“When There Is Peace in the Holy Land, There Will Be Peace in
the World”
Rev. Lilli Nye
September 24, 2006
Today, all over the world, Jewish communities are entering into their High Holy Days. Rosh Hashana began yesterday, and the holy days will culminate with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on Oct 2. And today, all over the world, Muslims are entering into their holy month of fasting, the month of Ramadan. Ramadan begins today and will end on Oct. 23.
These solemn observances, in both traditions, seem to me to be practices of self-discipline—the giving up of self-indulgences and unworthy habits and the strengthening of one’s best self. A sincere observer will use this as an opportunity to reorient his or her core self toward what is ultimately true and important.
During Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the practice is teshuvah, often translated as “repentance.” It literally means turning—turning around, turning back, turning toward, returning. Whether one turns toward God or toward a person from whom one is alienated, or even toward one’s own true self, it is about restoring a relationship that has been frayed or broken. Teshuvah, turning to heal something that is broken, calls for rigorous self-examination and humility. These efforts toward honesty and reconciliation are disciplines, just as much as fasting can be.
For Muslims, the month of Ramadan commemorates the month in which the prophet Mohammed fasted in seclusion, and while undertaking those spiritual rigors, received the first visionary transmissions of the holy teachings that would become the Qur’an. Muslims honor that momentous occasion and emulate the prophet’s self-denial each year during Ramadan.
If strictly observed, Ramadan requires that no food or water pass the lips from sunup to sundown, that one go to the mosque to hear the full recitation of the Qur’an over the period of 30 days, that one give charitably, and that one hold oneself to higher standards of purity in thought, speech, and action during the month.
Fasting is a tremendously effective way to train oneself away from all kinds of habits. You learn that if you can discipline yourself away from the impulse to put food in your mouth, you can also discipline yourself out of impulses to do, say, or even think unwholesome things. Hunger pangs become a continuous device for mindfulness.
At face value, one would think that the observances of Ramadan and Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur would be powerful tools for peace work between Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine and neighboring countries. One would think that if the practices were undertaken in each population with the utmost sincerity, at least some degree of reconciliation would naturally follow.
But, as I ruminated in the sermon last week, religions in the abstract do not create peace on their own. Religions live only in the lives of people. Religions are transformative only to the extent that the people seek transformation. If Rosh Hashana or Ramadan were the keys to peace in the Holy Land, they would have brought it long ago.
Nevertheless—and I have no statistical or empirical basis for what I’m about to say—I am going to believe that for many Jews and for many Muslims, these periods of deepened spiritual practice do give rise to longing and prayers for reconciliation and peace between their peoples. These periods of intensified self-discipline, self-examination, and self-surrender must stir many hearts and minds to seek understanding. I cannot believe it would not be so.
But we hear much less about this than we do about conflict. Peacemakers make less noise and disruption. Their work is quiet and gradual and is generally ignored by the media. So one has to scout out what is being done for peace between Israelis and Arabs. When one does, when one discovers the brave work of a community like Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam, the Oasis of Peace, one’s hope is strengthened.
The title for my sermon today is “When there is peace in the Holy Land, there will be peace in the world.” That title, beginning with the word “when,” implies that there will, eventually, even in the very distant future, be a time of peace in the Holy Land.
I actually received this title from the prophetic writings of a 20th century mystic, Samuel Lewis, also known as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti. Back in the 1940’s, before the conflict in the Holy Land had repeatedly come to the center of the world’s concern, Samuel Lewis saw in an inward vision the way to peace there.
While his teachings share many common ideals with current practices in peace work, they were quite radical at the time, over 60 years ago. The fact that people are now striving to do some of the things he imagined is indeed a testament to the gradual unfolding of human understanding. I am heartened that Sufi Samuel Lewis said when, and not if, and yet …
I find myself still struggling with the word, When.
Marcia read to us the thoughts of one resident of Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam. Another resident, who identifies himself only as Howard, wrote another reflection: “What If There NEVER Will Be Peace?”
He writes that the implicit idea behind peace organizations and peace work is the hope and belief that such work can bring a change to the world, not just to the little community that does the work. The idea is that peace workers model something that catches on. They show the way and eventually the movement gains numbers and momentum and begins to widen in influence. And when there is enough critical mass, a major shift takes place. Hope is the energy that drives that effort—the hope that it will eventually bring peace to the people, to the region, to the world, and have an impact on national and international policy and practice.
But this writer was wrestling with the very real, the very tragic persistence of hostility and violence, the exhausting contagiousness of it. He lamented that the great majority of people seem to prefer the practice of hatred and destruction, or, at least, they are unwilling to learn the processes of true problem solving. The roots of violence are continually and easily re-inflamed and the practice of peace seems never to catch hold at a mass level.
And so he arrived at the sad but determined conviction that peace work must have an intrinsic value. One must do it because it is right, not because one expects to reach the prize at the end. The doing must itself be the prize. Peace work has a value because it changes the individuals that undertake it, even if they are but a tiny minority. Peace work has intrinsic importance and power because it keeps alive an alternative way. It refuses to concede to the collective fog of projection and irresponsibility, the collective bog of retaliation, but insists that there is a higher ground for human beings. Peace has value not merely because it is a means to an end—one that we may never achieve. It has value as a way, a path, in and of itself.
All that said, I am still willing to hold on to “When there is peace in the Holy Land” not just “If there is peace in the Holy Land.”
The conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East is the most vivid symbol right now, for the world, of the human pattern of tribal conflict. The longstanding human instincts of projecting and demonizing, of blaming and retaliating, are being lived out most visibly, and with the most dire and painful consequences, right there on the land held most sacred to the three great monotheistic traditions.
Such conflict has always happened, and is happening all over the globe—indeed, tribal conflict continues to bring horror and devastation to too many communities today. I do not mean to diminish the significance of any other situation.
Yet, at this time in history, the hostilities between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land burn at the center of the world stage. We sense that the future of our world rides on the outcome of this struggle. With its generations of history, its many tangled layers of cause and effect, and the frighteningly high stakes for all involved, it embodies many of the core dilemmas facing humanity today.
My belief is that if, or when, all the peoples involved (including our nation) can develop new and humane patterns of relating, and can find a true and lasting resolution for this most intractable conflict, then there will be no problem that the human race cannot overcome. If we can find a peaceful way through this, we’ll be able to find a way through anything.
All peace work is essentially the same process of taking responsibility for oneself while opening to the humanity of the other.
For peace to have life, each side has to shed certain things: Each side has to relinquish its moralistic judgments and stereotypes about the other, has to relinquish blame and the denial of personal responsibility, has to stop making unilateral demands, and of course, has to renounce the use of force—whether violent or coercive—to get what it wants.
For peace to have a chance, each side has to cultivate certain things: honest and critical self-awareness, communication that accurately describes one’s experience, willingness to be vulnerable in making requests of the other, willingness to listen anew.
Each has to be willing to give some things: true acknowledgement of the other’s full humanity and equality and the reality of the other’s experience and needs.
Marshall Rosenberg, who developed a process called “Nonviolent Communication,” points out that “killing people is too superficial.” I felt startled by this statement, because what could be more significant than to cause another’s death? But it rings true that, as a problem-solving device, and even as an expression of anger, violence is much too superficial to address root causes and feelings. It is both ineffectual and unsatisfying, because one has not gotten what one truly wanted. Not only that, but one has created the conditions for a further deterioration of understanding, and so set in motion the next ineffectual and unsatisfying wave of violence.
Deb Reich is Jewish a writer living in Palestine, and she has these vivid words
on that cycle:
“Open your eyes! To subdue your neighbor by force is to shoot your own
grandchildren through the heart – because no people remains subdued forever,
and when they rise again, your children’s children will pay the price.
Equally true, if harder to accept, is that however legitimate your uprising
may be deemed by any impartial judge, throwing off your [oppressor] by force
means that you become him, and so the cycle continues.”
One of the terrible dilemmas of peacemaking vs. violence is the difference in the amount of time one takes vs. the other. Violence may be superficial, but it’s the preferred way in a world that will not slow down enough to undertake deeper and more lasting work. We prefer instead to quickly and brutally incapacitate that which threatens us, and call that security.
Peace work unfolds at a painstakingly gradual pace, because it requires nothing less than the transformation and maturation of consciousness. Our conditioned patterns of thinking and reactivity, ingrained for generations, must become conscious and observable to us. Habits that are mindlessly, relentlessly reinforced by the surrounding culture have to be surrendered, deconstructed, and replaced with new ways of seeing, hearing, speaking, and behaving.
Peace work means clearing away the haze of self-serving ignorance, the fog of blame, victimhood, dehumanization of the other, denial of responsibility, unconsciousness of our own energies and motivations. Learning to step out of this fog, into the light of accurate perception—this is the deepest and most important work that human beings can do. In my own humble opinion, this work of transforming our minds, of awakening to self-awareness and accurate perception, is ultimately why we are here on this earth. That is our true work. The integrity and elevation of our human society will rest upon how fully and compassionately we can grow to see ourselves and one another.
I’d like to share one more quote from Deb Reich. She writes:
One thing is very clear to me now: Once you let the humanity of the other into your consciousness, you can never go back. I often feel like the Little Mermaid of the fable, who wanted to stay on dry land and walk on two legs. Her wish was granted, but at a price: walking around among the other humans, she was perpetually in pain, feeling as if she walked barefoot on broken glass…
My awareness of all those good-hearted people who are persuaded that it’s necessary to send their kids to kill and die for the nation, but treasonous to dedicate their lives to learning to live harmoniously with the cousins, is worse than fragments of glass underfoot; it’s like fragments of glass in my heart…
Peace becomes possible when we are willing to be pierced by the truth of our shared humanity. When we become ready to pay the price of vulnerability, when we accept the pain of recognizing the damage that has been done, when we are willing to stand naked before that without any rationalizations, without any excuses, when we fully wake up to the real.
When we can do that, there is nothing we won’t be able to do. Then there can be peace in the Holy Land. Then there can be peace in the world.
May it be so.