Hi everyone! Because this is my first post, here is some background about myself:My name is Grace Tibbetts and I am one of the Peace interns for this summer! In August I will be a senior at Avila University, studying Psychology. After attending graduate school, my goal is to work with young children who experience trauma and adversity.
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So forewarning this is a little bit of a heavy post.
This summer I will be discussing lots of hard issues, including peace toward self, immigration and refugees, and inequalities in education. As I prepared myself for a week of Peace training and as I begin the week, I don't feel quite ready to talk to high school students about peace. It's a bit of a cliche to say the news and media are overwhelming right now because it seems that they're always overwhelming. However, somehow right now, it feels like a disease- something spreading. Before we came to our week of training, the shooting in Santa Fe, Texas happened and the day we arrived, there was another school shooting actually in Indianapolis (where we are staying). Kids killing other kids seems so much more difficult than other issues on the news. This thought may be a product of the "that doesn't happen here" mentality. We see the violence happening in other countries all the time, but for some reason it seems that we have a separation from the media. It's not close enough to us, so we can become distant from it- but this. This is pretty hard to ignore. There's also an entirely separate commentary on the fact that we are finally talking more about gun violence now that it has affected the white population, but we will leave that idea for another post (or 5).
This all makes me feel unqualified to be teaching about peace. I don't know what to do. I don't know what would fix this terrifying problem. Maybe it's the social climate right now? Are we more violent than we used to be or is it just publicized more? I know how to be peaceful toward others. It's hard to be peaceful toward myself. It's even harder to put peace into action, especially when no one knows what the right actions are. I'm coming into a stage in my life where I feel that I'm supposed to be knowledgeable, I feel that I'm supposed to have more answers than I do. I'm supposed to be able to say "God will take care of this" but I'm not sure that's how this works. And its- for a lack of a word with more emphasis- overwhelming.
But none of us are really supposed to know the answers. The only thing we can do is to strive for understanding, strive for knowledge, even when it is painful, and strive for peace AND justice.
As I go into my summer of teaching about peace, I will be reflecting on this familiar prayer from Gandhi and I hope that you will take a few moments to do the same. What if we said this to every person we met and what difference would this small change in perspective make?
I offer you peace.
I offer you love.
I offer you friendship.
I see your beauty.
I hear your need.
I feel your feelings.
My wisdom flows from the highest Source.
I salute that Source in you.
Let us work together. For unity and peace.