Making peace in our world
Making peace in our world
4 July 2018
"Peacemaking is an active presence of goodness in the world." - Danielle Strickland
If there was ever a time for peace it’s now. We need it, badly. And I don’t mean the kind of peace that keeps quiet.
That’s a kind of keeping the peace that disguises itself as nice and kind but is instead a deeply passive insistence on the status quo. People who “keep the peace” have the luxury of wilful blindness and are most likely those who have something to lose if true peace (justice/fairness/equality/ rightness) was ever actually made.
What we really need right now in our desperate world is true peacemaking. The kind Jesus suggested would usher in the Kingdom of God. Peacemaking – like troublemaking but turned upside down.
Peacemaking – people with voices who speak up for the underdog and go out of their way to get in the way of injustice, exposing the deep and dark places of racism, hatred, abuse, and oppression in the desperate belief that exposure is the first stop on the train to healing.
Peacemaking is an active presence of goodness in the world. It’s a decision to get our heads out of the sand and live into the reality of our current global context. There is so much peace to be made. But where to begin?
Recently, Amplify Peace (amplifypeace.com), an organisation I helped co-found, led a group of women on a peacemaking pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was a trip intended to veer far from the average one – going out of our way to get in the way of folks who were suffering and thriving in the midst of deep and horrible oppression.
We wanted to get immersed in the realities of making peace, so we sought out people who were trying to do just that. People stuck in the midst of the long trauma of conflict but who were seeking to live a different way. People who looked and sounded a lot like Jesus.
We had a pretty simple framework that I think might be helpful to anyone who is wondering how to become a peacemaker in their own world. Listen – Learn – Live. It is this first way of making peace in the world – listening – that I want to focus on. Listen. This is much harder than it first sounds. Listening is an act of solidarity with the person you are trying to hear. And this is where we get a bit specific. Whose voice have you not heard? And how can you begin to make some peace by choosing to listen to the voices of those whom you don’t know?
At the heart of every human being is a sacred beginning. And to find that human heart can take some uncovering of our own prejudice and distorted perspective, and the only way to get to that divine connection of a shared humanity is to listen to each other. Many of the people we think we “know about” we have not met.
This is because the world is designed to keep us apart, to separate us. And this separation increases fear and the fear keeps us in confl ict. And peace is lost. So, peacemaking begins by choosing to move in the opposite direction of oppression and injustice. Those of us with the power to choose where we go and what we do and who we talk to can make the deliberate decision to listen to those we have not yet heard.
So, what might that journey look like for you? Identify whose voice you have not heard. It may be a new immigrant family from another culture, a person from another faith, someone socially excluded or left out of the narrative of our dominant cultural norms. Then seek them out.
This is where it gets a little hard and when we realise that the kind of listening peacemaking requires of us will be a bit costly. You may need to volunteer somewhere or make a trip or a phone call to someone who might be able to help you connect with someone you wouldn’t naturally connect with. It will feel awkward and that’s okay.
You will feel like a beginner and that will be a great blessing. You will be the one asking for help – and that will be a great chance to live in the upside down kingdom of God. No wonder God called peacemakers blessed!
Danielle Strickland is a Salvationist who blogs at daniellestrickland.com. This is an edited version of the original article that appeared on her website.
Comments
Hi. Just a few comments on your article. 1. What makes you assume the present requires peace more than any other in history? Surely those being slaughtered by Islamic fundamentalists in the 7th century (which birthed The Crusades) would find your comments insulting. 2. Why did you lead an all women group, surely that is sexist to not include men. 3. Do you think Jesus listened to the Jews that he whipped out of their own temple? 4. Your article exemplifies your overall confusion on matters - you begin extolling the virtue of a peace that is not quiet, yet spend most of your article talking about listening. 5. Finally, I understand there is much debate about starting sentences with conjunctions, but they add little and only serve as fluff. Please refrain from such frivolity.