Author: Michael Batinski

For some months I have been thinking about the mundane yet shining examples of the way faith and practice join on the path to peace.

This inquiry began a couple days after last Christmas, when I encountered a friend at the coop grocery who regularly joins Carbondale’s Saturday morning peace vigil. I had not attended the last vigil, simply because Christmas fell on Saturday. That morning, while with my family, my thoughts turned to that street corner where the vigil meets. As the customary time approached, I wondered whether others were gathering with their signs calling for peace on earth. I continued to wonder. Spontaneously my friend and I asked each other who had appeared. She too had not attended and also wondered. She had heard that three regulars were there. We were not sure who they were.

I have been reflecting on this moment with the two of us recognizing a shared concern. Sometimes I ask why I still come to that street corner vigil. Does standing on the corner holding a sign calling for the end of war make a difference? The weight of evidence is not encouraging. Public demonstrations for peace seem to have negligible affect on this republic’s deeply engrained war making impulses. Indeed, with the wars’ continuation regardless of the 2008 election’s outcome, I have wondered with others whether the continuing vigil serves to remind passersby that nothing changes and that protest is futile. Is war like the weather? We might complain, but can we do anything about it?

Such questions likely occur to others who congregate on this corner in the cold as well as the blistering heat and who keep this appointment despite the taunts and jeers. Yet such questions may distract us from meanings that lie on the edges of this event, meanings that emerge on another plane than that of practical politics or straightforward cause-effect relationships.

I have been wondering about the feelings that lead me to the Saturday vigil and then to Friends Meeting the following morning. For some time I have been aware of a necessity that moves me to both places. Exploring the similarities returns me to distinctions conventionally made between the religious and the secular. The differences are manifest. In contrast to the quiet of the Quaker Meeting, the street corner is a noisy place with traffic streaming past and the freight train thundering by predictably. Instead of a voice speaking out of the silence, passers-by honk in support or screech obscenities. Such differences notwithstanding, I return to those who remind us and teach us to open ourselves to the religious in everyday life.

I write with care at this point lest I misrepresent these vigil keepers. They come from diverse traditions, some religious and some emphatically secular. Their talk is often not focused on the vigil’s purpose. Nor does the talk turn to religious topics. Some reflect on their personal lives. They joke. They exchange thoughts on other community activities. The wars do not come up, at least not directly. Yet wars are there, always. These people have been gathering despite the lessons that might teach them the futility of their actions. They have been standing on that corner for nearly a decade. Many are veteran advocates of peace. For decades they have protested the growth of the military state and have watched it grow steadily in size. And they keep true to their convictions. Perhaps they do not talk about the pragmatics of their vigil. What impresses me is that they persist and that they persist in good humor.

I recall one rainy day. Drivers were swerving deliberately away from a puddle lest they splatter the protestors. Then with the same deliberation a police car veered in the opposite direction to splash a couple women. All, even the splattered ones, laughed. At times, some one will keep a tally of passersby who honk in support and those who jeer in anger. Some will talk about the agenda of the Southern Illinois Peace Coalition. Tickets will be sold for a folk singer coming to town. I have listened to one steadfast soul ruminate: how can we reach across to those who express such white-hot anger? There seems to be no answer. Yet she is the most faithful attender.

The people who gather—most are women—have been teaching me. Their example returns me to the ageless question regarding the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane: how can we discern a difference? A light illuminates that street corner. Perhaps that is what draws me. These veteran witnesses for peace continue despite the enervating question: does keeping this appointment stop the shooting? They persist even while attending to weighty personal matters. They tend to partners who are ill. They talk about children, some with their own problems. Some are battling their own illnesses. The distractions are numerous, and yet they gather at noon. Somehow one veteran captures the moment with her sign “I am against the next war.” Another sign reads “Been here since 2001.”

The record of persistence is impressive and teaches me something. Perhaps counting their rates of attendance does not reveal clear meaning. Between fifteen and twenty regulars gather each week, good or bad weather. Is the number small? Perhaps. I do not know. What is their affect on passers-by? On each other? Somehow their smiles and their good faith carry meaning enough in this time of endless war.

I will not be in town for the next eight weeks. Yet I will think of them each Saturday and feel my faith renewed by their shining example.

Author: Madelyn George

I often cry when I read the news, or listen to news on the radio, so more often than not I simply don’t read, or don’t listen because I don’t have the energy or the time to have my heart broken every morning. It is especially hard to have one’s heart broken by any number of stories of violence in the world, then to go about our daily lives only to find that most people one encounters don’t even know or care about the situation weighing so heavily upon one’s spirit.

I hear the anger and frustration in the voices of Friends who are moved to stand and speak during meeting for worship. They rise from the blanket of silence and their voices shake. They ask questions like, “How can we be so calm? Why aren’t we doing anything?” I hear a lot of anxiety about where we are headed – how young people may or may not be demonstrating their aptitude for the type of peace work Quakers are famous for. I guess I take it a little personally.

In the summer of 2009 before I began my last year of college, I received a fellowship from the American Friends Service Committee to organize peace action on my college campus. I was shocked. My pacisifism up until then had been the quiet type – I began attending Quaker meetings as a teenager, so it was more of a belief system than anything else that directed my interest in social change. Now, with one year of college left, I would finally have to start organizing, spreading the word, and actually talking with people about my beliefs.

Columbia College has a diverse student body and a sprawling urban campus. Getting students to show up for stuff, much less unite behind a cause was going to be a challenge, and I had absolutely no idea where to start. I went into the year knowing that young people have some unfortunate negative stereotypes associated with activism, and yet Columbia is full of individuals with a ton of creative energy and plenty of talent. At least there was potential.

Things started out slowly. Working with a faculty member and AFSC I helped to organize a die-in in response to the anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. At this point I had no student collaborators. On the day of the event I was disappointed that more people didn’t show up, but I made a couple of new friends and that was all it took to begin forming a group of student activists on campus. When it came time to lay down under the white sheet while the names of one hundred civilian victims of the war were read aloud, and felt my skin prickling and tingling. I had been so busy dealing with small details of the event that I hadn’t spent any time honoring its significance. I laid there on the sidewalk as the names were read, hearing people moving around me, hearing their varied responses, and I silently expressed my gratitude that all my friends and loved ones were still living.

I wish I could say things fell into place easily, but actually there was struggle involved every step of the way. I kept trying to predict what my peers were going to be interested in. What did they need in terms of peace activism on campus? I found myself feeling extremely discouraged when even my close friends just didn’t seem to care. But then I would remember that I still had complete control over my own actions, and I could only hope that by living the truth I believed in I might affect others without knowing it. This would last for a couple of days before I got discouraged again, and I kept finding myself completely depleted, exhausted, as if I had nothing left to give!

I shared my story of frustration and exhaustion along with these three major revelations to a hundred people at an AFSC benefit in the spring of 2010:

1.     Individual responsibility is the only path toward collective responsibility. BE informed. There were so many things I knew nothing about. Up until recently, I chose my opinion, felt confident that it was the right one, and then never bothered to learn more. There is something to be said for being present, bearing witness.

2.     Actions should evoke empathy. I had to redefine my goals as an organizer in order to affect people emotionally. Mass amounts of people showing up to an event don’t necessarily make it successful. It’s the change one person can undergo, the experience they have inside their bodies in an instant that’s important. Images are a great way to make this happen. Fewer facts. Fewer discussions. People need to be given a chance to feel something about injustice and unspeakable violence, and to feel a sincere love for peace.

3.     Stay centered. Don’t forget about inner peace. It’s easy to get caught up in today’s cultural machinery – emails, networking, promoting. But we need to stay connected to the roots of our active pacifism so that as this country’s passionate peacemakers we don’t find ourselves exhausted before the job is done.

I am still not sure which forms of activism make the most sense for the current generation of young people, but I now have the tools I need to move forward as someone who makes at least a little more change than the passive person who used to do nothing but care. Caring is not enough, yet I have learned that it truly doesn’t take much to affect change by affecting others as long as we stay connected to the roots of our beliefs. These roots are internal, and must be nurtured with compassion before we can act with our full Light shining forth. We must nurture our inner light daily or our own quest for peace threatens to place us at odds with the world. And maybe it’s okay to let the news go unread, trusting that wherever there is violence in the world there is also beauty and love. The light that shines in us shines everywhere.