I do not like war metaphors…. but here we go:
I was sitting with my young Italian friend at a raw, gluten-free, vegan cafe’ in Florence talking about a variety of things that concern a life. Eventually the fear arose: are we entering WWIII and will Iran bomb the US military base in Italy? And then how will Europe react? Because it will have to react, right? All those questions he never considered days before. All those questions which arise from countries being at war in order to protect their citizens or their power, their territorial rights, autonomy, cultural values. I assured him as best I could that Iran will not bomb Italy.
While sitting eating almond-paste raspberry-filled cookies and calming down a rising fear in a young mind, our planet rotates in the birthing darkness of an ever-enlarging universe.
We each only have a moment here in this miraculous body to interact with one another, to learn, to grow and then to die. But, while we are alive, what an opportunity we have to witness and participate in the vast expanse and the minuscule beauty we are a part of.
However, that is a choice.
Standing on a mountain in the Italian Alps after a long climb on a very hot day, I watched a hawk hovering in the wind seeking its lunch, as I was waiting for mine in the malga - a small cabin which serves food and drink - where the grandson of the owner was preparing fresh ravioli floating in butter from their cows, topped with cheese from their goats and finely chopped chives from the garden.
After a long climb, and an absorption of more beauty than my spirit could process, I have to say this was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. Out in the clean air, beside the goats, the hovering hawk, and this family of multiple generations who have been feeding climbers for a century, life seemed what it should.
Meanwhile war is raging in Ukraine, Israel, Sudan, Iran, Gaza and too many other locations to count or know of.
We have to make a choice.
It begins with asking ourselves exactly what we are willing to do to live in the peaceful world most of us say we long for.
In 1910 William James gave a lecture which became an essay, The Moral Equivalent of War. I re-read his thinking recently and am motivated to share some thoughts with you from what he observed prior to the murder of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the flame which ignited the Great War that killed over 16,000,000 people.
In the warning and opportunity James laid out in his speech, he posits the tendency toward war is so deep within us that we can barely escape its seduction. We look back in fascination at the history of winners and losers, we hold high our heroes and their fight in literature, film, holidays, sculpture and song. We feed off of a need to be the stronger and to conquer our enemy.
However, none of us truly, if asked, would choose to go to war with a willing desire for it. Yet there is this… justification and acceptance… that arises out of our repeated primitive experience. We have come to a point where most agree that certain actions are morally wrong. Now, instead of seeking slaves and other pillaged bounties as rewards for our power, we seek peace by waging war. In fact we generally agree that we must wage war in order to have peace.
I think about his concepts, and position at how misguided all of this is, and watch my thoughts push forward. If attacked, how does one not respond? If a known attack is coming, how does one allow it without preventing it militarily? How can we leave this cycle of pain and survive the violence of those who do not, truly, see the possibilities of a world built from love?
There was a point when Germany was a threat to “the free world.” They were defeated. Now they are, for the first time since that defeat in WWII, building their military to defend against the growing aggression of Russia.
If we don’t draw a direct line from how we relate to one another to the equipping of the military utopia we continue to perpetuate we will advance, in our ignorance, on a road toward our destruction.
We are ONE human family.
And if we needed confirmation of what we must all truly know in our quietest of moments, science now has proven it.
We are linked. Through the chain of a DNA strand.
That is the lesson of life and until we understand and embrace it, not theoretically or through posting a MEME but in how we live out our daily lives in relationship with all others we come in contact with, we have nowhere to go except toward violence, the recovery from violence, the repetition of violence. We will stay fearful and do everything we can to protect ourselves from our growing enemies until our civilization collapses, as all others have before. We then will rebuild with whatever and whoever is left. And then we will repeat the cycle.
The problem now is that we are interdependent and interconnected. Our weapons of destruction are far more powerful and far-reaching. Our technology exceeds our capacity to manage it with care. The collapse will be that much more complete.
So where is the hope? As I said in my last post, hope is a practice. A verb with its sleeves rolled up. Which means this is not an inevitability.
It demands something human beings have never collectively done. It requires we awaken out of our sleep in the utopia of a military world. And together make the decision to break ourselves out of the cycle. We have to garner the collective strength of will to hold a clear vision of a planet without war as a default for transformation. Not only holding this vision, but acting on it willfully as a human family will lead us to the elimination of mass manipulation of populations through governance or power-grabbing of any kind - state, religious, ethnic - to do violence to one another.
We have to struggle our way toward love of each other. Through forgiveness, through our anger, through our selfishness and cruelty, through the traps we’ve set for each other, through our greed, and through our fear. Through all of it we must struggle toward love. This is muscular, courageous generational work which requires strategy and intention, there is no quick panacea.
We have no other choice.
Our actions, attitudes, our words have power. WE have power. We each get to choose how we imprint ourselves on this world. As King Solomon said “Death and life are in the tongue.” We create and destroy with our words as well as our actions. We are deeply powerful. No government, no military industrial complex can impact the truth of that if we choose to intentionally transform our world in collective loving action. To stop our cycle of violence by changing the relationship we enact with one another. To love our neighbor as ourself.
There is no other way.
Holding up, living and reliving a military utopia is an illness deep within all our societies that has been a continued narrative through the rise and fall of all our civilizations. We absolutely must replace justifying the infliction of violence upon one another with a constructed, fought-for, actively-engaged campaign of peace, love and friendship throughout this world.
Over 100 years ago, and before two World Wars and many global conflicts with millions upon millions dead, James stated that we need to learn from war — and we must grow away from it. Evolve into something greater.
He said we must look to the army — embrace its discipline, structure and order, the concept of service and devotion, of readiness and fitness, of universal responsibility. He saw that we must apply all of that to another function. Building our world together toward balance and harmony.
How can we create a new story for human beings where celebrated heroes are those who give the best of themselves to our civilization? Contributing their talents toward a harmonious balance and contributions which serve all of us instead of a claim to victory through death and destruction?
Last Saturday I led a monthly conversation on intentional caring. It is a Zoom gathering of the We Care Promise Team open to anyone around the world. Present was someone from Cameroon, Pakistan, Senegal and people from the states. First I spoke of the power found in aligning together behind the promise of intentionally caring for all people. Then we opened the conversation for everyone to discuss where is care needed? - either in our personal lives, our community, our nation or the world. This deeply trigged my friend from Pakistan. Pakistan just experienced four deadly days of military conflict (May 7-10, 2025) with India. It is a country with many social ills and human rights threats. She was filled with passion, with sadness, with anger, with fear and deeply wanting to have hope. She is a human rights and women’s rights advocate through her work in theatre and traditional dance and music. A globally-recognized and accomplished artist-activist, she stated to us from her heart that she has worked 50 years and feels she has failed.
We are all fighting alone. And too many of us, with all the love we have, are unknowingly putting bandaids on a festering wound. We have to go deeper to the source of our suffering - the quality of our relationships with every human being we come in contact with. And we have to do this work together.
If not, with all our good efforts, we will continue to fail.
As James said, what we can take from armies are their discipline, their organizational structure, their commitment to mission, readiness and desire to serve as a unit, a team. We must do the same now. Determine where our efforts can and should go and insist on aligning others to this fight of ALL caring together for ALL. As I’ve mentioned many times in these posts, this is the work of Community Renewal International — to motivate and equip us to do what so many of us already are doing but with two vital adjustments. 1) to assess if we are caring for ALL people or only “our” people or “these” people and 2) to align ourselves to this single purpose in a collective transformative action. This is the specific kind of global caring we need, fought in the battlegrounds of the daily moments of our lives. In the intimacy of our communities.
In Shreveport, Louisiana where Community Renewal International was born, you will find Barksdale Air Force Base. Barksdale AFB is home to the Air Force Global Strike Command which is responsible for all U.S. land-based ICBMs (with thermonuclear warheads) and strategic bombers (which can carry nuclear weapons). It is a place of war readiness and military power closely located to the center of a strategy and methodology for systemizing peace, care and love throughout our world.
We hold the capacity for both at all times. We have to decide now what we are going to do with that capacity. Which history are we going to write? Can we be courageous in our choice? Loving others is not easy. Most especially in a growing culture of enemizing one another before truly listening with compassion, curiosity or sophistication. In certain circumstances putting care first is a warrior move. Putting care first in collective action and a systemized strategy is the Moral War we desperately need in neighborhoods all over this planet.
I am opposed to war as a metaphor. But it seems sometimes even what we are opposed to we can learn from. Listening to this amazing artist from Pakistan struggle through the danger, the hatred, the prejudice and violence around her and still wanting to believe that care and love are possible is a belief worth leaning into.
It’s a belief worth fighting for.
This is the moral war we have to enlist in.
If you feel a pull away from the military utopia that has always been,
if you feel repulsed, frightened or tired,
worn of your anger, your prejudices,
exhausted by imposed limitations on living fully -
which keeps you from experiencing the magnificence and minuscule beauty of this short life on this glorious planet -
and wanting others to have that freedom as well . . . . . .
now is the time to pull away fully and forever.
To answer that call centered in your chest crying toward peace.
Not a false peace waged through the physical violence of war,
but peace grown through love.
Through a deep and lasting commitment of change in how we live together and how we see one another.
This means each of us must be recruited and deployed.
We then roll up our sleeves and put on the uniform of
Brother.
Sister.
Friend.
Neighbor.
And go to work caring together, as hard as it will be, and for as long as it will take, for the sake of our future.
Amen.
I end every post with an invitation to join the We Care Promise Team. A movement that is growing globally to center care and love in our communities through intentionally caring relationships. If you are an artist and interested in this please click here to join the Creative Corps We Care Promise Team.
If you are NOT a creative but an AMAZING human being please click here to join the We Care Promise Team. Ultimately we arrive in the same place. A planet transformed through the loving, caring acts of intentionally connected persons who live on her.