I agree with him here (at least most of it. The scalability of any statement from the personal to the social bothers me). I think more discussion would result in a better understanding of Peace Making than any statement written by a committee.
More on this next week but for know a big thank you to Rev Morales for a response and his insights.
Bill,
I apologize for the delay in my response. I have been on the road and in a seemingly endless series of meetings.
I have not had time to give the statement careful study. I have read through it quickly.
My initial reaction (and it is nothing more than this) is that the statement is not likely to have much effect. I am sympathetic to the general idea of peacemaking as involving levels that go from the personal to the international.
What is missing is a sense of peace as something much more than the absence of violence. In the Hebrew scriptures, the word "shalom" is translated into English as "peace." However, "shalom" has meanings "peace" does not convey. The ancient concept is about wholeness. To wish someone peace is to wish him or her a whole and healthy life. Our statement needs to emphasize this more, I think. We need to see peace as not merely the opposite of violence, but as a condition of human wholeness and prosperity. When there are conditions of exploitation and injustice, there is no peace even though there may be no violence. What is critical here is that peace is something created and sustained by real conditions and by relationships of compassion, equality, and justice. Western Europe is at peace today because it has come a long way in creating the conditions of peace.
I realize that the statement does address this in part, but I think it gives too much emphasis to peace as merely the absence of violence.
Peter Morales
6 comments:
Robin, please, let's stick with Peace Making.....
You're introducing a new thread Robin.
If you want to go there, start your own post and link back to mine. You have your own blog.
thanks
Peter's point is a good one and a fundamental one.
War almost without exception arises out of conditions.
Peace will likewise. It's not the absence of war.
Positive--just, equitable--conditions build and maintain peace. The LACK of those conditions bring about war.
It might be effective to think about war as the absence of peace, as the absence of justice, equity, and so forth, rather than letting the noisy, attention-getting character of war be seen as something... with peace being the absence of war. If war itself is an absence and understood as a consequential negative, then talking about peace as the absence of an absence takes on the kind of absurdity I suspect it should.
I personally do not see my comment as starting a new thread but, at least this time around, your wish is my command Bill. I may none-the-less respond directly and point-by-point to Rev. Peter Morales' talk about Peace Making here if you don't mind too much. If your second suggestion had been your first suggestion I might have taken you up on it earlier. . . :-)
Regards,
Robin Edgar
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