Wayne
Manning I’m writing this on my laptop on Monday evening
with the current news in the background. President Bush made his “48
hours” address a couple of hours ago and all the commentators are
telling us over and over what he said and what it means. It is difficult to think of much else than the
apparently inevitable coming conflict. It has us all preoccupied to one
degree or another. I am saddened and distressed that we can find no other,
less destructive way to meet the clear and present danger of growing
weapons capability in Iraq. The security of our planet is at risk. That
became very clear on 9/11. There is no longer any spot on earth that is
invulnerable to a group dedicated to causing death and destruction. Does this view make me pro-war? No. I am decidedly
pro-peace, if I must be pro-something. But it seems clear that peace has a
price. Sometimes the paradoxical price of war. I believe that peace won
with war is a precarious peace at best. I pray that such peace buys us
struggling humans enough time to learn how to achieve real, lasting peace,
applicable to every culture in every nation. I am saddened and distressed in a more immediate and
personal sense by how we are treating each other in America and even here
in Auburn. We are playing at war right here when “war activists” throw
objects from moving vehicles at “peace activists” who are legally
demonstrating. We are pushing peace further and further away when peace
demonstrators revile the very police who are making it possible for them
to present their message safely, as reportedly happened in San Francisco
recently. We play at a “war with words” as the published letters in
our newspapers get more and more mean-spirited. Extremists on both sides of the question, of course,
cause most of this behavior. But such behavior can continue only when good
people, people of good faith whatever their position, stand by and say
nothing. When we lose our respect for each other we lose something of our
humanity. When we fight among ourselves about the question of war or
peace, why should it surprise us when we act it out on a global scale? Every life-affirming religion that I know of has at
its core some version of the “golden rule.” Perhaps the most familiar
is found in the Christian faith: So whatever
you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and
the prophets. It is found this way in Judaism: What is hateful
to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest
is commentary. And in Islam: No one of you is a believer until he
desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. There are many, many people in all three faiths who
believe this deeply. We must not let the fundamentalist/extremist views
present in all three religions obscure this truth. Our greatest and best
hope is for each of us to hold firm to this core reality, and to know that
there are good people of good will both here at home and in Iraq who are
willing to pick up the pieces and move forward to a new level of
understanding and relationship. In my tradition I am taught, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Who is my neighbor? On a planet as small as this one, everybody is my neighbor. Everybody.
|