Can Elders Show Us the Way to Peace?
An article in the NY Times titled, "Grannies Charged in Peace Protest Are Acquitted" which appeared on April 27 aroused a number of feelings in me from admiration to anger. The article described the trial of a number of elderly women in New York City who, last October, entered a military recruiting station and said they wanted to enlist; some of them had canes or used walkers. This was a protest against the Iraq War and they were arrested and charged with blocking access to the station. In the trial last week, all were acquitted because they were willing to step aside and let anyone else in who wanted to enlist. The writer of the article made many parallels of the trial of these women to the classic Hollywood movie Miracle on 34th Street and suggested that grannyhood was on trial, similar to putting Kris Kringle in the docket. Definitely a no-win situation and surprise, surprise, the grandmothers were all acquitted.
Now whence came my admiration and why my anger? I remember when these women were arrested that I was impressed with their action and thought then, "They haven't gone far enough." Or perhaps more correctly, for their action to be really effective it would take a lot more grandmothers and grandfathers to take similar kinds of actions on-goingly to really make a difference. At best this was a minor diversion and unfortunately it has been turned into an amusement by the press. The comparison of these women's courageous action to a 1940's Hollywood movie served to diminish it, to undercut it. The spin cast on the trial and on their actions by the NY Times reporter made it all seem very cute and I got rather annoyed. "Damn it all," I thought, "war is not cute." And the action these women took was not cute. It was brave. The problem is that it was so isolated. We just need more of it. Lots, lots more.
We can easily ignore the actions of these women because we ignore or dismiss the elderly in our society. They literally have no role in giving us their advice or their wisdom in how to live. How very different this is from other cultures where the elderly are still revered, where adult children fight over which one can take care of their aging parent as they do on Okinawa So, according to the NY Times reporter in this article, I would conclude that all grandmothers, and I guess grandfathers too, are good for, is to give gifts and goodies to grandchildren. What nonsense! I may not be a grandmother (never having had children of my own) but I am, at the age of 58, definitely growing into the role of an elder and I have a lot to say and a tremendous amount to contribute. I have a lot of living left to do and I won't be dismissed. All of the living that we beings of a certain age, have done is an invaluable resource to the world, and the world needs to draw on these resources if the planet is to survive its present addictions to violence, greed and exploitation of its resources.
What does all this have to do with making peace? My friends who have had children tell me that giving birth and raising children arouses the deepest love a human being can know. The bond between mother and child, they have told me, is so sweet, so deep, so fierce, that no other love even comes close. Although I chose not to have children of my own, the maternal instinct has been alive and well inside me and I worked with children of all ages throughout my long career as a nurse. Beyond that, once I began to heal from my own life wounds, I began to fall more and more in love with life itself, with the natural world, with animals, with the very beingness of life. There is some way in which, despite never having had a baby, I understand this extraordinary love of a mother for her child, because I feel a similar fierce and piercing love for life itself, for all of life. It is this mixed awe, joy, sorrow and ecstatic love for all of it that has made me wonder why it is that we offer up our young people, 17, 18, 19 years old, our best and brightest, on the altar of war? I have often imagined what I would do if I had a son or daughter and war broke out and my child were summoned to war. What would I do? I think the idea of losing my child in the insanity of war would kill me, just absolutely kill me. It boggles my mind that we send these children, whom we birthed, whom we love as we love no other, off to kill and to be killed before the cannons of war! I would place myself in front of the cannons before I would let a child of mine go off into the theater of war.
Oh, well, easy for you to say. You've never had a child! What do you know? What if your child inisists on enlisting? What if the country is being invaded? Children once they grow up are no longer your property---they are adults, they have minds of their own. They are called on to defend our freedoms. We need the strongest, most able bodied people we have and those, unfortunately, are our young people. Did it ever occur to anyone, the polititians, the generals, to the electorate, that this is insanity?? We are always so ready to run off to war, like it's some grand and glorious game, some heroic exercise that will bring us thrills beyong belief. If it's so wonderful, so worth doing, then why don't the polititians, the senators, the congressmen, the generals, all these people in their forties and fifties and sixties, go and fight these battles themselves? Why in hell are we willing to sacrifice the lives and the limbs of our children?? I'm sorry, I don't get it!
I say hurray to the grandmothers who got arrested in Times Square. If only there had been hundreds of thousands more of them. If only there were thousands of them (us), grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers, getting arrested every day, refusing to allow our kids to be sacrificed, would the war machines continue to roll? I don't think so. So this has to do with honoring and valuing life itself. That is a gift that elders can bring. Perhaps this is peculiarly a female role. I'm not sure. It certainly is not new, as witnessed by the play from ancient Greece, Lysistrata, where the women, so sick of endless war, withheld sex from their husbands and lovers. The war, apparently, quickly came to an end. Those women knew what was more important: the continuation of life itself. Similarly, people who are committed to ending hunger on this planet have recognized the critical role of women in that struggle. When women are engaged in the fight to end hunger, great progress is made.
There is something about having been around for a while on this earth, having loved and lost. You learn a few things. You learn what's worth dying over and what's not. You learn that there are more creative and interesting ways to deal with conflict. Thich Nhat Hahn, a wise and gifted Buddhist teacher, saw many of his spiritual brothers and students killed during the Vietnam war and that war left an indelible imprint on him. Today, Thay, as he is known to his students, teaches from his retreat center at Plum Village in France and at retreats all over the world, many of them to veterans of war. His small book, Calming the Fearful Mind, is his response to terrorism, written after 9/11 and describes the compassionate listening that is practiced in the Plum Village community. At Plum Village they bring creativity and compassion to conflict with exquisite results. Why can't we learn this? Thich Nhat Hahn is an elder. He offers his teaching to us.
I attended a Passover Seder recently as a guest of some Jewish friends and heard this wonderful updated translation of the familiar Dayenu prayer there. This comes from the Jewish sage and elder Arthur Waskow:
What miracles and accomplishments would be sufficient (Dayyenu) in today's world for us to be truly satisfied?
For if we were to end a single genocide but not stop the other wars that are killing people, it would not be enough.
If we ended those bloody wars but did not disarm the nations of the weapons that would destroy all of humanity, it would not be enough.
If we disarmed the nations but did not end the pollution of our planet, it would not be enough.
If we ended the poisoning of our planet but did not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be enough.
If we made sure that no one starved but did not end police brutality, it would not be enough.
If we freed the poets from their jails but cramped the minds of the people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be enough.
If all people could understand the creative poets but could not explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be enough.
If people could explore their inner ecstasies but were not allowed to love one another and share in all humanity it would not be enough.
And only when all human beings have all these things, have food and shelter and human rights are available to all will it be enough. (my summary of the long ending)
Truly, elders have so much to teach us, so much to give that perhaps we might say they are the way-showers to peace. Who might we turn to today, with love and gratitude, for their counsel and wisdom?
Questions of Inquiry:
1. Who do you know in your world who is an elder? How do you treat/revere and respect the elders in your world?
2. Are you an emerging elder? If so, how can you gracefully assume that mantle and speak with power and dignity when in that role?
Now whence came my admiration and why my anger? I remember when these women were arrested that I was impressed with their action and thought then, "They haven't gone far enough." Or perhaps more correctly, for their action to be really effective it would take a lot more grandmothers and grandfathers to take similar kinds of actions on-goingly to really make a difference. At best this was a minor diversion and unfortunately it has been turned into an amusement by the press. The comparison of these women's courageous action to a 1940's Hollywood movie served to diminish it, to undercut it. The spin cast on the trial and on their actions by the NY Times reporter made it all seem very cute and I got rather annoyed. "Damn it all," I thought, "war is not cute." And the action these women took was not cute. It was brave. The problem is that it was so isolated. We just need more of it. Lots, lots more.
We can easily ignore the actions of these women because we ignore or dismiss the elderly in our society. They literally have no role in giving us their advice or their wisdom in how to live. How very different this is from other cultures where the elderly are still revered, where adult children fight over which one can take care of their aging parent as they do on Okinawa So, according to the NY Times reporter in this article, I would conclude that all grandmothers, and I guess grandfathers too, are good for, is to give gifts and goodies to grandchildren. What nonsense! I may not be a grandmother (never having had children of my own) but I am, at the age of 58, definitely growing into the role of an elder and I have a lot to say and a tremendous amount to contribute. I have a lot of living left to do and I won't be dismissed. All of the living that we beings of a certain age, have done is an invaluable resource to the world, and the world needs to draw on these resources if the planet is to survive its present addictions to violence, greed and exploitation of its resources.
What does all this have to do with making peace? My friends who have had children tell me that giving birth and raising children arouses the deepest love a human being can know. The bond between mother and child, they have told me, is so sweet, so deep, so fierce, that no other love even comes close. Although I chose not to have children of my own, the maternal instinct has been alive and well inside me and I worked with children of all ages throughout my long career as a nurse. Beyond that, once I began to heal from my own life wounds, I began to fall more and more in love with life itself, with the natural world, with animals, with the very beingness of life. There is some way in which, despite never having had a baby, I understand this extraordinary love of a mother for her child, because I feel a similar fierce and piercing love for life itself, for all of life. It is this mixed awe, joy, sorrow and ecstatic love for all of it that has made me wonder why it is that we offer up our young people, 17, 18, 19 years old, our best and brightest, on the altar of war? I have often imagined what I would do if I had a son or daughter and war broke out and my child were summoned to war. What would I do? I think the idea of losing my child in the insanity of war would kill me, just absolutely kill me. It boggles my mind that we send these children, whom we birthed, whom we love as we love no other, off to kill and to be killed before the cannons of war! I would place myself in front of the cannons before I would let a child of mine go off into the theater of war.
Oh, well, easy for you to say. You've never had a child! What do you know? What if your child inisists on enlisting? What if the country is being invaded? Children once they grow up are no longer your property---they are adults, they have minds of their own. They are called on to defend our freedoms. We need the strongest, most able bodied people we have and those, unfortunately, are our young people. Did it ever occur to anyone, the polititians, the generals, to the electorate, that this is insanity?? We are always so ready to run off to war, like it's some grand and glorious game, some heroic exercise that will bring us thrills beyong belief. If it's so wonderful, so worth doing, then why don't the polititians, the senators, the congressmen, the generals, all these people in their forties and fifties and sixties, go and fight these battles themselves? Why in hell are we willing to sacrifice the lives and the limbs of our children?? I'm sorry, I don't get it!
I say hurray to the grandmothers who got arrested in Times Square. If only there had been hundreds of thousands more of them. If only there were thousands of them (us), grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers, getting arrested every day, refusing to allow our kids to be sacrificed, would the war machines continue to roll? I don't think so. So this has to do with honoring and valuing life itself. That is a gift that elders can bring. Perhaps this is peculiarly a female role. I'm not sure. It certainly is not new, as witnessed by the play from ancient Greece, Lysistrata, where the women, so sick of endless war, withheld sex from their husbands and lovers. The war, apparently, quickly came to an end. Those women knew what was more important: the continuation of life itself. Similarly, people who are committed to ending hunger on this planet have recognized the critical role of women in that struggle. When women are engaged in the fight to end hunger, great progress is made.
There is something about having been around for a while on this earth, having loved and lost. You learn a few things. You learn what's worth dying over and what's not. You learn that there are more creative and interesting ways to deal with conflict. Thich Nhat Hahn, a wise and gifted Buddhist teacher, saw many of his spiritual brothers and students killed during the Vietnam war and that war left an indelible imprint on him. Today, Thay, as he is known to his students, teaches from his retreat center at Plum Village in France and at retreats all over the world, many of them to veterans of war. His small book, Calming the Fearful Mind, is his response to terrorism, written after 9/11 and describes the compassionate listening that is practiced in the Plum Village community. At Plum Village they bring creativity and compassion to conflict with exquisite results. Why can't we learn this? Thich Nhat Hahn is an elder. He offers his teaching to us.
I attended a Passover Seder recently as a guest of some Jewish friends and heard this wonderful updated translation of the familiar Dayenu prayer there. This comes from the Jewish sage and elder Arthur Waskow:
What miracles and accomplishments would be sufficient (Dayyenu) in today's world for us to be truly satisfied?
For if we were to end a single genocide but not stop the other wars that are killing people, it would not be enough.
If we ended those bloody wars but did not disarm the nations of the weapons that would destroy all of humanity, it would not be enough.
If we disarmed the nations but did not end the pollution of our planet, it would not be enough.
If we ended the poisoning of our planet but did not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be enough.
If we made sure that no one starved but did not end police brutality, it would not be enough.
If we freed the poets from their jails but cramped the minds of the people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be enough.
If all people could understand the creative poets but could not explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be enough.
If people could explore their inner ecstasies but were not allowed to love one another and share in all humanity it would not be enough.
And only when all human beings have all these things, have food and shelter and human rights are available to all will it be enough. (my summary of the long ending)
Truly, elders have so much to teach us, so much to give that perhaps we might say they are the way-showers to peace. Who might we turn to today, with love and gratitude, for their counsel and wisdom?
Questions of Inquiry:
1. Who do you know in your world who is an elder? How do you treat/revere and respect the elders in your world?
2. Are you an emerging elder? If so, how can you gracefully assume that mantle and speak with power and dignity when in that role?
posted by Joy at 10:41 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home