peace

peace


Peace can be easily defined. All one has to do is head to any number of online dictionaries. I chose Webster’s Online Dictionary as my source and this is what it gave me:

Peace
Noun
1. The state prevailing during the absence of war.
2. Harmonious relations; freedom from disputes;
3. The absence of mental stress or anxiety.
4. The general security of public places;
5. A treaty to cease hostilities;


Pretty Strait forward and simple really. We all know what it means. We scream for it. We chant it. We want desperately to bring it to our lives and our world, and yet I think we have no idea how to actually make it happen.

Sure, we can rally to stop the war, we can hold placards, we can scream and shout and make an all around ruckus, but in the end this will not bring about peace. In fact, it will do quite the opposite.

Imagine a park, on a summer afternoon, quiet, still, and peaceful, then the thunderous roar of 1,000 people disrupting the peace, to chant for peace. The Police are called in. There is tear gas, knight sticks, and arrests.

Is this peace? This is nothing more than a small scale war. This is nothing more than Invading Iraq for peace. This, my friends, is not how we bring about peace.
So how do we do it?

Before I get into that, I have to stop for just a moment and make something very clear. I am no authority on this subject. This is just my opinion – one born of reading, thinking, and considering. In the end, it means nothing.

My opinion on how peace comes about is somewhat different and a bit more difficult to accept. We as a nation, meaning those of us in the U.S.A, tend to like the easy way out of things. If something is happening we don’t like, we stop it; if the kids are annoying us, we ground them; if there is a bug on the wall, we kill it. These are the simple easy fixes, but they do not solve the underlying problem.

Ground the child and he will be in trouble again at some point. Killing the bug does not get rid of the infestation.

It is this kind of thinking that we must change. We must accept that if we are to bring about change – bring about peace – that what we have done up to this point has not worked. The simple solutions of war and violence have not worked.

If we can accept that what we have been doing has not worked, then we can accept that perhaps the opposite could. If violence has failed, perhaps nonviolence can work. If ignoring the humanitarian crisis’s of the world has failed, perhaps focusing more attention on them will work.

If the easy fixes of violence and war have failed, perhaps the difficult fixes – using kindness, compassion, and nonviolence – will work.

This, in my opinion, is how we spread peace.

We must change the way we think about the problems we face. If I suggest to you that in order to put out your burning house you should throw gasoline on it, you would tell me I am crazy. You know this will not work because you have been around fire and you know that adding fuel to it only makes It worse. The same goes for violence.

It is easy to answer violence with violence, but that only stop the problem for the moment.

Do you think there would be such discontent for the United States if we were accepting of the Muslim nations of the world? If, in the wake of 9/11, we had spent time talking with the Muslim nations and worked out a way to find Osama Bin Laden, as apposed to simply declaring war on Islamic nations and painting Islam as an enemy, would he Islamic people be more or less willing to help us?

This can only happen through a change in attitude by each one of us, individually. Compassion, tolerance, kindness and understanding cannot be legislated. It happens when the people of a nation come to the realization that what they are doing is wrong and they make an effort, as a whole, to be unwilling to accept violence and hatred.

If each one of us makes an effort, all on our own, to change the way we think, then change can happen. Look around you. Consider how many times a day you say “I hate this” or “I hate that”. Think about the fact that you would rather read a blog where two people are cussing at one another than this. Consider how you would rather kill a spider than take it outside.

I consider how I would rather tell a Christian I hate them, then to try and understand where they are coming from. Little change bring about big changes.

I have decide that I am to change the world, then I have to start with myself. This blog is an example of that.

Will you join me?