Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/valerie/page/15/)
President Obama stated in his remarks to the UN General Assembly, “Each of us must choose the path of peace.” It is an individual duty that is a starting place for our moral acting. It is a debt we owe to our traditions, to our history and to our humanity.
And still, from time to time, we weep. Our broken hearts healing stronger ache and hope and love with fresh-washed, tear-washed bright, shining, glistening love.
Is there a figure on the national landscape that can bring left and right and people of all races,religions, and economic classes together? Will ordinary people make the decision to work to find common ground no matter the rhetoric of preachers, politicians, pundits and talk show hosts? These remain open questions.
We say that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, but our leaders are not brave. They work from a logic of “craven political expedience,” while the truly brave suffer. This is not comedy, but a tragedy that ought to be corrected.
Some people in Gasland used the language of war to describe what is happening in their lives. One man spoke of a way of life that is under attack. He felt “besieged.”
The difference between “mama grizzlies” and human females in particular and humanity in general is the capacity for rational thought. it is the moral responsibility that comes with that capacity. Unlike the mama grizzly, we are not only responsible to and for our own personal offspring. We are responsible to defend all the children of all the communities, towns, cities, nations and world. We are responsible for both human and nonhuman offspring.
I am so glad that through the eyes of faith I can see a day when the state is out of the marriage business. When we all–straight and LGBT–have equal rights and responsibilities under the laws of civil union or domestic partnership. Marriage will then exist within the domain of faith communities, and they can marry whom they will.
Peace in this holy and tragic land will come when we understand the Biblical wisdom that teaches that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.” (II Corinthians 10:4) The struggle is a struggle to defeat the logic of war. It is a struggle to win the argument of method so that the world thinks differently. When we think differently, we will act differently. We will see war and the cycle of violence for the absurdity that it is.
The idea of a culture of peace understands that peace is more than an end to violent conflict. Peace is a way of being in the world. It is a thought process. It is its own logic. It is a context of interpretation. It is how we know what is rational or not. A culture of peace understands power dynamics differently and chooses power sharing rather than a power over model. A culture of peace grows from the idea that violence is not inherent in the DNA of human beings. It is a learned behavior. If we learn violence, we can unlearn violence. We can learn peace.
The dead do not need us. We need them. We listen to their silent secrets and they tell us that there is no tribe, nation, race religion, class, ideology or identity in the world of the dead. They tell us to savor every moment, to eat slowly, to laugh too loud and too often, to taste the salt of our sweat and tears, to love deeply, madly, and truly because death is an awful finality.