Peacemaking: Contemplation and Action?

Jacqueline Block, with her husband, Richard, and children, Ezra and Hilary, Chiapas Mexico

The author of this post is Jacqueline Block who is currently living in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico with her family on a MCC assignment. You can read more about her on their blog site.  

At our initial MCC interview we were asked our understanding of peace and being peacemakers. A good question….how might you answer? One of my main thoughts in this regard is that peace can only come when peacemakers are at peace themselves.  Or better put by St. Francis “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.”  So I find myself on a journey towards a more peaceful existence with God, internally and with others.

I have sought to learn and grow in part through reading scripture and books that speak of peace. Last month I found a new gem – The Road to PEACE: Writings on Peace and Justice by Henri Nouwen, edited by John Dear. While some may know of Henri Nouwen as a spiritual writer, John Dear brings to our attention Nouwen’s deep concern about “injustice, violence, and war” (Nouwen, xxvi) and portrays Nouwen very much as an advocate for peace.

Amongst the various writings in this book,  The Road to PEACE contains an unpublished manuscript entitled, “A Spiritually of Peacemaking,” a summary of which Dear provides in his introduction:  First, peacemaking requires a life of prayer….Second, peacemaking demands ongoing [nonviolent] resistance to the forces of violence….Third, peacemaking necessitates community. (Nouwen, xxxvii)

Intrigued? I am. While Nouwen focuses much of his writing directly towards war and nuclear disarmament, I believe his thoughts could apply to other avenues of peace, justice and advocacy work as well. Personally, what I find compelling about Nouwen is his belief and ability to lead a contemplative life, deeply committed towards an intimacy with God, and also to be a man of action who practiced and taught that our prayer life should move us towards advocacy and peacemaking.  And if it does not?  Nouwen would say, “We might as well start all over again. Go back to the Gospel and figure out how to connect with the peacemaking crucified Jesus” (xxviii).

While this might seem more of a challenge for contemplatives to become active peacemakers, Nouwen equally “challenged those already engaged in the struggle to deepen the roots of their inner contemplative life” (xxix). Why did Nouwen see this as important? Because he understood the temptation of peacemakers to think “that everything we do depends on ourselves” (xxx); an attitude which in times of success may lead to pride and in times of difficult may lead to despair.

Moreover, there is the possibility that in our efforts to bring peace, our actions could “easily become fearful, fanatical, bitter and more an expression of survival instincts than of our faith in God and the God of the living” (xxx). Instead Nouwen saw the primary work of peacemaking to be prayer, as he states:

Prayer-living in the presence of God-is the most radical peace action we can imagine. Prayer is peacemaking and not simply the preparation before, the support during, and the thanksgiving after… In prayer we undo the fear of death and therefore the basis of all human destruction (xxx).

In this quote we begin to get a real picture of Nouwen’s foundation of peacemaking, one that is based in his understanding of scripture and its call to bring peace as Christ brought peace, through humility, love, community and intimacy with his Father.

If you are interested I invite you follow me down “A Road to PEACE.” I hope to share more thoughts and questions on this blog as I journey through this book and learn more about being an advocate for peace.