What would you do? What would you do? If you were the President, or were in any situation where you could decide what to do to make our economy strong and vibrant? What would you do to make our health care system just, reasonable and comprehensive? What would you do to secure peace and security in our country and our world? While Iran is convulsing in after shocks to their presidential elections. While North Korea is behaving like a junk yard dog as their leadership is being handed from father to third son. While Israel is struggling to find alignment within and with the international community as well as with Palestine. While AIDS still runs rampant in Africa and the Roman Catholic Church still stands in opposition to birth control, family planning and safe sex. What would you do? I was telling you about Earthstewards and Danaan Parry during the tense days of the 1980s, Cold War et al. Interest rates soared around 16-19%, everywhere was in a slump...
Danaan Parry and many others who worked directly with him went on for years to plant seeds for peace. He led the effort of citizens’ diplomacy during the 1980s, to break the dreadful wall of fear dividing us from the people behind the iron curtain and other citizens of the world. Planting peace trees became a critical activity as they went to Russia, India and then here in the United States.
Eknath Easwaran wrote: The great Hindu scriptures say that God is absolute truth, absolute joy, absolute beauty. A scientist who is seeking the absolute truth, as Einstein did, is seeking God. Anyone seeking absolute joy, whether in a tavern or in the shopping mall or in Monte Carlo, is seeking God. And anyone who is seeking beauty – on a canvas or a stage or a mountaintop – is seeking God. What lovers of beauty seek in paintings, in sculpture, in dance, in music is just a reflection of the absolute beauty that is God. The real source of all beauty is God, the Beloved.
Danaan Parry had been a nuclear physicist and a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in his first career. He told the story, when we first met, that as a physicist he began searching for the truth, which he could not find in the atom, nucleus, proton, electron and not even the quark. Then he taught for a while in Berkley before developing Earth Stewards and teaching Warriors of the Heart training for peacemaking. This evolved from his doing individual assignments in Belfast, Bethlehem and across America to group exchanges and projects around the country and the globe. Peace trees.
They found that getting inner city youth together to plant trees for peace in Washington DC became an activity of whole learning. First of all, the young people did not know how to conduct a meeting with order and it would usually break down into fighting. So they taught simple procedures of how to have meetings and how to reach decisions with group agreements. Then they knew they had to provide rewards so they began the peace table of delicious and nutritious foods to celebrate a day’s work together. This was so successful they took it to Los Angeles and other cities.
And the final one was when a group of Earth Stewards was prepared to go to Viet Nam to plant peace trees in a location that had been cleared of deadly land mines from our war there decades earlier. And after the last meeting of planning the strategy to the finest detail, Danaan departed. On his way to the ferryboat on Bainbridge Island, his heart, that had carried so many people and cared for so many souls and given so much to the world, that had held so many (hugging Danaan you got a good bear hug like Yogi Bear), simply gave out.
But that was not the final one. Like many others, I have strived to be and to teach peace in what we do, in how we live. Peacemaking at home, in churches, in communities, in families and within ourselves is critical at this time. Learning and living the way of peace means we don’t just say that’s a good idea and then go on with life as usual. It means we deliberately live so we don’t express hurtful criticisms and destructive emotions to others, even those we don’t like. It means finding the common ground, in our humanness. This is doing what Jesus said: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” This is what we can do.
Jelaluddin Rumi wrote: All day I think about it, then at night I say it.Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea my soul is from elsewhere I'm sure of that,
And I intend to end up there. This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place, I’ll be completely sober.
Meanwhile, I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
But who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes?
What is the soul? I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord,
And I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
Peace, John
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