Because of the horrendous nature of the terror we have experienced as a nation, there is great danger that we will now be caught up in what has been called “a cycle of violence and retaliation.” It might better be called a “spiral,” for if it begins in earnest, it will mount. The violence of vengeful response will create more terrorism which will recreate more violent response — and so on into ultimate terror.

Gandhi once said that if we continue to follow the path of an eye for an eye long enough, there will one day be no more eyes.

What is called for now, perhaps more than at any other time in our recent history, is imagination — yes, imagination. The Biblical term is “vision.”

Let us now begin to imagine/envision a world free from hatred and suspicion and terror.

Let us now begin to imagine/envision what would be required to bring that about: Making it safe to be a child in this world? Letting no one go to bed hungry? No more dread of atomic destruction because there would be no more such weapons? Courts of Truth and Reconciliation (a la South Africa) scattered throughout the world? Every citizen of this world literate? Homes without violence?

Let each of us turn inward and imagine/envision what we would be willing to give of ourselves for such a world.

The Old Testament prophets whom Jews and Christians and Muslims alike revered imagined/envisioned a world in which swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; in which the lion would lie down with the lamb to be led by a little child.

Could we turn our imaginations loose in such a crazy, glorious, redemptive way?

Mark Rouch
Lake Junaluska

 

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