#peacework

pieces for peace(s) - or: hands are a meeting zone

What did I do during the war? I use to imagine what I would say in response when asked that question by a child of mine. None ever did. And I haven’t thought about it in a long, long while. Now Ukraine is happening.

I remember listening to “War Wounds,” a Selected Shorts podcast.  It’s a memoir by Tom Bissell about he and his father visiting places in Vietnamwhere his father had fought as a Marine. And I am reflecting again on theimaginary answer to “What did I do during the War? The Vietnam War?”

I protested. We as a family protested, marched with signs. Martha went to Washington as part of a delegation to talk with our congressmen. Had photographs taken of us with our two children, who were four and five at the time, picketing. They were snapped by newspaper photographers and by others, we learned later. For some of our photos wound up in FBI files we were told.

We were living in Asheville, North Carolina, where we had moved from New York City. My first job was working on a rock crusher for the brother of Martha’s step-father. The brother was a highway contractor and was working on the new interstate outside of Asheville. After some weeks—it may have been six weeks or it may have been less— I was able to leave for a job on the morning daily, The Asheville Citizen. And I was a reporter.

We became protesters almost accidentally. We attended Friends’ Meeting (Quakers, as they are more popularly known) . Pacifism has long been a tenet of the Friends and before long we were joining them in their rallies and other protest events and casually hosted gatherings that included some seriously committed pacifists such as the daughters of poet pacifist, Carl Sandburg. Personally I had never been a fan of war. This had a great deal, I am sure, to do with what I had read in school such as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, and growing up listening to war tales. Aunts and uncles had fought in World Wars I and II. I had ancestors who fought in the Revolution and in the Civil War (or the War Between the States, the name my great aunts would only use). What struck me in all these stories and accounts was the devastation that war brings. The devastation occurring in Ukraine.  But also the devastation in the lives of those touched by the ones who return from war and the ones who didn’t. Martha’s father was killed in the Hürtgen Forest in midwinter Germany 1944, leaving a wife, two daughters, and a widowed mother as well. 

This may be of interest to readers. It ties in to the effort of making all things new

https://www.newcomerpalmer.com/episodes/zazkt1pwnbs373btozh6o45tdz67th

The Growing Edge podcast Episode 43: Rebroadcast -From Polarization to Healing: A Conversation About Conflict Transformation W/ John Paul Lederach

This month on The Growing Edge Podcast we will be revisiting our Feb 2021 conversation with John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus of International Peace Building, and internationally respected expert in conflict transformation. John Paul describes the stages that lead to violence in a society, as well as the ways people heal and create communal networks of change. In a time when we are all deeply concerned about the tragic violence happening The Ukraine, The Growing Edge is revisiting this Powerful conversation about how hope for a more peaceful world happens in daily and personal ways as well as through community, national and global efforts.