On the Road to Peace

A hundred and fifty of us gathered on Sunday night, Aug. 5, at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos, New Mexico, at the exact spot where long ago the Hiroshima Bomb was built. Right at 5:15 p.m -- 8:15 a.m. Monday morning, Aug. 6 in Japan -- we heard live, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the ringing of the Peace Bell in Hiroshima.

Editor's note: This meditation is the fourth of a five-part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.

Editor's note: This meditation is the second of a five-part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.

It was hot and muggy this past weekend at the campsite outside of Chapel Hill, N.C., where about 2,000 progressive Christians gathered for the second annual ecumenical Wild Goose Festival, but people didn't seem to mind. Everyone enjoyed the music, the speakers, the prayer groups, the art booths, the kids' games, and the conversations with old and new friends. I, too, was happy to catch up with many friends, among them civil rights leader and theologian Vincent Harding. He has taught for the last few decades at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, but he is best known for his work with Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s and for drafting speeches for Dr. King, including his famous April 4, 1967, speech against the Vietnam War.

"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

That's the advice of Howard Zinn and the insight of a helpful new book, Healing the Future: Personal Recovery from Societal Wounding by Dennis Linn, Sheila Faricant Linn and Jesuit Fr. Matthew Linn (Paulist Press, June 2012). The Linns have long taught that we are all wounded in our personal lives by our parents, families and childhood, but now the entire toxic culture of violence is poisoning each one of us.