Learning How to Live: Seeking Peace through Literature in Times of Violence and War
(from 2007)
Lesson, Again
In the silence after new tragedy, I turn
my ear to the green world that is always
somehow just spring, just what we need
to hear when all harmony has gone.
The toads’ trill-songs line the waterways,
bluebells give color-arias to the sun,
sound of shad breaking the wet surface
where even the branches that drag
in currents have something to say.
We are offered a way back, a way
in to all that beckons and blooms, all
that goes on in some symphony
of budding and buzzing and blue.
Elsewhere, children are buried
to the solemnity of drumbeats
deep in our blood. We know how
to mourn. We must learn
how to live.
-- Colleen Webster
Poet Colleen Webster articulates the challenge of the times in the final line of her poem, “Lesson , Again”. We must learn how to live in the midst of the current war on terror and the seemingly endless string of violent and tragic national and international events.
In the days following the April, 2007 massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, Webster wrote “Lesson, Again” and went on trying to do the things she can do to find peace in these troubled times.
“I went out in to the green and blue and blooming,” Webster recalls. “I led a wildflower walk, went on a birding walk, went kayaking, walked my dog each morning around the tip of the Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna River.”
Webster, a writer, poet, and college writing teacher living in Havre de Grace, Maryland, has avoided mainstream media coverage of world events for the past seventeen years “I watch no TV, hear no commercial radio, and read the paper once a week,” Webster explains. “I am on a journalism diet, because bad things have always happened, but only recent technology gives us all these things at once, in living blaring color. My soul cannot take that. I acknowledge the losses and try to add to the gains.”
Since the Vietnam War exploded into living rooms on television screens in the 1960s, our daily existence has been fraught with images of war, tragedy, and terror. Recent history is marred by acts of violence and war. Daily, we are bombarded with images of combat – not only from the world’s battlefields, but from our own schools and workplaces. Oklahoma City. Columbine. September 11th. The War in Iraq. Virginia Tech. The daily paper and the nightly news are filled with constant reminders of these human atrocities.
For many young Americans, violence has been the most prevalent message shaping their realities. These violent world events act, in effect, as emotional landmarks along the way -- wounds on a collective psyche that may never have an opportunity to truly heal.
So, while we go on mourning, we must also learn how to live another way.
While high school history courses -- and often the nightly news -- tend to view the world through the chronological study of wars, battles, and other violent episodes, we need to begin to see the world from a viewpoint of peace.
Not everyone has gone on a full blown media diet like Colleen Webster. But many people do actively seek more peaceful lives. Many look for ways to find more calm and stillness in their daily routine. And many seek ways to counter the bad news with good.
Yoga, prayer, walking, hiking, bicycling – these are a few of the activities people choose to try to counter the negative emotions of 21st century life. Reading, too, is a good way to bring more peace into our lives. Reading offers an opportunity to tune out the noise of the news and the television and seek a more peaceful existence. Reading offers the chance to reflect, to look more deeply, and, ultimately, to begin to explore new ways to view the world. And maybe best of all, reading offers a temporary respite from the breakneck pace of the modern world. Reading offers a chance to sit. To be quiet. To be still.
Some readers seek peace by reading about it in a very direct way. Thousands of books explore the question and the possibility of peace in the world. Some are historical accounts of the peace movement. Others are direct calls for an end to war and violence. From Plato to Dr. Phil, philosophers, writers, and self help experts through the ages have offered ideas of how to achieve peace – whether as a nation or in our marriages and families.
Other readers counter violence through books that offer a more direct, personal peace. Essays, stories, and poetry have the power to settle the mind, calm the body, and generate a peaceful feeling. Simply reading a writer’s description of our natural surroundings, or a poet’s observation of the ordinary moments in our lives can move a reader toward feeling more peaceful, more at ease.
Ultimately, the combination of avoiding the negative images of the media and, at the same time, appreciating what is simple and peaceful about our modern existence seems like the perfect formula to achieve more peace in our lives. No CNN. No Internet Explorer. Just the simple act of taking the time to sit and read.
One of the most popular first steps in the exploration of “peace literature” – that which speaks directly to the possibility of achieving of peace in our lives -- is Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic, Being Peace.
Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk who was actively involved in aiding victims of the Vietnam War by helping to communicate their desire for peace. In the early 1980s, Nhat Hanh “…became aware of the tremendous interest in Buddhist meditation among Americans and he agreed to lead retreats on Buddhism and peace work,” writes Arnold Kotler in the preface to Being Peace. “Because of his experience with the war and his willingness to face the realities of our time [Nhat Hanh’s] teachings are also about suffering, reconciliation, and peace.”
Being Peace, then, is actually a collection of talks that Nhat Hanh gave to peace workers and students during the Fall of 1985. Nhat Hanh recognizes that the world we live in is filled with violent and often disturbing images. But he also knows there is hope. “Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby,” Nhat Hanh writes in the book’s first chapter. “To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time.”
He goes on to offer some practical advice. “If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love…If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.”
Ultimately, according to Nhat Hanh, it comes down to our ability to smile. “Smiling is very important,” he writes. “If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace. If a child smiles, if an adult smiles, that is very important. If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.”
***
Few American writers have written as extensively about war, peace, and modern life in America as Wendell Berry. Berry is an essayist, poet, novelist, and farmer. His numerous books and essays include The Unsettling of America, The Unforeseen Wilderness, and What Are People For?. In the months following September 11th, Berry wrote “Thoughts In the Presence of Fear”, which was published in Autumn, 2001 edition of Orion magazine. Then, in 2003, Berry wrote “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy” – a scathing response to the establishment of Patriot Act by the Bush Administration.
Berry’s book, A Continuous Harmony, is a collection of essays expressing Berry’s hopes for a harmonious world. Published in 1972, A Continuous Harmony includes essays on a variety of topics including conflict resolution, consumerism, and poetry and nature.
“The political condition in this country now is one in which the means or the disciplines necessary to the achievement of professed ends have been devalued or corrupted or abandoned altogether, Berry writes in “Discipline and Hope” in A Continuous Harmony. “We are offered peace without forbearance or tolerance or love…comfort without responsibility, abundance without thrift. We are asked repeatedly by our elected officials to console ourselves with that most degenerate of political arguments: though we are not doing as well as we might, we could do worse, and we are doing better than some.”
According to Berry scholar Daniel Silliman, Berry’s writing suggests a new way of seeing the world. “Wendell Berry, seeking to escape the logic of violence, seeking to ‘practice resurrection,’ starts with humility,” says Silliman. “The feeling of reading Berry is one of quietness. He is a man frightened by the reality of apocalypse, frightened by the human abuse of the world, by the solutions set out to solve past solutions that are tipping our lives and our world off-kilter, sending them spinning and banging into self-destruction, and yet he speaks softly, calmly.”
In “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear”, Berry makes his point that war rarely results in peace. “In a time such as this, when we have been seriously and most cruelly hurt by those who hate us, and when we must consider ourselves to be gravely threatened by those same people, it is hard to speak of the ways of peace and to remember that Christ enjoined us to love our enemies, but this is no less necessary for being difficult,” Berry writes. “The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual ‘war to end war?’”
In the same essay, Berry offers his opinion that we, as a society, have ignored the great peacemakers throughout history. “What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being,” Berry writes. “We should recognize that while we have extravagantly subsidized the means of war, we have almost totally neglected the ways of peaceableness. We have, for example, several national military academies, but not one peace academy. We have ignored the teachings and the examples of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other peaceable leaders. And here we have an inescapable duty to notice also that war is profitable, whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free, make no money.”
***
Writer and activist Terry Tempest Williams writes and lectures on issues of social justice, human rights, and the need to protect our environment. Her book Refuge documents her family’s experience living as “down-winders” near the United States atomic bomb test site in the deserts of Utah. While she writes and speaks out extensively on human suffering and tragedy, she manages to do so through a lens of human hope and an unwavering appreciation of beauty.
Williams’ 2004 book, The Open Space of Democracy, is a collection of three essays that were originally published in Orion magazine. The essays “Commencement,” “Ground Truthing,” and “Engagement,” track Williams’ personal and political journey in the months following the start of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq .
Carl Pope, Executive Director of The Sierra Club, sums up the tone of The Open Space of Democracy in his dust jacket blurb for the book. “In a time of despair Terry Tempest Williams offers us hope,” Pope writes. “In a season of confrontation she provides connection. Against the passions of war she wields peace.”
Few contemporary writers seem as committed to peace as Terry Tempest Williams. And she’s not interested in standing around waiting for peace to happen. In “Ground Truthing”, the centerpiece essay in The Open Space of Democracy, Williams explores the literal and figurative meaning of ground truthing.
Williams seems especially interested in the ground truthing she defines as “walking the ground to see for oneself if what one has been told is true.” And, along the way, she treats her readers to a sense of peace and calm. “Dwarf firewood creates flames of fuchsia on the riverbank,” Williams writes. “A soft gray ceiling of clouds brushes over our heads. I keep turning around to feel the embrace of these sweeping valleys. First thoughts: Never have I felt so safe. No development. No Distractions. Nothing to break my heart. I was not prepared for this uninterrupted peace.”
But that sense of peace is admittedly rare for Williams – and for anyone paying attention to the news and caring about world events these days. After a series of questionable decisions by the U.S. government that would surely have negative impacts on our country’s natural resources, Williams was momentarily thrown off track. But, as always, she finds her way back. And it is in her writing, that readers find lessons on how to live.
“It is difficult to find peace,” Williams writes in the opening essay, “Commencement”. “I am torn between my anger and my empathy. And then I go for a walk. My balance returns. I calm down, breathe, and allow for deep listening to occur.”
As it turns out, Williams eventually manages to find comfort in the words and presence of none other than Thich Nhat Hanh who happened to be in Washington D.C. to address Congress on the second anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
“Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of the problem if consumption, the need to live more simply, that our extravagant lifestyle in America is its own form of violence on the planet,” Williams writes, recalling his words in the Notes section near the end of The Open Space of Democracy. “‘Dear friends, please take care of yourself if you want to protect the environment. The very well-being of the planet depends on the way you handle your body, your feelings, your perceptions, and your consciousness…if you cannot deal with the problem of consumption, and the problem of pollution and violence within you, how can you deal with problems of consumption and pollution and violence outside of you in nature?’”
***
American poet Mary Oliver is renowned for her poetry’s evocative imagery. Her writing can simultaneously stir souls and still racing hearts. Oliver has won numerous awards including The Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award. All the while, she has maintained a quiet and peaceful life herself – choosing not to participate in the celebrity and over-promotion that is often bestowed on award-winning writers.
Oliver is known for her clear yet elegant descriptions of the natural world. Her poetry brings nature into clear focus and transforms the everyday world into a place of wonder and discovery.
Oliver’s love for nature, so vital and integral to her poetry, began with her childhood in Ohio. In a rare1992 interview with Stephen Ratiner, Oliver reflected on the place nature has had in her life and work. “I grew up in a small town in Ohio,” Oliver said. “… It was pastoral, it was nice, it was an extended family. I don't know why I felt such affinity with the natural world except that it was available to me. That's the first thing. It was right there. And for whatever reasons, I felt those first important connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather than with the social world. I think…the first way you take meaning from the physicality of the world, from your environment, probably never leaves you.”
Why I Wake Early is a collection of poems about trout, lilies, crickets, toads, and, along the way, living in happiness. Oliver’s point in this collection of poems seems to be simple and clear: everyday we can find a million reasons to wake early and enjoy the natural world around us.
"Mary Oliver's poetry is an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization," the Harvard Review wrote. "For too much flurry and inattention, and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making."
In this excerpt from her poem, “The World” from Why I Wake Early, Oliver call on us to slow down – to take the time to listen to what nature has to offer. “And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music out of their leaves./And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and beautiful silence/as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too hurried to hear it.”
***
David Budbill’s collection of poems, Moment to Moment is filled with images and insights that offer readers peaceful -- and often delightful – experiences. As the title suggests, Moment to Moment is a study of the small events in our lives that, added together, make up our existence. Budbill recognizes the need for slowing down in today’s harried society.
He celebrates the pleasure of stillness in this excerpt from “A Stillness, Absolute, Profound” from Moment to Moment. “I have known a stillness, absolute, profound,/so deep/this pen across the paper makes a racket./I have known a solitude and stillness so profound/that my own breath/is the only evidence there is any life around.”
Budbill has written seven books of poems, several plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and the libretto for an opera. He is a former commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
Born in Ohio in 1940, Budbill’s body of work includes the occasional protest poem. He also plays with a musical group whose most recent CD is called “Songs for a Suffering World: A Prayer for Peace, A Protest Against War”.
Budbll’s most recent collection of poetry is While We’ve Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). According to Budbill’s website (www.davidbudbill.com), “The poems in While We've Still Got Feet grow out of the peace of a mountain wilderness home, the pleasures of daily life, and an acute awareness of the melancholy passing of time as the days turn through the seasons.”
Budbill seems fascinated with life’s opposites. Comfort and pain, Love and hate, peace and war, -- these are themes that permeate his writing. Describing the poems in While We’ve Still got Feet, Budbill’s website highlights this fascination. “Beneath the surface of these simple poems is a wealth of meaning and passion. As before, David Budbill deal[s] with opposites: solitude and loneliness, contentment and restlessness, the allures of the city versus the country and the ever present tension between the desire for engagement with the world on the one hand and withdrawal from it on the other. There is no resolution for the conundrums and dichotomies of this life, but rather the comfort that comes from a clear articulation between life's opposites.”
Budbill admits that he writes with peace in mind. “Of course I do,” he wrote recently in an e-mail. “For my own personal peace and for the peace of the world. Yes. Definitely.” But he is not so sure that reading peaceful poetry can counter the steady dose of violent images we see everyday in the papers and on the news. “I don't know,” Budbill writes. “Maybe. I would like to believe that's true.”
He addresses the state of the world directly in this excerpt from his poem “The Sixth of January” from Moment To Moment. “I am sitting in the blue chair listening to this stillness./The only sounds: the occasional gurgle of tea/coming out of the pot and into the cup./How can this be?/Such Calm, such peace, such solitude/in this world of woe.”
***
So, these writers – and countless other like them – offer readers peace. Tich Nhat Nahn offers his peaceful instructions. Wendell Berry shares his moral insights and lectures. Terry Tempest Williams articulates her passionate activism. And poets like Oliver and Budbill create their moods of calm and stillness.
In a variety of ways, and with a variety of styles, these writers invite readers to sit – to achieve momentary stillness – and enjoy a slower pace. These texts encourage the reader to create images that can bring a sense of order and calm to their lives. This writing asks readers to view the world – even just temporarily -- through an alternative, peaceful lens.
Laurie Lane-Zucker, Executive Director of the Orion Society, writing in the introduction to The Open Space of Democracy captures not only the essence of Terry Tempest Williams’ specific message but, more generally, the vital and potentially soothing nature of the written word in times of war and violence.
“We need new leadership and a new process by which to engage with each other, our communities and the rest of the world – human and more-than-human,” Lane-Zucker writes. “We need a new commencement, a new gathering place. We need to ground-truth old truths. We need to spread democracy, especially in our own hearts and lives. We need to inhabit change more compassionately. And we need to heed the sage advice of those who, like Emerson, Whitman, and Carson, hold a close correspondence with the American oversoul.”
Or, as Colleen Webster suggests, we need to learn from the lessons the world offers. We need to actively seek peace in our lives.
We need to learn, again, how to live.
(Originally published in The Lancaster Literary Guild’s journal, Rapportage. July, 2007)
What’s on your Peace Shelf?
A list of peace titles:
Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh
While We’ve Still Got Feet by David Budbill
Moment to Moment by David Budbill
The Open Space of Democracy by Terry Tempest Williams
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
A Continuous Harmony by Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry
Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
White Pine by Mary Oliver
The Leaf and The Cloud by Mary Oliver
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The Dawn Collector: On My Way to the Natural World by Reg Saner
Sick of Nature by David Gessner
Leaping by Brian Doyle
Rose by Li-Young Lee
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Reason for Hope by Jane Goodall
Small Wonders by Barbara Kingsolver
The Necessity of Empty Places by Paul Gruchow
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Poets Against the War edited by Sam Hamill