“We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.” … Mary Parker Follett
As I catch snippets and shards of the news these days, I can’t help but feel anxiety start up. Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Israel, Palestine and on and on it goes.
My stomach goes in a knot just writing this out.
For me, this is personal. I don’t get it. We know how to resolve conflict. For me, it’s incredulous.
We would never let two colleagues in a workplace threaten each other’s lives if one of them doesn’t do something. We wouldn’t allow two children to smash each other’s toys. We don’t condone violence and in fact, we need to train our soldiers to dehumanize because otherwise they couldn’t kill.
We, as a community, regularly take firm stances for peace.
Regularly.
Then how is it that we have such intense political conflict? I don’t get it.
And, I don’t want to ask you to explain it to me because I know how the brain works. We are all making up our own narratives, based on our own snippets and shards of information.
None of us has the big picture. We only see that (apparently) when we die.
Yet, certain peacemakers inspire me.
Bill Ury inspires me so much. He and Ken Cloke and Mark Gerzon and all the people Gordon White and I interviewed for our on conflict podcast over the years.
There are so many active peacemakers out there.
And, it’s not enough. We can’t leave peace only to the professionals. We need to all become active peacemakers. We need to stand together and say “No” to violent ways of resolving conflict.
Bill Ury tells a great story in his latest book “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict”
He was in Venezuela, at the invitation of the Carter Centre and the United Nations to help with yet another dangerous political conflict. It was arranged that he would give a talk one night on his book The Third Side, which is about how ordinary citizens can, and must, play an active peace role in the face of conflict.
An invitation was put out to individual citizens, from the opposing factions, to come to the talk. Ury and the organizers expected perhaps 150 people but rented a space that sat 500.
Over 1,000 people showed up.
There were mounting tensions in the country, but civil war had not yet broken out. To Ury, this represented opportunity. He relays what he said that night:
“In your conflict, like in others, it seems like everyone has to choose one side or the other. People who don’t take a side are criticized and attacked…. What can stop a civil war? I can tell you from my experience elsewhere that the key is the whole community coming together to stop violence. Beyond the two sides, there is a third side. It is the side of… your children and their future. And your future. The third side is the engaged community that opposes violence and stands for dialogue and finding ways to live together peacefully, even with deep political differences.” He then had this gathering of opponents say no to violence. He invited them speak it out loud again and again. Three times they shouted a phrase suggested by someone in the audience, to symbolize their united desire to stop the violent ways of resolving the conflict.
Ury encouraged them to get louder each time.
To Ury, as to me, this is not a party trick or a rah-rah game. This is life and death.
We must stand together and say NO to political violence.
Can we do that?
I believe we can.
It starts with going inside and taking the direction of our souls, our inner music, hearing what we truly want.
Our artists take the time to source the collective wisdom. Let’s pay them homage & listen to their guidance – as Taylor Swift tells us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWtfOHBF1_w
Let’s all just… calm down.