Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Today an old friend I respect sent an email to a peace talk list-serve I subscribe to that started this way: “To those who are working for peace…. forget it! If peace is the absence of war…forget it. The future of war is guaranteed.” He then went on to explain how the defense budget is increasing and about some new dark robotic weapons of war being developed by the Pentagon. I do not know if he wrote the first line or was quoting it, but certainly he was in agreement with it in his posting. In my opinion my friend clearly is not a gardener and did not read the Albert Einstein quote in my March 31th posting: “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”

He has a good point, but fortunately, being a real friend, I can disagree with him without him getting upset and dropping our friendship. I civilly disagree with the opening statement. I am not sure exactly why but here is an attempt.

I believe peace is not the absence of war. I believe a person can face an enemy and still be at peace. I believe a person can defend himself or herself, even using violence, and still be at peace. True peace is something that cannot be taken from an individual or even a group of persons, like a government. It is like the old Easter story of the master teacher who was asked by other monks how it felt to be “enlightened.” He said: “Before I was enlightened I was depressed. After I was enlightened I was depressed.” Peace, like enlightenment, is something that you have or do not have. One can give it up, but it cannot be taken.

Albert Einstein, who had supported the development of the Atomic War by the USA later came to regret that decision. He was an agnostic but “religious” as he expressed it in this quote from his book: “In knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

In the natural world and in the human world today, I believe, we find this kind of hope. Another great scientist, Teilhard de Chardin, expressed it best: “Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness…. the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.” This hope that we can make a difference and help end war gives meaning to life.

What is the sense of suffering, even dying, if there is no hope of peace, joy, and new life? I really believe, like in a garden, we repeat what we sow. We can look at evil in the world, like war, and interpret this truth to be “the chickens come home to roost” or “what goes comes around.” The same truth can be said of war or peace.

So I say to my friend, look at nature and how it revitalizes itself. Look, like Einstein, at “unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal” and find hope. See as St. Ignatius of Loyola, and “find God in all things.” Be like Gandhi and find joy not in the ‘victory’ but in the struggle, suffering and pilgrimage of life.

So my friend, however you may want to express, it seek peace and make peace and there will be peace. There are all kinds of signs if we have ears to hear and eyes to see. Even my conversation with ROTC student yesterday at prayer vigil for Marquette to Stop Teaching War gave me great hope in an end to war, a hope worth working for. Wars come and go but peace is eternal.

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