The Vision of Peace
By John Dear
CommonDreams

Sunday 14 November 2004 "I see no poverty in the world of tomorrow
- no wars, no revolutions, no bloodshed. And in that world, there
will be a faith in God greater and deeper than ever in the past."
- Mohandas Gandhi
"Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a
dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and
the world will live as one." - John Lennon

The story is told that in the early 1980s a small group gathered
in their church basement in East Germany to ask a daring question:
"What will Germany look like a thousand years from now when the
Berlin Wall finally falls?" There was no question of the Wall
coming down soon. Such a prospect was unimaginable. Communism was
here to stay. The grip of the Soviet empire was permanent. The
suicidal competition between the two nuclear superpowers seemed
preordained. And yet, they asked the question. They allowed their
imagination free reign. What would a world without the Wall look
like? And what must we do now to hasten that great day a thousand
years from now? I believe that asking such a question, letting
our imaginations challenge us and daring to dream of a new world
unleashes a spirit of transformation that can actually change
history. According to the story, the small group felt energized
as they discussed their dream. They decided to meet again a few
weeks later. Soon word of the meetings spread and more people
began to meet in church basements to dream of a world without the
Wall. Over the next few years, a grassroots movement grew.
Ordinary people on both sides of the Wall pursued the vision of
unity and reconciliation. They met, organized, prayed and spoke
out. Then, out of the blue, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his new
policy of perestroika. The Polish Solidarity movement pushed the
Soviets out and a new democracy was born. Events moved quickly.
Communism collapsed and the Soviet Union imploded. The God of
peace is hard at work trying to disarm the world. But God needs
our help. God needs every one of us to be part of God's global
transformation for peace and justice. God needs our grassroots
movements of nonviolent resistance to disarm the world. The
grassroots movement begun in East Berlin by a handful of faithful
dreamers made all the difference. In November 1989, tens of
thousands of people marched in East Berlin to demand the fall of
the Wall. Every day, more people marched. Soon, hundreds of
thousands were marching. Then all of a sudden, on November 9th,
the Wall fell down. It took the world by surprise. Yet the Berlin
Wall could not have come down peacefully without the grassroots
visionaries who dreamed, imagined, met, discussed and organized
over the years. Gorbachev needed a grassroots movement to make his
vision bear fruit. In other words, the Wall fell because ordinary
people imagined a world without the Wall. They held up the
possibility of a world without the Wall and they acted as if such
a world was possible and inevitable. New Abolitionists
Their daring vision reminds me of the abolitionists who imagined a
world without slavery. "Every human being is equal," they said.
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, regardless of race. No human can be bought, owned or
sold. Therefore, slavery must be abolished - now!" They were
dismissed as unpatriotic revolutionaries, unrealistic idealists,
and crazy lunatics. "Slavery has always existed," they were told.
"This is the way things have always been and always will be. Some
people are not human. Even St. Paul endorsed slavery! You cannot
change the course of history." "No," they said. "The time of
slavery is over. A new world without slavery is coming." The great
herald of the abolitionist movement, William Lloyd Garrison, set
the tone for the movement when he published his newspaper, "The
Liberator," in 1831 and declared to the world that the age of
slavery is over. His front page editorial in the first issue
stirred the nation. "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I
will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be
heard," he announced. With the help of hundreds of committed
activists, Garrison wrote and spoke out day and night against
slavery. He encouraged people to join the movement, smuggle slaves
into Northern freedom, disrupt the culture of slavery and demand
equality for all. These abolitionists were attacked, mobbed,
threatened, jailed and even killed. They practiced steadfast
nonviolent civil disobedience against the laws which legalized
slavery. Their vision and determination paved the way for the
aboliti
on of
slavery.
Like the abolitionists who envisioned a world without slavery, we
are new abolitionists who envision a world without war, poverty,
injustice and nuclear weapons. We give our lives to that vision,
creating movements for disarmament and justice, trusting that one
day, the vision will come true. Reclaiming Our Imaginations
We have much to learn from these imaginative visionaries. Like
them, we need to reclaim our imagination. We have to begin to
dream again of new possibilities. We need to exercise our
imaginations, and envision a new world, no matter how crazy others
think we are. In a world of war and nuclear weapons, that means
imagining a world without war or violence. One of the casualties
of our culture of war is the loss of our imagination. We can no
longer imagine a world without war or nuclear weapons or violence
or poverty. Few dream of a world of nonviolence. If we do, we are
dismissed as naïve or idealistic. Yet without the imagination for
peace, the vision of peace, we will never get out of the downward
cycle of violence that is destroying us. If we want to discover
the blessings of peace, we have to renounce war and dedicate
ourselves to a new world without war. Every human being has to
join this global campaign for peace if we are to lead ourselves
away from the precipice of global catastrophe. We need to
rediscover our shared humanity and reclaim the higher principles
of love, justice, compassion and equality. We need to demand food,
clothing, housing, education, healthcare, and dignity for every
child on the planet. We need to give our lives for a future of
peace. The Blindness of Violence
But if we want to envision such a world, we must recognize that we
are blind, that we can no longer see clearly. We can no longer see
our way to peace. We cannot see our way toward dismantling our
arsenals, ceasing our bombings raids, supporting the world's
poorer nations, ending hunger and poverty, and pursuing universal
brother and sisterhood. Instead, we see only war and further wars.
We can imagine all kinds of weapons of mass destruction and ever
greater invasions and wars. We can dream up astonishing new
weapons. We put our best minds, our time, our funds, and our
energies into this vision of war. In the process, we blind
ourselves to the vision of peace. Violence blinds us. We think we
see, but we have grown blind to our shared humanity. We do not see
one another as human beings, much less brothers and sisters.
Instead, we see non-humans, aliens, outsiders, competitors,
objects of class, race or nationality. When that happens, we label
people as enemies, and declare them as expendable. If we want to
see our way toward a new world without war, we need to recover our
sight. We need to meet together in church basements and small
grassroots communities to discuss the daring, provocative
question, "What would a world without war look like?" As we ask
the question, we can begin to imagine such a world. Then, we can
discuss and enact ways to make that new world a reality. In order
to reclaim this vision, we need to teach each other that war is
not inevitable, that war is not our future, that nuclear
destruction need not be our destiny, that peace can come true for
all people. We have to rekindle the desire for the vision of
peace. Once we desire it, we will pray for it, work for it, and
welcome it - and move our culture from blindness to vision, from
numbness to imagination, from war to peace. Since our blind
leaders are driving us to the brink of destruction, we have to
take the wheel, turn back, and lead one another away from the
brink. We cannot expect vision from the warmakers or their media
spokespeople. Only peacemakers can see the way forward toward a
world of peace. To be visionaries of peace we need to be
contemplatives of nonviolence, people who imagine the God of
peace, who let God disarm our hearts, who allow the God of peace
to show us the way to peace. As visionaries and contemplatives of
peace, we can then become a prophetic people who not only denounce
imperial violence as ungodly, immoral, and evil, but announce
God's way of nonviolence, justice and peace. The Vision of
Nonviolence
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most famous speech outlined his dream of
a new world of equality and justice. He upheld the vision of
nonviolence. Five years later, on the night before he was killed,
he spoke of being on the mountaintop and seeing the promised land.
"For years, we have been talking about war and peace," he said.
"But now, no longer can we just talk about it. It is no longer a
choice between violence and nonviolence; it's nonviolence or
nonexistence." With these last words, the great visionary pointed
the way forward to make his dream a reality. Nonviolence employs
a vision of a disarmed, reconciled humanity, the reign of God in
our midst, what King called "the beloved community," the truth
that all life is sacred, that we are all equal sisters and
brothers, all children of the God of peace, already reconciled,
all one, already united. Once we accept this vision of the heart,
we can never hurt or kill another human being, much less remain
silent while our country wages war, maintains nuclear weapons,
executes people or allows millions to starve to death. Active
nonviolence is much more than a tactic or a strategy; it is a way
of life. We renounce violence and vow never to hurt anyone ever
again. Nonviolence demands active love and truth that seeks
justice and peace for the whole human race, resists systemic evil,
and persistently reconciles with everyone. It insists that there
is no cause however noble for which we support the killing of a
single human being. Instead of killing others, we are willing to
be killed in the struggle for justice and peace. Instead of
inflicting violence on others, we accept and undergo suffering
without even the desire to retaliate with further violence as we
pursue justice and peace for all people. Nonviolence is a life
force, Gandhi said, that when harnessed becomes contagious and can
disarm nations and change the world. It begins in our hearts,
where we renounce the violence inside us, then moves outward with
active, contagious truth and love toward our families,
communities, nation and the world. As we practice it personally in
the face of violence, we also join grassroots movements for
justice and peace to organize nonviolence on the national and
international level for the disarmament of the world. When
nonviolence is put into action, it always works, as Gandhi
demonstrated in India's revolution, as King and the civil rights
movement showed, as the People Power movement showed in the
Philippines, and as Archbishop Tutu and South Africa showed
against apartheid. Next August 6th marks the 60th anniversary of
our atomic vaporization of 130,000 people in Hiroshima. My friends
and I are trying to imagine a world where this horrific violence
will never happen again. We are working through the global
grassroots disarmament movements to make our voice heard and
welcome such a world. This vision of peace means we have to
disarm Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb, not far from where
I live in New Mexico and transform New Mexico and the entire
nation from a land of nuclear violence to a land of nonviolence. I
hope and pray that all of us will pursue this vision of peace, and
use this upcoming anniversary as a moment to call the nation once
again to disarmament. Shortly before he died, John Lennon was
asked why he devoted so much of his time and energy to peace.
"Isn't that a waste of time?" the reporter asked. Lennon answered
that he believed that Leonardo de Vinci help make flying possible
because he imagined it, discussed it, painted it and brought it
into people's consciousness. "What a person projects can
eventually happen," he said. "And therefore, I always want to
project peace. I want to project it in song, word, and action. I
want to put the possibility of peace into the public imagination.
And I know, as certain as I am standing here, that someday peace
will be." If we dare imagine a new world without war and reclaim
the possibility of peace, as John Lennon believed, we will raise
human consciousness and help pave the way toward a new nonviolent
world. Our mission, our duty, our vocation is to reclaim that
vision of peace, and pursue the abolition of war, violence and
nuclear weapons. All we have to do is open our eyes and take
another step forward on the road to peace.

---------------------------------

John Dear is a Jesuit priest and the author/editor of 20 books,
including "Living Peace," "Disarming the Heart," "Jesus the
Rebel," "Mohandas Gandhi," "The God of Peace," "Peace Behind
Bars," and most recently, "The Questions of Jesus" (Doubleday).