Quakers have been practicing peace as a spiritual discipline since the 1650’s. Their well-worn path to peace begins in prayer and worship, leads to recognizing God in all people, includes practicing nonviolence, and endeavors to make love the guiding force in all they do. This path, which is available to everyone, celebrates life’s highest joys and witnesses life’s deepest tragedies amidst the beauty, uncertainty, and violence surrounding us. While practicing peace is not always easy, it is a spiritual discipline that expands love, generates hope, and satisfies our soul’s deep longing for peace.
Historically for Friends, the path to peace begins (like mine did) with the practice of meditation and prayer. Listening within changes our perspective on the world because when we open ourselves to a prayerful relationship with God, we are invited to view the world from God’s perspective. And through God’s eyes we see that poverty, violence, and war are not God’s choices for the world, but are willful, human decisions.
Over the centuries many people have experienced what educator John Yungblut describes as “an inescapable connection between contemplative prayer and motivation to engage in social reform. It is contemplative prayer that confirms the inseparable unity of all things. It is here that we discover we are not only our brother’s and our sister’s keeper, but that in some profound sense we are our brother and sister.” Recognizing our intrinsic oneness deepens our empathy and compassion for others, exposes acts of violence as self-violating, and reveals all wars as civil wars.
Because prayer involves trusting an unseen power and accepting unpredictable results, it is easy to doubt its power and efficacy. Sometimes on snowy evenings, when I am vigiling in prayer lines, and my feet hurt from standing on cold brick sidewalks, I find myself wondering if our witness is being noticed by passersby and whether our prayers are making a difference. Then I remember the many times I have been introduced as a Quaker and someone says: “Oh, were you one of those people who stood outside the square in prayer during the Viet Nam (or Panama or Gulf or Afghanistan or Iraq) war? It always renewed my hope to drive by and see you all standing there in witness!” I am then reminded again that in practicing peace through individual and collective meditations and prayers, we gently ruffle the cosmic waters of the world’s conscience, generating ripples that affect people’s lives in ways that we may never know and creating peaceful outcomes we cannot imagine.
Practicing Peace, Catherine Whitmire