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“Pedagogy of Conflict”

When I was a child,

I learnt to count:

one, two, three, four, five.

But these days, I’ve been counting lives, so I count

one life

one life

one life

one life

one life.

Because each time is the first time that that life has been taken.

Legitimate Target

has sixteen letters

and one

long

abominable

space

between

two

dehumanizing

words.

 

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and the leader of Corrymeela, a spiritual community in Northern Ireland, which was instrumental in the peace process that brought a ceasefire to their nation. Don’t let the big word in the title intimidate you. “Pedagogy” is an academic term, which simply means the method of instruction. Here, the poet is suggesting we might find peace if this was what we taught our children about the cost of conflict.

I grew up in a time of peace, in a country at peace. There might have been a few “conflicts,” or “scandals”, but by the time I got to high school even the Cold War was thawing and walls were falling down. I used to look around the world and feel sorry for all those “other places,” including Ireland, where violence was an everyday fact of life that took place in the streets and schools and shopping malls.

But then the Oklahoma City Bombing happened (1995) and Columbine (1999) took place and 9/11 (2001) brought foreign terrorism to my everyday consciousness and there were no more illusions that things like that happened to “other people” in “other places.” They happen here in places I frequent and frequently love like churches and schools and concerts and nightclubs and places of business. It happens to people who look like me and to people I might know and love: white, latinx, African-American, Asian, straight, gay, old, young, Christian, Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, immigrant, or American.

In the hours following the Parkland shooting this year, O’ Tuama’s poem haunted me:

One life

one life

one life

one life

one life

I was “counting lives” seventeen times that day for each of those fourteen children and the three adults who dedicated their lives to serving them. I wept in grief, but also in gratitude for  every single day my kids have come home from school alive. Each school shooting deepens my understanding that what I took as a right feels more like a privilege and deepens my sorrow that we as a nation seem unwilling to find solutions to prevent that from becoming more and more true. Perhaps if we started counting as O’ Tuama does, we’d change that.

This is one of those poems that must be read aloud to experience the full impact. Read it aloud while you hold the faces of victims of gun violence, of any kind, in your mind’s eye.  And finally, you can hear the poet read it himself  here.

 

 

 

 

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A great act of non-violence
A great act of non-violence

I woke early for a Saturday morning (6 a.m.) and though I longed to stay in bed, I got up and went right to work on the things I had left undone last night. I folded laundry, started a new load, did some dishes and organized a soccer uniform before I poured my first cup of coffee and sat down to read and meditate. I opened my daily tome, The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo, came across this passage and almost choked on my coffee.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace.” Thomas Merton

Nepe continues:

Merton wisely challenges us not just to slow down, but, at the heart of it, to accept our limitations. We are at best filled with the divine, but we have only two hands and one heart. In a deep and subtle way, the want to do it all is a want to be it all, and though it comes from a desire to do good, it often becomes frenzied because our egos seize our goodness as a way to be revered.

I have done this many times: not wanting to say no, not wanting to miss an opportunity, not wanting to be seen as anything less than totally compassionate (and I would add capable and competent). But whenever I cannot bring my entire being, I am not there. It is like offering to bring too many cups of coffee through a crowd. I always spill something hot on some innocent along the way.

It seems an old adage is a good place to start: Do one thing and do it well. Though I would offer it as: Do one thing at a time and do it entirely, and it will lead you to the next moment of love.

While I am not the peace activist Merton was referring to, I read this and thought of my actions and the many things I have scheduled for today, the way I already have my next eight hours plotted out in half hour increments, knowing where I must be and what I must be doing and who and what I am responsible for. I thought of tomorrow and the eight more things that are on my list of things to do. I thought of how any disruption of my plans could lead to violent thoughts: annoyance, disappointment, frustration. Though they may not lead to violent acts, those emotions certainly don’t promote peace in my heart, my life, or anywhere on the planet I can think of.

I had coffee with my friend T yesterday. She is one of the busiest women I know, on-the-go from 5 a.m. until I don’t know what time and up and at it again the next day. I asked her what her secret was, how she can seem to go non-stop without growing weary and she echoed Nepo’s words. She said, “I stay in the present moment. I don’t think about the past. I can’t worry about the future. If I just stay right where I am, I have enough. I am enough.”

One of my favorite things about her is that when I am with her, I never feel like I am  getting splashed with hot coffee. I love to spend time with people like that, people who know how to say, “Yes,” to just one thing at a time. I am pretty decent at it myself, except with my kids and Tim and you know, the people who actually matter the most. They see me too rarely face-to-face and eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand and heart-to- heart. They see me in profile, driving the car, doing the dishes, typing into the computer, reading a book, taking care of business. I am there, but my ego is in charge and my heart is dormant.

As I race to get these thoughts written down in the midst of making breakfast, finding shin guards and packing for a 24-hour trip out of town, I consider the thought that all this multi-tasking might just be the most common and unrecognized act of violence of all.