In a world prone to war, is peace the piece missing from our hearts?

“I just need a peaceful minute, Nanny.”

The little voice spoke from a corner of the room amidst a spread of trucks, dinosaurs, and magnetic tiles, part of a fantasy land being built by my five-year-old grandson – a child who is in constant motion, constant thought, constant talk and with an endless supply of make-believe stories to share.

It was as if he was telling me the deepest secret of his young soul, something he had discovered but didn’t know how to make happen. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking that he didn’t truly understand.

Peace can be elusive, whether the peace we long for within communities or ache for in the deepest recesses of our souls.

I learned a lot about peace from my father, who was a storyteller by nature – family stories, Bible stories, ancient myths, stories from history, and they all left an impression on my young heart.

My dad was especially fond of sharing his love of Native Americans, who had a deep spirituality and special relationship with creation born of respect and gratitude. One of my favorite stories was the Iroquois tale of the Great Peacemaker, the Great Law of Peace and the Peace Tree.

Years later I would learn how instrumental the Iroquois and the Great Law of Peace would be in American history and the formation of our democracy, but, as a child, I was enamored of the image of a great peace hero and the roots of the peace tree reaching out to join all people in unity.

When my youthful, naïve, romantic vision of peacemaking came face-to- face with the actual violence and cruelty that existed in the world, I discovered that peacemaking wasn’t as easy as I believed it to be.

What I have come to understand over many years is that peace needs to be cultivated. It is a task that needs to be undertaken interiorly, in our hearts, and exteriorly, through our actions.

For us, as children of God, peace must be something more than simply the absence of war. Peace must flow from our relationships – with God, with creation, and with others. It is not always easy.

Many years ago, during an annual conference for Catholic school teachers and catechists, I offered a workshop entitled, “Is Peace the Piece that is Missing?”

During the presentation I suggested a few questions for reflection. The most provocative question, apparently, was, “How many of you know, without a doubt, where you stand on the issue of peace and the need for war?”

The answers were not encouraging. One teacher walked out. It was understandable. She had lost a brother in the Twin Towers attack and was very angry with me and the ideas I was sharing, though they were teachings of our Catholic faith, regarding the way of peace.

Two years later, a woman stopped me at the same annual conference and asked if I had given a peace workshop a few years prior. When I acknowledged that I had, she said, “I am the woman who walked out. It took me a long time, more than a year, but I finally got it.”

Servant of God Dorothy Day once said, “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”
For many, that personal challenge is very difficult because, sometimes, the most troubling reality is the one we come face-to-face with in our own hearts.

So, how are we to take up the great task of peacemaking in a world that sits on the precipice of war? Begin with prayer, and Dorothy Day’s words: “We must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.”

To learn more about the Iroquois Great Law of Peace visit www.pbs.org/native-american/blog/how-the-iroquois-great-law-of-peace-shaped-us-democracy, or, www.history.com/iroquois-confederacy-hiawatha-peacemaker-great-law-of-peace.