My family and I have been dealing with the impact of a sudden tragic death of a young person. We’ve been grieving, telling friends, organising the funeral service and burial and, most of all, supporting one another. Friends and family, people we knew and people we didn’t know, gathered from far and wide to join us in mourning and commemorating this young life.
The priest at Peter’s requiem mass drew our attention to the challenge of world peace, and I found myself recalling the refrain of an old song: ‘Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.’ I looked it up: it’s by Jill Jackson and Mark Miller and dates from around 1955. I’m pretty sure that I first heard it sung by Tom Paxton in 2000 at the Imagine Peace festival in Amenia, New York.
I think it makes sense: after all, where else can I have any influence on the beginnings of peace, if not in my own life?
My friend Eric, at college, long ago, was determined to make a difference to society, determined to make a difference in the world. He worked ceaselessly in the University’s volunteer groups, proving food for people in homeless shelters, visiting prisons and helping to redecorate senior citizens’ homes. The old ladies and gentlemen loved him; so did the people with developmental disabilities at the sheltered workshop. I went to Eric’s home with him one Easter vacation and was shocked to hear the cruel way he constantly teased his younger brother and sister, ragging them about the size of their ears and feet and refusing to share food or sports equipment with them. It was long established habitual behaviour, and he was totally unconscious of how it contrasted with his public persona.
Just this summer, at a children’s party, I reprimanded a boy for jumping on top of a little girl in a bouncy castle. As I comforted the weeping child, the boy was genuinely astonished that I should find this unacceptable: ‘It doesn’t matter," he said: "She’s my sister." He thought it was acceptable to hurt a smaller child because she was his sibling.
It’s not just peace that can begin with me; it’s love, compassion and generosity. And they need to begin within my own family and close circle of friends. What use is it to shine a light in the wider world if we don’t shine it on the people close to us in our everyday lives? How can we possibly influence the spread of those positive qualities in the world if we don’t practice them at the very root of our own lives?
What we do as individuals matters. It matters on many planes, not least on the plane of our own personal development.
During a recent conversation about the need to preserve one of our most precious commodities, I suggested to one of the proponents of saving water that she could make a contribution by showering every other day instead of daily: ‘Oh no,’ came the horrified reply ’I need to have a shower every day.’
Yes, we need to cut down on oil consumption, but I can’t possibly take the bus to work; I have to drive out to the farm for my organic vegetables; what I do is a) sacrosanct and b) really doesn’t make any difference.
It doesn’t matter if I treat my sister unkindly, after all she’s only my sister; it doesn’t matter if I sneer at my parents, they’re only my parents; it doesn’t matter if I kick the cat, it’s only a cat.
It does matter. It matters to the object of my unkindness, it matters to the world, it matters because life may be short, and most of all it matters because it makes a difference to who I am.
Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me. Let there be love, generosity, kindness, compassion and care for the environment on Earth, and let them all begin with me – where else? Where else on Earth can I possibly make a start?
