On the Road to Peace

Last week, Peter DeMott, 62, a friend to peace and justice people everywhere, fell from a tree he was trimming. He was rushed to the hospital and died during surgery. A Vietnam vet and a man of few words, Peter worked full time since the 1970s for peace and disarmament. Some of those years he spent behind bars for civil disobedience. His death leaves those who knew him shocked and grieving. But we also recall his life with gratitude.

“My experience in the military convinced me of the futility of war and of the sad misallocation of resources which war-making requires,” Peter wrote. “My faith in God prompts me to work for a world which unifies us all by ties of love, solidarity and mutual cooperation.”

Last week, over three hundred people from all over New Mexico gathered in Santa Fe at the Roundhouse, our gorgeous adobe capitol building. There we rallied and lobbied the legislature as it prepares to consider abolishing the death penalty. Maryland, Nebraska and Montana have come close recently. New Mexico may be close too. But once again the decision centers on Governor Bill Richardson. Will he support or veto abolition? This time he may do the right thing. Hope is in the desert air.

Who might be the greatest living peacemaker? I acknowledge the question is a bit impertinent. It conjures competition, while by its nature, the word "peacemaker" bespeaks humility, equality, warm humanity. Even so, for the title of greatest I place my money on Hildegard Goss-Mayr of Vienna. If you don't know of Hildegard, I urge you to get the first biography ever written of her, Marked for Life: The Story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr, written by Richard Deats, published by New City Press.

She was born in Austria in 1930, and grew up in an unusual Catholic family dedicated to peace, even while under the Nazi regime. Early on, she studied the philosophy and practice of nonviolence, and with husband, Jean Goss, became an apostle of nonviolence.

While hiking the other day in the high desert of northern New Mexico, I met my neighbor, a Native American elder who gives workshops around the country on Native-American spirituality. When I asked him for his thoughts on President-elect Obama, he said that Obama had already given us a great gift. “He has liberated white Americans from their role as oppressors. Not all have understood this or accepted it,” he said, “but it is a great gift.”

The bombing and invasion of Gaza should stop now. It is immoral and impractical; the indiscriminate wounding of children and civilians makes the heart sick. And as is often the case, here is bloodshed and mayhem funded and aided by the United States.

Joining my voice to those of friends around the world, I say: Stop the killings, end the occupation and pursue nonviolent methods of dialogue and cooperation toward a just, peaceful co-existence.