Peace…world peace, peace on earth, inner peace, peace march, peace sign, peace protest, peace with honor, peace prize, piece it together, a piece of pie, piecemeal, peace at any price, peace doves, peace flags, peace in the family, winning the peace, peace like a river, peace out, peacenik, peace be with you… What do you think of when you hear the word "peace"? Everyone you hear says they want peace, but I really don’t think everyone wants the same thing. For some people, peace means an inner quiet and calm, that is unruffled by the world around you. For the Zen masters, peace is truly something internal. It is portable and is not dependant on the violent or nonviolent behavior of others. It is a way of being. For many military and governmental leaders, over many centuries, it has meant those other people giving up so the fighting can finally stop. Peace happens when someone else surrenders or is beaten into powerlessness. For me, as a child in the 1960’s, peace meant getting out of the war in Viet Nam. Peace meant not only an end to the fighting between soldiers across the world, but to the fighting between Americans here at home as well.

There has a lot of talk about peace around here lately. And there is going to be more of it. This is in part because the Unitarian Universalist Association has charged us with an important task. A resolution was taken to the General Assembly and was approved for us as our congregational Study Action Item. It is about Peacmaking. This is not something we vote "yes or no" about, but something we are called on to study and to wrestle with. This UUA Study Action Issue is about Peacemaking, in all its complexity. For years we UUs have followed the tradition of Just War theory, but does that still work for us? Do our UU principles call on us to change our approach? If we were to adopt Peacemaking as our new tradition, what would that look like? Would we be pacifists, like the Quakers? How would we settle conflicts in the world and how would we protect those who are threatened and attacked? Could we or would we ever imagine a situation where military force was necessary?

At a future General Assembly, our delegates will be able to speak on behalf of our congregation. They will be able to represent our Fellowship because we will have gone though a process of discernment. Now when I say we are charged by the UUA to take on this topic, I want to remind you that we are the UUA. The UUA is not a bunch of pencil pushers in Boston, but it is as association of congregations, coming together in the democratic process support each other and the life of our faith.

Today, we at the UU Fellowship of Corvallis begin to walk this journey of exploration and study…this wrestling with these questions. After the second service today, just following the action lunch, we will have the first of our five peacemaking forums. Everyone is encouraged to attend, if they can. In these forums, which will be held over the next two months, we will hear the words of experts, and hear the words of each other. We will listen and we will question and we will talk. I look forward to these forums and to the process we will undertake together. But first I want to share some ideas about peace and Peacemaking. To open our minds to the complexity of these issues. And if you are expecting me to hand you my version of the right answer, you are out of luck. I will be struggling, along with the rest of you, to make sense out of some of these complex issues.

To begin, I want to share a story with you about peace and war. As some of you may know, I have a son in college. About 2 years ago, shortly after he turned 18, I was out to dinner with my husband. I had forwarded the home phone to my cell because I was expecting an important call. So when the phone rang, I answered it. The polite young man on the other end asked for my son, by name. I said, "Ian isn’t here right now, can I take a message?" The young man said he was Private so and so from the Marine Corps and he wanted to talk to Ian about career opportunities serving in the Marines. Now I am a nice lady and I know how to behave properly in a restaurant. But at that moment, I was not a nice lady. My voice became hysterical and I yelled into the phone, "No, No, You can’t talk to him. I won’t let you. I won’t let you have him!!!" and I slammed the phone shut and felt the adrenalin coursing through my veins. I was a mother bear who had just seen the hunter coming toward her cub. And anyone who has spent any time in nature knows that one of the most dangerous animals in the world is a mother protecting her young. I didn’t want my son to go off to Iraq, to become a soldier, to be trained to kill other people and possibly be killed himself. I usually think of myself as a peaceful person. But I didn’t feel very peaceful at that moment. I was angry and afraid and I felt that strong maternal instinct that I would do anything, including violence toward that nice young man on the phone, to keep my baby safe. I have often thought about that evening in the restaurant. My reaction was not about my politics or my theology. It came out of my gut. I expect that many of you listening to me today know that feeling that came up in me, that you too would go to any lengths protect your child from harm, including violence. I believe that this instinct is part of how we are made. I honor this instinct in myself and in others. I believe that if any other mother in the world felt her child was in real danger, she might well resort to violence to keep her child safe. It is the way of things and to deny this law of nature is as foolish as to deny the law of gravity.

But there have been people who have committed their life to peace and nonviolence as the ethical and religious basis for their interaction with all living things. For instance, there are Janist monks in the Far East who carry a little broom and sweep the walk in front of every step they take so they are sure not to trod on any insects. This is their level of commitment to doing no harm to any other living being. This is the most committed example I can think of for the practice of nonviolence. But, closer to home, we have the Quakers. The Quakers do not carry their non-violence ethic to the level of these monks and I will say I have even shared a ham and eggs breakfast with a family of Quakers in my time. But if you look through American history, no group has been more steadfast in their commitment to Peace than the Quakers, or as they call themselves, the Society of Friends. Their commitment to peace is a religious one. I found it interesting that when I began to study Quaker documents on Peacemaking, only some of their documents were about about stopping war. Many documents were about how to carry on your life in the community, in interactions with your next door neighbor and the clerk at the DMV. Many papers I found were about how to live the spirit of Peace in their congregations, where they always make decisions based on consensus building rather than by elections where some will inevitably win while others lose. Quaker religious belief is that there is a spark of the divine that resides inside all of us. They often refer to it as "the inner light." If we all contain this sacred light, this bit of the divine, it would be wrong to harm anyone. Rather, you would want to treat everyone with respect and positive regard, to honor the light within them. I share with you the words of a Quaker testimony of Peace by Mary Lou Levitt. She says, "At the heart of this conviction is Friends' experience that there is something of God—the seed of the Spirit—in all people. Quakers believe that more can be accomplished by appealing to this capacity for love and goodness, in ourselves and in others, than can be hoped for by threatening punishment or retaliation if people act badly. This is not to ignore the existence of evil. It is to recognize that there is no effective way to combat evil with weapons which harm or kill those through whom evil is working. We must turn instead, in the words of early Friends, to the "weapons of the spirit," allowing God to reach out through us to that of God in those with whom we are in conflict. "Spiritual weapons"—love, truthsaying, nonviolence, imagination, laughter—are weapons that heal and don't destroy" I have often heard it said that this theology of the inner light is not so far from our UU belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that we, because of our beliefs, are called to treat each and every person with respect and positive regard. That we might call on the good that is within one another when faced with disagreement rather than rely on either the domination of physical strength or our usual tactic of the power intellectual intimidation.

The Quakers are, by tradition, pacifists. They do not use outward weapons and do not go to war under any conditions. But there are other approaches different groups of people use in dealing with seemingly intractable human conflict, especially between nations. By that, I mean "war". The three main approaches seem to be categorized as Pacifism, Realism, and Just War. People who practice pacificism do not advocate war under any circumstances. They even respond to the threat of war with a peaceful response. Some people in history have called pacifists, cowards. They have said that they are somehow cheating because they enjoy a safe world because others are willing to fight tyranny and injustice, putting themselves in harm’s way, while they sit in safety and talk of love and harmony. In response to that argument, I draw your attention to the Women In Black. This is a group of women, most of them in middle age or later who have already raised their children. These women stand in silent strength in places of great danger. For instance, they might stand at military check points in war torn lands and bear witness to what goes on. They are in danger, physical danger, as they act as the conscience of the world. No one could call these brave women cowards. You see, soldiers are not the only ones who put themselves in harms way. Peacemakers all over the world have also taken bullets for the cause of justice. Remember the students facing down the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Young people, in China, standing in peaceful defiance of troops sent to stop their protests.

Then there is the approach called "realism". It could be summed up as "all’s fair in love and war" or "looking out for number one". I hate that it this theory is called "realism" somehow implying that this is the most real or realistic approach. In this theory of conflict, you do what works best for you. If you want to invade another country because it is in the best self-interest of your country, you do that and you are not surprised if others do the same. For some it seems that the "Rules of war" is an oxymoron. You do what works. How intelligence is gathered, how prisoners are treated, who bombs who and when…it is all decided on a pragmatic basis. One of the best quotes of realism I have found is from Adoph Hilter when he said, "Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless". Hitler was honest in this statement. Alliances are used to help you win a war, or at least maintain power. War is not necessarily always about world domination, but it is often about economic advantage or strategic moves to insure future power advantage. It would be easy to make a case in saying that our current US defense strategies are based on Realism. We go to war to protect American interests, not just American cities. We strike preemptively when we feel it is to our advantage. We interrogate prisoners in extremely aggressive ways when it is deemed necessary to gather information to insure our success.

Well what about Just War theory. How can you have a just war? Does that mean nice war or good war. Not at all. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy dedicates many pages to describe Just War theory. Just War is the approach that is officially used by the United Nations, who the UUs have traditionally been strong supporters of. This is also the approach used in international courts, such as those in The Hague. Just War theory makes a distinction between justifiable military action and aggression based solely on self interest. For a war to be "just" it has to meet three major criteria. They are Just Cause, Just Conduct, and Just Termination. Just cause tends to mean that military action is necessary because someone in danger of loosing basic human rights if no military action is taken. It is not about a land grab but about human safety. Leaders who declare the war must have proper authority by their government to do so and all other non-military solutions must have been exhausted. Just Conduct has to do with how people are treated in times of war. The rape of women and children and the slaughter of innocent civilians are not Just Conduct, nor is mistreatment of prisoners of war. Just Termination has to do with how the defeated country is treated after conflict is over. There should not be retribution but rehabilitation of the economy and infrastructure. If all of these are not met, the military action is not a just war, but an act of destructive aggression that undermines the safety of the world. I leave it to your judgment to decide whether you feel that our current war in Iraq meets all the criteria necessary to be considered a Just War by the international community. Perhaps these three criteria, just cause, just conduct and just termination, are unrealistic expectations of human beings in military conflict. I guess it has to do with how we see human nature and the ability of any national leader to ever follow rough ethical guidelines in the military arena. But if that is the case, that we see this as impossible, then we can have little faith in groups like the UN to help make the world a safer and more just place to live.

So, what are we to do. So many people have experienced the horrors of war. Our citizens, our children, killed and or turned into killers. I personally resonate with the words of that great Unitarian activist, Julia Ward Howe when she wrote her Mother’s Day Proclamation. She said, "Our sons shall not be taken form us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs". Yet Howe also was the person who penned the words to the Civil War anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Her commitment to ending slavery in America was so strong that she was willing to actively support that war that promised to end that slavery. But we are not in the 1800’s. As bloody and terrible as the Civil War was, we of the 21^st century have the capacity to do much worse today. With our weapons of mass destruction the stakes are so much higher. The world is an unstable place and organized violence seems to be present on nearly every continent. I recently heard on NPR that the chances of a nuclear weapon being used against the United States in foreseeable future are estimated to be as high as 50%. That frightens me. After the A-bomb was used at the end of World War II, Albert Einstein was asked, "What weapons do you predict will be used to fight World War 3?" "I can’t predict that," he said, "but I can tell you this: World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." To continue to allow war, even careful war with a seemingly justifiable cause… to continue to think of war as a possible solution….this may doom us to an end to civilization as we know it. But right now genocide and terrible atrocities are happening in Darfur. Innocent people die in this war torn region of the world. The compassion of the world is reaching out trying to come to their aid. But it is a very dangerous place and the only way that aid workers can come in to bring any help to the women and children in the refugee camps is if armed peacekeeping forces are protecting them. These are armed soldiers, with guns and they are trained to kill. Yet without them, humanitarian aid could not be given. There are no easy answers.

In my first sermon in this Fellowship, I told you about one of my Husbands uncles, Uncle Clayton, who is a Methodist theologian. Today, I want to tell you about a different uncle. Uncle Jack is a professional peacemaker. In his working years he traveled all over with world doing things like coordinating US foreign aid programs and administrating for the Peace Corps. For Jack, peacemaking is not a dinner table conversation, it is a way of life. Now that he is retired, he volunteers for a group called Interpeace, a group associated with the UN. Lately he has been working in Somalia Rwanda. This country was so devastated by war and the new peace is fragile. Jack often sits in small meetings and helps groups of community leaders, from different factions, negotiate local water rights. He knows that without people feeling that their basic needs will be met, that there can be no lasting peace. It is long, slow work. It is hard work. Their recent Christmas letter, holds up the memory of a colleague of Jack’s in peacemaking who was recently killed in Mogadishu. His name was Medina Mohamud Elni. Real peacemaking is hard work and dangerous work. Jack is not a rabble rouser, not in the least. He plays by the rules and that has generally worked well for him. But every Sunday afternoon, when he is in the US, he joins his wife to stand in the park. He and many of their friends stand in silence for an hour or so every week, to make a public statement for world peace. There is not yelling, just standing together, in a public area, to bear witness. After all he has seen in the world, working in Hati and Rwanda and other hot spots, Jack has not become so jaded that he has given up on a simple and silent protest in the park.

So I promised you I would not give you any answers today and I think I have kept my promise. But I do hope I have expanded the question about how you feel about peacemaking. As Unitarian Universalists we are called not only to work for justice and equity in human relations, but to pursue the free and responsible search for our truth. My hope is that we can al take that search for truth very seriously. My hope is that truth can help inform our work in this very complex world and that we can, somehow, find a way to live support justice and live in harmony with our neighbors on this beautiful planet called earth.