El Salvador – Engaging Peace

by guest author Alan O’Hare, A Seanchie (Celtic storyteller)

In this post, I invite you to “see the voices” of renowned peace activists, less well known proponents of peace and reconciliation, and all the human beings who have suffered from the wars and conflicts pervading our world.

El Salvador mural with Archbishop Romero. Photo by Alison McKellar, used under CC Attribution Generic 2.0 license.

Think of their stories as part of a tapestry of peace, a tapestry that could be displayed in a meditative gathering in which we can envision Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Nelson Mandela, our brothers and sisters in our own journey towards peace.

As we create this tapestry, allow these images to be your guides:

Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin at the 1989 Fall of the Wall
Aung San Suu Kyi being released to the loving embrace of the people of Myanmar after many years of unjust house arrest
The life and courage of Archbishop Romero being celebrated in El Salvador Cathedral where he was assassinated in 1980
A circle of victims and perpetrators from the 1994 Rwanda genocide sitting on the grass (gacaca) listening to confessions and seeking reconciliation

Recall Gandhi as he sat spinning threads of harmony, independence, and resistance that rippled across the nation of India. Even now we can see the echoes of his voice of peace, a voice that became a rolling thunder continuing to resonate throughout the world today.

Recalling Gandhi should be more than just imagining him; it should be truly seeing him through all those millions of people whose lives have been affected in the search for peace and reconciliation. See him and appreciate more fully the voices that carry on his mission, and the art, music, movement, and fragrance hidden in the beauty and power in each of their words.

Alan O’Hare, LifeStoryTheatre.org

World War I was not the war to end all wars; neither did the dropping of a second U.S. atom bomb at Nagasaki, Japan bring lasting peace to the world.

origami peace cranes — Origami peace cranes

Since August 9, 1945, and the end of World War II, the U. S. has committed troops to more than 100 armed conflicts around the world—in widely dispersed areas such as China, Korea, Palestine, Lebanon, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, the Congo (Zaire), El Salvador, Libya, Grenada, Honduras, Chad, the Persian Gulf, Panama, Colombia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Many of these armed interventions provoked controversy and protest among American citizens; others barely reached public awareness. The goals were always lofty; the results frequently horrendous; the true motives often highly suspect.

Although the U.S. has used armed force with increasing frequency to achieve a wide range of goals across the globe since World War II, the actual number of armed conflicts occurring each year has declined rather steadily in recent decades—from around 164 in 1982 to 40 in 2000 and only 28 in 2008.

The consistent decline in armed conflicts is one basis for optimism concerning the possibility of world peace. Despite the involvement of the United States in ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is good evidence that increasing numbers of people around the world can see alternatives to violence as a means of resolving conflicts.

Public support for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is declining even as funding continues. What will it take to get the country’s leadership to listen to the voice of the people who oppose these wars?

Future blogs will discuss the kinds of thinking people bring to their judgments concerning the legitimacy—and illegitimacy–of a government’s use of armed aggression and alternatives to that aggression.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

A living tapestry of peace and reconciliation (Part 1)

Remembering Nagasaki, 1945