Into the Unknown

By Donald Phillipps in All Sorts

where are the visionaries for peace to be found?

INTO THE UNKNOWN
I read an article the other day on the subject of genius. The writer believed the word was being totally over-used, and that „genius‟ was too easily ascribed to merely talented people. He illustrated his point by recounting the five or six occasions when he has talked at length with Nobel Prize winners. He found them generally dull and uninteresting people - he had hoped for insight or inspiration, and there was none.
He quoted the words of a famous philosopher, who had offered a way of distinguishing between the two ideas of genius and talent. "Talent is like the marksman who hits a target, which others cannot reach. Genius is like the marksman who hits a target, which others cannot see." I think this an inspired piece of wisdom, and in such dark days as these in the international arena, we desperately need those who are able to pierce the darkness.
Here‟s another, and for me, strikingly relevant quotation - and many of you who read it will remember the words. They were used by King George VI in his 1939 Christmas message - not long after the outbreak of war, when a long darkness had fallen over Europe and the whole world. What may surprise you is to learn that the author, Minnie Louise Haskins, was a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics - a secular institution if ever there were one.
„And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."‟
I don‟t intend dwelling solely on the horrific situation in Syria. Dreadful though it is there, other places in the world have their own hosts of people who are hurting. We do nothing to solve these hurts by invoking the power of darkness. Remember President Bush‟s notorious phrase - „the axis of evil‟. It eventually came to cover a whole series of countries, like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and so on. As if the world could be rationally divided into places of light and places of darkness.
Always in the mind of the fundamentalist is the tendency to see things sharply differentiated in black and white. The blackness is to be destroyed - worse still, to be overcome by weapons of mass destruction - which, almost by definition kill and maim the innocent. It is arrant hypocrisy to claim that such means are ever justified
One of Colin‟s inspired hymns has the title Tree of Peace. Listen to its first verse again:
Where shall be found that holy ground
where we may plant the tree of peace, strong to survive through fire and storm: where shall such peace be born? The second verse begins with three key words that define the meaning of peace:
„Our common theme....‟ Surely peace is the common desire of all people! Do we assume that Bashar Hafez al-Assad the President of Syria, has no desire for peace at all. That the same is to be said for Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. How do we find the way to dialogue, rather than threaten, such world leaders. Grave promises of retaliation made on the public stage may simply suit the national interests of leaders who feel they must remind the world of their
greatness. At the height of the Cold War the ageing Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, paid a visit to President Eisenhower, in the hope of convincing him to open face-to-face negotiations with Soviet Russia, rather than threaten the use of nuclear missiles. Churchill used a phrase at a private luncheon that has gone down in history - it was to the effect that, "To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war."
The writer of that article on „genius‟ to which I referred regarded Churchill as one of the very few people of genius among politicians. Some of you may be surprised at this. But if ever there were a time when we need politicians with a touch of genius it is now. In this increasingly complex and constricted world they are the ones who must lead us into dark places with an equal measure of confidence and humility.
The piece that the King used in his speech still echoes in our hearts and minds. Maybe we think of Jesus of Nazareth as the one standing at the gate of the years. Certainly he is the one who has overcome the last enemy, time itself. Certainly, too, he is the one who first ventured into the darkness of death, and was not lost.
But peace is not so grand a thing that we have to leave it to world leaders. It starts here:
Here is the place where, by God‟s grace, we in our time must plant Christ‟s peace, deep in our hearts and minds and souls, making the dream come true.
Donald Phillipps