Peacemakers Create the Peacefield
Warriors rush into a battlefield, their weapons raised, seeking to kill, maim, and destroy. No matter how noble the cause, their violence sows division, discord, hatred, sadness, and despair. War sows to the wind, and as ever, reaps the whirlwind.
Where as the warrior rushes in, the soldier has been seduced into a battlefield, following orders to fight for the aims and ambitions of others, while being told their actions are honorable. We should take none of the valor away from the brave men and women who were seduced into warfare through propaganda, culture, or necessity.
We’re not here to denigrate those who served, but to save countless generations from the horrors of war.
War leaves physical and emotional scars on the land, the people, and the soul. The tragedies and terrors it visits upon people cannot be undone in a single generation. Only when we focus on peace and making it a reality, can we save others from the cost of war.
What is peace?
Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” We cannot know what we are to craft if we do not understand the nature of peace itself.
Peace is not just the absence of war, strife, or discord. The peace we are called to create is shalom. Shalom is not only peace, it is wholeness. Shalom restores and honors the dignity of all people so they might live a life free from hatred, strife, and violence. This is the peace we are to craft if we are truly to be called the children of God.
Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that we are to love our enemies because this is what the children of God do.
At times, it is difficult to love our friends and family, and to many it sounds impossible to love one’s enemy. Peacemaking requires us to have the strength to do so.
Loving our enemies, does not mean that we condone their actions. It means that we understand the brokenness and pain that gave rise to those actions. No one thinks of themselves as a villain. We make ourselves out to be the heroes of our own stories, and if we are ever going to end the stories that breed hatred, division, and violence, we have to love our enemy enough to learn what those stories are so we can undermine them and bring wholeness and peace to the world.
Peace making is a heroic task. Without the valor to stand strong and the courage to stay the course, we can fall to our fear and sow more violence to the wind that one day will return to us in the whirlwind. Our strength must be forged in the conviction that no one anywhere for any reason deserves to suffer. Suffering, fear, hatred, greed, and lust for power are the roots of violence and war. If we cut down the tree, but leave the roots violence will grow back with a vengeance.
Peace is the dignity and wholeness that removes the need for strife, division, and hopelessness.
The work of a peacemaker
A peacemaker is a person who literally crafts the conditions for peace to live, thrive, and fill the land. They’re the ones who have the courage to savor the goodness of life, sit with the pains of life, create from their hearts, and bring justice, celebration, and joy wherever they are.
There are countless ways to be a peacemaker, each is as precious as the individual who does them. A peacemaker asks, “what is missing and what is broken?” Their answers may be big or small, local or global, personal or distant. So long as the problems they see as missing or broken actually are real, it’s scale doesn’t matter. That is a question for later.
The peacemaker must be careful, because they may find many problems at once. Through prayer, contemplation, and study, they must discern the one that resonates with them most. That resonance will keep their attention focused, and their strength renewed as they move on to the remedy.
The next step is to discern the root of the problem. Often, the wounds that we encounter in the world are merely where the problem reaches the surface. The immediate condition may require triage, but if the root is not dealt with, it will grow back again and again.
The work of the peacemaker is primarily creative. Something new must be built, or repaired, or changed in someway that makes healing possible. This is where the talent of the peacemaker shines through. They may be organizers, musicians, bakers, architects, or any of a myriad of things. The true power of peace making is the art of bringing our talents to the problem to restore the wholeness.
Instinctually, when faced with a problem we tend to go into fight, flight, or freeze. Choosing violence or hostility is running away from the problem. Instead of facing the truth and standing its ground like a peacemaker would it pretends the real problem is over there and runs out to slay its paper dragon. Others freeze and submit to the status quo giving into fear. A peacemaker accepts the challenge before them. They do not cower away to the simplicity of violence or pretend that this is the way things just are. They stand in the breach and create a solution.
Truth be told, peacemaking is harder and more time-consuming than war mongering or keeping the status quo. That is why so many take the latter routes and cast off the problem to future generations.
The Peace Prayer of St Francis
We have a pattern for our actions, set in a prayer that was named for Saint Francis of Assisi, even though he never said it. The prayer first appears in France in 1912 in a publication whose title in English would be the Little Bell:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.
It never ceases to amaze me that in the years leading up to the great war, this prayer appears in France. It is the healing balm that the so-called Christian countries participating in the first world war needed, but did not use.
This simple prayer can be said daily, or whenever it is needed, and provides the pattern of peacemaking. It shows us how to sow dignity, restoration, and wholeness into the world. It is the program of peace, the blueprint of shalom.
In this world where we struggle not against flesh and bone, but against powers and principalities in high places, it is so important for us to remember that the tangible destruction, violence, and hatred that fills our world is nothing more than the overflow of a broken person or a broken culture lashing out at the world around it.
An injured animal snarls and bites, but injuring it further will not heal what is wrong with it. While we may need to stop the animal’s rampage, until the source of the damage is fixed, we’ve only treated a symptom, not a cause.
The work of a peacemaker is not only to bring peace now, but to restore the wholeness that will last.
Together, we can be strong and bring peace in its fullness to this world.
Viriditas. The greening power. Hildegard knew it. The forest knows it. Creation’s Paths: A Creation Spirituality Primer is for everyone who has ever felt the divine moving through roots and rain and refused to call that feeling anything less than holy.
