Love, War, Peace, and Everything in Between:  4 Steps to Changing the World

Love, War, Peace, and Everything in Between: 4 Steps to Changing the World

on Sep 10, 2013 in World We Live In | 5 comments

West Bank, Santas Ghetto. Photo by EddieDangerous, Flickr Creative Commons

West Bank, Santas Ghetto. Photo by EddieDangerous, Flickr Creative Commons

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

–The Talmud
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Over the past two weeks, many of us have watched anxiously as the tension around Syria and drumbeats for war grow.

Yes, a very bad thing happened there. Hundreds of people, perhaps more, were killed by chemical weapons. Bad things happen all over the world, though. Do we try to respond to all of them? How do we choose what to respond to and what to ignore? And what should the response be?

It is daunting to consider these questions, and so many of us turn the other way.

We have been forced into a corner where it appears that the only choices are:

a) to act with aggression, or

b) to ignore and do nothing.

This, however, is a false choice. (I wrote more about this here.)

When we are in a corner, the choices seem more limited – and in fact may be limited by the corner itself. Viewed in this way, of course a nonviolent solution may seem implausible and impossible.

What I believe is this: Peacemaking is more than a single response to an isolated event. Rather it’s a way of life, built up moment after moment, day after day, year after year.

It grows out of a deep commitment to embodying nonviolence in oneself in all ways – speech, thought, actions. It has to be woven into the way we treat each other and govern our societies.

And it is rooted in Love.

Peacemaking requires imagination. It’s really a creative act, as John Paul Lederach describes beautifully in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.

And it needs to be accompanied by justice; that is, ensuring that all people (and creatures) have equal access to the conditions and resources we need to survive, and that we have processes in place with which to address the myriad ways that justice has been denied to individuals as well as groups of people.

During this past summer, I taught a workshop in northern Thailand on socially engaged Buddhism. One of the many things we explored was the difference between change and transformation. Sure – you can switch out one unjust regime with another, and you’ve achieved social change.

But social transformation can only happen by working at the level of root causes and cures. The greatest of these are our mental models – the view we hold of the world (and ourselves).

In my workshop, I shared a model of three overlapping circles that looked like this:

photo

The place where those three elements — Spirit, Strategy, and Power/Privilege/Position — intersect is what makes transformation possible.

Back to Syria – how to respond? Admittedly I’m not an expert in this, but I love what Anne Lamott wrote about just that:

There’s no way regular people like us could know what to do in Syria, whether to strike or not. The greatest strategic and political minds of our day, with genuinely brilliant advisers and sci-fi intelligence gathering, can’t figure it out. So how is some aging hippie Nana peacenik going to figure out the Rubic’s Cube of this distant savage heartbreaking civil war, where many of the rebels are jihadis, and there’s no one who is prepared or organized enough to run the country post-Assad?

But isn’t this one reality–that the most fastidiously trained and learned people in the government, military, humanitarian and diplomatic fields, can’t figure out the right move–reason enough to hold off bomb strikes for the time being?

If we want peace in Syria — or anywhere — we have to work for it, right here and right now in ourselves, and in the workings of our country.

So how can we move toward this vision of creating a more just and peaceful world? Here are four steps that can help us get started:

1) Realize that a peaceful and just society is possible, and that nonviolence is the most effective way to get there.
I want to give you a homework assignment – watch this incredible documentary: Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It’s the amazing true story of the women’s peace movement in Liberia. It will make you understand that the impossible is possible, when spirit, strategy, and power/privilege/position intersect.

2) Realize that we are not alone.
Connect. Find a community of like-minded and like-spirited peacemakers. Here are a few suggestions:

Remember that we bring all of our humanity into every situation, and that we often unwittingly re-create violence in these very groups where our desire is to make peace. So don’t expect them to be utopias… but realize the power of patience and willingness to learn together. This is how we practice peace right where we are, and wake up together.

3) Have a practice that nourishes peacemaking.
There are so many possibilities… some of these are individual practices, some are collective. Here are a few: Nonviolent communication, council practice, meditation, yoga, art… plenty more ideas here.

4) Take peaceful actions in your every day life.
Every day you can do something that builds peace in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your environment — what I call micro peacework. Take that action. Don’t stop. Persist. Commit.

 

Do you have more ideas on how to practice peace? Please share them in the comments below.

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Sharing the Love

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—Maia




    5 Comments

  1. Thanks so much for this post Maia. I often wonder where my assistance is needed most. Is it 20 hours away in Syria giving food out to people, or is it in my parent’s living room helping him get through cancer. The people in my neighborhood who need mental health counseling, is their suffering any more or less important than the people who’s lives are at risk due to injustice?

    It was great to read about all the intelligent politicians and humanitarian aide workers that are out there that can not find the answer. It makes so much sense to think of it that way. I hope that non-violence at all costs will lead us to greater peace.

    Victoria

    January 23, 2014

  2. Great conversation-starter about false choices (there have been several raised by discussions about Syria and Assad). The one that’s been getting my goat is the personal “choice” between supporting military intervention or protesting it and advocating diplomacy. Both, neither, and all manner of other options in between! I really appreciate the thoughtful comments from Katie, above, which hit home for me. I believe practicing peace requires knowledge and engagement, not knee-jerk advocacy or cliched catchphrases. This can include educating yourself and/or others about the issues — cultural, historical, personal — that feed the conflict and potential reactions from other parties, and about strategic approaches to conflict management (“resolution” is often unrealistic). I also like the ideas around working at grassroots, interpersonal level using forums that provoke discussion or bring together people who wouldn’t otherwise have opportunities to interact — collaborative arts and media projects, sports events… Thanks for the re-inspiration to engage.

    Hia

    September 11, 2013

  3. Thank you for this, Maia — and for the BPF shoutout! Yes, I appreciate your emphasis on the fact that peace is not a quick cure, but a process that takes a lot of time and effort. Sometimes it feels impossible. (That documentary on women in Liberia is a great one — I watched it with a Marxist feminist study group a few years ago. Strong determination, there.)

    I don’t know if this is the right time and place to go into this, but I want to at least float a question that’s been on my mind a lot: what it means to accept that nonviolence is the best way to get [to peace]. I certainly agree that it seems best to explore all possible nonviolent solutions before resorting to armed self-defense (or community defense), and it does seem true that armed resistance often perpetuates cycles of violence and trauma that continue to play out… at the same time, how do we also value various anti-colonial uprisings, for instance, from Haiti to Algeria, or even the American Revolution (for folks who are into it)? Not that these revolutions birthed utopian societies. But at the same time as we build for the long term and advocate nonviolent transformation, how do we deal with these circumstances of genocide and severe oppression that afflict parts of our human family? I guess another way of asking this is: how have you, personally, come to believe that nonviolence is the best way to peace, for all situations, always? Genuine question I am grappling with.

    At the same time, I think there are a ton of positive & brilliant nonviolent things we can be doing together, as you say. Last night in a lefty organizing group, we hosted two wonderful young, politically savvy friends (one Syrian-America, one Palestinian-American) who offered an in-depth, nuanced, hour-long presentation on the history of Syria and the current situation, informed by Arabic news sources that members of our group (English-speaking and Spanish-speaking) do not have access to. In many ways I found this session to be even more valuable and transformative than a 1,000-person protest of U.S. military strikes in Syria. These protests, especially when led by non-Arab Americans who may not have a nuanced sense of history, can often fall prey to oversimplifications and reactivity, as promoted in mainstream info-tainment media.

    I wonder what it would be like to try to shift our idea of public protest from loud proclamations (U.S. Hands Off Syria!) to more public teach-ins — subversive teach-ins — where people with access to history and more up-to-date information could publicly share with others. These rallies could carry the outspoken message that it is our collective responsibility to counteract the historically shallow information offered in mainstream media. I’ve seen various groups try to offer public education through flyers at rallies, but honestly I don’t know that this is a particularly culturally relevant form of education anymore. Do people really read flyers? Face-to-face, video, and infographics (bonus for political comedy!) seem to be the pedagogical currency of today, at least where I live.

    Anyhoo, I would love to pick up John Paul Lederach’s book! Creativity seems essential in any form of political organizing or social transformation. On that score, I also really enjoyed this recent article from Waging Nonviolence (I think they do good stuff) about a campaign team that ruled rallies and protests out of its tactical vocabulary entirely. Came up with other, fresher forms instead. Yay!

    http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/un-done-deal-strategy-soul/

    Sorry for the long comment; only a wordy reflection of excitement and gratitude for the thought-provoking post.

    Much love,

    katie

    Katie Loncke

    September 10, 2013

  4. All we are saying … is give peace a chance

    Yael

    September 10, 2013

  5. The article was very well accepted by me. I think one of the things I need to work on is sarcasm. It is so easy for people my age, “aging hippie Nana peacenik”, to be sarcastic, as so many things have been tried and we are still, in the same place. At least we feel so. Addressing the sarcasm is so important, because as we address this , we will become aware of our use of it to do nothing. Peace will take time and we are still learning. Doing nothing is as strong a message as sending the wrong message. It says, we don’t care. We give up. It is not worth the struggle. Sarcasm keeps us stuck. It keeps the fear from moving.

    Mitra

    September 10, 2013

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