Some thoughts on peace on Veterans Day

"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."