How to Be a Peacemaker

What sickness plagues these wicked hours? We give excuses to replace eulogies, rationales to replace remembrances, we speak of collateral damage and forget about the graves of orphans.

And don't we love to wag our disapproving fingers in the faces of leaders and governments? But have we looked inside ourselves, do we have a soul-mirror? The realization that government might not always have the appropriate solution to a problem, and that in fact it might be more interested in maintaining itself, perpetuating its longstanding legacy of powers, is not a new one. The fact that those who dwell at the apex of power both at home and abroad have the strongest pull towards the whisperings of greed is an ancient truth about humanity, and few are the men and women who withstand its seduction.

But we, the common women and men, what will be said of our many complaints and our very few peacemaking days? Will we be lumped into the history that paints our America as an unfeeling giant of capitalism, or will we somehow wiggle around in our mold and be a part of a people that believes in those older ideas that say that stopping to help your neighbor is the better way? We must not speak merely of changing the more static and rigid things of government, but rather about the day to day experience of our people and our response to the oppressive evils in our world.

So will we place a collective finger on the pulse of the world and weep with those who weep, laugh with those who laugh, and mourn with those who mourn? What will we do in the mundane hours, when we feel that we are an insignificant voice in the vast breadth of humanity, and we drive to work and come home and do it again the next day? Perhaps the sickness of these hours is not of others, but it is our own apathy, our own greed, our own lack of initiative to begin peacemaking right here, right now.