It Takes Two

It takes only one to make war, and two to make peace.

A one-sided war is still a war, but peace requires an offer of trust and the acceptance of the offer. One must hold the other worthy of trust, and the other must step into worthiness. They must accept the invitation.

The situation is never too far gone. Peace is always possible.

As enmity deepens and the fight becomes habit, and memory of love fades, peace requires more and more of a miracle.

I intended my last essay (about the inevitable car crash, about giving up the pleas to hit the brakes and turn the wheel) as a warning disguised as a prediction. It is not actually inevitable. It is just that we are at a place now where pleas are insufficient. We need miracles, miracles of forgiveness and understanding and reconciliation, and release of what we thought we knew.

I’m not going to make a case for that. One thing I was saying in my last essay is that I’m done making cases. Lord knows I tried long and hard to make the case for peace, going back a decade. Those were my pleas to turn the wheel— This is How War Begins, Building a Peace Narrative, Making the Universe Great Again, The Field of Peace, Friends don’t Let Friends Destroy Themselves, and lots more. But now we are at a point where those who call for peace are branded by each side as an agent of the other.

That also is the point where miracles are necessary. What is a miracle? It is a happening that is impossible from within a current story, but possible from a new one. Therefore, not only does it seem impossible, but by happening anyway it invites us to question what else we have assumed that may not be true. That is the state of unknowing, the release of old beliefs and what we thought we knew, that prepares the soil for the miraculous in the first place.

Do I know how to make miracles happen? Certainly not. But all of us know how to ask for them, and how to prepare ourselves to recognize and receive them. I don’t have to say how. You already know how. You know what I’m talking about.

Here is one I’ve recognized and received: Outside of politicized discourse, people are getting friendlier, kinder, and more empathetic. Have you noticed? I was just on a trip. People at hotel counters, airport convenience stores, TSA checkpoints, and restaurants are getting kinder. They are helpful and responsive to humor. I feel it quickening. It is a miracle. It is happening! Do you recognize it? Do you receive it?

It’s much like a peace offering. An offer of trust. It takes two, the giver and the receiver, and then the receiver becomes a giver in turn, each stepping deeper into trust. That is our relation to the Giver of miracles. We receive them in equal measure to our willingness to trust.

I’m tempted to “make a case” that what I’m seeing is real, and that it has global significance, that some causal principle will translate it into political and ecological healing. I’ve got some bad habits. Even right now, I’m verging on making a case for no longer making a case. I think I sometimes explain things not so much to convince the reader, but to convince myself. I’m gonna stop doing that for a while. I’ve purchased an electric shock collar, and I’ve trained AI to deliver me a painful jolt every time I start making a case for something. It happened twice already writing this post.

So, I won’t make the case that there is a way through our present straits. I won’t make the case that peace is yet possible. I will only point out that you know that it is. The mind may doubt it, but the heart knows it is possible and that none of our strivings have been in vain.