“Peacemaking is not for the selfish or
faint-hearted. I learned this from a
couple of fellows I’d never met until the night of my senior prom. I’ll call them Josh and Randy
bec(c)ause in all honesty, I don’t remember their names. No one had invited me to
the big dance, but I said I wouldn’t have gone anyway. This was the Vietmam era, and I wanted to be part
of an all-night peace vigil being held in a local park. (That was a lie, of
course, contrived to save face and convince myself that I wasn’t miserable
about not having a boyfriend, not being “chosen.”) 

“The protesters in the
park thinned out as the night wore on until there were only half a dozen of
us—Josh and Randy, three other women, and me—with blankets and sleeping
bags, set to stay for the duration. Just after midnight a couple of men
approached our little assembly, and I assumed they intended to join the vigil.
When the two guys in our group arose to make space for them, the strangers started
shouting insults and hurling punches.

“Since I’d never seen a
fight before, other than in the movies or on TV, I wasn’t sure what to expect,
but what I saw would have astonished even a habituated barroom brawler. Josh, a
birthright Quaker with nonresistance in his bones, and Randy, a Vietnam vet
who’d said, “I did my duty over there, and now I’m doing it here,” stood
stoically, arms at their sides. In about a minute, the attackers realized that
no one was fighting back. They were so spooked by this lack of response that
they hightailed it out of there as if they’d seen a ghost—two ghosts.

“Randy was bleeding
enough that one of the women took him to the ER, while Josh nursed his swelling
jaw with a can of 7up from the ice chest. I stayed awake to process in my mind what had
happened. I didn’t know in an absolute sense where I stood philosophically on
questions like war and peace, or even self-defense. All these years later, I’m
still not sure. In fact, compared to the myriad gray areas I see now, my world
at seventeen was as black and white as a pair of spectator pumps. It is unclear to me to this day if turning the other cheek is always the right response, but on
that late spring night so long ago I was able to witness its power firsthand.
That made up for missing the prom many times over.

“I never saw Josh or
Randy after that, but when the word ‘heroic’ comes to mind, I see them, and the
images of heroes I’ve come to know since, many of whom are wearing military
uniforms. All of these admirable men and women tapped into a strength they found inside to do what they
believed was right. When you tap into your own
gentle strength, you become a hero. Some people will admire you, some may think
you’ve lost it, and most won’t care either way. That’s fine. When one drop of
water is followed by another and another for a long enough time, boulders are
worn away. You can choose to be like water. Or like the
person you hoped you’d become when you’d been on earth so briefly you could
almost remember heaven.”