A Piece of Peace
October 9th, 2006
It is difficult to believe that the essay below comes from a teenager. The insight and writing skill are exquisite. What makes me believe is the spirit of hope and a deep understanding of humanity unsullied by — though not unaware of — the jaded cynicism of so common to my peers (mid 20’s to mid 30’s).
This essay was the winner of a contest held by the URI of Charlotte, in the
American state of North Carolina. The contest was held along with another interfaith group in the county as part of their International Day of Peace celebration. They invited high school students to write about building a culture of peace. They had a number of judges representing academic and religious communities, but I suspect no expertise was required to recognize this particular essay as the winner.
Talia Saxe from Myers Park High School (Charlotte, NC, USA)
September, 2006
I stood at the Israeli-Lebanese border.
My aunt and uncle’s rosemary surrounded home was not far from the border where we stood, and my family and I had been out exploring with the farmer Eytan and the car he called “his lady”. This was unlike the time my freckled cousin and I held hands across the Mexican-American border, giggling that we stood in different countries. At this border, I held on only to the pink morning glories my tour guide had picked for me, and I looked out onto thirsty hills through the holes of a sensitive fence. The backs of Lebanese farmers faced me. The towers of Hezbollah watched me. And though less than a month later this
desert would flame into war, I was not scared. I thought I had seen peace taking a walk through the soft summer fields of Lebanon.
Peace can walk on any sides of a border. It needs no visa, not even a passport to mingle with farmers or businessmen, to drink tea with mothers and their daughters. But for peace to thrive even in the desert sun, peace must be welcomed.
For a culture of peace to be built, peace must be welcomed into every element of a culture: in its language, in its rituals, in its food. When we start stuffing peace into samosas, when we stop referring to others as savages, when we try to speak another’s language then we will be working on a creation of peace. And once families of all kind decide to invite peace for an evening meal, and then another and another, then a culture of peace will take root.
But peace begins not only in the home, not only in the congregation, not only in the community, but also within ourselves. It begins with the assertion that peace is no dream and the understanding that peace is compatible with the people we aim to be. That like being both an American and something else, it is possible to keep our culture and adopt the culture of peace. It is possible to maintain our separate identities, while subscribing to a universal idea.
My brother Jeremy is proof that two cultures can coexist, for two live upon his head already. His baseball cap sometimes plays the role of a yarmulke, though he replaces it with a small skullcap in the mornings for school. But even his skullcap has Yankees stitched into the black leather. Perhaps Jeremy too holds a hope for peace on top of his hair, for his skullcap draws questions from curious middle-schoolers, and the answers hush the teasing and begin the understanding. Adopting peace means recognizing that every moment holds room for an action of peace.
Importantly, peace would not be inaction. Peace would not be the absence of anger and disagreement. But anger in a peaceful world would lead to creation. And so to move towards a peaceful world, the angry must gather their pens, their markers, and their electric guitars to create the novels, the images, and the songs that someone has never heard. And the art will hush the fighting and begin the understanding.
I stood atop many other mountains at the beginning of my summer. One belonged to a Druze man whose white cap covered his ears. We stood on his land, my family and I, to see the view, and though we had no way of communicating through words, he cut us a branch of his cherries. That evening with stained shirts and stained lips, we returned home with a blue plastic bag full of cherries for my aunt and the belief that perhaps peace walks frequently through fragrant orchards. And though we cannot draw a map of its route, we can certainly search in the petals of a flower, the rim of a hat, on fertile mountaintops, and in all unexpected places, to find pieces of peace.