Terry Hershey

In This Issue:

• PEACE
• Sabbath moment
• Prayer
• Poem
• Words to live by

FEATURE ARTICLE
by Terry Hershey

PEACE

I come to find a refuge in the easy silence that you make for me.
Dixie Chicks

There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me there.
Rumi, (poet and mystic 1207-1273)

My peace I give to you.
Jesus

I felt it shelter to speak to you.
Emily Dickinson wrote to a friend

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
Chinese proverb

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us remember: what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.
Elie Wiesel

Someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
Al Cohn's definition of a gentleman

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I hate people. I hate life. I hate the world.” Lucy is apoplectic.

“I thought you had inner peace,” Charlie Brown says to her.

“I do,” Lucy responds. “But I have a lot of outer obnoxiousness.”

Sorting through our pile of Christmas cards and letters, I count PEACE as the most used word. (Email has not yet eliminated cards, or the requisite family epistles showcasing advent peace by boasting about children who have graduated from Harvard with honors while excelling at Juilliard all the while providing investment counsel to Warren Buffett. Meanwhile, I’m doing my best just to get my son to clean his room. Makes one all weepy, doesn’t it? I read these letters while sipping a hot toddy listening to KT Oslin croon “I’ll have a blue Christmas. . .”)

It is easy to make peace a manageable topic if we reduce it to a sing-a-long. Or, we see peace as a longed-for-state-of-mind not too dissimilar from winning a lottery. In other words, it’s conceivable, but for a lucky few.

I have heard sermons (and have preached some) about peace, as an ideal. We hear peace frequently paraded as a political talking point. Enticing, yes. But when something can be reduced to a bumper sticker (“Visualize world peas”), it’s hard not to be cynical.

Here’s what I believe: Peace can only be found, or embraced, or internalized, in the specific, the mundane, the daily and the particular. Here are a few slices of particular life from the past month. . .

Let there be peace on earth.

It is morning in Antigua, Guatemala. The Volcano Agua stands sentinel over the city. It’s presence–filling the backdrop behind the city–is a source of comfort. All is well.

My weekend morning begins with a walk through the city to my favorite café. The sounds of Guatemalan city life–sharp rifle-like reports from the exhaust pipes of “chicken-buses,” shouts from market vendors and ubiquitous music–fill the air.

In El Parque Central, los lustredores (shoe shine boys) pitch their service in bi-lingual staccato, “Shine, uno dollar.” The park fills one city block. All of the benches are occupied, with families, friends, lovers. Together on this afternoon. This park is a magnet, the impetus, the container for this weekly liturgy of connection. Watching this scene unfold , I realized that peace, like faith, is always identified by a verb. Sitting, talking, laughing, listening, smiling, touching, singing, playing.

In the verb we find the life-blood of peace. Without the verb, we are only skin and bones.

The biblical version of shalom is about covenant, meaning that we seek peace by restoring wholeness. How do we do this? We overcome whatever alienates us (hence the verb) from full participation in community.

I didn’t ask anyone in the park what they believed about peace. Because in their laughter, I realized that the question was not necessary.

Let there be peace on earth.

Advent season has passed, the birth of the Prince of Peace. With its requisite squabble over whether we use “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” What a worthy debate, as we jostle one another, both hands loaded with shopping bags from Macys, Nordstrom and the Gap. I can do the half-yearly sale with the best of them, so it is wise not to pretend that words like Merry Christmas can be elevated to a moral concern when our primary preoccupation (or worship?) is consumerism. Say what you want, but nothing will change until we move from being a stuff oriented society to being a relationship oriented society.

This much is true: Long lines are perfect for eavesdropping. Where truth is always stranger than fiction. One shopper stands at the counter of Restoration Hardware, two bags on one arm, a cell phone in the opposite hand, held up to her ear. Those of us in the long line are hostage to her one-sided conversation, for which there is (unfortunately) neither volume nor mute dial on her telephone voice.

“It’s so sad,” she is telling her cell phone. “I don’t think people really see the meaning of Christmas. It feels so secular now. I don’t know what’s happening to our culture. . .I know, I know, and Gina’s school, they won’t even let her sing Away in a Manger.”

The clerk motions to the woman talking on the phone.

The woman answers the clerk in a clipped tone, “No, put that on the Visa card too. And I want separate bags for those.”

She continues, to the phone, as if this has all been one long sentence, “Okay. Gotta go, I’m am soooo crazy right now. So much last minute stuff to do. Let’s get together for a latte later.”

When she walked past, I thought about the “hope and fears of all the years,” and I wished her a Merry Christmas.

Let there be peace on earth.

Peace. Okay. What’s in it for me?

We are immersed in a culture that sees everything in terms of personal betterment. To many, peace is a euphemism for personal happiness. You don’t have to look far. There’s this gem from singer Mary Blige, who says that God has willed her to wear bling. (Don’t feel too middle-aged if you are a newcomer to this word. It refers to hip-hop jewelry.) “My God is a God who wants me to have things,” the singer tells May’s Blender magazine. “He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block. I don’t know what kind of God the rest of y’all are serving, but the God I serve says, ‘Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I’m gonna make sure you’re doing that’.”

You go girl!

It’s seductive. No doubt about it. In this scenario, peace is a package deal, sort of like mental well-being, which leads to an easier life, more self-esteem, a clearer purpose and if we play our cards right, plenty of money. You’ve got to admit, there is nothing quite like peace on earth when it means a new plasma screen TV. Not that I’d turn one down (in case anyone is in the buying mood), it’s just that it’s a whole-bunch-of-a-whopping-stretch to equate any of this with God or faith or peace.

To cut to the chase: I’m sure Jesus doesn’t care whether I look hot or not. And I’m doubly sure that when he said, “my peace I give to you,” he didn’t have my self-esteem in mind.

My peace I give to you.

I love the story about the woman stopped by the police for speeding.

“Of course I’m in hurry,” she explained to the officer, “I’m lost.”

For all my talk about peace, I exacerbate my problem. Like the woman in the queue at the store, my life can be soooo crazy. So why do I feel the need to keep the pedal to the metal? If I feel lost, where do I need to be so quickly? What does my busyness take care of?

Listen to Henri Nouwen, “Recently I spent some time walking in New York City. I realized how most places are filled up with other things. . .We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. . .We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come.”

The result, of course, is that we choke (or block or prevent) the very peace we seek.

We all know this: Our soul cannot thrive without nutrients. It becomes anemic or withered or weak. We experience a loss of creativity, joy, presence, listening, vibrancy. An absence of peace.

Which begs the question: who is feeding that part of my soul that nurtures peace and well being? Where is that place which doesn’t require performance or manipulation or retribution?

So today. . .I fed my soul. I am parked in my truck, waiting at our north-end-ferry-dock at dawn. The syrup-like layer of sky color above the cascade mountain range is an arresting, even tantalizing, pink. It is not high, looking more like a layer of creme in a decadent sponge cake. And yet, so flitting, temporary, replaced in less than five minutes by a smoky blue morning sky. A brief interlude. Is it Mozart or Bach? I feel a rush, an explosion of cello strings, as if bow and string are the color. My heartbeat slows. And my mania is dispelled, at least for now, with no need to bury my day in activity.

I savor a line from Mary Oliver. . . Life’s fretfulness may be transcended.

This way of living begins. . .when we realize that peace means literally living from the inside out.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Do you know the story about Powers Hapgood of Indianapolis? Kurt Vonnegut tells it in his book A Man Without A Country. Hapgood was a typical Hoosier idealist. Socialism is idealistic. Hapgood, was a middle-class person who thought there could be more economic justice in this country. He wanted a better country, that’s all. After graduating from Harvard, he went to work as a coal miner, urging his working-class brothers to organize in order to get better pay and safer working conditions. Hapgood’s family owned a successful cannery in Indianapolis, and when Powers Hapggod inherited it, he turned it over to the employees, who ruined it.

Hapgood and Vonnegut met in Indianapolis after the end of the Second World War. He had become an official in the CIO. There had been some sort of dust-up on a picket line, and he was testifying about it in court, and the judge stops everything and asks him, “Mr. Hapgood, here you are, you’re a graduate of Harvard. Why would anyone with your advantages choose to live as you have?”

Hapgood answered the judge, “Why, because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir.”

Let there be peace on earth .

It’s a sad sad story when a Mother
will teach her daughter
to hate a perfect stranger.
- Dixie Chicks

Zach spent his birthday throwing snowballs with his friends. Not a bad way to solve the world’s problems. A good old fashioned snowball catapult. Peace is not manufactured, but the soil preparation is pretty straightforward.

Last month, I had a conversation with a pastor (of a California church) about the Muslim Imams removed from an airplane in Minneapolis, because their praying before the flight was suspicious. “It serves them right,” he told me. “But many of them were born here.” I said, “They are American.” “Then they should go back where they came from.” “You can’t be serious?” “I am.” “And how would you accomplish this?” still wondering if he was pulling my leg. “I would put them all on a plane,” he told me, “send them over the Atlantic, and open the door.”

I know. His rhetoric is alarming, and surely must be exaggerated. It still chills me as I retell it. But I am repeating this conversation, word for word, for two reasons.

One, hatred can take root in all of our hearts. And too often we nurse it. I would never say anything close to what he said, which all sounds magnanimous of me until I catalogue all the ways I sow hatred, including consumption, hurry, exclusion, and the then I’m none too happy.

Two, I did nothing. I don’t know what I could have done, but I remembered the words of Elie Wiesel “Let us remember: what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Let there be peace.

It is a new year. I toasted with several friends in our home on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t get around to making any resolutions. I found it sufficient to dust off the list from last year, and work on the ones I never got around to.

Plenty of folk covered the gamut for me on www.43things.com. Read 50 books. Lose 10 lbs. Quit smoking, again. Look good in my bikini. Be nicer to be people I don’t like. Find a beautiful down to earth financially well off woman who isn’t picky. I’m with the two men I overheard talking on the ferry. “How’s your memory? Do you take anything for it?” “Yes I take medication. Two gingko and this other good stuff, but I can’t remember what it’s called.”

Adlai Stevenson, a dear friend of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, wrote a tribute of her the day she died. It was printed in The New York Times the following day, November 8, 1962. He said of her, “What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many? She walked in the slums and ghettos of the world, not on a tour of inspection, but as one who could not feel contentment when others were hungry... I have lost more than a beloved friend. I have lost an inspiration. She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.”

Now. . .that, is a resolution. A simple act. A simple verb. Be willing to light a candle. What Jewish tradition calls a rodef shalom , a pursuer of peace.

Today, the early morning sky is a murky grey, a solid cloud cover mass. It sits, hangs, above the horizon, like a weighted drapery. There is a distinct line at the base of the cloud cover. Below it, an opening, a window, a view to what is beyond. On the “other” side, the Olympic Mountains are bathed in sunlight. The snow glistens. It is pristine. I stop the car. There is a catch in my breath. A ferry slides by, through the picture, gliding on the water.

I am a child of God who believes
that we are all children of God
and we are all part of each other.
May we all know peace.
- Thich Nhat Hanh