Sabbath Devotional :: Pursuing Peace on the Train

pursuing peace - Mormon Women for Ethical Government — .

About a week ago my family and I were stuck on a very overcrowded train on a holiday weekend in a foreign country. People were behaving badly. There weren’t enough seats on an inadequately staffed train, and the descent into chaos was quick, with many individuals refusing to honor the seat assignments of others. There were fights, and some punches were actually thrown.

Long story short, in spite of having pre-booked the journey and paid for reserved seating, my family of six was left standing for much of a seven-hour journey. We were understandably a bit stressed and peeved. A few hours in, we were able to get into some of our seats, but several remained occupied. Two of those were held by some fellow Americans who proceeded to share their political opinions loudly and volubly.

I didn’t like or agree with their opinions. I was embarrassed and hurt by their opinions. Their Christianity was invoked in defense of some unpleasant ideas that my Christianity found offensive. And to make it all infinitely worse, they were sharing those opinions from the seats I had rightfully purchased. What to do?

I did nothing.

I believed that it was the right choice in the moment, because under the circumstances there was no way to engage peacefully. But in the days following, my mind would return to the train, and I would mentally argue with someone I had seen once and would never see again. He had been wrong about almost everything (I am sure of it!), and I was anxious that in leaving those wrongs unanswered I, too, had been wrong.

Still, I felt that the decision to not engage was my only option, because the train was already filled with tension, because I was never going to change his mind, because I didn’t want to put my children at risk, because he was clearly a difficult and prejudiced human. There were countless “becauses,” and all were external to me.

Then after a few days of stewing, it sunk in. The real reason I couldn’t engage was simply because I wasn’t prepared. The “because” was actually internal, and I was the obstacle and potentially also a difficult and prejudiced human. There likely would have been a way to engage with him and bring peace, but in that moment I wasn’t emotionally and spiritually developed enough to transcend my personal discomfort and frustration. My charity had failed.

As members of MWEG we have agreed to follow a committed and rigorous path to peace. One of the first steps on that path (one I am obviously still struggling to master) is the understanding that peace is not an external state, but one we bring with us wherever we go as developed and determined disciples of Christ. He has come to each of us that we might have peace in a world filled with tribulation, and he has given us the charge to share that peace with all we meet.

In the days since that little moment of (not so favorable) personal revelation, I have again replayed train guy’s diatribe in my mind, but this time with a different objective. I have asked myself what it would mean to truly have started that conversation from a point of strong internal peace. Peace that I had modeled on the behavior of the Savior, fueled by my discipleship and then carried with me.

First, I sat down with the scriptures and did some renewed study on the ideas of charity and brotherly love. And when I ran my train neighbor’s arguments and my responses through the lens of 1 Corinthians 13, some painful truths came into focus.

He advocated against bestowing goods to feed the poor. I mentally disagreed with him, and regularly try to be generous to those in need. But a close reading of the scripture reminds me that because I had not charity, my generosity profited me nothing.
He didn’t seem to understand how the policies he advocates for today will be deeply damaging to the world tomorrow — he lacks prophetic vision. I truly think my knowledge gained through faith has helped me have some vision. But I had not charity, so I am nothing.
He was somewhat crude and ill-informed. Even if I had, by comparison, spoken “with the tongues of men and of angels,” I had not charity, and so my voice would have been as a “tinkling cymbal” in his ears.

In each of these situations the Savior was telling me that if I want my voice to matter and be heard, if it is to communicate and change minds, it must come from a place of pure love.

The second thing I did was to sit down and develop a Christlike and peaceful narrative response to my compatriot’s ideas. I did my best to try to understand him, see him as a child of God, have grace for his limitations in the way I hope the Lord will have grace with mine, and feel love for him. During this process I kept finding myself slipping back into timeworn argumentative patterns, and I had to actively fight to find new mental tracks. But I kept at it, and my feelings toward him dramatically changed.

Two things happened for me as a result of this exercise: My heart was softened and humbled, and I felt a rush of inspiration as my mind filled with ideas about how to find a common ground and articulate the needs and concerns of those who require our support and help. The process gave me a renewed witness that there is incredible power inherent in the pursuit of peace, and it is ours to harness and wield for good when we have practiced peacemaking so consistently that we bring internal peace to external conflict.

My job is to do all that hard work now, so that I am ready to share in the moment — not after a week of learning and self-reflection!

Our Savior stands ready to help us in this process, and his example is there for us to follow. I am grateful he was with me on that train and commit that next time I will see him there in the moment and do my best to represent him.