Café - Hot Topic- Peace is where you make it by Le Anne Clausen

Peace is where you make it
by Le Anne Clausen

I was in sixth grade, during the first Gulf War, when I decided that peacemaking was going to be a priority for me. I couldn’t stand seeing the images of entire neighborhoods blown apart and the enthusiasm of some of my classmates who watched and cheered the destruction. Since then, I’ve been trying to work for peace in any way I can.

I have served as a human rights worker in Israel, Palestine, and Iraq for over three years. My activism has also taken me to Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the U.S.-Mexico border, and jail. It has also brought me back to my hometown, my church, my college, and my seminary in ways I never expected.

I have learned that peacemaking takes place everywhere, in all different circumstances, in ways large and small. You don't have to move to the Middle East to do peacemaking work. If you’ve ever wanted to do something to change the world but didn’t know where to start, here are my thoughts on becoming a peace advocate, as shaped by my experiences.

1. Be a follower.
A decade ago at Wartburg College, my classmates and I attended an intensive urban ministry course in New York City. When we returned, several friends revived the defunct Students for Peace and Justice group on campus. I didn’t join right away; I was skeptical and wanted to see if they were going to be an active and effective organization. When I saw how well they worked to get our college’s nondiscrimination policy to include LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, & Questioning) persons, I knew this was a group I could support. After that, we organized a Martin Luther King Jr. Day teach-in to discuss race issues and faith perspectives. We invited Iraqi artists to campus to showcase their work and talk about their experiences of war.

I soon realized I had found a community that cared about issues that were important to me, too. By joining this group, I learned the impact that a few individuals could have to bring about change in a larger community.

2. Or strike out on your own.
During college I planned to participate in the ELCA’s Young Adult Global Mission program after graduation. But then two of the countries I applied for fell into armed conflict, canceling our potential placements. A third considered me too young and unqualified. I was devastated. But then I found a grassroots Palestinian women’s organization that needed an English-speaking volunteer office assistant. That opportunity led me to work with a Palestinian-Israeli peace group. Later I participated in Christian Peacemaker Teams. Before I knew it, I was living in the Middle East for four years.

I learned that you don’t have to know all the answers when you start out. You just have to have faith, be open, and trust that opportunities will come.

3. Bloom where you’re planted.
After four years in war zones, I realized that if I could have an impact on the peace process in faraway places, I could apply what I had learned in my home country and community.

In Chicago I coordinate the Center for Faith and Peacemaking, an interfaith grassroots organization that connects seminary students with opportunities to serve as volunteers and social justice advocates. In time, we hope to launch interfaith peace teams that would bring teams of people skilled in human rights and interfaith dialogue to places of inter-religious violence in the world.

4. Or buy that plane ticket.
“Bloom where you’re planted” might be used as a reason not to go overseas, but the Bible is full of stories of God calling people to far places to do God’s work. The stories of Abraham, Moses, Ruth and Naomi, and Mary and Joseph are all good examples.

Being a good visitor when working overseas means being well prepared. Learn the culture and political system and some of the local language. Go with a humble spirit and the desire to build lasting relationships with others. If we go expecting to teach as well as to be taught, we can do a lot of good.

5. Be who you are.
I spent three days in jail this year for participating in nonviolent civil disobedience against a U.S. government facility responsible for training most of the perpetrators of massacres and other human rights atrocities in Central and South America over the past 50 years. While serving my sentence, I didn’t expect to become a pastor to my fellow inmates. In fact, I hid my “real life” from them at first because I thought they would feel uncomfortable around me. But not only did they actually want to talk with a person they could trust, the younger women especially sought me out to talk about their lives. This was a real gift to me as a young woman in ministry because I truly learned to listen and offer support to those in need.

6. Don’t go it alone.
One of the difficult things about peace work is that it can be isolating unless you find a good support group. Good friendships are in themselves a form of peace building. Friends and colleagues along the way have helped me to avoid burnout, and I have found that you can take turns resting when the work you are doing is particularly difficult.

7. Don’t get yourself down.
Peacemaking isn’t much fun when I am tired and start complaining about how bad the world is. Sometimes this kind of lament is needed, but set a time limit on it. Then start talking about what gives you hope. That will get you through and keep you going.

8. Encourage people around you.
Peacemaking takes all ages. When I was in Baghdad, at least half my colleagues were well past retirement age. The soldiers immediately sought them out as “grandparents” and could talk to them about how they felt about being in the war.

9. Be prepared for criticism.
Sometimes you will face criticism from people around you because they’re afraid of change, or of what might happen to you, or that you are “rocking the boat.” In times like these, I have discovered that the prophets and the Gospels as good places to find encouragement. Movies about the lives of great peacemakers (such as Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, or Dorothy Day) also help me get back on track.

So be the change you wish to see in the world. Ask a few friends for their help, even if it’s just joining you for coffee so you can talk through your ideas with them. And don’t get discouraged. Peace begins (and begins again) with every step.

Le Anne Clausen will graduate this year with a ministry degree from Chicago Theological Seminary. She hopes to continue building the Center for Faith and Peacemaking, as well as helping start an emergent church with an emphasis on global and interfaith peacemaking. You can learn more about her work through her blog, www.unlikelymonastic.net.

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Faith reflections
by Brooke Petersen

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for    theirs is the kingdom of    heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for    they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they    will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger     and thirst for righteousness, for     they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they     will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for     they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for     they will be called children of     God.
Blessed are those who are      persecuted for righteousness’      sake, for theirs is the kingdom      of heaven.
Blessed are you when people      revile you and persecute you      and utter all kinds of evil      against you falsely on my      account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your     reward is great in heaven, for     in the same way they     persecuted the prophets who     were before you.
Matthew 5:3-12

This passage from the Gospel of Matthew has been read and reread in our sanctuaries. Many writers before me have connected the words of Jesus with the struggle for justice in our world. So it came as quite a surprise to me that the first sermon I ever preached on the Beatitudes totally, completely bombed.

Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew that this sermon was not my best work. I have childhood memories of seeing this famous passage cross-stitched and framed, hanging on a wall in my grandmother’s basement. Not only had I heard the Beatitudes, my family decorated with the Beatitudes. So naturally, I assumed I got the Beatitudes. But I was wrong.

As I preached that Sunday morning it became clear that I had gotten so caught up in explaining the content of the Beatitudes that I completely missed how they connect with our lives in the midst of a troubled world. These words of Jesus are hard to handle because they call us into counter-intuitive scenarios — where the blessed aren’t those who seek power but those who are merciful and pure in heart. These aren’t naïve ideals preached by Jesus — they are marks of the kingdom of God and ways that we can participate in the coming of that kingdom.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opens up the difference between negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is the kind of peace that is found in the absence of conflict. Negative peace is the kind of peace that we are all too often satisfied with: It is the kind of peace that makes us feel comfortable, because no one is rocking the boat. No one is pushing us to our limits. No one is asking questions about justice. Negative peace feels good because it means there is no conflict.

I suggest that negative peace is not the peace that Jesus is speaking of in the Beatitudes. Negative peace doesn’t require anyone to be a peacemaker; it only requires us to stay quiet, to accept things as they are, and to avoid noticing the tension that is bubbling under the surface. King contrasts this negative peace with positive peace: peace that is marked by the presence of justice. Positive peace does not come from ignoring injustice; positive peace comes from the presence of justice for all people. Positive peace requires us to be active peacemakers, making peace a verb instead of a noun. It demands action for justice. It calls us to name those places in our marriages, in our work, in our church life, in our neighborhoods, and in our cities where we have remained quiet, satisfied with an absence of conflict rather than an in-breaking of the peace of God.

But being peacemakers, being active participants in the positive peace that marks the life of Jesus Christ, isn’t easy. The Beatitudes provide no roadmap.

We live in a country that has been at war for more than 5 years. Millions of people struggle to find health care or to meet their most basic needs. A global food crisis is plunging more people further into desperate poverty. Many of us struggle to find peace in our homes and in our work. All too often our congregations are not places of peace but places of pain. Peace-making isn’t just difficult, it sometimes seems downright impossible.

So where does that leave us? The Beatitudes don’t make sense. They call us to be peacemakers in a world of violence. They ask us to rejoice and be glad in the face of persecution. They suggest that all the ways our world tells us to get ahead are far from the values of God’s kingdom. We are called to make peace even when what really makes sense is throwing in the towel. We are called to rock the boat for justice, to demand more than what the world will give us. We are called to work for the kingdom, to make a place for the kingdom, and to notice where the kingdom has already become a part of our reality.

Peacemaking is not left to the people we call activists. Jesus directs these words to all. But how do we do it? There are no easy answers, only the choice to try. We can choose peace instead of violence. We can choose justice instead of injustice. We can, even in the smallest of ways, try to make a place for the kingdom of God to be birthed in our midst. And we can keep going back to the drawing board, keep refusing to settle, keep hearing the words of Jesus and keep trying to live into them.

Questions:
1. Where do you see a lack of positive peace in your neighborhood? Do you see a place where your church or family might have an impact?

2. When you read the Beatitudes, what strikes you as most surprising? Do any of Jesus’ words make you uncomfortable?

3. What are some examples of peace-making in your own life? When have you chosen peace? What are some ways you can talk about those experiences with your family or friends?

4. Are there times in your life when you have stayed satisfied with an absence of conflict instead of the positive peace that King talks about? What did you learn from those experiences?