That question above is both meaningful – and meaningless. A paltry “Day of Peace” – this year, Saturday 21 September – insults the efforts of those who work year-round for something approximating “peace”. Or, at least, who work in multiple ways to promote more intelligent evidence-based possibilities to contain if not resolve conflict, and to reduce the unchecked pursuit of power and territory through destruction and death.

In protecting what’s left of our optimism or hope, however, we might also see this day as one to remind us that no event can of itself make sufficient difference to the “culture of war” (not peace), normalised around our world and continuously affirmed here in Australia. What it can do, though, is throw the question back to us:.

Can we – as individuals up against the most powerful institutions and insatiable greed of the military-industrial “complex” – make any difference in bringing about greater peace?

Can we do this if not for our own sakes but for the sake of those who will. before long, “inherit the earth” we leave them?

Cynics and exhausted activists will be quick to say that in sustaining hope for change we brush a lone feather against the side of a tank, a bomb, a submarine. That could be true. It would also be an act of resignation or despair that as weary and despondent as we may feel, I for one am not ready to make.

The theme of this year’s “Day” is “Creating a culture of peace”. I read that as a highly participatory invitation. Cultural change matters. It is not easily achieved. However, it is achievable. It is achievable, better yet, only through COLLECTIVE action arising out of many people, then more and still more, believing that positive change is possible – and inarguably desirable.

Cultural change cannot be imposed. It will be resisted by government and corporate interests that are challenged, even while their propaganda machines work overtime to trivialise or crush the smallest resistance to what they want us to regard as “normal” and “inevitable”, however abhorrent.

Cultural change can also not be achieved individually. And I am not alone in suggesting it cannot be achieved through familiar political means only, particularly when it comes to defying the enculturation of millennia that result in today’s hideous versions of tribalism, racism, religious bigotry, land and water theft, imperialism. Plus, a hyper-capitalism that invades the most intimate crevices of our minds, including what we believe adds up to identity, as well as what we identify with.

“Spiritual practice” is a phrase maybe more familiar to those who have taken up some version of Eastern wisdom traditions, including Buddhism in its various forms. Spiritual practice is familiar, though, in ALL traditions – and well beyond them. It is not obligatory. It doesn’t rest upon nor require a proficiency in dogma. It supports your attitudes and wellbeing in this time, this life, this world, rather than prepping you for rewards to come. It is also, if it is worth a single grain of salt, inclusive. What such inclusivity means is quietly revolutionary. It defies claims that any one “tribe”, faith or philosophy owns the truth.

When it comes to creating peace – or simply edging our external world a fraction closer to considering peace as a possibility – then some kind of spiritual practice or perspective seems to me to be intrinsically self-supportive.
It gives meaning to what you are doing: meaning that’s independent of others’ cynicism or approval. Meaning which unconditionally affirms your primary identity as a member of our vast, vastly diverse human family – as entitled to life and dignity as any other person. Or soul.

Issues of identity rule tribalism.
They are also key to greater peace.

How you see yourself determines how you “see” (define, value, protect or endanger “others”. This is where spiritual practice challenges the “normal” conditioning to which we are all subject.

Could you, for example, explore the startling notion that all human lives are of equal value? What each of us does with our life is not of equal value; self-evidently it is not. But to deny any person the right to exist on the basis of their race, religion or culture offends the merest comprehension that either all lives have intrinsic value, or yours does not and neither does mine.

Spiritual practice has to be practised! It is experiential, not abstract. It is explored via questions of meaning in the messiness and vitality of life, not via dogma. It arises from trust in a basic goodness, not evil or “sin”. It may include meditation and contemplative experiences that lessen fear and increase a sense of belonging. It also rests on a basic understanding of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others…”

Psychologically, spiritual practice wakes up what can be called empathic imagination on which all peace-making depends.

Rabbi Hillel almost 2000 years ago summed it up in excellent plain speech: “What is hateful to you, don’t do to other people. That’s the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Go home and get on with it.” (I paraphrase only slightly.) Somewhat more recently, the famous 13th-century Sufi (Islamic) poet Rumi wrote, “Out beyond wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field…Let me meet you there.” In other words, get over your tribalism, your binary thinking, your stifling exclusivism in any of its forms. Think spaciously. Feel the embrace of a whole and healing life. Choose life. Not harm, not violence. And not untimely, cruel, unnecessary death.

Peace-making is sustained over decades only by a stubbornness that a) it’s worth it; b) your efforts count as much as anyone else’s do; c) to turn away from peace-making betrays your human (and arguably divine) spiritual “inheritance”; d) future generations depend on individual acts of defiance, adding up to collective action as illimitable as there are stars in the sky.

If you are reading this before the evening of 21 September (in the Pacific region), you are welcome to join a half hour meditation with very short readings brought to you by Calm in the City https://calminthecity.org.au/, in which I will be participating. NO expertise or “beliefs” needed. Just a desire for greater peace in your heart and in our world.

Calm in the City write: “The event will be a beautiful silent online vigil on the evening of Saturday 21st September, 8.30 – 9.00pm (Australian EST), accompanied by short reflective readings and the holding of an intention around the 2024 theme – ‘Cultivating a Culture of Peace’. Please register here for the zoom link – or tiny.cc/unpeaceday2024”

If you read this at any other time, please feel free to add your name to our mailing list – which will be activated soon around more initiatives with Calm in the City, and other collectives.

Two of my books take these thoughts further. They are Seeking the Sacred: Transforming Our View of Ourselves & One Another, also Heaven on Earth: Timeless Prayers of Wisdom and Love. All our efforts matter.