Fostering the Light of Peace in a World at War
REFLECTION FOR REMEMBERING & PEACE SUNDAY - November 9th, 2025
25 years ago, when I was fresh out of theological school, I decided that now that I’d been taught to ‘think theologically’, I needed to spend some time seeing how my theology could be lived ‘on the ground’. And so, I went to live in Palestine, with an organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams. CPT, an ecumenical initiative begun by the Quakers, Mennonites, and Church of the Brethren, was committed to the transforming power of God’s love through activism grounded in partnerships with local peacemakers worldwide.
In 1999 I arrived in Hebron, determined to live what I understand to be some of the central commitments of my faith: an unswerving commitment to peace, nonviolence and sacrificial love. Three years later I left with the same commitment, as well as a deep unease and uncertainty about what peace, nonviolence, and sacrificial love mean.
A conversation I had with my Palestinian friend, Nisreen, reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah, who warned us of those who call out ‘peace, peace’, when there is no peace. “I want to live in peace”, Nisreen reflected, “but I don’t trust this word anymore. It is a big trick and a dirty word. Talking about peace makes me very angry – more than anything else. So it is better to say that I don’t want to live anymore. And I really start to envy the people who have been killed.”
The words of peace, before which Nisreen would rather die, are words that hold out the promise of something longed for with every ounce of our tired and battered bodies, only to find that they are a smoke screen for ulterior motives, lies which play on the hungers of our hearts.
How then, might we not sink into despair as we face into these scandalous corners of our world, but rather foster the light of something whose name we dare not even utter lest it become ashes and blow away?
We entered into worship this morning listening to Bach’s Alleluia, from Motet VI. I first encountered this piece through my friend, Tim Corlis - then conductor of the Vancouver Peace Choir - which I understand actually rehearsed at Trinity-Grace for several years pre-COVID.
Tim was planning a concert where his choir was singing Bach’s Motet, and I was inspired by his reflection on this piece of music. Tim spoke of the long 2-minute cadence of alleluia’s which end the Motet (link here to listen) and the way its repetition becomes part of the fabric of the music so that unless one pays close attention, the word itself is barely noticed.
It occurred to me that a peace which is worthy of the name, which heals and restores – the peace of the Holy One that is more of a gift than a project – is also like that alleluia. It is ever-present – in the background like a promise – ever ready to be heard, touched, pulled up into our conscience, given room to blossom and grow. The alleluia of peacemaking is not a grand scheme or grandiose vision, but rather weak and fragile words and actions for the sake of a more livable world.
For the next short while, may the words of that Alleluia continue their pulse as I reflect, in this time of remembering lives lost to war, on what I believe to be a triad of fostering peace: A willingness to see; an ability to grieve and lament; and a commitment to take hands and journey together.
Like an open ear curved towards the allure of song, we begin our journey with a willingness to see – not merely to look, but to see deeply into the lives of Others, especially those faces which are forbidden us – forbidden our eyes and forbidden our hearts.
When I joined Christian Peacemaker Teams, I chose to go to Hebron, a predominantly Palestinian Muslim city, in part so that I might learn to know people from a culture and religion different from mine, not to mention a culture and religion all too often cast in a negative light in my then very euro-christian environment.
After many months of drinking tea with neighbours, playing with their children and helping to harvest their olives, I was able to join a non-violent protest against the confiscation of Palestinian village lands for an expanding Israeli military base – and stand alongside a group of youth who months earlier might have looked at me with great suspicion, seeing me only as a reminder of the powers who oppress them. That day we stood beside one another with a banner stating: “We refuse to be enemies”.
The foundation of any of the non-violent actions and interventions I may have engaged in was the time invested in relationships - a willingness to see, and to listen, and to stay a while with the Other; to hear and see stories unfamiliar and unknown.
We are not encouraged to do this by our fast-paced age of social media posts, tweets and reels. An ever increasing cacophony of sound bites splatter upon the window of our day to day life – bombarding us with images and clips about the latest tragedy, the most recent bombing, the newest ecological disaster to rip through the earth’s body.
And then, as quickly as these stories come at us, we are moved along to the latest in sports or the newest fashion influencer. Who has the time to let anything sink in, to wonder how the soaring cost of living has affected the couple in the apartment across the hall, or maybe even to ask them?
Yet this is, I’m absolutely convinced, the place where fostering the light of peace begins. In those simple acts of seeing beyond appearances with open minds and open hearts - seeing the face of the other as bearing the face of that which is most holy to you – in those moments something in the cold, frozen ground stirs.
Yet it does not stop there. It is difficult, in the best of times, to allow the full truth of the lives of others, let alone our own life, to come into clear view. Russian author, Dostoyevsky, in his masterpiece, “Brothers Karamazov” writes “Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams”. Allowing ourselves to listen closely, see deeply AND to care fully requires more of us at times than we feel able to give.
It will ask us to cross boundaries of friend and foe, to love even our enemies. Even more, it may take us to the edge of despair, stretching its reach into every corner of our aching world.
The danger of a willingness to see, is always the possibility of despair – a giving up in the face of impossible odds, a sense of powerlessness even as we reside in one of the most privileged nations on earth.
It is for this very reason that peace is fostered not only by authentic seeing, but also by authentic grieving. We call this cry of desperation, lament. It is not a faithless cry. It is not the voice of one who has given up hope in God, or in the possibilities of life. Quite to the contrary. It is the deepest moanings of a life laid in the hands of God, the profound echo of love demanding recognition from the source of love itself. To grieve with holy rage in the face of injustice and pain is a sign that we have not allowed our vision to become obscured by the crusty scab of cynicism.
Like deep listening and seeing, genuine grief is also counter-cultural. Not only do sound-bites encourage us not to see, but they certainly don’t give us any time to grieve. They whip us from tragedy to tragedy so quickly that our only respite is when our doom scrolling is suddenly interrupted by an advertisement we are not allowed to skip, and we are then fed the answer to our overwhelmed hearts – a new and improved vacuum cleaner; a tastier chicken pot pie; a faster car.
I was struck by an ad at my local bus stop one Christmas, which sported a photo of a dark neighbourhood with small, glowing lamps scattered here and there. Then, in bold display front and centre was a tall, glowing bottle of beer. “The Brightest Light”, the caption read.
Indeed, there are many corporations which would love for you to think that the brightest light we can turn to in times of uncertainty or grief is their product. Which is precisely why fostering the light of peace requires that we allow ourselves to rage against and grieve for the injustice and cruelty in our lives and our world, as this as much as anything wards off the temptation to close ourselves tight and turn away from the alleluia pushing its way to the surface.
From this root of strength, then – with open eyes and vulnerable hearts, we take the next step. A walking with – a taking of the hands of someone who is afraid, perhaps in danger, or perhaps someone who’s path you might not otherwise cross.
I may not have known what to say when a Palestinian farmer was shot at by Israeli settlers when he went to harvest his grapes. But I could, and I did, join him and his family in the vineyard so that the settlers were less likely to attack.
I could not stop the tank shells from bombarding the neighbourhood of my friend, Nisreen, but I could, and I did stay overnight with her and her family weekly, and share in their sleepless nights huddled in the only safe corner of the home.
These were small things, and in the face of such a magnitude of violence, they often felt petty and useless. And yet, ever since I left Palestine to return to a life in Canada, there has been one particular image that has stuck with me; one thing I was told that echoes in my heart to this day.
In September 2002, the last time I was in Hebron, I spent many mornings walking young Palestinian children to school, Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers who sometimes harassed or attacked them. One morning, a Palestinian social worker who tried to help the children through their fear and trauma was telling my teammates and I how she helped the children have courage in the face of all the injustice and violence they lived with. Of all the techniques she spoke of, and of all the lessons she taught the children – one piece of advice forms, I believe, the cornerstone of God’s reign of peace.
“I tell the children to walk with one another – never alone”, she said. “And when confronted by a soldier or a settler, to say to themselves, ‘I am strong. I am holding the hand of a friend’”.
An act of strength. Holding the hand of a friend. A starting place for justice. Holding the hand of a friend. Not the great armies of the earth, not the powerful weapons of mass destruction, or mass deception, not the heavy threats of revenge or retaliation which seek to bully an enemy into submission – but the simple act of accompanying a person in their fear and vulnerability.
Most of us have likely heard about the “Butterfly effect” – that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world affects the weather patterns in another. People often think that only significant actions have significant consequences. But nothing is further from the truth. Even the most seemingly insignificant action has unknowable effect. The future is open, and is infinitely sensitive to every move we make.
And the light begins to break forth – the gift of peace is held out for us to open –
Lest we forget, we remember.