Thresholds to a Culture of Peace

At the transition into the new century, UNESCO gave imaginative reflection to just what might go into a recipe for a culture of peace. Their conclusion -- called a "Manifesto for a Culture of Peace" -- numbered six items. They have their own ways of imagining those six; I have mine, as expressed in narration during the closing ceremony of our sixth Thresholds Festival to a Culture of peace:

1. Respect all Life
In our imagination, God’s voice is the first thing we hear – speaking out loud the Divine Imagination, and with a word calling all life into being – snail and owl and salmon and ape; dragonfly and butterfly, anemone and grape; and somewhere along the way, you and me. Leaf and lamb; sparrow and sponge; walnuts and women; minnows and men – all singularly and chorally echoing the very voice of God. Imagine a world in which those echoes found themselves in harmony – valuing and respecting the augmenting voices that collectively swell us into something new and ever more beautiful. Dream of a world that sings in a fundamentally different key. Dream into being a world whose pulse beats with the conviction that there is nothing so courageously strong as holding the hand of creation in affectionate, profoundly appreciative love. The imagination begins, then, with a basic respect for all life, without discrimination or prejudice.

2. Reject Violence
Peace: the very word itself reflects an onomatopoeic expression of its intent. “Peace.” Even spoken in anger the word maintains its hold on a higher character and beckons those who hear and speak it to let go of violence – if only for a moment – and reach prayerfully toward its possibility. “Give us,” we implore of some higher power or each other or perhaps our own better nature, “give us…peace.”

3. Share With Others
There are wars to end and mountains to climb; there are burdens to lift and oceans to both swim and cross, but there may well be nothing that requires more strength than opening one’s fist, loosening one’s grip, and sharing. “The Earth provides enough,” observed Gandhi, “to satisfy everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed." The earth provides enough, but until we believe it we will budge our way to the head of the line in desperate, grasping, hoarding fear. There is enough for us to share with others. If we will.

Change and the stewardship of creation can scarcely gain much momentum until we begin to simply pay attention – attention to big things, to be sure, but small ones as well: the distinctive kinks of a winter tree’s barren branches; the thawing pools in the midst of a frozen lake; the arch of an eyebrow reacting in surprise; shoulders melting in a loving embrace; and movement, like the way a necklace moves on a breathing chest. Noticing; attending; paying close, invested attention.

4. Listen To Understand
Listen to understand – understand the hopes that get me out of bed in the morning or the hurts that drag your face down into your hands. Listen to understand – the particular dialect that gives you some hint of my story. Listen to understand the gifts you have to offer and willingly, eagerly hope will be welcomed, honored, and used. Listen to understand the gratitude whose loudest expression is “joy” – for living, for loving, for connecting and for forgiving; for singing and breathing and eating and glorying in the sheer exhilaration of simply being. Listen to understand the simple happiness of “Amen.”

5. Preserve the Planet
Despite the flags we stake in it and the boundary lines we carve in it; despite the cement we pour over to control it and the holes we drill down to rape it, at the center of our faith and the humility of our souls pools this abiding truth: that the earth is not our own. This much we know: that mudded into form by the earth’s very soil, we are siblings with all there is; and the earth is our womb. This much else we know: that we nourish each other when we Preserve the Planet.

Lungs swell and fill with invisible, unnoticed air. Eyelids blink and the pupiled irises soothe with unconsidered wash. Some things are so common, so very much a part of our experience, that we don’t notice them until they’re gone – the song of a bird, the crystalline wonder of snow – a simple drop of rain. Precious and beautiful these essential gifts and vulnerable graces.

6. Rediscover Solidarity
Each of the six points to culture of peace is driven by a verb, representing in their very expression that peace demands action. It has never been the purpose of this Thresholds Festival to merely gather us together for sympathetic intellection. It has always been its purpose to inspire, to evoke, and to stimulate movement well beyond this place and weekend. Peace, like love, is not merely something we are “in,” it’s something that we “do.” And so we come to the end of the Festival, but only to a fresh beginning of our longing and living for peace. The movement begun in these sessions must now find its way into different patterns of living. The rhythms and currents that have swept through this house must now find expression in yours, and your neighbor’s, and beyond; and rediscovering solidarity with all God’s people and the gifts we bring, hand in hand, amplify the voice that gave us birth.