The news of the day includes both the release of three hostages by North Korea and Israeli air strikes on Syrian facilities and infrastructure. How do we hold both movement toward peace and toward deepening war?

I am aware that, in my own spirit, escalating war feels more possible and more likely than it did two years ago. I have a difficult time trusting that peace could break out on the Korean peninsula. I also see both the Syrian and the Israeli actions as escalating war. I hope I am wrong.

What I know for certain is that we have not been living in peace. We have had US troops at war in Afghanistan for 15 years. In Iraq for a dozen. At the Korean DMZ for more than 50 years. We have active duty US troops stationed in dozens of countries around the world. Most of the world fights with US weapons. We are the world’s leading arms dealer…by far.

We have not been living in peace. But the conflicts could so easily escalate and the potential harm of that escalation is so vast. We live in a world in which our national leaders are boasting again about the deadliness of our nuclear arsenal, rather than working to reduce it.

This morning I am wondering what price we pay for living in a world perpetually at war. Is a certain anesthetization necessary, a deadening of our senses in order to “keep on keeping on?” Do we respond to the constancy of violence with an increasing willingness to accept violence as they way we must live? How is our willingness to accept gun violence here, day after day, related to our military presence in so much of the world?

Go in Peace, we say at the close of each worship service.

Peace. “Pax” in Latin. Absence of war.

There is a danger in leaving our understanding of peace stuck in the Pax Romana, the peace maintained militarily in an empire where all were either Roman citizens or second class citizens.

Our spiritual theme this month is Vision. That vision of “pax” cannot limit our understanding or our hopes for peace.

In Hebrew, the word is Shalom, which means fullness and wholeness. Shalom cannot be maintained by force. Shalom is not the absence of war, it is the presence of love.

Go in Peace. Practice Love. At First Unitarian we mean them both. In our world, we need them both.

Blessings,

 

Bill