Our Journey Home: Finding Peace Through Creativity

A few years ago I set myself a challenge. I had once taught a class called “Writing Peace into the World” and I decided that I would not teach this class again until I felt hope for peace in the world.

Anyone can find evidence for despair. I won’t enumerate here all the reasons we can become cynical about the future. It could be a long list.

So where do we look to make a different kind of list, the evidence of good will and harmonious future?

I found the answers I sought in a book. This particular book was a treasure trove, The Future of Peace: On the Front Lines with the World’s Great Peacemakers by Scott Hunt. This is a collection of interviews with the big names in peacemaking including the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, and even Jane Goodall.

What fascinated me was how all the great peacemakers clearly defined peace as more than the absence of violence. Suu Kyi talked about how peace is the freedom from fear. Not surprisingly the Dalai Lama said that “Peace is actually, I believe, an expression of compassion, a sense of caring.”

More importantly the overwhelming theme throughout the interviews was how we should endeavor to develop a peaceful mind, that doing so is more important than anything else we can do. We should not seek to change the world, but do our inner work. The great Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peacemaker Thich Quang Do said,

“The human heart contains a good seed. It is concealed deep within the heart. It is always there. When this concealed seed is realized, the whole world will be better. When you have peace in your mind, there will be peace in the world.”

Inspired by the powerful words and stories I read, I felt I could teach my workshop that uses writing to learn more about peace. It was not so much that I found the answer to world peace, but my heart had been opened to the possibility for hope.

An interesting sequence of events then followed. After teaching this workshop students asked that they continue to meet. This led to the formation of the Loft’s Peace and Social Justice Open Group and we continue to meet monthly to share our writing and discuss works by inspiring writers so that we can use our creative craft to promote peace and sustainable justice.

The philosopher Epictetus once said that one can immediately become a better person by finding and emulating worthy role models. Initially my role models began with people like the Dalai Lama. That has changed these last years thanks to the people I’ve met in the writing group and through our festival we organize called The Art of Peace. My new role models are every day people who, through their actions, give evidence for a hopeful future and include:

• Karla Gergen, a writing group member who has now left the US to teach young girls in Honduras for the next couple years.
• Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi-American from Minneapolis who is right now in Iraq promoting peace through his organization Muslim Peacemaker Teams.
• The people who form Nonviolent Peaceforce—headquartered in Minneapolis—which is an unarmed, international peacekeeping force composed of trained civilians who are saving lives in violent conflict areas around the world every day.
• Local writer Carol Pearce Bjorlie who through her writing, music, and teaching inspires students and writers to, as she exhorted in the May-June issue of A View from the Loft, “remove the mute” in behalf of peace.

You can find similar inspiration at the Loft on September 21, the International Day of Peace, when the Peace and Social Justice group presents its second Art of Peace festival. This year’s theme is “Our Journey Home: Finding Peace through Creativity.” The festival will present speakers Sami Rasouli and Carol Pearce Bjorlie, many workshops including one on nonviolent peacekeeping by members of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, a labyrinth you can walk on, performances and readings including The Voices for Peace chorus,Pangea World Theater, poet Todd Boss, and a rare art show bringing together American and Iraqi artists, all of which will demonstrate how to use your creativity in the service of peace.

Regularly updated information can be found at http://www.michaelkiesowmoore.com/artofpeace.html.

This article was printed in the September-October, 2008 issue of A View from the Loft.