what does it mean to live a life of peace? -...

What does it mean to

live a life of peace?

First Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo

Theme Based Ministry

November 2014

Table of Contents To go immediately to a section, simply hover over the heading with your curser and press Ctrl+Click at

the same time.

A Note from the Minister ............................................................................................................................ 1

Reading – “Where Does Peace Begin” ........................................................................................................ 2

Films About Peace ...................................................................................................................................... 6

Readings/Poems about Peace..................................................................................................................... 6

Reading No. 505 – Singing the Living Tradition ................................................................................... 6

We Dream of Peace – Voices from the Margins: An Anthology of Meditations.................................. 7

Wildpeace ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Books on Peace (fiction and non-fiction) .................................................................................................... 8

Fiction: ................................................................................................................................................ 8

Non-Fiction: ........................................................................................................................................ 8

Quotes About Peace ................................................................................................................................... 8

Challenges for the Month ........................................................................................................................... 9

Spiritual Practices ....................................................................................................................................... 9

Upcoming Themes .................................................................................................................................... 10

FUFON Thematic Ministry Packet – November Page 1

A Note from the Minister

To live a life of peace is a difficult thing – for me it means being constantly aware of my motivations and

intentions in each and every interaction I have. Not only does it touch on my relationship with myself –

am I at peace with who I am in the world and how I operate in it – but it touches on my personal

relationships as well as the larger relationships of peace in the world. In Hebrew the word shalom is

generally understood to mean peace, however the concept of shalom is far broader than that. Shalom

means completeness, wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness,

fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord. Now here’s a word that packs a pretty

punch!

And I also realize at the same time that in spending time looking at how I can live a life of peace is

something that I have a choice over – I am in a place where this becomes a choice. And there are those

in our community, in our country, and in the world that do not have this choice. Women living in

oppressive situations where they are living with an abusive partner do not have choice in terms of living

a life of peace. It’s easy to say that she should leave, but many times there are considerations that play

into her life that end up taking that choice away from her; likewise with people struggling with post-

traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its effects on their lives – and people struggling with mental illness.

It’s easy to say to someone who has been depressed for a long time, just get over it – and yet it’s easier

said than done. Winston Churchill, who was known to suffer from depression, called it his black dog.

Likewise waking up in the morning in constant pain as a result of an unknown diagnosis does little to

bring peace of mind into the struggle to get through daily life. Others are so beset with painful

memories and haunting stories that finding relief in a bottle of alcohol or pills is the only way in which

peace of mind can be attained.

In our examination of what it means to live a life of peace, let us remember always that living a life of

peace is a daily struggle for many. Let us, as part of building a Beloved Community, always be mindful

that there are people around us every day that struggle with mental illness, PTSD, or illness – let us do

what we can in each and every interaction with others to radiate out peace.


Reading – “Where Does Peace Begin” Most years at our church auction I’ve sold the rights for the highest bidder to choose the subject of a

Sunday morning sermon. This year’s winner was Bill G. Bill and I went out together for Chinese food to

discuss what he had in mind for a sermon. During our lunch, Bill told me that he wanted me to speak

about the topic of attaining world peace. Thanks, Bill, for giving me such an easy topic. Yeesh!

So, let me begin by sharing with you some of the thoughts that Bill had about peace that he wanted me

to think about. Bill wanted me to try to define what world peace actually means. How do we know if we

are actually getting closer to it? Do we really want it? Bill also observed that human life often has a

certain “dog eat dog” quality to it. We compete with one another and the way in which we live often

involves hurting other beings. Bill wondered if this negative view of who we are as human beings—if it

were true—makes world peace an impossible dream.

If you look not only at the world today, but at the history of the world, the goal of world peace can seem

like an impossible vision. In the book, What Every Person Should Know About War, Christopher Hedges

writes, “Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent

of recorded history.” And, it is not as if we can point to any kind of modern moral progress. More people

died in the wars of the twentieth century than in all the other wars that were ever fought throughout

human history. At the beginning of the year 2003 there were 30 active wars going on around the globe.

But, I want to make Bill’s question about attaining peace even more challenging. Peace is not the same

thing as the absence of war. I want to argue that even if you could end every war on the planet, as

wonderful as that would be, you might still not have peace. Don’t get me wrong, it would be amazing if

every war ended, but even that would not guarantee peace.

How is that possible, you ask? Well, let me give you this example. The Roman Empire conquered lots

and lots of lands all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The leaders of the Roman Empire believed

that they had the right to conquer other lands and to force the people there to live under their rules.

Their power made it so that some of the people they conquered couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. This

was known as the Pax Romana, or the peace of Rome, but I don’t think this felt like peace to the people

who were forced to live under foreign rulers. But, just because the people couldn’t (or wouldn’t) fight

back, didn’t mean they did not have something to protest and speak up about.

As we learn about the history of our country, we learn that ours has been a history of being very unfair

to many people. This land is not ours. This land right here, this land where we live and this land where

we worship, first belonged to Native Americans. Our country took this land unfairly and often violently.

Now, it has been a long, long time since there was an actual war between an Indian tribe and the United

States military, but just because there aren’t war battles raging, that doesn’t mean that there is peace

exactly. An absence of violence does not equate to peace.

There is a popular bumper sticker that reads, “If you want peace, work for justice.” I used to see this


bumper sticker and interpret it as a threat. (“You better start working for justice, or else!”) That, of

course, isn’t what the bumper sticker actually means. What it means is that you can’t really have peace

until there is justice and fairness.

This point makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it. I bet a lot of you have brothers or

sisters. I bet that a lot of you have fought about something with your brother or sister. When children

fight there is often a maneuver that is employed that helps us to imagine what I am thinking about here.

That maneuver involves sitting on your sibling and pinning his or her arms underneath your knees, so

that your sibling is completely immobilized. In that moment all struggle is eliminated, but the person

being pinned down feels something other than peace. We might call that arm-pinning, chest-sitting

maneuver the Pax Romana.

Fighting with your brother or sister is not just something that kids do. (I bet some of the adults here still

have fights with their brothers or sisters, although I hope it doesn’t involve pinning each other to the

ground.) But, the point is this: if you’ve had a fight with somebody, there is often a space between when

the fight is over and when peace is made. That space is not fighting, but it isn’t peace either. Peace

requires more than just that the fighting stops. It requires healing and resolution, so that both sides feel

that justice has been done.

If you want peace, work for justice. I think that this is what the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah had in mind

when he said, “They dress the wound of my people as though it was not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they

say, when there is not peace.” A few verses later in Jeremiah there are some very interesting words of

prophetic wisdom. Jeremiah says, “Take your stand and watch at the crossroads; ask about the ancient

paths; ask which is the way that leads to what is good.”

One of the questions Bill asked me was whether human beings really want peace? I think it is all too

often that human beings stand at a metaphorical crossroads and do not ask which path leads us to what

is good. I think it is all too often that human beings stand at the crossroads and ask, “Which is the

shortest path?” “Which is the easiest path?” “Which is the most comfortable path?” “Which is the most

pleasant and enjoyable path?” Not, which is the good path?

I should note that in our own tradition, delegates to this June’s General Assembly will get to vote on a

statement of conscience about creating peace. Part of that statement of conscience talks about three

successive forms of action: peacebuilding, peacemaking, and peacekeeping.

Peacebuilding has to do with creating a fair world where the roots of conflict are addressed. The roots of

conflict include things like economic inequality, the violation of human rights, and political oppression.

Peacemaking has to do with negotiation, mediation, and reconciliation when there is conflict.

Peacekeeping also has to do with taking action, with intervening to try to minimize the harm that

violence causes and to support the creation of space for diplomacy and humanitarian aid.


Unitarian Universalist social ethicist Sharon Welch talks about war and peace as much, much more than

a black and white issue. She claims that when we argue about war, we tend to divide ourselves into two

camps. One camp contains people of good will who believe that war and violence are always wrong, are

never right. That position is known as pacifism. On the other side are people of good will who believe

that violence and war are sometimes necessary. This way of thinking is often known as “just war”

theory. Both sides have faith that they are right.

We have diversity in this room on this subject. Some people in this room believe that war is always

wrong and should be protested. Other people believe that sometimes war is necessary. But, Sharon

Welch argues for a third way that gets us beyond black and white thinking, a way of reconciling these

two positions. She writes,

“When I was first a peace activist, the choices facing us seemed clear: the limited violence of just war or

the renunciation of violence in any form. Now, however, our options are greater and our choices more

complex. Since the early 1990s, the world of peace activism has been transformed by a focus on the vast

areas of concern shared by proponents of nonviolence and by supporters of just war. The debates that

divided us are now overshadowed by a recognition of what we share - the need for a third way: joint

efforts to prevent war… and repair the damage caused by armed conflict. […] If [we claim that] war is

the last resort, what are the first, second and third responses[?]”

When Julia Ward Howe issued her Mother's Day Proclamation, she was issuing an invitation for mothers

to take action, to, in her words, “take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human

family can live in peace.”

This afternoon members of this congregation will gather with friends from our city for our third annual

Julia’s Voice Stand for Peace event. Even better, this year we are being joined by many other Unitarian

Universalists all around the country. Julia’s Voice events are being held in Massachusetts, Rhode Island,

New York, Ohio, and Colorado. As a church, though, we do more than witness and protest. Our witness

is made all the more powerful by other acts undertaken by those in our church community. Do we work

to prevent war? By small acts. Our religious education classes have participated in the Pennies for Peace

initiative started by Greg Mortensen, which has helped to build schools in Afghanistan, something that is

needed if there is to be peace in Afghanistan.

Our church and our individual members have been active in working to repair some of the damage

caused by armed conflict. Some of our quilters have been involved in the “Quilts of Valor” program, a

way of showing tenderness and care to those harmed by war. At the same time we have worked to

provide support services to Iraqi refugees living in the Kansas City area.Such efforts, large and small, are

relevant to that third way of engagement that Sharon Welch tells us about.

At the beginning of this morning’s sermon we read together words from the Taoist tradition. Lao-Tse

tells us,


If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.

It there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the human heart.

Is this true? Does peace actually begin in the heart? Yes and no. I would also say that the opposite could

also be true. If there is not peace in the world, a moral nation should not feel a sense of peace. And if a

moral nation does not feel a sense of peace, a moral city should not feel at peace. When the city does

not feel at peace, neighbors should not feel at peace. When neighbors do not feel at peace, families

can’t really feel a sense of peace. And when we do not feel peace in our families, we often have a

troubled feeling in our hearts, a discomfort stemming from an honest view of the world.

Our Unitarian Universalist seventh principle talks about the interdependent web of all existence of

which we are all a part. One place we see that web is in nature. If your neighbor decides to go outside

and burn all their trash in the backyard, the smoke will make you cough. If you burn trash in your

backyard, the smoke will make your neighbor cough.

It is a rich and complex system. Our choices, our decisions, our actions, our relationships, our efforts to

heal, our efforts to reconcile, our voice, our witness: Each of these touch the whole.

###

I leave you this morning with a paradox from an unlikely source. Some years ago business author Jim

Collins went to interview Admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running-mate in 1992, who had been

brutalized as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. In the interview, Stockdale said that those of his fellow

prisoners of war who lost all hope perished. However, Stockdale also revealed that the optimists, those

that were certain that they would be going home by Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving also perished;

“They died of a broken heart.” He said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith

that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the

most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

As you go forth this day, choose to follow the good path, the path between despair and ungrounded

hope. Do what you can, knowing that by doing this, you touch the whole.

Rev. Thom Belote, Minister at The Community Church of Chapel Hill


Films About Peace

A Bridge Too Far (all-star cast including Liv Ullman, Lord Olivier, Robert Redford, and Sean Connery) -

Intended by producer Joseph E. Levine as an anti-war statement, this film portrays the Allied operation

at Arnhem, Holland, in 1944. Excellent battle footage leads to a moving ending showing the plight of

war's victims.

Dead Man Walking (starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon) - Not directly about war, but certainly

about the nature of human violence, life, death, and love, this is the most powerful film available on the

death penalty. Penn plays a convicted murderer, Sarandon the nun who tries to reach him at a human

level.

Gandhi (starring Ben Kingsley; directed by Richard Attenborough) - An epic treatment of Gandhi's life

and his nonviolent campaign to liberate India from British rule. Kingsley gives his best performance ever.

Among other things, the film is full of lessons on nonviolent philosophy, tactics, and strategy, but it is

really about one of the most extraordinary men of the 20th Century.

Milk (starring Sean Penn) - The story of Harvey Milk, and his struggles as an American gay activist who

fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official.

A Beautiful Mind (starring Russell Crowe and Ed Harris) – an autobiographical drama following the life of

John Nash, a young prodigy who begins to develop paranoid schizophrenia and delusional episodes.

Readings/Poems about Peace

Reading No. 505 – Singing the Living Tradition

Let us be at peace with our bodies and our minds. Let us return to ourselves and become wholly

ourselves.

Let us be aware of the source of being, common to us all and to all living things.

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards

ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other.

With humility, with awareness of the existence of live, and of the sufferings that are going on around us,

let us practice the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth. Amen.

Thich N’hat Hanh


We Dream of Peace – Voices from the Margins: An Anthology of Meditations

Loving Spirit of this and every sacred moment, be with us in times of self-doubt when we forget that

dreams are not born in an instant but must be nurtured, must be chosen over and over. When the world

is telling us that we are dreaming too large, too wild, too unrealistic, or even too small … remind us,

gentle, patient Spirit, that any dream worth waiting for is worth working toward.

Precious and Loving God, today more than ever we dream of peace – peace in our hearts, which have

been clouded over with promises of a free world that will never come to pass if brought with the blood

of war.

Dear God, today we ream of peace … today we dream of peace. Amen.

Marta I. Valentin

Wildpeace

Not the peace of a cease-fire

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

but rather

as in the heart when the excitement is over

and you can talk only about a great weariness.

I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.

A peace

without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,

without words, without

the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be

light, floating, like lazy white foam.

A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?

(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation

to the next, as in a relay race:

the baton never falls.)

Let it come

like wildflowers,

suddenly, because the field

must have it: wildpeace.

Yehuda Amichai


Books on Peace (fiction and non-fiction)

Fiction:

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul – Bob Shacochis – covering over fifty years and crossing four countries

with four different wars in the background, this book brings to life a portrait of events that lead up to

the war on terror and America today.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson – the book follows Jun Do, a man who finds himself a victim

of the North Korean’s whims.

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank – the diary entries of Anne Frank while she remained in hiding in

German-occupied Holland during the Second World War.

Non-Fiction:

Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism by

Karima Bennoune – an international human-rights lawyer, professor and activist interviews nearly 300

people from close to 30 countries to illuminate the inspiring stories of those who represent one of the

best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.

Youngblood of the Peace by Shirlee Smith Matheson – this book follows the adventures of an Oblate

priest who lived with the Cree, Saulteaux and Beaver Indian people of BC and Alberta.

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel – described as a poignant and hilarious book that gives voice to the

high incidence of depression among our youth.

Quotes About Peace

“I refuse to accept the view that [hu]mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism

and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality … I believe that

unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendrix

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Mother Teresa

“‘Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving

these differences through peaceful means, through dialogue , education, knowledge; and through

humane ways.” Dalai Lama


Challenges for the Month

Try one of the three peace challenges and post your findings on our Facebook page:

1. Observe a stranger sometime during your day. Silently say to yourself “This person is just like me.

Like me, this person has experienced joy and sorrow, despair and hope, fear and love. Like me, this

person has people in their life who deeply care about them. Like me, this person’s life is

impermanent and will one day end. This person’s peace is as important as my peace. I want peace,

harmony, laughter, and love in their life and the life of all beings.” Journal how this connection

impacts on your day.

2. Share your practice of peacemaking with two people and invite them to join in the practice. As more

people participate in the practice, our practice expands into a critical mass.

3. In a setting that inspires you, journal about who is the most forceful and impressive peacemaker you

have ever encountered? What did you learn from that person?

4. For as many days as you can this month, choose one of the following to do each day:

Tell someone how much you appreciate them;

Express genuine gratitude to those who have helped and loved you;

Offer healing or nurturing words to someone who needs them;

Show respect to someone whose respect you value.

Spiritual Practices

Choose one of the three practices offered here and engage with it over the month.

1. Take five minutes each day to meditate on peace. Sit quietly with your eyes closed. Place your

attention on your heart and inwardly repeat these four words: Peace, Harmony, Laughter, Love.

Allow the words to radiate from your heart’s stillness out into your body. As you end your

meditation, say to yourself, “Today w will relinquish all resentments and grievances.” Bring into your

mind anyone against whom you have a grievance and let it go. Send that person your forgiveness.

2. Thinking has power when it is backed by intention. Introduce the intention of peace in your

thoughts. Take a few moments of silence, then repeat this prayer:

Let me be loved, let me be happy, let me be peaceful.

Let my friends be happy, loved, and peaceful.

Let my perceived enemies be happy, loved, and peaceful.

Let all beings be happy, loved, and peaceful.

Let the whole world experience these things.

3. Once a week talk a walk with the sole intention of photographing beautiful things that help you to

feel at peace and then create a peace collage with your pictures.


Upcoming Themes

Next month our theme focuses on what it means to live a life of compassion. Contributions to the

packet are more than welcome! Please forward them to [email protected] prior to November 20th. This

includes art, poems, movies, reflections, etc. Unleash your creativity!

Over the rest of the church year, we’ll be looking at the following themes:

January – What does it mean to live a life of possibility? February – What does it mean to live a life of love? March – What does it mean to live a life of faith? April – What does it mean to live a life of creativity? May – What does it mean to live a life of strength? June – What does it mean to live a life of beauty?

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