A Culture Of Peace

A reflection by Pamela Hussey

Marigold Best and I have been preparing a Comment with the title A Culture of Peace: Women, faith and reconciliation, and we have been invigorated and inspired by the faith and determination of so many women working for peace in our troubled world. We feel their stories demand to be heard: they are good news.

In the Conclusion of A Culture of Life: Women's theology and social liberation (CIIR 2000), Tina Beattie says: 'The voices represented here are a chorus of whispers which do not amount to a great global movement.' The voices represented in our Comment certainly do not amount to 'a great global movement,' but they are getting stronger as the truth percolates from the grass roots upwards that 'without the full participation of women, enjoying equal rights with men, there can be no real peace, no real development, no real reconciliation, in fact no real hope for the world.' 

The Comment introduces the words and actions of women working and struggling in their own way and from their own contexts to win through to peace and reconciliation. These words can be deceptive, but the Israeli and Palestinian women of the Jerusalem Link for Women go straight to the heart of the matter: 'We train … about how to meet, how to learn to respect one another's vision, how to know that there are at least two versions, not one, to every story.' Meeting and working together can begin: 'When both sides feel that they are prepared to look into the eyes of the other with respect …'
     
Aung San Suu Kyi, the intrepid leader at the forefront of the movement for democracy and human rights in Burma who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, wrote a paper, 'Heavenly abodes and human development,' for CAFOD's 1997 Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture, which in the event was delivered by her husband. In it she describes simply but powerfully the inner dynamic essential to peace building, whether in the family or at international level: 'Paradise on earth is a concept which is outmoded and few people believe in it any more. But we can certainly seek to make our planet a better, happier home for all of us by constructing the heavenly abodes of love and compassion in our hearts. Beginning with this inner development we can go on to the development of the external world with courage and wisdom.' 

The remarkable thing about the women quoted in A Culture of Peace is the visibility, the physicality and the actuality of their struggle to build peace. We are far here from 'discourses of power and domination' - we are into seeing, feeling and acting. A Palestinian woman, Sumaya Farhat-Naser, speaking of the Women Making Peace programme, writes: 'When we have lived 50 years knowing each other only as enemies, with pain and bitter experience very much alive on the Palestinian side, it is very difficult to say: "Let's sit together and hug." We can't hug.'  

Gila Svirsky, an Israeli woman involved in the peace movement, described how they had 'thrown themselves in front of the bulldozers together with our Palestinian sisters and brothers, defied laws, pushed past soldiers, put ourselves on the line because we know that non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.' Tutsi and Hutu women in Rwanda adopted each other's orphans. Women sharing their stories and discussing led to women organising: a mother in Buenos Aires searching for her 'disappeared' son gets talking to a woman with a similar story, and the powerful Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are born.

A team of volunteers from the US, some of Afghan origin, set up a hairdressing training course for women in Kabul, many of whom had run clandestine home salons under the Taliban.  An increasing number of micro-credit projects make small loans, mainly to women, to start small businesses and join together in groups to support each other. These are all tokens of 'the kindly ties that can serve to bind humankind together in amity and understanding' (Aung San Suu Kyi).

For these women, issues in the abstract have come to life in people.

Saint Teresa of Avila tells us: 'We cannot know whether we love God although there may be strong reasons for thinking so, but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbour or no. Be sure that in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing in your love of God.' We are heartened to know that all religions teach some version of the Golden Rule 'Love your neighbour as yourself' - here are some examples:

'Do not treat others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.' (The Buddha, Udana-Varga 5.18)

'Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.'  (Prophet Muhammad, Hadith)

'What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.' (Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a)

The Latin American Bishops meeting at Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, sent a message to the people of Latin America in which they not only preached a culture of peace, but proclaimed what they hoped would be its consequence, a Civilization of Love: 'We invite you to be self-sacrificing constructors of the "civilization of love." It finds its inspiration in the message, life, and full self-giving of Christ, and its basis in justice, truth and freedom. In this way we can be sure to obtain your response to the imperatives of the present hour, to the interior and social peace that is so eagerly sought on the level of individual persons, families, nations, continents, and the entire universe.' 

As we draw near to the birth of the One whose message to humankind is summed up with earthshaking simplicity in the words 'Love one another as I have loved you', we may be inspired in our turn to become 'self-sacrificing constructors of the civilization of love.'

[A Culture of Peace: Women, faith and reconciliation will be published by CIIR in January 2005]