How to Have a Peaceful Planet

Live Oak, August 15, 1999
Leslie Grove

Good Morning, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Well, I have to tell you that it was very interesting to be presented with the topic, "How to Have a Peaceful Planet?" in 20 minutes.

The answer I believe is simple. Not easy but simple. Simple is we know that to lose weight we must expend more calories than we intake. Simple, but anyone who has struggled with dieting know it is not easy.

"Nations have no existence apart from their people. If every person in the world loved peace, every nation would love peace. If all men refused to fight one another, nations could not fight one another." by J. Sherman Wallace, THIINK

I believe what he really means is, Collective peace comes from individual peace.

So the questions become, how can we have individual peace? How can we motivate others to act peacefully? With words alone, I feel the great inadequacy of answering these questions....of conveying the true grit of peace. I say 'grit' because it is not easily obtained. In fact, I don't think you can discover, uncover or obtain it at all, peace can only be developed.

Just as you can only develop character or faith. We aren't born with faith that our most immediate need will be met. As infants we cry to make sure someone knows we're hungry & will bring on the food. How our need is met or not met , our faith begins to be shaped by our experience.

I know that speaking about peace isn't going to result in it anymore than reading a recipe out loud will cause a pot roast to appear. Though it is inadequate to expect peace to spring from words alone, we don't throw discourse away. Because words can influence belief, can shape faith, can give encouragement to developing character. We just can't count on them to be enough.

Nor are ideas. I may think of myself as a kind person which is a nice concept & yet no one can experience me as kind unless I perform a caring deed. It's the old cliche, actions speak louder than words. You may think of yourself as a good parent, loyal friend, hard worker, or endearing spouse. For others to experience our peaceful nature, I don't get any charge from repeating cliches, but this one seems so relevant here because we know that words & ideas aren't enough to bring about peace, develop character or enlarge faith. And yet, in the context of this speech, it is all I can give you. But I know I will ultimately be judged by my actions. Today, I hope to give you some philosophy, a new perspective, an idea, some examples, but I know it is my actions that have the potential to demonstrate more to you than anything I could say. The way I greet my family & friends after this service will show you more about my character than my words. Or my response in traffic congestion or how I behave when presented with disheartening news.

You may think of yourself as a good parent, loyal friend, hard worker, or endearing spouse. But for others to experience you as such, to recognize your peaceful nature,, they will look to your behavior.

Because peace grows out of character, personal belief, it can only be demonstrated, not legislated.

If peace could be legislated, there would be no war in the Middle East, the Arabs & Israeli's would have settled their dispute hundreds of years ago & many who have been killed, would have died a different death that the gruesome death of battle. If Peace could be legislated, The Catholics & Protestants would not continue to take up arms against one another.

But, it cannot be legislated; only demonstrated.

Today, this church is making a fresh covenant to nurture & support the children in the community. When we make the promise to nurture the children, we know the covenant is not about physical nourishment. None of us would take children to the grocery store & let them choose whatever & how much they wanted to eat. To be the sole governors of what they choose to consume. We wouldn't abandon them to their whims or the whims of the food industry.

The covenant speaks to our commitment to understand & accept their need for environments & experiences that support their spiritual health. This is very exciting because what it means is we're going to give them the support & practice to develop themselves in spiritual ways. We're going to strive to provide them with an environment & experiences which nourish their spirit. Just as it is through repetition & practice that children acquire academic skills, so too, it is through repetition & practice that they acquire the skills of cooperation, tolerance, & conflict resolution. Adults are no different from children in this way. It is through the effort & practice of conscious self-transformation that we learn peace.

I'm going to tell a story that illustrates how I believe you teach peace.

The best example I have of this comes from working with a gifted teacher of young children in a Montessori classroom.. Her name is Donna Bryant Goertz & the children in this story are 6 through 9 years old. Big influence on me. The reason it's important for you to know that it was a Montessori classroom is so you can imagine this picture. Imagine children working at their own pace, for the most part have choice about what they choose to work on & work scattered about the room--some at tables & some on mats on the floor. Now, introduce in your picture a 7 year old named Einstein is a particularly intelligent child in the way we're most accustomed to thinking about intelligence. He had a high IQ or intelligence quotient. Einstein would wander about the room & frustrate others by giving them the answer to things which they were laboring to figure out for themselves. For example, if a young girl was working with materials to calculate the product of 9 X 9, right as she was about to finish counting out the answer, he would blurt out "81!" or if two boys were quizzing each other on difficult spelling words he would walk by & listen for the word they were spelling & rattle if off, quickly & with little effort, before he could be stopped. You can imagine the frustration he was able to stir up.

He was academically gifted enough to know much of what his classmates were working on. But how was he social intelligence? His "peace quotient" if you will.

His motive wasn't to be difficult or unruly or cause others dislike him. He wanted to be work with them, to have partners, to feel like part of the group, but he didn't have the slightest idea of how to go about it.

When this teacher saw his strength in academics & weakness in social skills she called on the help of her classroom community to aid him. She would not just leave them to figure it out on their own. She wouldn't abandon him with his struggle. She reminded the children that they all had strengths & weaknesses & would say things like, "Stan, remember when you were struggling the with map of South America or Jacqueline, remember how hard you had to be to work on fractions? Well, geography, punctuation, math, none of these are Einstein's struggle. His struggle is making friends. Who is willing to help Einstein learn that? Whose available to have a conversation him for 10 minutes or he needs someone to eat lunch with him today or he needs someone to sit beside him & work quietly. Now, you know he may talk to you & you have to watch yourself, when you start getting frustrated, you to ask someone else to take a turn. Now who will write down everyone's hand who is up. Those of you who really want to help, can you take turn inviting him over to your house for 30 minutes. at a time? How is he going to learn to be comfortable making friends if no one helps him practice?

She did not shame him about his behavior. She didn't make a negative assumption about his behavior. She expressed faith that the children in her class were, of course, helpful & could relate to his struggle if they could be reminded of one of their own. She cannot teach him how to behave, but she can craft the environment & provide the opportunity for experience which will help him shape his behavior. It is not filling the mind with information, but provide a chance for children to construct themselves through activity.

1) This is how peace is taught, this is how peace is modeled.

"It is through confronting, contending with & supporting one another, that a community brings out its finest attributes & develops its members wholly." (Donna)

2) To have peace, we must practice the art of inclusion. And I do believe it is an art. Letting children experience how to include others, not exclude them benefits all the children in the community when they learn how to incorporate each other in the fabric of their daily life. All their lives they will be met with people whom are frustrating or irritating to them. It is how to address these people that is one of the greatest gift we can give. When you make it clear that in your family or in your community, you value others strengths & tolerate & educate their weaknesses, you teach peace. We don't cast off those who don't fit well. We look for another way within the community to meet their needs. As humans , we are lucky that we have a chance at continual evolution. We create ourselves each day by what we choose to do. Each day we have an opportunity to improve our "peace quotient."

3) For enduring peace, we must remain curious about others, their behaviors, their motivations, while all the time remembering it is our responsibility to deal with our own. If you find yourself in the same conflict about the same thing over & over with someone. Enlist your curiosity. Be willing to ask yourself, what is my role in this? Donna presented each child with the opportunity to ask themselves, how could I be part of the solution?

Einstein is not helped if everyone in the community says: well, he has a problem with making friends. That's his problem & it has nothing to do with me. When we distance ourselves from the problem. We enlarge the distance to the solution.

To develop peace, we ask ourselves, what is my part in the conflict? What am I willing to do to prevent or aid the resolution of this conflict.? I am not suggesting that we must continually identify others

I want to very clear in this monologue that I am not suggesting we are always all peaceful & smiling & kind & generous all the time & that we go around helping others with their faults. And I am especially not suggesting that we are making a covenant to act that way with the children of our community. That would no only be unrealistic but inhuman and perhaps more importantly, it would make us untrustworthy. Do you really trust the people who are always smiling? Always happy?

In my experience, I trust the people who are honest with me. Who can say they not only feel joy, but sadness, despair & exaltation, anger & patience. We don't model peace for each other & for the children by not having conflict. We model it by showing them how to resolve conflict. It isn't bad for children to see adults fighting. It's bad if they never see resolution. It's not bad for children to compete with one another. It's bad if they never learn how to cooperate.

In the curriculum that is being introduced this very moment in your Religious Education program are some conflict resolution models for this very reason. We know conflict will be there. It would be rather creepy if it wasn't. A little too much like The Stepford Wives. Individuals bring different perspectives, different perspectives bring disagreement. Conflict gets a bad rap. But it's not the conflict that not bad. It is unresolved conflict that injures. Conflict is there because diversity is there. It's futile & destructive to eliminate diversity. "Vitality & vigor come from meeting up with one another's differences, not one another's sameness."

4) We must hold the faith that they can learn from our positive examples & our gross mistakes. That we trust they will aspire to seek truths & find meaning. After all, life does not have an obvious meaning. We are not born knowing what it is all about--why we are here. The happiest people I know are those who have given life meaning. This is what we must model for the young people. This is one way we hold the faith for them.

5)TIME - teaching peace requires we are liberal with time. It requires that we give care & attention to detail when we are confronted with how to have harmony. In the story about Einstein, it took time to craft solution. Time to remind children of their own struggles, time to enlist them by assuming & asking for their cooperative efforts, time to make the plan for his success. Time away from academics but time given to character development. It would have been much quicker to say "Einstein, off to the principal office you go." when he was disruptive. but What greater satisfaction can we have than that of becoming the conscious master of our body & spirit? What greater gift can we give them than our diligence & our confidence that they are able to construct themselves?

You see, when others see us hurry something, they often assume we no longer care about it & want to get on to other things. As adults, we are often concerned with saving time. But you see, to develop peace, to construct ourselves & for children to construct themselves peacefully, the job becomes to spend time.

6) Part of our job is to create new beliefs to replace existing beliefs. A new faith. You might ask yourself--what is it that our young people believe? You might especially be asking this in the wake of the recent school shootings. Ready, here it is. The most common belief among young people & perhaps the most unifying belief in our country is this: "humans exist to work at jobs, to earn money, to get stuff." In a book by Brain Swimme called, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, he refers to this belief as the most common faith. "Faith" he says is our "personal cosmology" or "that which a person holds to be the hard-boiled truth about reality." He goes on to explain that the main force which drives this belief is advertising. He states that advertising is where children get their basic grasp of the world's meaning.

Now I haven't decided if I agree with Brian yet. I hope he's not right because if he is, it means advertising's crass materialism has replaced authentic spiritual development in our culture. As he points out, if you compare the effort we employ in this country for spiritual development with the "colossal & frenzied energies we pour into advertising, it is like comparing a high school football game with World War II." But this isn't the talk that puts down the advertising business or technology or consumerism. This is the talk that says how can we make it better. If we really are committed to teaching peace, we must commit our time to the task. That what I saw this morning when the covenant was being made --a commitment to put for the time.

As the adults in the community, it is our job to be the peacekeepers & the faith builders for children. This doesn't mean breaking up the fights or intervening in quarrels. It means we must model peaceful behavior & hold peaceful beliefs. I don't profess to know what to tell children about the meaning of life or what belief would be the best replacement for "humans work, to get money, to buy stuff." I do notice; however, that this community affirms & promotes a number of beliefs listed on the back of today's program. I would bet that most members of this audience have a value system that goes beyond believing the purpose of humans is we're born to work, buy & die. Part of what draws you here is you know there's more to it than that. That's the part that must be communicated to each other & to children. Your values, your beliefs, your musings about character & what would make the world a better place, these must be demonstrated. Advertisers have taken responsibility for getting their message across. We must take responsibility to get ours across.

Let us rededicate ourselves to not filling our minds with information, but to constructing ourselves with activity in the name of peace. Whether young or old, this is how we evolve, not through peaceful words, or peaceful thinking, but peaceful action.