Holidailies: Let There Be Peace On Earth

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be

In the year 1896, according to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel Peace Prize was established and stipulated that it be awarded to the person who:

“during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Hussein Obama today in Oslo, Norway on the 113th anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. Much has passed from that day to this and we continue to value the idea of peace, especially at this time of year.

With God as our Father
Brothers all are we
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony

Christmas often heralds messages of goodwill and unity and serenity. What drives us apart are often the very things that will bring us together—desire for cooperation, importance of individuality, value for democracy; it is interesting to me that Obama’s acceptance speech, then, included many references to the fact that " instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now
WIth every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow

Can I accept this paradox “O brawling love, o loving hate?” that strengthens and justifies the actions of the few to benefit the many? Is this slender olive branch extended tenuously across the breach a way to say that our actions are sanctified and right? Do we have the right to say that what we fight for is any more or less worthy than those “whose names [we] tender as dearly as [our] own?” and shall we, after all, “be satisfied”? Words that lack conscience, perhaps, since, without explanation, our actions do not reflect our truths.

And our truths have been thus: we play games of blame, we are masters of feelings of convenience, we lack empathy, unless we bear the brunt of the pain, we teach our children, unwittingly perhaps, that our family matters more than other families, and that as long as we work hard, keep our heads down and don’t rock the boat, all will be well.

Ours is a world of sickness—ill in the hearts of men who cannot look beyond the four walls of our personal castles, our pie in the sky dreams, and our delusions of grandeur. We suffer from closing out communities and shunning our neighbours. We suffer because we do not the direction in which to heal.

Once a year we take a moment to honour those who fought in war so that we may live in selfish peace. What of those who fight on? What of those who die in selfless war? There are no answers to my questions, I think. I, too am guilty, as we all are in our materialistic narcissism, but perhaps on this day, where one man is heralded as a harbinger of peace, a poor player whose accomplishments are yet to be realized and whose brief hour is still strutting and fretting upon the world's stage, I await to hear this tale, full of sound and fury, and hope that it does not signify nothing.

To take each moment and live
each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
and let it begin with me

And so it goes...