Where peace is a matter of imagination
Print Friendly Version| From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB | November 7, 2007 |
| Vol. 5, No. 16 |
There are some things in life which, if we want them badly enough, we simply have to do ourselves. I was in Korea last week, in tiny Hwacheon (Wa-shon) County, and I saw the proof of that with my own eyes.
The temptation, of course, is to wait for someone else to do something.
But if we wait long enough, it finally dawns: there's no use expecting someone else to do what everyone knows must be done. They have other interests, or other priorities, or other agendas. Or maybe they even have other reasons for keeping things just the way they are.
So, we find ourselves with choices to make: We can simply forget the whole thing. We can say, "That's the way things are." Or we can go on year after year, business as usual, accepting things as they are but hoping for something else. Or we can say, "Well, it will surely happen some day. It's a matter of being patient."
Or, possibly, hopefully, maybe we decide that it's better to die trying than not to try at all.
No doubt about it: It's a dilemma. Imagine this one, for instance.
Korea is involved in the longest unfinished war in modern history. Caught between the interests of the Four Great Powers -- China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- the Korean War, an appendage to World War II -- a by-product of World War II -- broke out in June 1950 to stop the spread of Communism in the region and, at the same time, to secure a foothold for the West in Asia. "We never went to war ourselves," the Koreans say. "We have only fought surrogate wars."
By 1953, 37,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed in the Korean War, 350,000 Koreans, and over 100,000 Chinese -- in The War that Simply Will Not Go Away.
But military statistics do not really tell the story: As a result of the Korean War, two million civilians died or were injured and 10 million were displaced.
Families as well as the land were cut in two and talk of reunification was considered treason. The psychological and intellectual effects of the Korean War persist to this day. "Our children have been indoctrinated to hate their brothers and sisters in the North," the professor told us. "Our young intellectuals are 'disabled.' They cannot think beyond international barriers. They cannot even think of reading Karl Marx. There is no intellectual freedom. They are disabled and isolated."
Fifty-seven years later, the two Koreas remain in an uneasy cease-fire and separated by the longest militarized border in the world. A No-One's-Land, the DMZ or Demilitarized Zone, symbolizes the psychic distance between two parts of the same country and the division of families it imposes on a family-oriented culture. To this day, two million armed troops -- brothers, cousins and uncles -- stand face to face against each other, on one side or the other of the four mile Nowhere between them.
Politicians have spent the years railing at one another, playing Cold War games in the middle of what people there call a "Cold Peace," and setting up observation towers to watch one another's troops plant crops or rumble their trucks up and down the mountains while nothing else happened.
And no one did anything.
Enter one man and one small county to change the situation.
Hwacheon County borders the DMZ. It is a county of 27,000 citizens and 35,000 troops. Living in Hwacheon is like living in an armed garrison waiting, waiting, waiting for who knows what? Or when? Or where? Or why?
Hwacheon County is a narrow valley strung from one end to the other with small rice paddies, ginseng plots and vegetable gardens. There is in that place, as well, one army base after another and, oh yes, the "Peace Dam."
Built only to protect the area from flooding in the event that North Korea's Imnan Dam, 36 kilometers above it, should ever break or, heaven forbid, be deliberately opened, the Peace Dam is, in fact, a war dam. It holds no water, gives no electricity, and has no secondary function. It is simply a $40-million-dollar bowl that is empty. Just in case.
The Peace Dam is, in other words, a metaphor for a country suspended in a war that has for long been domesticated but will not disappear. It is a distant, ever-present war cloud that hangs just over the border from Hwacheon County that to this day remembers the pain and fear and fury of it all and wants it over.
But then, one day in 2005, in a casual meeting on a village street, the local mayor, Jeong Gap-Cheol and the local philosopher, Professor Kim Yong-Bok, Chancellor of the Asia Pacific Graduate School for the Study of Life, determined that if peace would not come to Hwacheon, Hwacheon would become it themselves. (www.peacebell.co.kr) "Peace begins in Hwacheon," they decided, "in Hwacheon, the Peace Capital of the World."
To prove it, they would create a World Peace Bell out of spent cartridges from around the world. They would begin to turn the DMZ, a monument to death, into a Wildlife Preserve. And they would become a center for the study of the relationship between ecology and peace, with the otter, an endangered species in their midst, as the symbol of it.
"After all," they tell you, "bells can be heard across borders and otters swim freely on both sides of the DMZ because they cannot be stopped by wire and dams."
The metal peace bell is now being fabricated and will be hung next year about this time. For now a wooden bell - which does not make a sound - marks the place.
The whole project feels almost surreal. It defies political separation. It redefines freedom as more than cease-fires. It celebrates the life that war threatens, both human and natural. But, most of all, it calls the attention of both North and South Korea -- of the entire world -- to the desire, the demand, for peace by those who refuse to go on participating in prejudice and political war games.
From where I stand, it is a very bold project. Impossible, some may say. Even foolish. But oh, so beautiful, so rational, so clear.
And, by the way, just as they thought, people are beginning to come from all parts of the globe to stand there with them at the border of 21st century insanity where a mayor, a professor, and a tiny county are saying no to war and yes to human community.
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The World Trade Center
The World Trade Center could be replaced with a Peace Shrine. The Southern Border could showcase the welcoming warmth of a Statue of Liberty for the huddled masses. Every mass could become an experience of such irresistable beauty that it would be an obvious response to the ugliness in the world. Mary's presence could become much more palpable in our faith experiences to emphasize the generous kindness of our Maker. Every Homily could become an enthusiastic invitation to the warm and welcoming Household of the Divine Care-Taker.
Beauty is not opposed to truth. It is simply truth in its most attractive form.
This, sadly, is the position
This, sadly, is the position of the moral relativist- the refusal to recognize the difference between good and evil and the insistence there are no universal standards by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth. Relativists see nothing as absolutely "bad," thus, moral values are applicable only within certain cultural boundaries (cultural relativism) or in the context of individual preferences (moral subjectivism).
They cannot, for example see what the majority of Christians everywhere instantaneously recognize: there IS a moral difference between good and evil and the WAS a moral difference between Soviet politburo manipulation of activists in order to destroy Christian democracy in Europe, and Pope John Paul II and the Solidarity Movement whose ultimate aim was to free millions of people to practice their Catholic faith and give glory to God. Freedom to love and honour God is NOT a cultural construct that's ok for, say, Poles or Phillipinos but wrong for the Western EU elites. Freedom to love and honour God is what He wills for all humanity. There's a difference.
Therefore, the correct (Catholic) side IS mature and profound and the wrong (Marxist) side IS childish self-aggrandizement. You cannot be a moral relativist and a Catholic, because Catholics accept the undemocratic and absolutist notion that ONE truth exists which Jesus Christ gave to the Church. Ergo, all you need you already have. You have Christ's guarantee that John Paul II's side is absolutely right. Always. In every case. John Paul II is Christ's Vicar, and in this case, he was the shepherd guiding ordinary Catholic Poles who ARE the sheep. Perhaps the difficulty is one of faith.
I asssume this response was
I asssume this response was for me. I don't know that my difficulty is one of faith. My difficulty is one of religios belief. Faith I have plenty of, in Jesus Christ, in point of fact. My problem is I don't necessarily think everything Catholicism does is given the JC stamp of approval.
However, in the case of JPII and solidarity, I firmly believe Jesus was alive and well in that movement. I've even displayed a Polish flag in my house since Christmas of 1990. That flag was my favorite gift that year. Everybody but me is sick of it.
I just happen to think the Catholic church has quite a history of engaging in moral relativism and justifing it with the JC stamp of approval. I smell hypocrisy. I don't like it, and I especially don't like self serving justifications which rely on unassailable assumptions of absolutism, because then it's not a matter of dialogue it's a matter of brow beating and insults.
I guess I'm just not a very good sheep. Perhaps you should get out your cattle prod, since you seem to have no problem justifying it's use.
Christ's guarantee to the
Christ's guarantee to the Church that it would not err in faith and morals applies specifically to those Bishops IN Communion with Rome, acting AS ONE WITH the Bishop of Rome, (known collectively as the "teaching authority of the church," or Magesterium). That's what I'm referring to.
The "assumptions of absolutism" many Catholics reject is actually right, (but for the wrong reasons). They're assuming the Church is claiming that absolute truth applies to individual popes, bishops or particular little groups within various country's national Bishop's conferences. Untrue. This is NOT what the Church teaches.
These people and groups outside the Magisterium have clearly been hypocritical and wrong on many occasions in Church history. Certain popes and certain bishops have been evil men, true. But Christ will never allow a situation where the Pope and ALL the bishops will stray from the truth TOGETHER. Even wholesale rejections of Truth, like the Arian heresy, captured only 2/3rds of the Bishops and never the Pope.
The American sex scandal that exploded on the scene was a USCCB thing, not a Magisterium thing and therefore, did not have Christ's protection. And, as we can all see, there was plenty of hypocracy and evil among those "princes" of the Church-no argument here...
Peter in Newtown, PA Been in
Peter in Newtown, PA Been in South Korea and Poland (more than once). The most common comments and feelings are about how great "liberty" is. In Poland, when asked the question who his heroes were, the young man replied John Paul II, Lech Walesa and Ronald Reagan. I was astonished and inquired about Reagan and he said "he gave us liberty". Oppessive regimes, political or religious, eventually lose adherents and accept the liberation when courageous leaders make it available. That is the greatest export of the American experience.
Dear Deb: There’s further
Dear Deb:
There’s further work for the World Peace Bell of Hwacheon County to do.
Hot off the press is a story from the UK about a new course sponsored by Cambridge University’s Psychology and Religion Research Group. That course is the creation of Dr. Sara Savage, senior researcher, and her colleague, Dr. Eolene Boyd-MacMillan, and carries the unambiguous title “Conflict Transformation among Christian Leaders with Different Theological Stances”.
“Conflict is generally not handled well within the Church,” says Savage. “Worse, instead of the churches being contexts for grace and loving challenge, they can become arenas for bullying, blaming and scapegoating.”
Or, as Ruth Gledhill (religion correspondent of The Times) reports, “Christian leaders who preach a creed of peace and love to governments and others faiths ... turn into pugilistic bullies when it comes to issues such as homosexuality.”
The Cambridge course has been timed to precede the Anglican Communion’s 2008 Lambeth Conference and, so, initially targets senior Anglican bishops, promising to equip them with “the psychological tools to deal with the conflict over gays before they go head-to-head with each other ... next summer....” Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has been invited to enroll, though his spokesperson has declined to comment on whether or not he will.
Course sessions will bring together bishops in groups of four to six and will be “closely monitored”—“presumably,” adds Ms. Gledhill, “to make sure the clerics do not come to blows.”
While it’s perfectly true the 2 Koreas need to hear the tolling of the World Peace Bell of Hwacheon County, Anglicans (as well as other Christians and other people of non-Christian faiths) sorely need to hear it too.
Ken
Who else might attend the
Who else might attend the course at Cambridge? I'll be glad to contribute to a scholarship for some of the leaders of the church.
I love the idea of the World
I love the idea of the World Peace Bell. It may not bring peace or do anything any more substantial than what the Peace Dam accomplished but it made me smile out of sense of pleasure and not cynicism. As I see it, the major difference is that the Peace Bell is about people where as the Peace Dam was about governments and that the Peace Bell is about hope and the Peace Dam was about fear.
Dear Sr. Joan: The World
Dear Sr. Joan:
The World Peace Bell of Hwacheon County makes for a very nice story. It should keep peace "warm" in a place that knows too much "cold".
Published coincidentally with yours was the AP story on "Frrrozen Haute Chocolate", a concoction of cocoas from 14 countries topped with 5 grams of 24-carat gold and whipped cream and shavings from a La Madeline au Truffle. It qualifies, too, as something “foolish,” yet at the same time “beautiful” and “rational” and “clear”. And, from last Wednesday, it’s in the Guinness record-book as the most expensive dessert in the world.
I wonder which—a bell in Hwacheon ringing across the landscape of the 2 Koreas or a helping of gilded chocolate at $25,000 a pop in NYC’s Serendipity 3—holds greater promise of persuading "Dear Leader" in Pyongyang to give up his “prejudice and political war games”.
Well, “whatever works,” as they say, “works.”
Ken
I respectfully say this
I respectfully say this project is boldly foolish and impossible. The South Koreans are not dealing with a peace loving neighbor to the North that also laments that foreign wars mysteriously "happened" to them. They're dealing with a mentally unstable dictator–Kim Jong-il–and his extended mafiosa which runs the gigantic surrealistic prison north of the 38th parallel. There's no democracy to deal with, no representation by the people, ergo, no mechanism for peace talks. Got it? Does anyone seriously think that hearing a bell or admiring an amphibious rodent is going to persuade the ruling North Korean elite to get misty-eyed enough to stand down, give up their foreign bank accounts and privileges, institute a democracy and submit themselves to the Hague for their war crimes?
I encourage liberal activists to pick up a copy of the Mitrokhin Archive so that you may finally understand how nostagia for the '60s and childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues comes with a body count. Historians have extensively documented how, during the European turmoil of 1985-1990, the KGB and Warsaw Pact intelligence services created, influenced and, yes, financed similar liberal gestures like anti-Reagan demonstrations, "peace" rallies, anti-western op ed propaganda and other assorted street theatre. The only thing liberals accomplished was to sell the West's bargaining power and extending, to the bitter end, the Global Cold War and the bloody Marxist regimes where millions perished. That's a high price for kindling that warm liberal "makin' a difference" feeling.... The liberal intelligentsia and their little street sheep were, in the end, just employees of the Soviet politburo. Do we really want to go down that road again??? Can we not, perhaps, open our minds to source of history a little deeper that the Jon Stewart Show or Michael Moore and see that all communist regimes use the same agit-prop tactics and this DMZ bell nonsense is just such an IDENTICAL situation?
If people really want peace, then we need to be strong and vigilant against the anti-western plots of these North Korean oppressors and pray unceasingly for their souls to hasten the collapse of the regime. Like John Paul II and the Polish Catholics did which liberated that communist prison. That is the only realistic course of action and it's action based on true charity, not self-aggrandizement.
Didn't John Paul also have
Didn't John Paul also have his "little street sheep", the thousands of sheep who held all those Solidarnasc banners and paraded through Gdansk? And didn't Ronald Reagan fund all those street sheep through our own CIA? I don't see a whole lot of difference in technique and funding. I guess if the 'correct side' employs these tactics it's mature and profound. Deep even. If the wrong side does it it's self aggrandizement and child like emotionalism.
I like the Peace Bell
I like the Peace Bell too.
How about a perrenial peace center at Castlegandolfo? or in the Sistine chapel? How about Peace Sunday? How about a peace encyclical? How about a peace course in Rome?
How about an annual peace conference with Moslems? With the Eastern Church? How about a peace department in the Vatican? How about commissioning a peace Hymn? How about a peace prayer in every Mass?
How about adding to this list?