My main point of reference for peace is that inner sense of "it's all good", it is not a tangible thing.
That sort of inner peace is one of those things that you don't think much about until it is not there.
For millions of people in the world, peace or the lack of it, is a very tangible, loud, visual, solid thing. People in Iraq, Darfur, and a hundred other places ripped apart by conflict that don't make it to the headlines, I suspect would have peace as one of their highest hopes yet it constantly eludes them.
My dad did a series on the Beatitudes in Luke and one of his points in the "Blessed are the peace makers" bit was that it is "peacemakers" not "peaceful" or "peacelovers" but creators of peace.
An ancient Nun I used to visit last year said that global peace starts with peace in your own personal life. I don't know what i think about that. What do you think about that?
At the Parihaka peace festival (a big secular music weekend in NZ) on the wall where all the timetable was pinned up someone had scrawled a yellow post-it note saying "Jesus: Prince of Peace" and for the first time that name for God stunned me.
I think peace might be the consequence of social justice. Or are they both ends in them self?
One day I would like to own a battered old army helmet and I will plant a beautiful tree in it as a statment.
2 comments:
How do you be a peacemaker when there is so much... whatever the opposite of peace is. The old 'Miss World' "I want World Peace" is such a cliche but I do want that and would love to play a part in seeing it happen but as I have no skills that would make me employable by any peacemaking body I don't know where to begin.
I hope your Nun is right because then I can do something.
Yeah. I think I agree with her. That it has to start right here, ni our immediate. When I think about how little I pray about the worlds lack of peace I am pretty ashamed, so I think a peacemaker would pray more for the violent situations around the world. And perhaps it links to my last post a wee bit- we need to think about the violence held in our everyday actions and make peaceful choices (green, slave free etc!)... and keep our eyes open so that the few-a-lifetime- big opportunities don't whizz past unnoticed.
I wish peacemaking was a bit more clear sometimes...
Post a Comment