Are Global and Personal Peace Possible?

Those of you who have visited this blog and left comments on the past two “peace” postings have written about at least two kinds of peace: global and individual. Anyone who has lived more than seventy years has known the lack of global peace.

In 1950, the United States, as part of the UN forces, entered the Korean War. Daily, the newspapers and fledging television programs brought us news of what was happening on that far-off peninsula. Pusan, Inchon, Yalu River, the Chosin Reservoir and its bitter winter, Seoul, stalemate, armistice, police action became part of our vocabulary.

 

For three years the battle raged north and south of the 38^th parallel. At one point, the militia of the UN got close to Korea’s border with China. A massive number of Chinese soldiers repulsed them. Because MacArthur wanted to invade China, President Truman, commander-in-chief, relieved him of his duties. This caused an uproar in the United States. My father had no liking for MacArthur after his actions in World War II in which, according to my dad, “the general was interested only in the limelight.” So Dad applauded President Truman’s actions. Many didn’t.

On July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed. Tomorrow—Monday—will be the 64^th anniversary of that signing. Officially, that armistice left North and South Korea still at war. Many American newspapers maligned President Truman for conducting a “police action” and not fighting until the United Nations won. According to Wikipedia, “recent scholarship puts the full battle death toll on all sides at just over 1.2 million.”

In college, I met a young man who’d fought in Korea. Like most soldiers, he didn’t talk about his experiences, especially at Chosin. However, everyone who met him during those college years noted a maturity beyond his age.

Since that war, our newspapers and television stations have taken us to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. A college friend wrote a poignant poem about that and about the Oneness we all share. Of course, we then had the years of war in Vietnam. After Vietnam we had the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia and the holocaust there.

Then we had El Salvador and Nicaragua. My poetry-writing friend went to Nicaragua to help those driven from their homes. I feared for her during those months because in El Salvador four social activists from the United States had been murdered as well as Bishop Óscar Romero. Thankfully, my friend came home safe and rededicated herself to peace and non-violent protest.

Between then and now, wars have acquainted us with countries many of us couldn’t find on the map or visualize. Israel, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, Libya, Syria. And more. So many more.

So the question arises: Is there ever any possibility of peace? One of the slogans of World War II was—“The War to End All Wars.” Instead of that happening, the trenches of 1914-1918 led to World War II. Soon—on August 4, we will “celebrate” the 103^rd anniversary of Britain’s entry into War World I.

Is there no possibility of peace? Ever since World War II, which the United States entered when I was in kindergarten and could read headlines, I have read a great deal about war because I’ve wanted to know “Why?” Why do we take one another’s lives? Why do we send the youth of our countries to fight?

So next week, I hope to share a final posting about my discovery—yours, too, I suspect—about peace starting with one. With me. With you. It is that Oneness that speaks to me of possible peace—perhaps only within ourselves. But if one of us can change, perhaps all of us can. Could that be? Could it? 

Peace.

Pursuing Peace—#1

Recently a friend asked why I sign off on my blog postings with the word Peace. That question prompted me to think of my history with both the word and its meaning. Today I’ll begin to share with you my initial memories. I suspect I’ll be writing more than one posting about my relationship to peace, but here’s where it all began.

I was five years old and in kindergarten when the United States entered World War II. My parents had told me before then that England was fighting the Blitz and that RAF pilots were defending the island nation. Dad used a large world map to show me Great Britain.

“The British airmen are defending England now, Dodo,” he said. “We’ll probably end up entering this war. Like we did the last. This time we’ll fight for real peace.” I know I didn’t understand the words war and peace then.

However, in 1942, the song we heard repeatedly on our radio was “The White Cliffs of Dover,” sung by the English songstress and actress Vera Lynn. The lyrics spoke of the RAF pilots—called the bluebirds because of their blue uniforms. Lynn sang of their valiant efforts to defend their England and bring peace. That song is perhaps when I first understood the emotions that peace implied.

Between December 1941 and August 1945, I was like most children in the United States: we saved money for war bonds; collected scrap metal for the war drive; and listened as our parents talked at the supper table about the bold newspaper headlines on the battles, which were being fought on multiple fronts.

Several times each year, we gathered around the radio in the front room to listen to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats. By our beds each night we knelt to pray for our fighting men. We laboriously printed short letters to soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. We were all in the fight together; all of us—those fighting; those on the home front—were pursuing peace, which my mother told me was “elusive.”

Kitty-cornered from Saint Mary’s Grade School was a small grocery store. It was there I went after school one day a week to buy a few necessities and to present Mom’s ration books and the cash she’d given me that morning. The store’s owner had thumbtacked two maps on his wall: one of Europe, northern Africa, and Asia and one of the Pacific islands.

Each time I came into his store, the owner, whose name I’m sorry to have forgotten because he touched my life with goodness, gave me a history lesson. After I’d made my purchases and while I waited for the town bus, he’d summarize the war effort. Using thumbtacks, he’d show me where our soldiers were advancing or retreating. He’d point to islands in the Pacific and make educated guesses about where the marines would land next. He’d read to me from the letters his son sent.

Early on that son trained at Fort Leonard Wood, which had been built in the Missouri Ozarks in early 1941. He shipped out to the Pacific where he learned jungle warfare and finally fought in the Battle of Luzon. His letters, like all the military sent, had blackened letters. “Can’t let no spies find out what’s happening,” the grocer would say to me.

Frequently, he spoke of what he’d do when his son came home. Of how they’d run the store together. Maybe enlarge it. Of how they’d agree to disagree without fighting. Of the peace they’d share. Slowly I fashioned a picture of a world not torn by war but woven together by that peace.

Until we meet again, may you know peace.

The Mysterious Arc of Time . . . And Love

In the school year 1972-73, six years after leaving the convent, I taught high school juniors in Claremont, New Hampshire. Their syllabus included Look to the Mountain, a historical novel written by LeGrand Cannon, Jr. It is an engrossing story about Whit—a taciturn pioneer with great good sense, strength of mind and body, and a tenacity bred by a hardscrabble upbringing.

Entering the wilderness with him is Melissa. Together, they canoe far up river to claim land near Sandwich. The novel, which takes place between 1769 and 1777, captures the background in which these two—Whit and Melissa—settle and raise a family as a revolution begins to brew in far-off Boston.  

I enjoyed the book, which was new to me, as much as the students did. We were thunderstruck by the paucity of “things” on the frontier. We empathized with Melissa as she longed for the companionship of another woman; we were impressed by Whit’s know-how. A few students had seen that area of New Hampshire so they could describe the differences two hundred years had made on the landscape.

That summer, while visiting Dad here in Missouri, I told him about the book. “Your mom always enjoyed a good historical,” he said when I’d finished my long-winded summary.

He got up, left the room, and came back carrying two of Mom’s books: The Spider King, a historical novel about Louis XI and . . . you guessed it! . . . Look to the Mountain. I’d had no idea my mom had read it.

“Here, you take them,” Dad said. “You enjoy a good read just like your mother did.”

For thirty-eight years the two novels sat on a bookshelf in Stillwater, Minnesota. When I moved back to Missouri, I shelved them again. I’d read neither since the day Dad gave them to me. To be truthful, I didn’t even think about the fact that Mom had handled and read both of them.

Then this past Monday I wanted to read something about the Revolutionary War. All these years—forty-one—since I left Claremont, I’d remembered two scenes from Look to the Mountain: the mowing contest and Whit going off to war, carrying his prized rifle.

So I removed Mom’s copy from the bookshelf and began, once again, to read the words that so compellingly brought to life the inhabitants of Kettleford and Sandwich, New Hampshire. After all these years, they sprang forth from the pages to greet me as an old friend.

In the quiet after midnight, as I entered Whit and Melissa’s world, I idly looked at the copyright page to see when the book had been published. 1942. Then it was that realization unfolded within me: My mom must have bought the book brand new in Parsons, Kansas, where she lived in a refurbished chicken coop with my little brother while Dad worked at the nearby munitions factory. I was in Kansas City, attending kindergarten.

Last night I saw my mother—my brother and Dad asleep while she read late in the night, missing me, I believe, and hoping that my asthma wasn’t acting up.

She had turned the pages of that book just as I was turning them. Both of us—night owls—found solace and retreat in a historical novel. Both of us felt the heft both of the story and the hardbound book with the mountain on the cover. That mountain encouraged Whit to venture into the wilderness.

Seventy-two years ago my mother completed that book and sat within its story. She, too, had left her home and entrusted her life to another.  

Early this morning, seventy-two years later, I laid the book aside with a deep sigh of satisfaction. Partly from the story and partly because I knew that Mom had reached out across a vast space of time with its arc of love and had spoken to me of the ties that bind us together as One. She spoke; I listened.

There is much to be grateful for as we age. This is one of those things. Peace.

All photographs from Wikipedia except for book cover, which is from Amazon. 

My Sojourn in the Asylum

(Continued from Wednesday, September 4 . . . )

The four weeks between my walking innocently into the seventh-grade classroom and my taking tyrannical control remain chaotic in my mind. Just this morning, in a final dream before waking, I experienced again the bedlam that was that classroom. I woke in an irrational panic at having to write about the experience.

         Each school day for four weeks I entered that classroom filled with anxiety, knowing that most students would refuse to listen to anything I said. Between January 18 and February 12 of 1960, total mayhem reigned supreme. Mine was a voice in the wilderness.

Battle of Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrup

         From the daylong quizzes I’d given on our first day together, I discovered what the students did and didn’t know about all the subject areas of that year. I found topics I could teach from scratch; others I could supplement.

         On the second day I took from the classroom closet all the books their previous teacher had collected right before Christmas. All the while, I wondered why she’d gone through the textbooks so quickly and what she’d planned to do with the students for the remainder of the year.

         As I distributed the books, many students threw them on the floor or sailed them through the air. They thudded against desks. Chalkboards. Windows. Students ducked while others yelled in pain when a book hit its target. I let them lie where they landed and tried to teach.

Battle of Gibraltar of 1607 by Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen

         I wanted to introduce a topic from one of the quizzes, ask the students questions about it, use their answers to ask other questions, get all the students involved, and relate the learning to their lives. In other words, I wanted to emulate the way I’d been taught by gifted teachers.

         A few students—both girls and boys—paid attention. Amidst the din, they leaned forward from their desks to listen.         

         What did the others do?

         They sang rowdy songs, painted their nails, practiced pitching a hardball, styled one another’s hair, played marbles on the floor.

         Ron and his gang started a game of poker, shouting their bets, stomping their feet, whooping. When the winner of each round slammed his palms down on his desk, the whole room quaked.

Battle of Waterloo 1815 by William Sadler

         By the end of that second day I felt distraught. At my wit’s end. Unglued. I sought out Sister Brendan, the principal as well as the superior at the convent. Haltingly, fearful that she’d send me back to the monastery in disgrace—the first nun in nearly 100 years who didn’t know how to teach—I recounted what had happened that second day. Her eighth-grade classroom was across from my seventh-grade one, so she must have heard the din of shouting and upheaval throughout the day, but I needed to ask for help.

         After listening intently to my sorry tale, Brendan said, “Sister Innocence, I could come into your classroom tomorrow and take control. But as soon as I walked out, you’d lose it again. They'll only feel contempt for you because they'll see you don't know what to do. They'll have won."

         “But what can I do to get control?” I asked. “Just tell me that. I’ve never taken an education course. What do I do?”

         “A classroom like yours isn’t covered in education courses,” she said. “You’re just got to figure this out on your own.” Then she told me not to talk about any of this with the other nuns. She didn't want to lower their morale or ruin my reputation. 

          I felt I'd already entered the madhouse.

                                             ( . . . continued on Wednesday, September 18)

Three paintings of battles from Wikipedia.