Our true power is peacemaking
We cannot claim to be peacemakers if we accept the notion that anyone is our enemy, for then we become their enemy, and then peace is lost.
Dear friends: In a world challenged by war, we must hold closely to what we know about how to make peace.
Humanize everyone. There are no monsters, only humans making monstrous choices.
Repudiate all violence. If we accept violence against “them,” we enable violence against “us.”
Remember our deep kinship with all beings: we are a single human family, nurtured by our animal and plant cousins, sustained by mother water, all breathing the same air.
Embrace our true power. Oppression and powerlessness breed alienation and violence. Our true power is not “over” others or the natural world; it is power to engage, support, heal.
Anyone who tries to sell you a story that your only hope lies in the decimation of your enemies, is selling you as a collaborator in violence that will sooner or later subsume everyone. We cannot claim to be peacemakers if we accept the notion that anyone is our enemy, for then we become their enemy, and then peace is lost.
War never brings solutions. It only exhausts everyone involved, to the point where arguments or territory are ceded, halting violence temporarily, but leaving in place all the underlying fault lines of conflict and rage. Sustainable solutions can only be forged when everyone is recognized as fully human, deserving of human rights and respect; when violence is rejected; when kinship informs our power.
Insist - radically, compassionately, with all your conviction and all your power - that all who represent you carry a commitment to peace, and put that commitment into action.
And we must all do the same.
Be safe and well, and thank you for your company on this journey.