Peace Talk — Autumn 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineAbout two years ago I was walking back from the grocery store with my partner. and going on and on for the entire walk about a woman I knew and how much her behavior angered me. She had done some things that had hurt my feelings a couple of years before. My partner listened without saying a word until I paused to take a breath when he said, “You have got to be the angriest peace activist I know.”
His words stopped my rant dead. What could I say? He was right. I had been doing a lot of peace work over the preceding year, going to rallies, standing in vigils, handing out leaflets, making phone calls, organizing buses, yet I had done nothing to try to cultivate peace within myself. It was more than just the fact that after two years I had not forgiven this person for hurting my feelings, though on the surface I acted as though I had when she was around. I couldn’t have rational conversations about world events without working myself into a state of tears and venom. I would lecture anyone whom I could corner on how destructive their lifestyle was, and what awful people they were for living that way. I found it nearly impossible to celebrate anything because all I could think of was how horrid things were elsewhere. It was difficult to see beauty anywhere when there was so much ugliness. I dealt’ with these feelings by keeping myself so busy and so involved that I barely had time to think. Unfortunately, though I heard my partner’s words that day and realized what he meant, it would still be another couple of years before I finally started taking steps to create peace in my life.
This past July I attended a conference at the University of Maine called “Spirituality, Ecology, and Peace.” If I were to sum up what the theme of the conference was, though I don’t think it officially had one, I would say that it was how to be fully aware of all the horrors of the world and yet still be able to see the beauty that is all around us and create a sense of peace within ourselves. This is not an easy state of mind to create. It is much easier to get very wrapped up in either the ugliness or the beauty, to dwell in constant fear, anger and rage or to live in a cocoon of denial, seeing only the things that make us feel good.
The day after the conference my mother and I visited the Orono Bog. News of the escalating warfare in the Middle East had been on all of our minds throughout the conference the previous day. Since the conference was also about ecology, the topics of global warming, pollution, and nuclear waste had also been discussed. These issues were on our minds when we were setting foot on the boardwalk that would take us through an ecosystem that neither of us had experienced before.
We spent two hours walking the mile-long board walk. Much of that was in a squatting waddle as our eyes scanned the ground for pitcher plants and sundews and the wild irises that grew there. As the boardwalk began we walked through a lush wooded fen and then through a land of quiet conifers with mossy carpets spread between them. In the fens we saw squirrels, a rabbit, birds and dragon flies. Life was cool and green here. Bird song followed us along the entire walk, giving us a wild soundtrack for our visit.
From the fens we emerged onto the open heath where the boardwalk floated atop more than 20 feet of peat. Its hot openness was in deep contrast to the shady green canopy of the fens. It is not easy for life to take hold on the heath; there are areas of the heath called ombrotrophic where the only nutrients to be found are in the atmosphere, but what does live there thrives. It is here that the carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews are found. Some rare species of dragonfly make their homes here too. Here there are spruce trees that become overgrown with sphagnum moss within a decade of growing, yet the tree does not suffocate and die. By the time the moss has taken over the lower branches, the same branches will have drooped down to earth and taken root, producing a circle of new trees around the dying central tree. These trees will remain attached to the central root system for decades, creating layered circles of trees that can be hundreds of years old.
The boardwalk circled back into the fens, and we paused to sit on a bench to rest and just experience the life around us. For a time we heard no sounds of people and no one came along the boardwalk. How could I deny the life of this place? Yes, there was hunger, killing and destruction going on in the world, yet here was this place of great beauty that produced an immense diversity of life. How was it that I forgot for a time that these places existed? Being here did not make all of the bad things go away. It didn’t stop the bombs in Lebanon and Iraq. That moment didn’t feed the hungry around the world. What visiting the bog did for me was to illustrate that life, on a global or personal level, is not just pieces of things. It isn’t just grief and it isn’t just celebration; it isn’t just destruction and it isn’t just creation. It is everything.
It would be easy to allow despair to overtake us and let our spirits shrivel and die, but we don’t have to do this. Like the spruce on the heath, we can take root in an impossible place and grow. We do this through our celebrations and the things that bring us joy—feeling the sun on our faces, sitting close to loved ones, tapping into the buzz of life around us, taking time to be still—and as each person takes root and grows, we create a larger ring of life in the midst of destruction. Joined at the roots we create, individually, and collectively, something greater and longer-lasting than ourselves.