Being Peacemakers

notes on political fear and feeding people's hunger

On January 1 of this year, I awoke in a foreboding fog. The clock and calendar had turned and we were once again in an election year with the same candidates as 2020, a few years removed from the start of the pandemic and still susceptible to an invisible virus that evolves far more rapidly than we ever will.

It was like encountering the same dread of March 2020, the dread that had launched me into the darkest depression I’d ever known. Since those years, I’ve had therapy, time, lots and lots of writing to work toward healing and renewal, to keep my mind from veering back into darkness. I thought I had the tools to prevent it but on January 1, the shadows crept towards me. I don’t want to be afraid. But if I’m honest, I’ve been afraid for years. 

Fear is a haunting emotion. A little bit of fear can be stoked into outright terror. We know what unmitigated fear is capable of, how it can attach to vitriol and blame. We can be mongered towards violent action if we let our fear take over. We can be herded into mobs, whipped into frenzies. Fear can be a dangerous catalyst if we’re not careful. But fear is also valid, an honest component of being human.

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”

I want my fear to propel me towards peace instead of rage. “The peace of wild things,” the peace that settles when I walk a quiet path or witness the day’s fading light. I’ve written often about love and yet I’m shitty at loving well, loving with peace instead of fear at the forefront.

It’s a balancing act, having been conditioned towards one way of belief, finding my way towards expansive belief, forgiving myself for holding harmful beliefs, and now lacking grace (at times) for those I’m often convinced are still clinging to bad beliefs. 

These past few days I’ve been thinking about peace, especially in the aftermath of egregious political violence. I’m examining my own online presence, my occasional tendency to write angry and despairing words. Anger has a place, so does despair. Justice must fuel our action, but undergirded by peace which is “a freedom from disturbance; tranquility; an absence of hostility.”

Peace is the pulse of love. 

So much of my anger and fear has been stirred by rhetoric and vitriol from people who claim the ways of Christ and yet speak and act violently. I do not want to talk with such people. I do not want to dignify their convictions with questions. The truth is, I don’t know many people like that—-so angry, hostile, and cruel. But they are legion. And they are human. And I wonder what it would take to convince them to lay down their weapons, turn their swords into plowshares. 

I wrote on Instagram this week about finding hope for humanity in cooking shows where kindness radiates in English tents and American BBQ pits. There’s something to be said about communal meals, about barriers broken with the passing of a dish around a table. I referenced the 1987 movie Babette’s Feast, which culminates when Babette, the French chef-turned-household-cook prepares an elaborate feast for her up-tight guests. The multi-course meal begins somberly, each person at the table uncomfortable with the wine poured and strange smells wafting from the kitchen.

But as the night unfolds, as each course is presented, and more wine is poured, the scene turns jovial. Guests look up from their plates and converse with the people around them. They begin to laugh and savor the complexity of the dishes, the thoughtful pairings of expensive wine with each ingredient. An open table, Babette’s hospitality, the goodness of good food reaches into the depths of a formerly closed-off group of people. They begin to listen to one another. 

Joy Sullivan

writes in her poem Howl, “Sometimes, you don’t know that you’re starving until you’ve had a proper meal. That’s when your heart really begins to howl—when it learns what it’s been missing.”

We’re all hungry, we’re all scared, lacking in proper nutrients, lacking in proper care. Proximity does not necessarily increase compassion or decrease dehumanization. It’s not enough to live next to people who look and live and think differently. Some tables are not safe places. Some conversations are not productive. It’s impossible to debate a person into kindness. But as much as it depends on me, I can endeavor to be a peacemaker, breaching conflict with tomato pie and sourdough loaves. Not because this isn’t serious. Not because food is an all-encompassing remedy. But because I was once wrong and hungry and someone, many someones, offered kindness and sustenance as I found my way out of it.

Brendan James sings in his new song Peacemakers, “Did you start to feel hatred, did you start to despise other people around you who didn’t see eye to eye?...Oh peacemaker where are you now? Oh peacemaker come and show us how.”

brendanjames_music

A post shared by @brendanjames_music

I’m still afraid. Still worried about what the next few months could bring. In honoring my humanity, I honor these tense emotions. But, even in fear and uncertainty, may peace pulse through us. Realizing, as Hanh writes, “right now we are okay.” Our bodies and the bodies of others are marvelous, worthy of protection, worthy of peace.