PEACEFUL MEANS
We talk a lot about "peace" but we really don't do a great deal about bringing it about through positive actions.
Protest is one thing; solving is another. Can we learn to encourage the concept of peace?
I think so. It calls for honesty with one's self as well as with those in opposition.
The poet, Alexander Pope. said many years ago that: “Seas but join the regions they divide.”
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Think about that for just a moment.
Take time from our fear-fractured day of work and worry to realize how Pope's simple words apply both to geographical reality in, but in a wider sense - to describe and dispel the oceans of doubt, uncertainty, mis-information, fabrications, fables, lies and other such tidal currents of opposition between ourselves and others.
In a world so divided, or a community, or family, for that matter, it is wise to realize that the froth which forms the fringe of surf on each side is pretty much the same. The swell of water between them, often riled and sullied by tempestuous currents, ill-applied, defenses and fortifications against imagined inroads, see only foreboding doom as certain. Those same waters join the opposite shores just as readily as they seem to separate them!
That's so very true. The same principles which guide men and women on one side to achieve positive values in their lives are the very same others are using on the opposite shore. It only in the fear men and women feel of facing up to the seas of frustration that keep them apart... even widen the seas and placing deposits of social silt and political debris in the channels by which one may gain access to the other.
To an unthinking, complacent, or ignorant person on one side, the waters seem to divide him from those on the other side, but they also join both at the same time. We have to become aware of those element of uniformity rather than dwelling constantly on the differences.
When even opposite views are exchanged, it is possible to realize how alike portions of life can be . To build a bridge, to sail a ship, to dig a tunnel, or to fly across the dividing waters in a winged craft, demands thought and effort of many people working on each side of the troublesome expanse of intervening sea.
Work at it. Accept it. And the poet's words will ring true for all of us: "“Seas but join the regions they divide.”
A.L.M. March 8, 2003 [c427wds]
