Peace and the Lack Thereof

The sorrow, anger, confusion and sometimes hope I feel regarding the absence of peace in our world formed my inspiration for this essay. Like the various pockets of history which it seeks to connect, it is fragmented and disjointed, but its rough form, I think, serves to reflect the rough nature of some of the topics discussed. I also want this essay to be an invitation to others who may feel moved by it.

... Each of us is responsible for one life only, and that is our own... the task of perfecting our own life and character is one that requires all our attention, our will-power and energy... We are like the ploughmen each of whom has his team to manage and his plough to direct, and in order to keep his furrow straight he must keep an eye on his goal and concentrate on his task.

I - Healing

Recently an old friend asked me, "What was the last movie you saw that made you cry?" For the first time in my life, I had an immediate answer to that question. More importantly, it was an answer of which I was actually proud. I was proud that I had been able to cry, and proud not to be ashamed of admitting to the tears.

The documentary Regret to Inform began as the idea of Barbara Sonneborn, an American woman whose husband was killed in the Vietnam War. She lost her husband Jeff in 1968. She recalls, "Twenty years after he was killed, I woke up on January 1, 1988, and suddenly knew I had to transform his death into a powerful statement about war, one that would reach millions of people."

In my opinion, she succeeded brilliantly. The tears I shed watching that film outnumber those inspired by every movie I had ever seen combined. Unlike Barbara's husband Jeff, my father lived through the Vietnam war, and I have known and loved him all of my life, but there is no doubt in my heart that the war has drastically affected his life and spirit.

In her film, Barbara describes her many years of feeling at loose ends, adrift in the loss and the horror and the uncertainty, not so much at the simple loss of her husband, but at not knowing the time, place, or circumstances of his death. She chose to go to Vietnam to dispel the myths in her mind and to witness to the fact that Vietnam is not just the name of a war, but a nation where real people live, and where much has healed and moved forward since her husband was killed there.

I think I share Sonneborn's feeling that Vietnam cannot quite be a real place, since our loved ones experienced such horror there. Until very recently, I have known next to nothing about my father's experiences in Vietnam. It was only after coming across the essay "A Bahá'í Goes to War," by David Langness, (in the book Circle of Peace) that I had any idea I might be able to constructively and therapeutically explore this area of my extended past. If you know any Vietnam veterans personally, you probably know what a difficult thing it is for them to share much, if Anything, about their experiences there. An excerpt from the end of Mr. Langness' essay puts this in context as he describes his life after returning home from the war:

Being home was one of the strangest feelings I have ever experienced. I was disoriented, like I was walking in some waking dream. So much had changed for me, but little had changed here. It was as if I had been away on an extended vacation. When I walked in the door, the television was on. For some reason, that infuriated me, and for months I could not bear to have a TV on in the same room. It was as if those gifted with life were docilely content to sit and watch artificial life in a box. "No!" I felt like shaking them. "Live!"

Only one is left, and it recurs occasionally, every six months or so: In it I am back in my jungle fatigues, back in Vietnam, and the war is still on. Mortars and rockets and small arms fire are exploding all around... We're about to get overrun... I am calmly trying to talk to the officer in charge, telling him this is all a mistake, I've done my time here... besides that... all this killing and maiming and grief are for nothing. He isn't listening.

That is how Mr. Langness chose to end his essay. I made a copy of it and sent it to my father. A few weeks later my father sent me a letter, which made no mention of the essay I had sent. He did, however include a letter he had written to a Senator several months earlier, pleading his personal case against an unnecessary war in Iraq. It was and still is the most personal view my father has given me about his Vietnam war experience.

In the letter he quotes two antiwar slogans from that era, one addressing the American leaders: "If congressmen had to fight wars, there wouldn't be any," and the other speaking to the racial tension and bitterness evident in the US during that time: "Hey soul brother, why should you die in Vietnam, when your brothers are being murdered on the streets at home." Perhaps this was not the most direct response I had hoped my Dad would offer after I gave him Mr. Langness' essay, but, relatively speaking, it was a new realm of trust and openness for us.

I recalled that my father said that Oliver Stone's "Platoon" was the most realistic Vietnam movie he had ever seen. In watching that movie again, I began to see how and why there is so much convoluted reasoning, manipulation, mistrust, and deceit still in the realm of international relations, and why the Vietnam War specifically is almost universally considered to have been such a human disaster. Watching "Platoon" was like a trigger that sent me off on a new cycle of the same spiral.

Having recently discovered a few wonderful Bahá'í message boards on the Internet, I found several more for Vietnam veterans and the children of Vietnam veterans. As I, for the first time, communicated with others affected by this war, it was as if my view of the healing powers of the Faith were exponentially multiplied. I was used to thinking of Bahá'u'lláh's Long Healing Prayer as something to help with hurt feelings, an ill neighbor, or someone's broken arm, but stepping into a world connected through the common experience of a war like the US-Vietnam conflict gave me a whole new understanding of pain, depression and suffering. Here were people whose husbands, fathers or sons never returned from the war at all; veterans who watched their closest friends at age nineteen or twenty blown apart before their eyes, not on a movie or TV screen; and people who tearfully welcomed their veterans home only to watch them die from alcoholism, suicide, or cancer brought by Agent Orange.

One veteran who I met online told me, "One of the doubts which weighed heavily on our minds was would God forgive us for killing our fellow man. We talked about it and the only conclusion we arrived at was that maybe God would forgive us because we were in a war where it was kill or be killed." The fiercest theological discussion I've ever been involved in is not even in the same universe as the stress and anguish contained within that quote. In excavating these family wounds, I have come to a fuller understanding of sorrow and sacrifice, and can't help but wonder if or how my father had to deal with those same questions.

I used to wonder how people could shed so many tears over events that made such little difference to me. Now at least I have the comfort of knowing what that feels like from the other side. Most likely, not everyone should cry at the these memories, and most will not, but I'm thankful for the ability to feel some degree of my father's pain and those like him. There is a cliché of course that men don't, or should not, cry, but our sorrow reflects our conscience.

II - Paradox

A good friend of mine, one with more faith in science than religion, believes that paradoxes contain the most truth because they represent the intersection of two different ways of thinking which somehow overlap. In my life as a Bahá'í, as in my Christian upbringing, I believe this is an issue with which most followers of an organized faith struggle. It is a common criticism of the Bible that many passages contradict one another. This seems to be an issue of long-standing debate between Christians and those who identify themselves as agnostics or atheists. I feel there is a very similar issue within the Bahá'í Faith- "are certain passages of the Bahá'í Writings, and of any Divine Scripture,
contradictory?"

My current perspective is that the Teachings and Scripture of Divine Revelation are not contradictory, but rather multifaceted. This brings to mind the classic story about the elephant and the three blind men, each of whom are each asked to describe an elephant. One man, taking hold of the elephant's trunk, describes elephants as like a giant snake. The second man, feeling the elephant's ear, compares the elephant to a large palm leaf. The third man, feeling the elephants leg, says that elephants are like great tree trunks. Each is right, but none has the entire picture. Without the element of faith, which provides an underlying and unifying understanding of the nature of the Elephant (in this case) the differing aspects of the animal's nature cannot be appreciated, and in fact contribute to a denial of the elephant's very existence.

It is in this spirit of a paradox containing a great truth that I would like to offer two stories from the life of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who, for Bahá'ís, is the exemplar of how we can best live our lives in true service to God and humanity. Speaking at a meeting in Chicago in 1912, He said: "Be in perfect unity. Never become angry with one another. Let your eyes be directed toward the kingdom of truth and not toward the world of creation."

And the second story:

"Soon after the arrival of Bahá'u'lláh and His party in Akká the Governor visited the barracks for inspection. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, accompanied by a few believers, went to see him. But the Governor was discourteous and spoke to them in a provocative manner. He threatened to cut the supply of bread if one of the prisoners went missing and then ordered them back to their room. One of the Master's attendants could not bear to remain silent after such insulting treatment. He retorted with rage and hurled back at the Governor some offensive remarks. 'Abdu'l-Bahá immediately chastened His attendant by slapping him hard in the face in front of the Governor and ordering him to return to his room. This action by 'Abdu'l-Bahá not only defused a dangerous situation but also opened the eyes of the Governor to the existence of a real leader among the prisoners, a leader who would act with authority and justice. Due to this action the Governor's action towards 'Abdu'l-Bahá changed...[t]he Governor therefore began to act in a more humane way towards the prisoners. He eventually agreed to substitute the allotted ration of bread with a sum of money and allowed a small party of prisoners, escorted by guards, to visit the markets of Akká daily to buy their provisions."

In the first story the Master emphasizes the importance of never becoming angry with others, and keeping our eyes fixed upon God. In the next story, 'Abdu'l-Bahá disciplines one of His companions with a harsh physical blow, as punishment for letting his anger towards the Governor take hold of him.

I see the intersection of these two stories containing a spiritual principle upon which we can struggle to understand the purpose behind the current military tensions in our world. This is not to say that the answers are easily discernible.

III - The Future

After a long week of turning the issues over and over in my mind, praying and thinking, thinking and praying, I had the relief of working with some fifth and sixth graders. These wonderful youth have a view of the world which I will never quite be able to adequately share.

This past week I designed the lesson around the virtue of peacefulness. We read and discussed some quotations from the Bahá'í writings regarding peacefulness, and then for a short time I opened the floor for a general discussion of the problems facing peace in the world today. The students discussed of the situation between the United Nations, Iraq and the United States. Some of the students had been discussing it in school with their teachers, others had not. One young man brought up urban gang violence, which he had seen addressed on a recent news documentary.

I spent a few minutes explaining that the process of true and lasting peace must begin in the human heart and then move outward to family, community, nation and the world. Peace cannot be forced upon any group or any individual from the outside with any tangible or lasting effect. At that point, however, it dawned on me that these students already knew everything that I had been struggling to "teach" them. They're likely to have known from a very young age that peace must begin in one's heart and extend outward from there. For these children, who are truly the future of the world and I believe, part of the "new race of men," war is no longer a normal state of affairs between which there may be momentary spasms of peace. To these children peace is the norm, their expectation of the future of the world.

IV - The Work

Although the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh contain the seeds of a peaceful future for our entire planet, they also require great patience. The expectations of world peace have been planted throughout the centuries in many parts of the world by many of God's Prophets, each of whom has told us about a Messiah and promised Heaven on Earth.

I believe that a Bahá'í understanding of world peace and unity cannot exist without a active dialogue and sharing with people of all other spiritual/ religious backgrounds as well as those without a specific spiritual background. It is by sharing our faith and our beliefs that they truly become ours, and that we truly come to understand what we believe. Our beliefs are not simply what we say they are, but instead what we show them to be through our daily actions.

In the past few years I have had the bounty of watching the Austin Bahá'í community become increasingly involved in the activities the "Austin Area Inter-Religious Ministries." Every year the largest and most exhilarating event held by this group is the interfaith Thanksgiving celebration.

Over the years at these Thanksgiving services, I have seen Hindu musicians and dancing, Bahá'í Youth Workshop step-dances, church choirs, and a Jewish children's choir sing the beautiful words from Isaiah 2:4 - "They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." At this year's service, a Protestant minister, speaking from the colorful pulpit of a Hindu Temple, reminded us that the struggle for racial equality in the segregated American South of the 1960s, led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been deeply influenced by the Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi. This was a powerful acknowledgment of the underlying unity of spiritual and religious forces at work in our world.

In the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy, Austin's interfaith group took out a full-page ad in the local paper in which dozens of local religious congregations of all denominations pledged their support to the Muslim congregations of Austin. The Austin Police Department kept careful watch over the Mosques of our city for a number of days after the attacks. This was a beautiful example of true spiritual and civic unity- a community united to stop a cycle of violence and mistrust.

V - The Martyrs

The final aspect of violence I wish to address concerns the Bahá'ís facing persecutions and martyrdom in Iran. Only in the past few months, in feeling moved to learn about my father's pain from Vietnam, have I felt strong enough and motivated enough to learn more about these tragedies which have affected some of my Bahá'í friends just as directly. I've been reading William Sears book A Cry from the Heart, his passionate testament to the sufferings of the Bahá'ís in Iran. Again, the pain and devastation are everywhere. Only recently has a friend of mine shared with me that most Iranian-American Bahá'ís probably have a Bahá'í friend or relation who has been killed in Iran for their belief in Bahá'u'lláh.

Given this repulsive fact, I am in another level of awe toward my community's Bahá'í children, many of Iranian ancestry, whom I have the privilege of knowing and working with. Their world-view and concept of the future is so bright and beautiful as to sound unrealistic to many jaded Americans. Yet the possibility of their vision and reality was born from the terrible price of blood and sacrifice paid by their close family, friends and ancestors.

I'm taken aback each time I learn that another Iranian-American Bahá'í friend whom I have known for a number of years has lost parents or grandparents to these persecutions. It's not that I've been unaware of the martyrs in Iran, but I didn't realize how closely these terrible events had struck home for many of my friends. They barely speak of it, at least not in my company. Their reticence reminds me how little my father speaks of his experiences in Vietnam.

A number of years ago, an American Bahá'í at an Austin community meeting suggested that some Persian Bahá'ís share their stories of hardship with the community, as a way of educating and motivating the rest of us. For one reason or another, this hasn't yet happened, and I'm not even sure that it would be entirely appropriate. I've been told that such reluctance to speak about their stories is to avoid creating an unnecessary burden or sadness, a desire echoed by Gibran when he implores, "And let your best be for your friend." Often we wish to protect our friends and loved ones from sorrow, and give them only our best.

I respect this desire, but in studying these tragedies, I'm beginning to feel that there may be other useful approaches to this issue. Another poet, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, expresses it well in her book The Invitation:

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing... I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

This passage echoes the story of the Watchman, described by Bahá'u'lláh in His mystical work The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys. Every act of violence, even the persecutions in Iran or the Vietnam War, can be the seed for something greater. Colin Powell writes in My American Journey:

Many of my generation, the career captains, majors and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare to half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support. If we could make good on that promise to ourselves, to the civilian leadership, and to the country, then the sacrifices of Vietnam would not have been in vain.

Here Powell states his resolve that through the efforts of himself and his colleagues, even in the worst imaginable scenario, as the Vietnam War has often been described, there are opportunities which can give purpose to the painful loss and sacrifices made by so many. For me, it is some comfort knowing that a key military leader like Powell attempts to take these issues to heart as he struggles with the tensions currently facing our rapidly shrinking planet.

Similarly, in the story of the Watchman, Bahá'u'lláh teaches us about "many a secret justice..." to be found in hardship as well as the "end in the beginning... peace in war and friendliness in anger." Again, we see a great truth arising from the intersection of two very different ideas.

There was once a lover who had sighed for long years in separation from his beloved, and wasted in the fire of remoteness. From the rule of love, his heart was empty of patience, and his body weary of his spirit; he reckoned life without her as a mockery, and time consumed him away. How many a day he found no rest in longing for her; how many a night the pain of her kept him from sleep; his body was worn to a sigh, his heart's wound had turned him to a cry of sorrow. He had given a thousand lives for one taste of the cup of her presence, but it availed him not. The doctors knew no cure for him, and companions avoided his company; yea, physicians have no medicine for one sick of love, unless the favor of the beloved one deliver him.

At last, the tree of his longing yielded the fruit of despair, and the fire of his hope fell to ashes. Then one night he could live no more, and he went out of his house and made for the marketplace. On a sudden, a watchman followed after him. He broke into a run, with the watchman following; then other watchmen came together, and barred every passage to the weary one. And the wretched one cried from his heart, and ran here and there, and moaned to himself: "Surely this watchman is Izrá'íl, my angel of death, following so fast upon me; or he is a tyrant of men, seeking to harm me." His feet carried him on, the one bleeding with the arrow of love, and his heart lamented. Then he came to a garden wall, and with untold pain he scaled it, for it proved very high; and forgetting his life, he threw himself down to the garden.

And there he beheld his beloved with a lamp in her hand, searching for a ring she had lost. When the heart-surrendered lover looked on his ravishing love, he drew a great breath and raised up his hands in prayer, crying: "O God! Give Thou glory to the watchman, and riches and long life. For the watchman was Gabriel, guiding this poor one; or he was Isráfíl, bringing life to this wretched one!"

Indeed, his words were true, for he had found many a secret justice in this seeming tyranny of the watchman, and seen how many a mercy lay hid behind the veil. Out of wrath, the guard had led him who was athirst in love's desert to the sea of his loved one, and lit up the dark night of absence with the light of reunion. He had driven one who was afar, into the garden of nearness, had guided an ailing soul to the heart's physician.

Now if the lover could have looked ahead, he would have blessed the watchman at the start, and prayed on his behalf, and he would have seen that tyranny as justice; but since the end was veiled to him, he moaned and made his plaint in the beginning. Yet those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger.

(all content Copyright National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, 2000-2003, do not use without permission)