January/February 2002

September 11. All we need do is hear the date, and a whole flood of images and feelings arise. "Osama bin Laden," "Afghanistan," "the war on terrorism"--these words and phrases also carry a load of associations. Something very powerful happened to us as a global community on September 11, 2001. How we make sense of the sad and difficult things we are experiencing will determine how we act, and how we act now will shape our lives for decades to come.

I personally believe a doorway has opened for our evolution, and we are being presented with a number of gifts and opportunities. I don't mean to slight the tragedy of the events we are living through. People are suffering greatly, in many places and in many ways. Yet if we can draw out, and act on, the lessons that are available to us, we can use this war as a jumping off place for greater peace. We can set a different, positive pattern for our collective future.

I have discovered seven gifts, and the opportunities inherent in them, during the last weeks and months. There are others, of course, but these seven stand out for me as having the greatest potential for changing how we live together on this planet. They are gifts for us at the individual and at the collective levels.

1. We have been given the gift of Afghanistan, and the opportunity to become informed global citizens.

Think back to September 10 and earlier. What did you know about Afghanistan? About Uzbekistan? Pakistan? Kashmir? The Taliban? About Islam? About the Arab world? Do you know more now than you did then? I believe most of us do.

Metaphorically, "Afghanistan" represents knowledge, information and awareness about the world we live in. We are becoming aware of parts of the world that weren't on our radar screen before. Every day we are learning more about the geography, the religion, the various ethnic groups, the history, the hopes, the fears and the needs of people we hardly knew existed.

We are discovering that these people may dress differently, speak a different language or practice a different religion than we do, but in many ways they are just like us. They want what we want--safety, jobs, food, education--a better life. They're part of our human family.

When I think about the gift that this is, I think about the children. President Bush has announced an initiative for every American child to donate $1 to support Afghani children. On its face, this is a generous humanitarian gesture. But hidden within it is the opportunity to know the whole range of what it means to be an informed global citizen.

Being a responsible global citizen doesn't just mean reaching out to the other side of the earth. One in five of our own children live in poverty right here, in the land of plenty. We must inform ourselves about our own neighbors, about the people in the cities and towns of our own country, as well.

As an another example, the structures and experiences of gangs in our country look uncannily like life in war zones around the world. The phenomenon of child soldiers is alive and well in dozens of U.S. cities. Young boys are handed weapons, forced to commit aggression against "the enemy," and socialized into a regime based on violence, despair and obedience.

We have a long way to go to understand our relationship to the global family (less than one percent of the U.S. budget goes to international aid), but the doorway is open for us now, because of Afghanistan. To be an informed global citizen means to be aware of all that's going on around us--close by and far away--and realize we're all part of one single family. And being informed, we are called to take action--at every level.

2. We have been given the gift of our hearts, and the opportunity to let love flow.

What is the one thing almost everyone did on September 11? We called somebody. When catastrophe strikes, we automatically seek connection, and it's all about the heart. While we might have made connections with neighbors or co-workers, the ones we really wanted to speak with were our loved ones, our family and friends. Connecting with others reminds us we are living and loving human beings.

We've heard and read deeply moving stories about how people connected via cell phone from the ill-fated airplanes and on the stairwells of the World Trade Center. We've heard how some made lifelong relationships with perfect strangers in the midst of disaster. These have become our stories. It's a collective tragedy, for all of us.

These shared experiences at the edge of death have opened our hearts to grieving together. We're a nation in mourning, not just 6,000 families. Indeed, with a slight shift to global awareness, we are a planet in mourning. The dead and injured, those made homeless, from the attacks in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, are all part of our human family.

One thing I've learned from working in war zones around the world is that you can try to hold yourself away from the pain, because it seems like it's too big to handle, or you can go into it and let your heart break. Painful as it is, when we let our hearts break, they break open, making more room for love to flow.

Our new sensitivity to the pain of others is being expressed internationally by the fact that we are combining war with humanitarian relief. At the same time that we are dropping the destructive hardware of war, we are also delivering food supplies (albeit in vastly inadequate numbers). This is most unusual.

We rebuilt Europe and Japan after our wars there--not during. That we have come to the point in our evolution to understand that there is a side to our global relationships beyond force and revenge is a big step for us. That we have come to realize it's also about how we care for each other--our compassion for one another--is as giant a step for humanity as was that first step on the moon. While we have a long way to go in manifesting that compassion, still, we are demonstrating an awareness that has been absent in the past, and that's an encouraging sign.

We can also see the power of love flowing in our more individual responses to September 11. We've opened our pocketbooks widely for the disaster relief funds because we are feeling our hearts crack open with the desire to do something, to make a positive contribution, to care. Likewise, we are, as a nation, staying home more, connecting more deeply with family and enhancing our sense of community at the local level. This is all about keeping the heart open.

Tragedy is a hard way to get the gift of love, but the gift itself is invaluable.

3. We have received the gift of heroes and heroines, and our opportunity is to take risks in the service of others.

Who were our heroes and heroines before September 11? Comic strip characters? Sports figures? Entertainers? Now we revere firemen, police, emergency medical technicians--normal everyday people. Our heroes and heroines are no longer the highest paid, the most glamorous, the thinnest or the most eccentric--now they are folks we scarcely noticed in the past.

I gave a talk recently in which I asked, "What makes these people heroes?" One woman answered, "Because they put themselves behind, and put others first." What a beautiful role model for all of us! In Buddhism, this is called "altruistic motivation," acting from a desire to help and serve others.

This altruistic motivation appears to be spreading--it's becoming normative, mainstream. People are saying now, as a matter of course, "If I were on a plane and it were hijacked, I'd jump the guys! I wouldn't let them get away with it." More and more people are seeing the power of taking action, even if that action means taking risks.

As I reflect on our new brand of heroes and heroines, I am struck too by the class issues. America likes to pride itself on being a classless society, but in my experience, that is not the case. We are very conscious of class differences--indeed many states and towns have deep clashes around issues of shared concern--land use, environment, economic development, housing, etc.--that are often framed as cultural differences but are really related to divisions of class having to do with differences of wealth, education, and access to power and influence.

What interests me about our new heroes and heroines is that the jobs they are primarily associated with--police, firefighting, ambulance personnel--are not the upper or upper-middle class professions from which our champions are normally drawn. We usually give more prestige to doctors than to EMTs; to lawyers and detectives than to police; to intellectuals than to firefighters. What a lesson in humility this is for many of us; what an affirmation for others.

Our new heroes and heroines are teaching us another lesson as well. Many religious prophecies speak of these days as a time of salvation or redemption. The Second Coming has traditionally been associated with one being, Christ. But in esoteric circles, it has been said that in this era there is not one individual savior who will change the course of humanity; rather, that this is a collective task, the responsibility of the many.

The firemen, EMTs and police who went into the burning buildings went, literally, to save the people. Now, people are realizing that they too would act to save others. Courage, compassion and commitment are now the values we honor, and would claim for ourselves. Saviors are us.

The brave deeds of a few have awakened many to the power of personal responsibility and compassionate action. We have the opportunity to do as they have done, and take risks for the benefit of others.

4. We have received the gift of Islam, and our opportunity is to heal all our relationships.

Deepak Chopra sent an email after September 11 in which he invited people to consider what might be the "deeper wound" in our human society. I would suggest that one deep and festering wound is the split between the three western monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Westerners in modern society have a very limited experience of history. History is something that took place yesterday, or last year, or maybe the last century. For peoples in traditional societies, something that happened hundreds of years ago is still happening today.

So for us, the Crusades--the armed attempt by Christian knights in medieval times to recapture Jerusalem from the "infidels"--may seem like a quirk of history, and we can use the word "crusade" generically. To Muslims all over the world, it is a wound still festering and its language is offensive.

In fact, these three religions are still having the same conversation over Jerusalem that we had during the Crusades. Only our language, and our weapons, have gotten more sophisticated.

But I would suggest this split goes back even further and that the so-called clash of civilizations we are witnessing today was seeded long, long ago. We have captured it in our very Bible. I refer to the mythic split between Ishmael and Isaac, the two streams of Abraham's descendants.

Last April, I went to Israel and Palestine to offer support to the peace builders there, who were broken-hearted at the collapse of the peace process into yet another round of escalating violence. In a workshop I offered for Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian peace builders in the Galilee, we created a living picture or tableaux of the current situation. One woman stood as a peace builder willing to continue the work, with her arms outstretched in caring. A Jewish peace builder stood on one side of her and a Palestinian on the other, refusing her support; for them, the work had lost its meaning and its hope. They stood in mute despair. Unable to touch anyone with her reaching out, she wept.

Through her tears, she saw a new vision of an old story. She imagined Sarah (wife of Abraham, mother of Isaac) meeting with Hagar (handmaiden of Abraham, mother of Ishmael) in front of Abraham's tent. Instead of calling for Hagar to be cast out, Sarah greeted her as a sister and sought healing and reconciliation. In that moment, for that moment, the original split between the two branches of the ancestral family was somehow mended. Everyone in the room could feel the power of it; we all wept.

I believe the whole world has a similar opportunity in these days. We are in a healing moment where we can reach across the wasteland of our misperceptions, our accumulated slights, our fears and hatred, and say, "I see you; I embrace you; we're all of the same family."

And we are making use of this opportunity. Even as I was writing these words, I received a call from someone involved in a Christian-Islamic dialogue in New Jersey, seeking guidance on how to proceed with the hot issues. People are reaching out; we are engaging more than ever in inter-faith and cross-cultural conversations. We are starting the long overdue process of reconciliation and trust-building.

This opportunity to mend what is broken in the circle of life exists at many levels. Our relationships in need of healing are not just at the macro-level of culture and religion. We have wounded relationships in every dimension of our lives: with our mothers, our brothers, our sisters, our fathers, our spouses, our neighbors, our children, our co-workers.

Here in America, we have not only the Christian-Jewish-Islamic dialogue that is so critical, but a deeply destructive racial rift that needs our attention--white and black, white and red, and white and yellow. We have political polarities to bridge--left and right, liberal and conservative, the environmentalists and the ranchers/loggers/recreationalists; we have ideological divides to span--pro-life and pro-choice, gun control advocates and opponents, etc.

In short, the events following September 11 have opened the doorway for healing and reconciliation with all our relationships. We cannot afford to let this opportunity slip by us, unnoticed. The stakes are too high; the gift is too precious.

5. We have received the gift of a short course in Peace and Conflict Studies, and our opportunity is to become peace builders.

There are about 300 college and university degree programs in Peace and Conflict Studies around the U.S. It has become a burgeoning field in the last 20 years. What those of us who have graduated from these programs (I am one, with a Ph.D. in Peace Studies) have learned through innumerable classroom hours and weeks in the field, in places of deep-rooted conflicts around the world, anyone with a television is learning today.

Here are some of the general dynamics of conflicts that are becoming commonplace living-room conversation in these times:

	Escalating and recurring cycles of revenge and violence, where the reaction to each violent act generates the motivation to strike back--even harder. Our government was reporting, even before we bombed Afghanistan, that such an act would undoubtedly produce more terrorist attacks against us, yet we did it anyway!
	The process of polarization, where we push "the other" far away, demonizing them, dehumanizing them, projecting all the "evil" into them, while saving all the "good" for our definition of ourselves. Our leadership has posited this as a war of good versus evil, light versus dark, freedom versus fundamentalism; the Taliban is harboring evil, therefore we are justified in destroying it.
	The need to look at root causes. The internet and even the mainstream media are full of fine commentary analyzing the root causes of terrorism. We can readily see that there are no simple answers--it is not just about poverty, inequality, globalization, the unsolved Middle East conflict or crazy fanaticism. There are many factors, intricately woven together.

The traumatization of whole populations. It is not just the immediate survivors of the September 11 disasters, or the refugees in Afghanistan pouring toward the safety of neighboring countries while US bombs are falling, who are traumatized. We are all witnesses to these human tragedies. You don't have to be a direct victim to have symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (see "The Zen of Science," page 10). You can have what is called secondary traumatization, where you are affected just by seeing, hearing about or knowing someone who went through the traumatic event. We are learning that the effects of trauma linger long after the event itself, as many are still suffering sleep disorders, eating problems, or heightened anxiety. We are still trying to understand how to get ourselves back on airplanes; up the elevators of skyscrapers; or back to Ônormal life.' And we are still wondering how to help our children overcome their fears. While many Americans have been spared this kind of trauma in the past, for others, largely in our inner cities or in other countries, it is a fact of life. We are just beginning to realize how debilitating to a whole society this level of traumatization can be over time.

Unintended consequences. Very often, we take actions that are intended to have one outcome, but in fact, they produce something quite unexpected. The United States armed and trained many people from all over the Arab world in the Mujahadeen struggle against the USSR in Afghanistan. One of those individuals is named Osama bin Laden. Israelis did the same in the 1980s. In an effort to destabilize Yasser Arafat and the PLO, they supported what was then a small splinter group in the Palestinian community, never imagining that this little group named Hamas would grow strong and become its fiercest and most hostile opponent.

6. We have received the gift of our flag, and our opportunity is to exercise our right to speak out.

After September 11, the American flag became a vehicle for expressing our grief and our hope, our unity and community, our bond with one another and our connection with something larger than ourselves. Those of us who were politically active in the Ô60s and Ô70s, and associated the flag at that time with the unthinking and rigid patriotism that supported the war in Vietnam, got a special gift in the opportunity to re-own our flag in a new way. Many chose to fly the world flag--that incredible image of the earth as seen from space. For others, there was a tug in the heart--shall I fly the American flag and risk my friends thinking I've bought in to some atavistic nationalism? Or are we truly in another era now, and the flag can be a symbol of love for my people in a time of trial?

I'd like to suggest that we go beyond the flag itself and explore some of the values in American society that we can be truly proud of in these times. I've traveled all over the world, and can attest to the fact that we are a deeply privileged country, with freedoms and rights (and the responsibilities that go with them) that people all over the world hunger for.

One particular privilege and freedom we have that's critically important right now is freedom of speech. I went to Bosnia shortly after the war there and brought together Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims) for some of the first joint conversations people could have after the Dayton Accords. I'll never forget how one woman stood up, looked around the room and said, chillingly, "What I want to know is, where were the intellectuals? Where were the people of reason and sanity? Why didn't they speak up?"

I have been in many places at war and seen how brutally strong the power of group-think can be. Already we are seeing that dynamic here, where politicians, government officials and others are warning us to be careful about what we say. Already there is pressure in this country for people with differing views than those of the mainstream to be silent. On our university campuses and in our media there is pressure to not publish articles that question the prevailing consensus about the war against terrorism. This dynamic can be truly deadly. I have been in places where people standing for peace are seen as traitors and are killed, imprisoned or otherwise threatened or punished.

The last poll I saw said 87 percent of people in the U.S. support our actions in Afghanistan. That leaves 13 percent, or about 30 million people, who have other ideas. We must not allow these voices to be silenced. We must be vigilant against the vice grip of conformity, and protect the most precious privilege for which our flag stands--the right of the people to be heard. We can honor the gift of our flag by speaking out and sharing the truth of our own experience, no matter how unpopular it may be. When we let our voices be heard, and protect the common airwaves for the voices of all (especially the traditionally voiceless), we are truly displaying the courage for peace.

7. We have received the gift of a second chance, and we have the opportunity to choose life.

We all had a near-death experience on September 11. Let me explain that through a true story.

A man I know managed to escape from the upper stories of the World Trade Center, by who knows what grace. He was covered with ash, traumatized and disoriented when he emerged from the building, just before it collapsed behind him. He was taken in by a stranger, who gave him a safe place to sit and rest and find the ground beneath his feet again. At one point, the stranger looked him in the eye and said, "You just got a second chance at life. Don't waste it."

I think we all got that second chance. I think this is a story for all of us. What does it mean to look death in the eye and ask, "Why did I survive? Why was I spared?" For many, it means the opportunity to choose life; in every moment, in every situation, to ask, "Will I choose what is life-enhancing, or life-depleting?" Choosing life means choosing to live our lives on purpose. Each one of us is here for a reason; each one of us has our own unique place in the circle of life. Being on purpose means being conscious and intentional about our actions. It means having some sense of why we are here. Our life purpose needn't be some high and fancy goal; it can be as simple as, "I'm here to serve. To love. To be kind. To heal. To create beauty. To learn how to be a spiritual being having a human experience." Choosing life also means setting new priorities. When we come so close to death, we pay close attention to what really matters: our families, our health, our opportunities to serve others. For me, with a world at war, the strongest priority--and the reason I am here--is to create peace.

The great peace give-away

Some Native American nations practice the ceremony of the give-away, where one who has received a great blessing shows appreciation by giving away what they have. I believe we have received a great blessing through the events of September 11--the power and potential of these seven opportunities that are doorways to action: to become informed global citizens, to let love flow, to take risks, to heal our relationships, to be a peace builder, to speak out and to choose life.

My most recent book, The Peace Book: 108 Simple Ways to Create a More Peaceful World, is my personal contribution to the United Nations Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World; it is my give-away.

Though written before the events of September 11, the book is especially relevant now, more than ever, as a call and guide to action. The book is not for sale in any store; it can only be sponsored and given away. By using our personal and professional networks to spread this gift of peace, we can change the world, one "peace" at a time. Since June 1, 2001, more than 10,000 books have been gifted in this way.

Neale Donald Walsh, author of Conversations with God, sent an e-mail shortly after September 11 in which he said, "Now is the time of your ministry." I believe that now, indeed, is the time of our collective peace ministry. The Peace Book is one way I have of living peace in the midst of war, and sharing these reflections with you, gentle readers, is another. What will you do to give peace a chance? How will you use the opportunities presented by today's world events to make a difference; to make a different world?

     Louise Diamond, Ph.D., is the President and CEO of PeaceTech, a Vermont-based company that provides tools for peace builders. She can be reached at 802-453-7191 or at info@peace-tech.com. Check out The Peace Book at its web site: www.peacebook.com.