Betrayal of Christ
1596–97, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Nature might be harsh and cruel, like in a tornado, but nature never betrays. Despite my rash and harsh exterior I am very much a trusting person, childlike in that regard. I believe persons and when I find out they were not telling the truth, in fact just using the misrepresentation of truth to betray me, I feel very down and upset. It is hard to just let it go and practice the nonviolence described to Gandhi by Judith Brown as “striving nonviolently to the point of sacrifice rather than fighting to attain one’s vision of truth.” Unlike nature I fight for my vision of truth.

This does not mean that the way of nonviolence is not full of struggle. It is, but struggling for truth is not the same as fighting for truth. A nonviolent person absorbs the blows of lies and betrayal and keeps on struggling for the truth.

This brings me to the use of the word Peace. At the Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference a presenter from India who has extensively studied all the works of Mahatma Gandhi told me after my presentations on a Conversation between St. Ignatius of Loyola and Mahatma Gandhi that Gandhi seldom use the word peace in his many writings.

The word peace is overused. It has lost its meaning. I am guilty of overusing it, even signing my letters “Green Peace”. Like many other words and phrases like “family values,” it has been taken over by all kinds of persons of all viewpoints to mean what they want it to mean. But before I end or severely limit the use of the word “Peace” I would like to submit, with the author’s permission, a poem called Peace.

Believe
That peace will come like a
midnight snow.
Tender flakes fall
till by million they are
spread crost lawns and fields
and sidewalks and are gathered
onto shovels
into snowballs
and men and women
made of snow.

Cycles of the seasons welcome
such fruits.
The tiny seeds, the spores and flakes
yield rich harvest in their time. And
Time
Is all we have to make a way
for Peace…

The living world outdoes itself in beauty
winter, fall, and spring.
And so do we
Living
Allow the hammers of time
To beat our hearts of stone
Until they are
Many gathered pieces
of one full blown splendiferous accord.

Like a midnight snowfall
we awaken to at dawn
and see
the truth
is always larger than life.

JK

My friend who wrote this knows the pain of suffering and has overcome it. So here is the end of the overuse of the word peace by at least one person.

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