An Intention of Peace
by Pythia Peay
For
others, as for myself, the yearning for just a drop of miraculous balm to quiet
the troubled waters of daily life is universal. Loved ones hope to heal the
bitter quarrels that sunder them from one another. Busy people maneuver to
snatch a moment of calm. Those who are poor long for the peace of a full stomach
and physical security. Individuals in war-torn countries pray they will live out
their lives. Thus, we walk in the footsteps of the great mystics because,
ultimately, we seek the peace their messages promise. Torn apart from within by
warring emotions, or traumatized by the violence that scars everyday life,
practitioners seek to build an interior refuge wherein they can find a measure
of tranquillity. God is love, beauty, and truth, say the great teachers, but
beyond that, God is sublime peace, too. In this sense, peace is the ultimate
quality, containing within it all other qualities as the color white contains
within it the colors of the spectrum.
I have experienced sublime peaks of transcendent calm in meditations. Yet
such experiences have not prevented me from the unease and uncertainty of life.
As the Sufi teacher Pit Vilayat Inayat Khan has frequently said, it is
relatively easy for a great master to maintain his high state of consciousness
while on retreat or in a cave -- but far harder to do so juggling the everyday
demands of family and work. Humankind, it seems, has much to learn about the
arts of peacemaking. Many longtime religious practitioners and meditators who
have experienced the blissful depths of inner peace, for instance, have found it
difficult if not impossible to translate that into their outer lives. Likewise,
political activists have stumbled in their efforts to negotiate peaceful
conditions, blocked by their inner psychological shadows of intolerance and
hatred.
But these very inconsistencies reveal an important clue in the great work of
peace: peace cannot only be found inwardly, or fought for outwardly -- it is a
disciplined struggle that must continually be engaged on several fronts.
Psychologically, we each must do battle with the inner "shadow" that would
subvert our growth; while the spiritual path requires warriorlike discipline.
Outwardly, we are called upon to fight the wrongs of injustice and oppression.
Thus, like all the other qualities, peace includes within it its own opposite --
tension, change, and dissatisfaction. Acceptance of that fact of life is what
begins the path of peacework. To accept that conflict is a natural part of life
-- and to find enlightened ways to deal with that -- is what some say prevents
the outbreak of petty arguments, war, or violence. For while we may all be one
in the spirit, we exist in a dimension of reality that teems with passionately
fractious differences. So peace is not something that is singular and static.
Rather, it is a work in progress that takes place in the give-and-take dialogue
between the different parts of oneself, between oneself and another, between
rivals, and among nations, faiths, and ethnicities.
Peace in action is exemplified in the lives of the legendary nonviolent
peacemakers. Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela all
are extraordinary examples of men who put truth to work in the name of peace and
justice -- not from the distance of a cave, but directly in the heart of
everyday life. The impact of inner peace brought to bear on conditions in the
outer world in a nonviolent but engaged fashion is what Gandhi called "satyagraha,"
or "soul force."
Although the bright stars of the peace movement have mostly been men, it is
largely men who have started and fought wars, while women have stood helplessly
alongside history's bloody battlefields. Like Penelope spinning at her wheel
patiently awaiting the return of her husband Odysseus from the Trojan War, women
have been the ones to bear the brunt of emotional damage caused by the wounds of
war. "I do not see my life as separate from history," writes Susan Griffin in
A Chorus of Stones. "In my mind my family secrets mingle with the
secrets of statesmen and bombers. Nor is my life divided from the lives of
others. I, who am a woman, have my father's face. And he, I suspect, had his
mother's face."
The feminine experience of enduring centuries of waiting, healing, nurturing,
and sustaining family and community ties has resulted in what many thinkers have
come to realize is a valuable contribution to the tasks of sustaining peace.
Women's collective experience overseeing squabbling children, negotiating family
differences, nursing physical and emotional wounds, and tending friendships has
resulted in a stockpile of wisdom that can be applied on a large world scale.
"For generations," remarked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in October 2000 to
the Security Council, "women have served as peace educators, both in their
families and in their societies. They have proved instrumental in building
bridges rather than walls."
The notion of women as peacemakers is not just political correctness run
amok, write Swanee Hunt and Cristina Posa in their article "Women Waging Peace,"
in the May/June 2001 issue of Foreign Policy. Rather, they write, "Social
science research supports the stereotype of women as generally more
collaborative than men and thus more inclined toward consensus and compromise."
Pointing out that women are at the center of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) and popular grassroots movements, Hunt and Posa argue that international
peace negotiators should include more women in their ranks. "While most men come
to the negotiating table directly from the war room and battlefield, women
usually arrive straight out of civil activism and -- take a deep breath --
family care." A popular E-mail sent to me by almost every woman I know
circulating after the attacks humorously makes the same point: "Uniting all the
warring tribes of Afghanistan in a new government? Oh, please ... we've planned
the seating arrangements for in-laws and extended families at Thanksgiving
dinners for years ... we understand tribal warfare."
As friendship is a template of peace in action, women who are interested in
finding ways to bring peace into the world can strengthen their cause by
starting a women's circle of peace. They can practice meditations aimed at
deepening peace within and visualizing peace in the world without. They can
study the lives of women peacemakers. A peace circle is a wonderful place for
women to support one another in the time-honored tasks of everyday diplomacy:
raising children, and mediating disputes and conflicts in the family and
workplace. Women can join the personal with the political by choosing a social
cause to support, whether working for the rights of women worldwide, drawing
attention to the plight of refugees, or advocating for the homeless.
Participants can balance spiritual work with political action by writing
letters, circulating petitions, or making a formal group visit to local
representatives.
The work of attaining peace, it seems, is a constantly evolving mystery.
Perhaps what matters most is intention -- that whatever action taken in the name
of peace and justice be for those purposes and no other. The following insights
of women who have worked for peace, both in the past and in the present, can be
our guides. Their experiences both on the inner frontiers of consciousness and
in the outer world of politics and community can inspire other women who wish to
become courageous peacemakers in the world.
 This
article is excerpted from:
Soul Sisters
by Pythia Peay.
Reprinted
with permission of the publisher, Putnam Publishing. ©2002.
http://www.penguinputnam.com
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
A
noted journalist on spiritual topics, PYTHIA PEAY has written for Utne Reader,
Washingtonian, Common Boundary, and other publications. As a contributor to
Religion News Service, she has been published in newspapers around the country.
She studied meditation with the Sufi teacher Pit Vilayat Inayat Khan, and
collaborated with him on his book Awakening. Peay lives in the Washington, D.C.,
area.
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