As we enter into 2024 in a world being torn apart by military, ethnic and political hostilities, a snow-covered statue in our backyard garden gives me hope – and my New Year’s resolution.
The statue is of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century nature-loving Italian Catholic founder of the Order of Franciscans. A popular poem attributed to him offers an alternative to the bitterness and violence plaguing our world today. His poem begins: “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love….”
It follows nicely from the angelic proclamation at the birth of Jesus, “Peace on earth,” and invites us to be channels of that peace.
This certainly seems to echo in the words of another of my favourite songs, Sy Miller and Jill Jackson’s Let There Be Peace on Earth.
The two were so moved by the global unrest of 1955, that they introduced the song on a California mountaintop at a weeklong multicultural and inter-religious youth retreat. It “continues to travel heart to heart…in people everywhere who wish to become a note in a song of understanding and peace,” Sy writes.
Most of us know the opening lines: “Let there be peace on earth, / And let it begin with me….”
Yes, let it begin with me, and with each one of us as individuals in a complex world.
The song continues: “Let peace begin with me, / Let this be the moment now….”
And yes, let’s not procrastinate in doing our part.
Here, I’m thinking also of the responsibility of the broadcast and social media. So easily they can fall into the trap of headlining the conflict-inducing elements of a story – too often, it seems, without regard for the truth.
About that tendency, our longtime coffee companion Keith Newman has special insight. The former television producer has committed himself to countering conflict-inducing styles in the media, urging all of us to seek ways of discussing troublesome stories that can help heal, or at least not aggravate, bad situations (my Oct. 17, 2019 column).
All of this flows nicely from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
Thus, my New Year’s resolution: Let peace begin with me.
© 2024 Warren Harbeck
