If part of our experience of God is expressed in the Peace Testimony, then it is a truth that works for us in all circumstances, all the time. In human history, violence in its many forms has caused more pain than anyone could ever begin to quantify. Our hope, in working for peace, is that we are a small part of God’s plan for the world. Our contribution to the ‘ocean of light’ may seem small when compared to the ‘ocean of darkness’ but we trust that God is making something good come out of what we are doing. We always have a choice: we can add to conflict or we can try to lessen it. Just realising that we have a choice changes us. By exercising our choice, we may also help other people to feel they have choices too. In this way, different bits of peace activity relate to each other and show us what the peace movement will be like in the new millennium - multi-faceted yet connected, richly varied yet with a common purpose: to move us nearer to God.
We hope that the voices of the Friends who have shared their experiences here will touch you, and that the Spirit which moved them will affirm you in your upholding of the Peace Testimony, or renew you when you struggle to see its relevance. It is an imperative of our faith. “We cannot afford a future like our past”[1].
The Northern Friends Peace Board structures its working by grouping it into three thematic areas and this publication is organised in the same way:
This resource is one of our contributions to the forthcoming decades for Peace and Nonviolence and for Overcoming Violence. We hope that Friends and others will find their own ways of using it; both as a source for material for study, reflection and discussion and as a stimulus for action.
Most people enter into parenthood without knowing much about raising children. All we have is our own experience of being a child and this experience is not always helpful in today’s world, which differs so much from the one we grew up in. Yet it is in the family (of whoever the family consists) that children learn about relating, about how we communicate, how to love, how to solve problems and to deal with conflict. Underneath our inexperience of parenthood we carry an uncertainty about the future. We all very much hope for a better future for our children and grandchildren yet we still have and develop nuclear and other weapons.
I grew up in a war and when it was over I remember thinking “I don’t want this ever again”. Yet, since 1945 wars have been and still are raging far and near on the earth. What does this have to say about how we relate? Are we learning anything? And what are the connections between family life and the family of nations ‘life and vice versa? To help the global family move to a more peace-living way could we again begin “at home”?
Our own experiences of being a child are what they are and cannot changed. Blaming our parents is not part of the game. But it can be helpful to look at the pattern that was laid down then and ask where it helps or does not help me to raise my own children, where it nurtures or not my way of relating. It sounds a cliché but our children do grow up in an ever faster changing world and we need to grow with them. What a challenge to our consciousness! The task is to apply our understanding of these issues within own families.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
I first visited Palestine only five years ago, soon after a time of personal crisis. The first visit had a number of objectives, none of which was at the time directly connected to the peace process. Chiefly, I went to find meaning and a sense of adventure by living among people and in a culture very different from those I’d been used to hitherto, and to extend my academic career in a setting where it might be of value in the here-and-now and where I might find a counterpoint to aspects of university life in the UK that I found depressing.
The experience of living there for four months radically changed my relationship with the people, the place and the situation. Readers of Andrew Harvey’s “Hidden Journey” or Ronan Bennett’s “The Catastrophist” will immediately recognise the syndrome of looking for spiritual peace and uplift in war- zones or far-flung places! But, for me, the connection with Palestine (building on work with refugees in the UK and responding to images of life among Arabs stimulated by a friend’s reminiscences) came to have a deeper meaning. A momentum built up. I became convinced this was part of a grander design; it still feels a little like this.
Yet my learning has continued at an even greater rate most recently. At the outset I was much more taken with anger against the injustices suffered by Palestinians than with seeking peace – the latter being an infinitely more difficult, and seemingly intractable process. I had yet to learn that peace-work requires one to approach the situation from an entirely different direction. It asks you to acknowledge that developments in the conflict constantly trigger off personal feelings and test some of your dearest preconceptions. I didn’t at first realise that justice and peace are entwined, and that a concern for peace also involves a searching process of personal challenge and growth.
The whole paradox of a world where vast amounts of the world’s resources are used for armaments, while the basic needs of the great majority of the world’s population remain unfulfilled, has always haunted me. There seems to be a constant drive to annihilate human life - each one so precious, so full of potential, so totally irreproducible. Sometimes the assault on life is intentional, through land mines or weapons of one kind or another, sometimes it happens through starvation and disease. This is a constant mystery to me. I am sure that I myself would be totally unable to take a life (although I am not always a consistent vegetarian). I remember seeing the blood coursing through the tiny body of a trout embryo, and realising that it was the most beautiful thing I was ever likely to see. The world is an amazing breath-stopping place, and it is fitting for us to take care of it as much as is within our power.
When I am asked if the decision to take part in this [Trident Ploughshares] action was a difficult one, or whether I had any doubts or qualms, I have to answer that I’m afraid I didn’t experience any. From the moment I received Angie’s wonderful ‘Invitation’ I knew that Citizen’s Disarmament was right for me. It’s a question of ‘Walking the Talk’. People have commented that I wouldn’t have done it if I’d been in Iran where I’d be shot for my actions. I really do not know about that. What I can say for sure is that in a democracy, if people do not begin to take responsibility regardless of the consequences, oppression will set in and overwhelm them as happened in Nazi Germany. I suppose I’ve been steeped so long in Martin Luther King and in Thoreau - ‘What are YOU doing outside, Ralph?’ - that what I did was a logical continuation of my commitment. This was confirmed by the utter joy I felt in BEING ABLE TO CARRY IT OUT, in doing with my own hands what I d been asking to happen all my adult life. I certainly do not regard myself as a heroine...
Religious Aspects of Xenophobia
I do not think anti-Semitism is either natural or inevitable. It exists because it has been allowed to flourish amongst us; we do not have to go on tolerating it. However we must not delude ourselves into thinking that it has gone away or that it is harmless. It is “a very light sleeper” and it awakes periodically with full force. It denies and belittles a people’s understanding of and relationship with God. It has made possible the emergence and the flourishing of Islamophobia and other forms of religious prejudice, and it has no place in a peaceful and just society.