Pam Y. Fields

I was anguishing about the state of this world and how there is chaos and violence everywhere you look. I wished there was more that I could do. While I know that relationship building, reconciliation and peace making are crucial, they sometimes don’t feel like enough. Visible Unity had a Weekend for Peace recently that brought together diverse people to pray, sing, view and discuss film clips around racism and integrate a worship service. A song came to me and our diverse group of peace minded people joined together at a police station and prayed for peace and sang the lyrics of the song – ‘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

With God as our Father, Brothers all are we

Let me walk with my brother, In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me, Let this be the moment now

With ev’ry step I take, Let this be my solemn vow

To take each moment and live, Each moment in peace eternally

Let there be peace on earth, And let it begin with me

The peace that was meant to be, living in perfect harmony, and beginning with each one of us, should give us pause.  Not long after this, one of the board members of Visible Unity, Inc. sent me a link to a commentary on John 15:12-13 – ‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. The commentator suggests four things from this passage. The Obligation, the Sufficiency, the Pattern, and the Motive of Christian love. (http://biblehub.com/commentaries/john/15-12.htm)

The Obligation – cherishing a kindly and loving regard to all others; such an attitude is the only fitting expression of the mutual relation of Christians, through their common relation to Jesus; However unlike any two Christian people are to each other in character, in culture, in circumstances, the bond that knits those who have the same relations to Jesus Christ one to another is far deeper, far more real, and ought to be far closer, than the bond that knits either of them to the men or women to whom they are likest in all these other respects.

I like this focus on the obligation of Christians because I feel if we can get this right, then we will have a head start in loving non-Christians. I also like this because I think Christians may be lagging more so than other faiths in loving their brothers and sisters. In Christ, we are all one family.

The Sufficiency – Love will soften the tones, will instinctively teach what we ought to be and do; will take the bitterness out of opposition and diversity, will make even rebuke, when needful, only a form of expressing itself. The ‘one thing needful’ was that they should be knit together as true participators of His life. Love was sufficient as their law and as their guide.

Love is sufficient. What else is there to say?

The Pattern – Now He says, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ There stand the three, as it were, the Father, the Son, the disciple. The Son in the midst receives and transmits the Father’s love to the disciple, and the disciple is to love his fellows, in some deep and august sense, as the Father loved the Son. Christ’s love nailed Him to the Cross, and led Him down from the throne, and shut for a time the gates of the glory behind Him. And He says, ‘That is your pattern!’ ‘If He had never died for His enemies’ says one of the old fathers, ‘He would never have possessed His friends.’ The way by which we are to meet even alienation and hostility is by pouring upon it the treasures of an unselfish, self-sacrificing affection which will conquer at the last.

Enemies are future friends when love is involved and seeks relationship. Christians, we have our model. Turn to Christ’s love and allow it to infuse you that you feel compelled, obligated and equipped to love others.

The Motive – The novelty of Christian morality lies here, that in its law there is a self-fulfilling force. We have not to look to one place for the knowledge of our duty, and somewhere else for the strength to do it, but both are given to us in the one thing, the gift of the dying Christ and His immortal love. And so, brethren, if we would know the blessedness and the sweetness of victory over these miserable, selfish hearts of ours, and to walk in the liberty of love, we can only get it by keeping close to Jesus Christ.

From this passage, we should be motivated to reach out in love to all of our brothers and sisters. LOVE IS THE WAY TO RECONCILIATION!!!  LOVE IS THE WAY TO RELATIONSHIP BUILDING!!!  LOVE IS THE WAY TO PEACE!!!  If you have the desire but are unsure of how, please contact me. I will be happy to discuss with you possible avenues of reaching out to those different from you.

This past weekend Visible Unity, Inc. declared a ‘Weekend for Peace.’

Friday evening was ‘Prayers for Peace’ where we met at the Southwest Dallas Police Substation and engaged in prayer, singing and talking.  Seeking to be fortified as we begin or continue in the work of bringing peace into our spheres of influence.

Saturday afternoon we gathered at the Meadows Conference Center for the I/Eye Perspective.  We watched film clips from the movie, ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ and a clip of the self-introduction of ‘Tim Wise.’  We watched these clips with our eyes (Eye Perspective) and then had excellent discussion about race from each of our own personal perspectives (I).

Sunday morning (the most segregated hour) was the Integrated Hour of Worship, where a diverse group attended services at First United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas, Dr. Andy Stoker pastor.

We are in a war.  Yes, a war is going on in our country.  And with all wars people tend to forget that the enemy is also human and has family and friends who love them and who has hopes and dreams for the future.  People also tend to focus on destroying the other.  There is no desire to try and come together and talk things over.  Hate is the focus, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to kill.  Lastly, people tend to believe all the propaganda about the other side.  That they are not human, good or worthy.  They are a bane to society and so on.  This provides the ammunition needed to keep the war going.  It helps people to believe they are doing the right thing, the good and necessary thing.

In his sermon, Dr. Stoker remarked that we have a tendency to turn practice into truth.  I would add that in the history of the US, there has been a practice of devaluing people of color and this practice has turned into a truth.  A truth that has to be dismantled.  A truth that is founded upon ignorance and mainly, fear.  James Baldwin, when talking about the nature of the rage between Black and White, said that, ‘The root of the black man’s hatred is rage.  Blacks don’t hate whites.  It’s more rage; they just want them out of their way and more importantly, out of their children’s way.  The root of the white man’s hatred is terror.  A bottomless, unnameless terror which focuses on this dread figure and entity which lives only in his mind.’

The way past this terror and this unfounded truth is through relationships, relationships across cultures and divides, relationships across gender and economic divides, relationships across faiths.  Visible Unity can help you with this.  Contact us and join us in peace-building and relationship building.