REFLECTION/SERMON: Peace and Politics
© Rev. Dr. Elaine Beth Peresluha
This summer in
The SOC recognizes that while we can agree that our initial response to conflict should be the use of nonviolent methods, we also recognize the right of individuals and nations to defend them. The SOC acknowledges the complexity of peace and non- violence. It recognizes our responsibility to be in solidarity with others in countering aggression. Many of the U.U.’s at the General Assembly believe force is sometimes necessary as a last resort, while others of us believe in the consistent practice of nonviolence.
The exercise of individual conscience is holy work. Our faith calls us to create peace, yet we confess that we have not done all we could to prevent the spread of armed conflict throughout the world. At times we have lacked the courage to speak and act against violence and injustice; at times we have lacked the creativity to speak and act in constructive ways; at times we have condemned the violence of others without acknowledging our own complicity in violence.
We affirm a responsibility to speak truth to power, especially when unjust power is exercised by our own nation. Too often we have allowed our disagreements to distract us from all that we can do together.
This Statement of Conscience challenges individual Unitarian Universalists, as well as our congregations and Association, to engage with more depth, persistence, and creativity in the complex task of creating peace.
Before the deliberation on whether or not to adopt the SOC, Dr. Paul Rasor, author and U.U. theologian, spoke. Paul’s writings and public lectures over the past few years have focused on finding a new way to think about issues of peace and war, a way to move beyond the old dualistic paradigm of just war and pacifism. He charged those present to be theologically grounded in U.U. principles while discussing and deciding on this initiative to create peace.
He reminded the delegates that the Statement of Conscience failed last year because it was still largely grounded in the old dualistic paradigm. The conversation in 2009 reflected that same dualism and intellectual debate.
The Statement of Conscience passed at this year’s GA represents a radically new approach. It moves us beyond the old paradigm in both its language and its fundamental orientation. It states in positive terms the ideals we espouse, the principles that guide us. It represents wholeness. The voice of Unitarian Universalist hoping for what can be whole taking responsibility for what has not been achieved. That is how we create peace.
The delegates that passed the statement had to let go of our usual U.U. resistance to anything theological and appreciated that to have authority and integrity, this conversation had to be based on something more than rightness. The conversation that followed clarified that theological grounding in a way that empowered the vote with the authority of Wholeness. That unity of purpose and awareness brought out the best in people, by connecting them to new meaning, collaboration, and trust in goodness. That wholeness became more important and stronger that the many objections or differences in opinions. That is how we create peace.
What I heard Paul Rasor affirm was not the words of the SOC that created peace but the process that was engaged to enact it. Paul told me, that for the first time, he felt the promise and the integrity U.U.’s have wished for and historically fallen short of. Before this year, we were learning, holding onto rightness. This year we demonstrated that we had matured beyond rightness to an appreciation of what is possible, the complicated nature of the dilemma and our value based understanding that the world can do better.
Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, now Chancellor emeritus of the University of Peace in Costa Rica was one of the people who witnessed the founding of the U.N. and has worked in support of or inside the U.N. ever since. At age eighty, Dr. Muller stunned, an audience in 2001 with his most positive assessment of where the world stood regarding war and peace.
On the day Dr. Muller spoke, the world was looking at war in Iraq, in Afghanistan- and Dr. Muller gave voice to a new way to see what was going on in the world. "I'm so honored to be here," he said. "I'm so honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. I'm so moved by what's going on in our world today. Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war. The whole world is in now having this critical and historic dialogue--listening to all kinds of points of view and positions about going to war or not going to war. In a huge global public conversation the world is asking, "Is war legitimate? Dr. Muller was almost in tears in recognition of the fulfillment of this dream. "We are not at war," he kept saying. We, the world community, are WAGING PEACE. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. It has never happened before-never in human history-and it is happening now-every day, every hour, waging peace through a global
conversation.
In that moment, almost ten years ago, the world fell short, unable to resist the urge to war. Yet, we practice, if only for a moment, longer than ever before, something new. We practiced being in relationship in the presence of conflict. We exercised a new muscle. The muscle weakened out of fatigue, and we fell back upon a stronger, more familiar action. War. Muscles are made out of individual fivers- and each fiber out of individual cells that act in unison to perform an action. For this muscle to flex, it takes all the millions of cells in all the thousands of fibers to respond in unison.
The exercise of individual conscience is holy work. Our faith calls us to create peace. It takes the commitment of each one of us individually for wholeness to be created. As individuals, we must continue to practice, to believe, to exercise, and to strengthen new behaviors. Each time we practice, we contribute to wholeness, integrity, and hope. We create wholeness by showing up, by sustaining faith impossibility, in meaning and in purpose, despite the differences that may seek to divide us. In our choice to remain in relationship with one another, wholeness is possible. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. PEACE IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF CONFLICT, it is the presence of wholeness. That affirms we are each more than one voice; we are the voice of oneness.