Remembering Hiroshima

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki. In honor of the day, Teacher Ken posted this excerpt of the Quaker Peace Testimony...

At the heart of this conviction is Friends' experience that there is something of God - the seed of God - in all people. Quakers believe that more can be accomplished by appealing to this capacity for love and goodness, in ourselves and in others, than can be hoped for by threatening punishment or retaliation if people act badly. This is not to ignore the existence of evil. It is to recognise that there is no effective way to combat evil with weapons which harm or kill those through whom evil is working. We must turn instead, in the words of early Friends, to the 'weapons of the spirit', allowing God to reach out through us to that of God in those with whom we are in conflict. 'Spiritual weapons' - love, truthsaying, nonviolence, imagination, laughter - are weapons that heal and don't destroy.

All this sounds grand indeed; its consequences are for the most part very ordinary. The peace testimony is not something Quakers take down from a shelf and dust off only in wartime or in times of personal or political crisis. Living out a witness to peace has to do with everyday choices about the work we do, the relationships we build, what part we take in politics, what we buy, how we raise our children. It is a matter of fostering relationships and structures - from personal to international - which are strong and healthy enough to contain conflict when it arises and allow its creative resolution. It is a matter of withdrawing our co-operation from structures and relationships which are unjust and exploitative. It is a matter of finding creative ways of dealing with conflict when it does arise, with the aim of freeing all concerned to find a just and loving solution.

Like everyone else, Quakers live in the real world. Insights which are gloriously clear in the spirit translate into words or actions which seem muddled and imperfect. From time to time we fail; we fudge; we are hurt and hurt others. To accept as a certainty the spiritual conviction which underlies the peace testimony is not to be certain of the outcome. We cannot guarantee that we will never kill, far less that we will never do violence to those with whom we share the earth. Nor can we, by refusing to do harm and seeking always for a creative response in conflict, ensure either our own personal safety or the triumph of the causes we support. We can only choose to live day by day as if it were possible always to defend what we value and to resolve conflict without deliberate harm - in such a way that if damage occurs, healing is possible.

If we choose to attempt this, we are not alone. Those who have lived and witnessed before us (by no means all of them Quakers) have left examples to find and follow. Those of us alive now who are struggling with the same dilemmas can offer each other comfort, courage and support. And we are many. Like seventeenth-century Quakers, we live in an 'end time' - a time of crisis, of rapidly shifting perceptions, a time of great danger and great opportunity. People are becoming aware of their interdependence, and of the interconnectedness of creation. We are beginning to realise that security is common, indivisible, and cannot be assured by military means. To seek to live, at such a time, in 'that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars' is no longer (if it ever was) a saintly, other-worldly alternative; it is now an urgent and practical imperative.

- Daily Kos: In honor of the day, August 6