Our second son is busy with doctoral studies in biology.  He's never been active in politics and doesn't attend any church, but he reads widely across the disciplines and samples opinion from many quarters.  He seems unconcerned with outside pressures to be conventional or unconventional.  I'm glad that he's dedicated to the wonder of the natural world but I hope he continues to examine the social forces that don't register on his scientific instruments.

Our third child concentrates on her daily bread, something she shares with the great mass of people on earth.  She has no time for ideologies, theologies, or philosophies and certainly none for marches or vigils.  She works nearly full-time at low pay and goes to school full-time, trying to pick up a modest profession that will see her through.  Her income doesn't stretch beyond her rent and her cupboards are closer to empty than full.  She shrugs off issues of war and peace.  "What will happen, will happen," she says, "meanwhile I have to go to work."  Which is true.

The attitudes and lifestyles of our three children give me pause and make me think anew about this peace movement that so involves me.  Our children seem representative of many people in the great crowd.  Their individual struggles illuminate for me some the obligations that we in the peace movement must assume. 

Our oldest, the high-income professional, is my living reminder that we can't write off anyone, including the privileged of our society who hold wealth and power.  We can't assume they are foes or that they have no conscience.  We can't assume that we are more intelligent, more moral, or more compassionate than they.  We are obliged to find messages that touch their hearts and ideas that challenge their perceptions.  We must ask them to consider that wealth is amoral and power corrupt, not because we in the peace movement are immune to these 

My son the doctoral candidate forces me to reject despair.  Despite the ubiquity of violence, constant barrages from warmongers, and daily reports from fresh battlefields, the peace movement remains the conduit of hope to untold numbers of good-hearted people who are hungry for our witness and rely on us for inspiration.  These folks may never carry a peace sign but they carry peace in their hearts.  They calm the home and the workplace and they raise peaceful children.  They vote for peace.  We help keep them going.

Our daughter the worker reminds me that peace serves the poor.  We owe a great deal to our brothers and sisters in poverty, for we are the privileged ones in this relationship.  Often through unmerited circumstance, we've been gifted with the wherewithal to wage peace.  God has been generous with us and expects us to be good for our world.  Imagine a global society where work is dignified and fairly paid, where trust rules the streets and highways, where everyone is free to seek God and knowledge, and all are free to talk about it.  Now try to imagine that global society rising from the horrors of war. 

So the peace movement must contest for hearts and minds throughout the social strata.  We consider that we have no enemies.  And the peace movement must keep its shop open in good times and bad.  People depend on us and we have many friends.  And we can never abandon justice in the pursuit of peace, nor abandon nonviolence in the pursuit of justice. 

Our small families mirror humankind and our obligations encompass the human family.  If the terror of 9/11/01 fails to teach us that lesson, then there's little point to observing its anniversary.