Crawl Your Way Back to Hope
I listened to a man on the radio who had written a book about the murder of Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. He spoke of the assassin's desire to put an end to the peace process between Palestine and Israel that was underway then.
Speaking 20 years later, the woman interviewing said, "So what you are saying is that this man, the murderer, was successful. He was able to stop the progress of peace."
"Yes," the writer agreed, "you could say that."
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I am reminded of other senseless murders of those who wished to bring peace to their communities: Martin Luther King, Jesus. In each case, in the days after these deaths occurred, the followers of these leaders must have believed that their campaigns for peace were over, that all hope was lost.
In the mid 60s my family moved to Washington DC, and we were there during the riots that erupted after Martin Luther King was killed. The loss of faith seemed insurmountable, and so many were driven wild with despair.
Imagine what might have been the 12 disciples' loss of faith after Jesus was crucified. They could have fallen prey to the belief that his message of love had died with him, and perhaps believed this for many years to follow.
I was tempted, as I was listening to the radio, to barge through the airwaves and shake the interviewer and writer, "Too soon!! It is far too soon to pronounce the peace process dead. Twenty years is nothing!
Enlightenment, I always try and remind myself, is a slow drip.
Forty years after the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King our country elected an African American president. And, although there are still plenty of difficult issues around race relations, none of those people rioting, or those of us who watched in despair during the weeks after Martin Luther King's murder would have believed that we would have come that far in less than half a century. And, nothing that the current administration can do will erase the fact that the country voted for Barack Obama twice, and will vote again with open hearts.
The message of love that Jesus came to deliver did reach us. Whether each of us consistently follows the principle of love and forgiveness is another matter. But, the movement from the attitude of an eye for an eye, to loving one's enemies has been introduced and is in the process of slowly seeping into the hearts of man, individual by individual. God knows how long it will take to permeate all hearts, but the standard of love and tolerance is being practiced by many, all around the world, among the religious and the nonreligious.
To those who lose faith when the unthinkable occurs, may I offer my sympathy. I am the first in line to cave to despair, believe me.
When the horror of mass shootings in our country, and our politicians' refusal to adopt sensible gun control legislation mounts high in my mind, like a pile of unbearably nauseating garbage, I cannot imagine moving through the mess caused by our behavior and into a more peaceful future.
I admit that I have been tempted on occasion to believe that the human experiment on planet earth has failed, and it would be best for whomever is conducting the research to just put us out of our misery with a tidy 15-second catastrophe. Something along the lines of an asteroid the size of the sun making bulls eye contact with the little green planet.
Pow!
I see huge hands dusting themselves off.
"Ah well, another failed experiment." might be heard from the heavens, "Next!"
But, I know better than to circle that particular drain. I know there is light available to us. It is available today and will intensify as we move into our future. I trust we are moving toward peace, slowly, much too slowly for my wishes for the world, but I do have faith in this movement.
I have a friend who while lamenting our current weapons policies mentioned that she could see moving to a safe place, like Ireland. Ireland! Who would have thought twenty years ago that Ireland would be considered a safe haven. The Irish must have felt as we do today about their random killings: horrified, despairing, helpless, and seemingly endlessly so. The random acts of terrorism in that country kicked up in the late 60s and did not begin to subside until the late 90s. The refusal of the IRA to disarm stymied the peace talks further until they finally signed an agreement to gather up their weapons in 2007.
We are a young country. We are refusing to disarm ourselves. I believe someday we will. But, like Ireland, it will seem an agonizingly long time, indeed it already feels so, especially for those who have lost loved ones to gun violence.
To those who say it is impossible for us to disarm ourselves, I say, "take heart. The story is not over." The strife over home rule in Ireland began in the 1700s, and was put to rest three centuries later. Some stories take an awfully long time to resolve themselves.
The histories of the various countries around the world attest to the pattern of seemingly endless struggle, but peace does arrive. Hope is impossible to drown. If it sinks in one place, you will see it bob to the surface in another.
When we are young we have a natural tendency toward hope. We think we ought to live in Camelot, that Camelot is everyone's birthright. We expect it to snow on Christmas, the sun to shine on our weekends, our every prayer to be answered. "In short there's simply not, a more congenial spot, for happily ever aftering than here in Camelot."
When we suffer enough disappointments, experience the loss of hope enough times, at some point most of us will find it easier to adopt a defeatist attitude. We can grow embarrassed by our hope, not wishing to appear idealistic, innocent, naive. We'd rather be on the pessimists' team, because the optimists can look so foolish when things don't pan out as they had hoped.
Some say by the time you are 50 you have the face that you deserve. There is nothing more beautiful than a cheerful, bright-eyed 90-year old, one who still believes in the possibility of Camelot. Some are able to hang onto this vision for the world throughout life, but most of us have to crawl our way back to hope.
Perhaps we just have to readjust our timelines. "Not in our time," you hear, "we're a cowboy nation, we'll never put down our guns."
Does it matter what time peace comes when it comes. The movement from gunslinger to peacekeeper is already in process. It started centuries ago.
"Too late!" I say. "The light has already been released onto the world. It cannot be snuffed out! Too late."
Margaret Dulaney is the author of To Hear the Forest Sing: Some Musings of the Divine. More at www.listenwell.org.
