Being Complete with War Itself

 The Unfulfilled Longing for Peace

I invite you to take a journey with me today.  I want to explore the experience of completion and how this phenomenon could be applied to war. The longing for peace is so deep in human beings and yet, despite ourselves, we revert to armed conflict again and again to try to solve problems with others.  Our cherished visions of peace recede and never seem to come to pass.   Why is peace so seemingly impossible to achieve? What gets in the way? 

The Experience of Completion

Recently I was reviewing relationships in my life that have healed after long discord.  I call this state of being at peace with someone being complete.  When I am complete a quiet space opens.   After a time I find myself creating a new way of being with that person I disliked before.  It amazes me.

 I use the word complete in a special way here.  When I look at a particular relationship or conflict,  I ask myself if there is anything left to say.  Do I still want to argue, defend, criticize, mourn, condemn?  If I feel at peace, I know I am complete. I once heard this described as having “no wood left to burn.”

Fascination with the Holocaust is Never Over

Over the holidays many new movies appeared with Holocaust themes.  Filmmakers apparently love to mine the Holocaust, especially when Oscar season is coming.  It is as if this last good war and its horrors is still alive, even though it ended sixty years ago.  Many people also see echoes of that war in the endless cycling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What if We Chose to Get Complete with the WWII?

I began this blog in April 2008 by suggesting that we could choose to end war, if and when we decided we didn’t want it anymore.  I wrote about the payoffs as well as the huge and terrible costs of war and then raised the question, what do we really want?  I now think it would be possible for humans to be complete with war if we were willing to be complete with specific wars, and, if we were willing to do the work required to get complete with those wars. 

What would it be like if everything possible had been said and expressed about World War II and the Holocaust?  What if there were no more mourning to be done, no one left to condemn, if all the wrongdoers had been brought to account?  What if everything that could be said had been said, by every person alive?  What would that open up or make possible? What would be there?  Space —and silence.

All the Wars and Genocides Must be Completed for Peace to Emerge

Ah, but we are not done yet.  There are other wars and genocides left to mourn: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, conflicts in Colombia and in Darfur, Congo and Liberia.  People disappeared, tortured, slain, massacred. Bosnia, Srebenica, Armenians in Turkey, El Salvador, Rwanda, Guatemala.   What if every war and conflict of the past century had been completely mourned? All losses settled. All wrongdoers brought to account. All the schools, homes, temples, churches and mosques had been rebuilt.   All the memorials to the slain had been raised.  All the tears had been cried.

After Completion–Spaciousness Arises and New Possibility

Does humankind want to do the kind of work it would take to be complete?  If not, we are in for very dark times and possibly the end of human beings on this planet.  But if we choose to heal it, all of it?  What then?

Silence, stillness, like a field of newly fallen snow by moonlight, all the pains and suffering of the world assuaged, blanketed in snow—this would remain.   Come let us sit for awhile in this emptiness, breathing together.  After awhile questions may arise: What now? What might we imagine for our planet, our children and future generations?  What kind of world could we build together? What, in our deepest hearts, do we truly want?

We could begin now.

 If you have thoughts or a response to this blog, please leave a comment.