Making Peace

In creating the Constitution of the United States of America, the founding fathers understood the benefit of building on the influences of philosophers, reformers, and political pioneers. Gleaning wisdom from modern English and ancient Roman philosophies, delegates studiously applied the wisdom of their political predecessors to form a nation unlike any seen in Earth's history.

However, the most surprising (and more significant) influence for the delegates of the Constitutional Convention could be found much closer to home. The most democratic societies of the time were those of Native American nations, in particular the Iroquois Confederacy located in and around the Great Lakes region. 

Centuries prior to the founding of the American colonies, six primary nations were united on the American continent through great effort and dedication by a now-legendary Huron man named Deganawida.

Deganawida had a vision of neighboring tribes forming an alliance of friendship that would replace the routine cycle of hostility and vengeance. In pursuit of his vision, the legendary Huron journeyed and performed impressive feats of purity, power, and persuasion. Together with other peace minded individuals like Hiawatha and Jigonhsasee, Deganawida helped establish a powerful confederacy and ushered in an era of peace between the Oneida, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senacas, Tuscaroras, and Mohawk tribes. Because of his efforts, he is remembered reverently as the Great Peacemaker.

We bestow a lot of respect and reverence upon our history's peacemakers, and rightfully so. In a world full of despotic ambition and senseless warmongering, we find special comfort in the achievements of men and women who, against overwhelming odds, overcome the intoxication of vengeance and violence to embrace something greater than their own grief or individual hardship.

The everyday peacemaker, through monumental and admirable effort, influences the hearts and minds of others in ways that far surpass the tyranny and coercion employed by wicked men and women. What makes peacemaking so special is that one does not need to come from a position of societal status or import to effectively make peace. In fact, humility and meekness are common characteristics amongst the worlds most impressive peacemakers.

This ultimately means that we too can become peacemakers, so long as we understand what it means to make peace, and then dedicate ourselves to the practice of making it within our own hearts, our own families, and our own communities.

The Peacemaker

Peace is not something you wish for. It is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away. - Robert Fulghum

Learning what it means to become a peacemaker might mean that we need to abandon some deeply held beliefs over how we achieve peace. For instance, we might not associate attributes such as assertiveness or audacity with peace. Such things seemingly fly in the face of compromise and conformity; two virtues we often erroneously connect to the achievement of peace. In truth, making peace can be messy, onerous, and downright difficult.

In what might seem like a counterproductive approach, peacemakers can be disruptive and bold. They are active, engaging, and even zealous in their pursuit of peace. Though they may not seek a fight, peacemakers do not shirk from confrontation. Though they do not delight in a fight, they do find purpose and satisfaction in resolution.

Of course, peacemakers do not create actual peace, rather they create the conditions whereby peace can exist, building an environment of boundaries and respect. As suggested by President Nelson, the peacemaker's greatest skill lies in their ability to draw boundary lines without creating battle lines.

The peacemaker understands the purpose of agency, and does not employ the tools of deception and manipulation to accomplish harmony. Any "peace" that is built on a foundation of lies and corruption cannot last, assuming it even existed at all in the first place. The peacemaker takes no shortcuts. He or she make no pretense over the intentions they possess. This makes them powerful uniters, because they are full of integrity and transparency.

It would be worth noting that the world does not always look kindly on the peacemaker. Even the Great Peacemaker himself could not convince his own Huron tribe to join the Iroquois Confederacy. Likewise, we should expect a significant dose of ironic friction as we walk along the peacemaker's path. There will be haters, detractors, and even traitors.

To a peacemaker, giving weight or credence to the critic falls low on their list of priorities. Instead, they pursue truth over comfort, concerning themselves primarily over what is right, not over what will happen. As such, the peacemakers make the most effective agents and harbingers of peace in the human family.

The Peacekeeper

Peace is the only battle worth waging - Albert Camus

In stark contrast to the peacemaker, the peacekeeper employs a very different strategy:

A peacekeeper is primarily interested in maintaining the status quo. They do not like to rock the boat, stir the pot, nor rattle the cage. Peacekeeping implies that every possible effort be employed to avoid the conflict, hoping to eliminate the conflict before it can even reach a boiling point.

The peacekeeper always forgets that conflict avoided is only conflict deferred; and conflict deferred is conflict intensified. A peacekeeper doesn't actually keep the peace, rather they maintain the illusion of peace. In this we find the primary fault in the peacekeepers approach: there is no peace to keep.

Rather than fostering an environment of harmony, the peacekeeper creates an atmosphere of resentment, avoidance, and confusion. Deep down, the peacekeeper doesn't have the desire for peace, rather they desire comfort over conflict. They concern themselves chiefly over what will happen, or what people might think, as opposed to concerning themselves over what is actually right.

Peacekeepers are nervously indifferent, impossibly hesitant, and habitually avoidant. Tragically, they are doomed to fail because in their desire to keep a non-existent peace, they fail to take the necessary steps to bring about actual peace in their lives, let alone the lives of others.

Christ alluded to the eventual failure of the peacekeeper when he taught, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it."

When it comes to experiencing peace in our lives, we cannot afford to take a passive approach. Peace cannot simply be preserved. Peace must be made.

The Prince of Peace

This all brings me to some thoughts on the example of Jesus Christ, the very Prince of Peace. As I have worked towards establishing peace in my own life, I have found incredible insight into how I might best achieve that peace by studying how Christ encouraged harmony and delivered peace. I would encourage you to do the same, because I think that what you will find will further challenge your fundamental understanding on what is peaceful living.

The first thing we must note, is that Christ's definition of peace does not fit comfortably with our own understanding of peace.

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth," He said, "I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34)

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." (John 14:27)

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to understand this. Christ teaches us that our understanding of peace, or the peace as the world giveth, is not the peace that He will provide. This is evident in His diverse treatment of the people He interacted with. Remember, the same Prince of Peace who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind was the same Prince of Peace who "made a scourge of small cords, [and] drove [money changers] all out of the temple..." (John 2:15)

Yes, Christ exemplified kindness, charity, and love. However, Christ also exemplified assertiveness, authority, and righteousness. Christ rebuked. Christ chastened. Christ disrupted. Christ did not seek contention, but He did not shy away from confrontation. Christ was a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper.

So what do we make of this knowledge? How do we reconcile our hallowed image of the Prince of Peace in light of His disruptive and assertive behavior?

If "...[His] thoughts are not [our] thoughts, neither are [our] ways [His] ways...", then we need to start by better understanding His ways, and cease confusing them with our ways:

- Rebuking (His way) is not akin to berating (our way).

- Confrontation (His way) is not akin to contention (our way).

- Disruption (His way) is not akin to turmoil (our way).

- Zeal (His way) is not akin to fanaticism (our way).

- Chastening (His way) is not akin to scolding (our way).

Christ was a peacemaker, and He explicitly invites us to follow His example. That might mean a lot of discomfort. Many of us have walked the fruitless path of the peacekeeper, sticking with comfort and familiarity. Many of us think that berating is rebuking, contention is confrontation, turmoil is disruption, fanaticism is zeal, and scolding is chastening.

It is here we need reminding that "...[His] thoughts are not [our] thoughts, neither are [our] ways [His] ways..."

As we abandon our ways and adopt His ways, we will soon find ourselves endowed with the same power wielded by Christ, who when facing the raging tempest, commanded the winds to cease and the waves to subside. With this power, we too can stare down the danger and chaos around us, and we can say "Peace! Be Still."

1) Making Peace In your heart

Peace comes from within. Do no seek it without. - Buddha

Peace, like any great achievement starts with small and deliberate steps. It starts in the hearts and minds of individuals, after which it will grow outwards from the individual soul and into other domains, both immediate and distant. There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutes.

The entirety of our struggle with peaceful living starts from within. Our fears and our anxieties rob us of the peace we so desire. This is why in the midst of the storm, Christ could be found sleeping in the boat while experienced mariners panicked over that wind and the waves which threatened their lives.

"Why are ye so fearful?" asked Christ admonishingly. It was a question and command Christ would utter multiple times throughout His earthly ministry:

"Fear not."

"Be not afraid"

Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius understood intuitively this lesson taught by Christ:

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain itself is not due to the thing itself, but to you estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment"

Keeping an untroubled spirit might seem like a simple enough philosophy, and it might even make a lot of sense logically. Afterall, if every individual were able to experience a profound sense of internal calm and composure, then the world might actually experience a dramatic cessation of hostility without a plethora of despots, dictators, and deceivers. But this line of thinking gets away from the actual importance (and efficacy) of our individual effort to establish powerful personal peace.

Starting where we are now and with what we can do in this moment will accomplish far more than anchoring our hope to a misguided desire that others might experience a sudden pang of guilt or epiphany.

We like to anchor our hope on such things due to the difficulty of looking inwards and calming the tempests raging in our own hearts. Self-reflection and self-improvement are onerous endeavors. To understand that our peace begins and ends in our own mind and heart is to also accept that the burden of our angst, our frustration, and our dissatisfaction falls squarely on our shoulders.

It is there, within the personal domain, where the heaviest lifting must be done. And achieving that internal clarity and resoluteness might look different for everyone. But in general pursuing higher degrees of wholeness requires honest (but not necessarily perfect) attention to physical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual health. On top of that, you must combine those pursuits with a forgiveness of your shortcomings, and with a sincere appreciation for your efforts.

Making peace in your heart requires these things and more. Through your faith and hope, you can endeavor to establish and increase a sense of internal peace that will flow beyond your personal domain, until it affects the immediate world around you.

"Nowhere you can go is more peaceful, more free of interruptions, than your own soul. Retreat to consult your own soul and then return to face what awaits you." - Marcus Aurelius

2) Making Peace In Your Family

When you find peace within yourself, you become the person who can live at peace with others. - Peace Pilgrim

For those who wish to see how their internal peace or chaos might be impacting their world, look no further than your own relations with your family. Our ability or inability to pursue and produce inner peace is most visibly measured by our interactions with our parents, our children, our siblings, and our spouse.

In most cases, our personal peace is tested more profoundly in the relationships with whom we share the most love, care, and appreciation. A man might bear any burden, face any invader, and sustain any physical damage without any loss of inner peace. However, agonizing over the betrayal, deceit, desertion, or injustice from close relations tends to test our limits far more than the threat of physical harm. Making peace in these circumstances proves excruciating at best.

Agency and self-determination will always preclude us from forcing peace in the familial domain. Here we must remember that the goal is to make peace, not force peace.

Making peace in your family looks like:

- Offering counsel or perspective, while remaining open to the counsel and perspective of others.

-  Allowing someone space to grow and potentially make mistakes, but offering forgiveness and admiration for someone who makes genuine changes.

- Seeking first to understand, and second to be understood.

It does not look like:

- Ignoring abusive behavior or subjecting yourself to it.

- Abiding lies, deceit, and manipulation in order to keep the relationship intact.

- Sacrificing dignity, growth, and sanity for the sake of comfort and familiarity. 

In summary, making peace in your family might mean turning the other cheek, but it does not mean giving them a cheek to strike over, and over, and over again. It is worth remembering that neutrality, conformity, apathy, and passivity, in any combination, do not amount to peace, harmony, and calmness.

"A bad peace," said the Roman Historian and politician Tacitus, "is even worse than war."

Some will argue that you always fight for family. In a sense, this is a true and noble sentiment. We can always plead, hope, and desire the best for the people closest to us. But when family embraces a life of malice and destruction, both towards themselves and towards others, fighting for your family must take on new meaning. Sometimes the act of severing those ties proves more courageous than the act of enduring them.

Thankfully, making peace within your family often doesn't require such an extreme decision. Instead, the family can be a safe place wherein you might exercise a positive and lasting influence, building your own peace and consciously adding to the peace of others. Whenever possible, take advantage of these opportunities as they will create a solid framework whereby you can make peace in other areas of your life.

3) Making Peace in Your Community

The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

I have already mentioned the futility of wishing and hoping for a sudden miraculous program or policy that might reverse the tide of chaos we see the world over. We know peace starts with us. So, I will not preach nor pontificate over the complexities of civil unrest and world crises. However, I would like to admonish against the practice of keeping solely to ourselves and our own. Peacemakers are not content to stop at the border between their world and the greater world around them. In many ways, they can make a world of difference.

If you need convincing of this fact, I would refer you to scripture. In studying this topic, I noticed a very interesting scriptural pattern. Whenever peace is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, it is often accompanied by some conjugated form of the verb establish. 

Mosiah 29:14

 "And even I myself have labored with all the power and faculties which I have possessed ... to establish peace...

3 Nephi 6:3

"... and thus they did establish peace in all the land."

Alma 3:24

"And then they returned again and began to establish peace in the land..."

Helaman 2:1

"...had established again peace..."

These aren't simply a few selections of verse. This pattern repeats itself over and over and over again. Active peace making can, and often does, make a far reaching difference, sometimes even the world over.

For more examples like this, I encourage you to look at the stories of notable historical figures like Nelson Mandela, Dirk Willems, William Penn, Andrew Carnegie, and Theodore Roosevelt. Doing so, you will note how with skill and diplomacy, these monumental figures encouraged peace by masterfully balancing action with deference, boldness with meekness, and mercy with justice. Practicing these same virtues in your life will also encourage peace, whether it is in your heart, your family, or your community.

Armed with a better understanding of what it means to be a peacemaker, we should endeavor to make peace within our own lives and the lives of others. The peacemaker is not content with simply preserving peace, rather he wages peace with the same devotion as those intent on waging war.