Only a few, short days ago a man of Afro-American descent was elected as the next President of the United States. This is right up there with other events nobody truly expected to happen such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. So, when he gave his Grant Park speech in Chicago in the style of a black preacher, with the refrain “Yes, we can” being echoed back by the gathering, I believed it. We believed it. Kenyans declared a national holiday. People around the world believed that anything was possible. We were witnessing the impossible happening before our eyes. Our hearts opened to something we didn’t even know we were missing until it was staring us in the face, stirring our passions, igniting our imaginations to new possibilities. The world became reacquainted with hope.

 

We keep hope hidden away in the deep recesses of our psyches until we perceive that it is safe enough to let it come out. It’s like oxygen for our soul. We cannot live without it, but we are afraid to breathe too deeply of it. It can hurt to breathe too deeply. Then, every once in awhile somebody comes along and is willing to embody hope on behalf of humanity: JFK; Martin Luther King; Rachel Carson; Dian Fossey; Julia Butterfly Hill; Nelson Mandela; Bishop Tutu; and now Barack Obama. The lungs of our heart open; tears flow. Hope, the exiled virtue, returns home.

 

Dare we hope for peace in the same way? Will we join in the refrain of the world: “Yes, we can!” when it comes to putting flesh on hope as the presence of peace in the world? It is important to be able to distinguish between the election of Barack Obama as a symbol of collective hope and Barack Obama, the man – a distinction not lost on him. What got him elected is, for me, the real source of hope – a grassroots citizen movement of 10’s of millions of people, the likes of which has never been seen before in the history of American elections, with a singular intention to realize a common goal.

 

Young, disenfranchised men and women finally found a reason finally to get involved in civic society – to knock on doors, make telephone calls, be a presence at the polling stations. The mobilization of citizens with common purpose, believing that all things are possible, is the true source of hope. Barack Obama possessed the skills, the frame of mind, and the inclination to realize that the miracle couldn’t happen without the people – that is his genius. He galvanized a vision of a better America. But the future will be determined, not by a single man, but by the ongoing commitment of those millions of people, in the U.S., in Canada, and around the world, who are willing to believe that all things are possible. And this alone is the source of our hope for peace.

 

What if we brought the focus of the movement that got Obama elected to the cause of peace. Historically, our collective focus has been on war, not peace. In the late 19^th century, for the first time in history, the nations of the world created War Cabinets. The business of actually preparing for the possibility of war during peacetime was an unprecedented development in history. According to military historian, Jonathan Vance, this explains, in part, why the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne by a Serbian terrorist in 1914 triggered a chain of events that led to WW1. We were ready for it. The nations of Europe had been imagining war scenarios for a couple of decades by then. Diplomacy was no match for the momentum of war. Are we ready for peace? 

 

What might be possible if for the next hundred years we had a similar focused intention on peace?

 

Saul Arbess is the President of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative. He has been actively campaigning for a Department of Peace in Canada. The Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Hon. Doug Roche, former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and Chair, UN Disarmament Committee, are supporters of the initiative. They state, in a letter, that, “it would be timely to provide for greater balance, coordination and direction in peace and security policy by creating a Minister and Department of Peace, working closely with Foreign Affairs Canada, DND and civil society organizations.” They argue that Canada needs a “voice in Cabinet specifically responding to conflict by peaceful means and implementing a culture of peace at home and abroad.”

 

Such a department would:

1. Act as a sensor for the early detection and nonviolent intervention in areas of conflict before conflict escalates to violence

2. Serve as an incubator for creative responses and mitigation of violence


3. Develop the long range thinking required to deal with the root causes of violence


4. Implement UN treaties, covenants and declarations in concert with the Ambassador to the UN and the Ambassador for Disarmament

5. Increase Canada’s role in nuclear and general disarmament

 

Can we imagine a department dedicated full-time to balancing our instinct for preparing for war with the intention to prepare our nation for peace? Can we imagine a “voice in Cabinet specifically responding to conflict by peaceful means and implementing a culture of peace at home and abroad?”

 

Eighty years ago, The Rev. Colonel George Fallis, and those who built this sanctuary, dedicated it exclusively to the cause of peace. Colonel Fallis knew firsthand the ravages of war. He was a chaplain on the front lines of France in World War 1. He ministered to shell-shocked soldiers, he prayed with young men before they went over the wall, he was with them as they drew their last breath. You can perhaps imagine this morning that we are joined by the souls of those young men who were tended to by Reverend Fallis – call them Chappie’s Boys.  In a dimension, beyond our normal perceptual capacities, they are gathered with us. They are here out of respect for Colonel FAllis, and trying desperately to get a message to us that we must find alternatives to war. Perhaps you can imagine them joining their voices with those of the courageous young men whose names we recited earlier – casualties of war almost 100 years after they lost their lives. They are part of what St. Paul called the “great cloud of witnesses” that gather with us when we open to the spirit of Jesus Christ. Listen to their voice, imploring us to overcome the habit of war. Is it possible?

 

Anything is possible. There is a deeper wisdom, a sacred wisdom we can draw from. It’s older than human civilization. The Bible personifies this wisdom as feminine. This was an intentional metaphor, intended to subvert the conventional male wisdom that the ways of war are inevitable, and that the fundamental nature of human beings is violent. Yes, there is a part of us that is on a hair trigger – always ready to fight. We needed that part of us in our evolutionary development. There are times, sadly, still today when we must be ready to defend ourselves. And thank God for those who were willing, when we ran out of alternatives, to take up that defense. But to live by wisdom is to use what times of peace there in order to evolve a new humanity.

 

To love wisdom, our Scripture tells us, is to follow her laws. And the fundamental spiritual law of the universe, found in every religious tradition including our own, is that we are one with God and one with all of creation. Foolishness, according to the sacred wisdom tradition, is believing in separation. Fear causes us to contract from our essential nature, which causes us to lose this sense of oneness with others. We begin to see others as separate from us, other than us, and threatening to us. We divide the world up into “them” and “us”. We make plans to ensure that our tribe, our nation, our religion, our family will have the advantage. And if we prevail, we succeed in creating a disadvantaged enemy. And then, when the enemy plays their part in this game of separation – attacking us – we are confirmed in our perception that they are indeed a threat to our interests. And so it has gone, throughout history. And because it has gone this way, we believe that this is natural. It is not. From the perspective of Lady Wisdom, it is unnatural.

 

We are honoured this morning by the presence of the 15^th Field Regimen, who are here according to military protocol to guard the Books of Remembrance. It is an honourable task you undertake here this morning and we thank you. But I wonder if we would all consider the possibility of standing guard over another book. It is a book that a former member of our congregation, Melinda Munro, thought we should include among the other Books of Remembrance. This books pages, as of yet, are blank. Our job is to keep it that way. Its empty pages should be on display beside those pages that are filled with the names of the fallen. We should be as proud of those blank pages as we are of the names of our beloved fallen that fill the other Books of Remembrance. And we should be as willing to sacrifice our lives to guard these empty pages as the young men here today are willing to give their lives to defend our nation. Can we imagine what it might mean for us all to stand guard over that book - to do all that we can do to keep those virgin pages unstained by ink? Call it Wisdom’s Book of Peace.  

 

Everybody I’ve spoken with in the past few days has expressed concern for Barack Obama. Will he be able to live up to our expectations? Surely, we’ve set the bar too high. He will inevitably be cast from his pedestal. But if you listen to Obama, he takes a different perspective. The question that really matters is whether we will be able to live up to this renewed hope. And by extension, will we make peace a priority in our own lives, and learn to listen deeply and non-violently to each other? Will we find some way to help create the conditions on our planet that makes war obsolete? Will we let streams of justice flow like living waters? Will we practice compassion in our own families and with one another? Can we let our elected leaders know that if this once a year ritual to honour our fallen doesn’t translate into policy that helps us focus on peace, then it’s not truly honouring them? Can we find our way to sacred wisdom, to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace? Can we live up to this historical moment? That’s the question.

 

There is one among us who is sensitive to the presence of the lost souls of war. She wrote a prayer on their behalf.

 

We lived in dark and filth

and horror

But we had camaraderie

         and closeness and we saw the moment

where life is real and present and knowable.

Please find your way to this moment

Because that is the only place

       where war will end

and life will heal.

Pray for us. We are lost souls.

Hold us – no one did when we died.

      Hold us in this moment.

      Find your way to peace