How to shape peace today

On International Day of Peace, Christine Schliesser counts today’s conflicts, deliberately imagines peace, and recalls an old song.

Christine Schliesser

Christine Schliesser lectures in Theology and Ethics at Zurich University, and is a scientific collaborator with the Center for Faith & Society at Fribourg University.

a dirt barricade blocks a cross roads, behind which stands a roadside cross

A crossroads in Ukraine.

Jonny Gios on Unsplash.

One in four. This is the number of people living in conflict-affected areas on this planet. A record 100 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Psychologists tell us that we can only process numbers in the two-digit realm in a meaningful way. Any number larger than that eclipses our capacities to attach a face, a story, an existence to that number. 100,000,000 is simply too large to picture. So imagine the entire UK population on the run, plus the population of Australia, plus that of Hongkong. In 2022, 16,988 civilians were killed in armed conflicts, which is a 53 per cent increase compared to the year before. And as you read these lines, there are 32 ongoing violent conflicts in the world, including drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflict, and civil wars.

Just as we are overwhelmed with trying to grasp the extent of violence, conflict and war, we are equally at loss with imagining peace. When in 1981 the United Nations General Assembly established the International Day of Peace (IDP), it was recognizing exactly this by emphasizing that “it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. Constructing, envisioning, imagining. The tough world of realpolitik, however, seems to leave no place for such kind of romantic games of mind. Helmut Schmidt, former chancellor of Germany, made no attempt to hide his scorn for the imaginary, “Let him who has visions consult a doctor”. This shows a remarkable misconception of reality, however. French philosopher Henri Bergson points to the power of imagination, for to invent “gives being to what did not exist; it might never have happened”. Perceiving and transforming reality thus become mutually supportive forces. And the numbers above make it clear that peace is not the default option of reality, but needs to be envisioned. “Inventing peace”, as film director Wim Wenders calls this conscious effort.

Restoring momentum to the SDGs is a crucial sign of life for global cooperation – and for peace.

So peace begins in our minds, but it cannot remain there. Just as love yearns to be embodied, peace seeks concrete shape. And just as the shape of love is acts of kindness, the shape of peace is acts of justice. In the Jewish and Christian tradition, the term shalom is used to convey this kind of inclusive vision of peace and justice. This year’s International Day of Peace (IDP) coincides with the UN General Assembly. When conceived 78 years ago, a vital part of the United Nations’ raison d'être was the common vision for peace. The experiences of the horrors of two world wars totalling more than 76 million people dead – another one of these unfathomable numbers –united the nations of this world in their quest for peace. Yet the shape of peace is justice. So three years after the conception of the UN, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born, celebrating its 75th birthday this year.

As the world leaders currently convene for the UN General Assembly, however, the nations assembled there will be anything but united. The demand and supply of international collaboration seem grossly disproportionate as multiple challenges, including geopolitical, ecological and economic crises, eat away on multilateral ties. This year’s IDP also coincides with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) summit, marking the mid-point milestone of the goals.

Endorsed in 2015, the 17 SDGs unfold the vision of a better world, including the eradication of poverty, advancing education and gender equality and environmental stewardship. If justice is the currency of peace, it seems only appropriate that this year’s IDP’s theme is ‘Actions for Peace: Our Ambition for the #GlobalGoals’. “Peace is needed today more than ever”, says UN Secretary-General António Guterres. This, in turn, means that the vision spelt out by the SDGs is needed today more than ever. It is a misunderstanding to conceive of the SDGs as an add-on for better times. Rather, restoring momentum to the SDGs is, as Stewart Patrick and Minh-Thu Pham from the Carnegie Foundation point out, a crucial sign of life for global cooperation – and for peace, one may add.

To dispel the ever-prevalent “myth of redemptive violence” as the still predominant paradigm, we need exactly this kind of active imagination.

One would think that the scale of the challenges spelt out by the 17 SDGs requires the joint collaboration of all actors. Yet one factor that is strikingly absent in this equation is religion. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that 85 per cent of this planet’s population profess adherence to a faith tradition, according to the World Population Review 2022. This makes faith communities the largest transnational civil society actors. Now religion – every religion – is inherently ambivalent. But this means that each religion can not only be used to incite hatred and violence, but also contains potent resources for peace and reconciliation.

Many of the SDGs including peace, justice, equality and care of creation to name but a few align with core concerns of, for example, the Christian faith tradition. Just imagine the potential for transformational change towards peace and justice if faith-based actors worked together, among each other and with secular actors! To dispel the ever-prevalent “myth of redemptive violence” (Walter Wink) as the still predominant paradigm, we need exactly this kind of active imagination. Or as the poet of an ancient song once put it:

“Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss”.

For more information on the role of religion in the SDGs, read the Open Access book series “Religion Matters. On the Significance of Religion for Global Issues” (Routledge), edited by Christine Schliesser et al.

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Death & life

10 September 2024

4 min read

A covering of feathers for the terrors of the night

How to struggle with the burden of other people's suffering.

Katherine Amphlett

Katherine is a counsellor based in the West Midlands.

Evie S. on Unsplash.

It’s one of the sad facts of life: that many of us at some point will see our parents get old and fade away. Sigh. It doesn’t matter how well prepared you are or how much you’ve thought about it before hand, the reality of a fragile mum or an exhausted dad can break your heart.

I’ve talked to my parents about this for years here and there. We’ve done lots of joking about seeing them off with a pink pill in the sherry, or ‘it’ll be a pillow for you Pa, if you’re too annoying’ – type thing. But when they left after Sunday lunch a couple of weeks ago, I had to clutch my husband. He lost his own mother last year… we’re still fluttering around the gap she’s left in our family. And now there’s my beloved olds too, looking diminished and moth eaten and moving at crepuscular speed. Ask Dad how he is these days, and he says ‘Old, dear’, and won’t elaborate further.

I can cope with this when it’s in short bursts. Visiting them for lunch or taking them out on a trip is OK and manageable, and there is still joy in family occasions. Mum’s birthday was full of love, even though she took all afternoon to open her cards and became hopelessly confused about who’d given her what.

But staying with them… that’s hard. Seeing the dust thick over the spare room; worrying about just how long that bowl of leftovers has been in the fridge. I whip about as unobtrusively as I can, scrubbing the bottom of the washing up bowl or putting their jerseys in a wash. I don’t want to be annoying – they won’t accept help and I’m not going to push – but it makes me sad. In particular I hate that my mum is in constant pain from crumbling bones, and that dementia has stolen her mind. Also, that as a consequence, Dad is irritable with her; he who has always adored her so much.

I could picture them vividly, the feathers, soft and heavy and beautifully patterned like an owl’s, and imagine I was peering out through them at Mum’s pain.

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Since childhood, I have struggled with the burden of other people’s suffering. I sometimes wonder if I’m exaggerating when I think about how much I mind, but I don’t think I am. I can only manage if I’m really ready for it. With my counselling clients that takes the form of very firm boundaries, regular supervision, colleagues to talk to etc… but with family it’s much harder. It’s just your own naked, soft-bodied self-shrinking from all the nettles and thorns – like a hermit crab without a shell.

So when I went down to Mum and Dad’s this time, I felt the need to prepare. ‘Put on the armour of light,’ St Paul says, which sounds just the thing. I hardly slept last time, tossing and wriggling through small-hour horrors with my neck hurting and a feeling of tears not being far away. What to arm myself with though?

The answer came in the form of an ancient poem - Psalm 91. I was listening to a Premier Radio presenter who is a pastor – a big, tattooed fellow with rings in his nose and lip – and he said it was his main defence when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. So, I looked it up, and I loved it. It was all about how the Lord will cover you with his wings and keep you safe from the terrors that visit in the night and the pestilence that stalks by day, or words to that effect.

Malcolm Guite (a poet and priest whose writing I love) says you have to treat Psalm 91 with care: it was the one Satan tempted Christ within the wilderness, challenging him to throw himself from the temple roof and God would send his angels to catch him (as it says in the psalm). It’s not to be taken literally, this psalm: you can’t deliberately put yourself in harm’s way and expect to be immune because you’re a Christian, like some of the vehement anti-vaxxers around the world who think faith alone will protect them from lethal diseases. But the message is that if you put your trust in God, he won’t let you be damaged in any important or lasting way by the evils of the world.

I memorised as much of it as I could. And then when I woke in the night – inevitably – with the dread hovering over me, I kept thinking, ‘The Lord will cover thee with his feathers’. I could picture them vividly, the feathers, soft and heavy and beautifully patterned like an owl’s, and imagine I was peering out through them at Mum’s pain and muddliness and Dad’s frustration and my own fear. They were like malevolent ghosts drifting through the dark, menacing and cruel. But Mum and Dad and I, our actual selves, were curled up safely, warm and hidden with the great wings over us.

And eventually, I was able to go back to sleep.