What Happens after all this: Peace?

It’s so easy to find fault with country and the world today, with courts, the administration, foreign governments, and dictators and oppressors everywhere acting out. I’ve compared what is happening today to the 1930s and 1940s, the rise of Stalin and his camps and use of exile and execution, to Hitler and the harnessing of World War I grievances and persistent Anti-Semitism into concentration and death camps.

It’s hard to read the papers, with depressing news of ongoing wars in Ukraine and Sudan, internal conflicts in Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and so many other places. And to Israel’s crazy pursuit of a “Holyland” that is Muslim- and Arab-free, and matching somehow an ancient Jewish past. It’s somehow a vision strong enough to provoke our American government—already stressed with unsuccessful punishments of the Iranian Ayatollahs—into a haphazard “war” on and sometimes in Iran.

Given all of that, how can we find hope?

On Tuesday morning I had a great bike ride, then made myself sourdough pancakes with walnuts inside and real maple syrup and yogurt on top. I came to work—and I love the people I work with—and started making arrangements for a Saturday field trip with tribal peoples to millennial sites, places used by their ancestors to hunt, fish, gather roots and berries, and put up their tipis with glorious views of the Snake River canyons and not-too-distant Seven Devils Mountains in Idaho.

I’ll first go to a potluck with more than a hundred root diggers from tribes across the Northwest on Friday night, then make the Saturday field trip and a longhouse ceremony on Sunday. I am always humbled by Longhouse services, the drumming and the songs that go back forever, the honest confessions of lives that have strayed from traditional values and celebrations of their returns.

Readers probably get tired of me saying that my solace in these hard times is being with Indians, but it is true. And I will lean on those people and relationships that I have come to love from time to time for the rest of my days

But there is hope in other directions too. Hope in the 400 people that came to our last free Monday night community dinner here in Joseph Oregon—there were three months of wonderful Monday meals again this year. Organized by the Methodists, but helped along with money, food, and labor from an army of volunteers from other churches, civic clubs, and dedicated individuals.

And hope in an international dinner that the local Rotary Club put on last Saturday night. Eighty of us shared a delicious Persian dinner and an evening talk by a returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Iran. Jackie Spurlock, who worked as a librarian in Esfahan in the 1970s, has been back to Iran on three occasions, most recently in 2019. Her message: the people of Iran love the people of America; it is the governments that get in the way.

Our servers were high school students. Our Rotary club sponsors three high school “Interact” clubs. Really, the kids, with help from teacher advisors, do most of it themselves. The Rotary Club steps in with a bit of financial help, and in turn asks the students to tell us about their work and adventures. Recently, the Joseph club—about ten of their members—came to a regular Rotary meeting with a PowerPoint presentation on their spring trip to Brazil. One of the students had relatives in Brazil, and helped fashion a program of service and pleasure, which included cleaning beaches, planting mangrove trees, and meeting and tutoring Brazilian students in English.

We asked them if this combination of service and tourism was different and better than being regular tourists. The answer was a resounding yes. They saw things and met people in a different light, in the light of their Brazilian lives rather than lives aimed at pleasing—and gaining profit from—tourists.

These local programs might seem unusual and somehow small drops in a very big bucket of global woes. But there is good news on the national and international fronts too. Rotary on the world stage has adopted peace making and conflict resolution—along with polio eradication, water and health improvements generally, in its international mission. We have our own Rotary Peace Fellow here. Seth Kinzie studied conflict resolution in Uganda, and now participates in an NGO that operates for Peace in Africa out of Malawi.

And there is a new book by two men, an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab, who have become friends in shared tragedy—both having lost close family members to the “other” side. The men, Aziz Abu Sarah & Maoz Inon, and their new book “The Future Is Peace,” are making the television and radio rounds. The title says it all—and that in the midst of incredible conflict in their home countries.

And they are not the only peacemakers in the Holyland. There are peace-making bridge groups of women, of former military adversaries, and of students sharing schools and learning Hebrew and Arabic together. When governments get out of the way, there is a reservoir of people who truly believe in peace and co-existence.

In our own country, David Brooks, my favorite historically conservative political writer, gave a wonderful lecture at Yale which is making the rounds, telling us more about the historical moment we are in, its precedents and what might come next. In “How America Recovers from All This,” Brooks suggests that the nation is ripe for a “humanistic turn” that champions dignity, virtue, and communal repair. He concludes that true recovery will not come from politicians alone, but through a collective shift in values sparked by individuals, artists, and educational institutions.

That’s a mind full of hopes and challenges, but it seems like a best path away from the current fixations on conflict and profits. I’ll tell you what I learn from my Indian friends this weekend!

Peace!