Let It Begin With Me

The song “Let there Be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin with Me” was written by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson in 1955 and is often associated with the Christmas season. The angel and the heavenly host proclaimed peace on earth to shepherds in the region of Bethlehem. The Miller and Jackson interpretation not only encourages self-examination and self-criticism, but also empowers each of us to be a part of the peace that is coming. Like Gandhi’s “Be the change you want to see,” we are taken from the thought of the overwhelming character of violence and conflict in our world and given a task: start with ourselves.

In one of the most influential recent books on conflict resolution, The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute, the authors begin by observing a common assumption when facing conflict, whether within families, at work, or at the geopolitical scale. It is usually assumed that others must change. The authors think this is a mistake that results in conflicts continuing as root causes go unaddressed or even are perpetuated in attempts to solve the very problems that they are causing.

If the root causes of all conflict—including the ones that we feel most powerless to address—are the same, overcoming them can certainly begin with me. The authors of The Anatomy of Peace identify bitterness, envy, indifference, and resentment, although the list can be expanded to include greed, fear, the need to control, and so on. Their point is that conflict cannot just be identified by actions since conflict refuses a heart at peace and nurtures a heart at war. Identifying these things gets us thinking about root causes. Wars can be hot or cold, violent or not violent. But a war that is cold and not outwardly violent is still a war. A heart at war refuses to believe the humanity of other people and sees them as objects and obstacles. A heart at peace emphasizes our shared humanity, looks for ways to cooperate, and commits to finding shared solutions to problems.

Nonviolence is about so much more than not being violent. It is about cultivating a heart at peace, open to discovering forms of violence within ourselves that we did not know to call violence; welcoming truth from strangers, including enemies; and looking for what is good and beautiful in ourselves and around us. The Arbinger Institute and countless others who put in the hard work to resolve (or reframe) conflicts will point to this work as usually being arduous and drawn out, especially since hearts at war can be resistant to embracing an alternative. But there’s no shortcut around dealing with the root causes, which is why peace on earth begins with each of us.

Means are Everything

In 1924, Gandhi responded to the claim that any means are okay as long as the goal is a good one. He disagreed. "I would say," he wrote, "'means are after all everything'. As the means, so the end. Violent means will give violent Swaraj [ self-rule] ... There is no wall of separation between means and ends . . . I have been endeavoring to keep the country to means that are purely peaceful and legitimate. . . . If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later."

Gandhi's commitment to uniting means and ends contrasts strongly with so much of what we witness. Today, for example, in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, ceasefire negotiations have stalled, and other nations are turning their backs on Israel while Israel's leaders express their willingness to stand alone.

Sixty years ago in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, King said, "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality." To him, the reason for this appears to have been that unarmed truth and unconditional love are actually the nature of reality itself. In the same speech, King urged that humanity must "evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Likewise, Gandhi taught that "nonviolence is the law of our species." It is the power that believes that the best way to a just and peaceful future is to act justly and peaceably all the time. But it's more than this since nonviolence isn't just a belief about something essential to our humanity; it is the truth about our humanity.

I was recently speaking with an Israeli who commented that Israel has already lost its war with Gaza. He might not have phrased his point in terms of nonviolence. But the idea is there: "Violent means will give violent self-rule."

I often point out that, at ACN, we don't spell "nonviolence" with a hyphen. This came to us as a suggestion from Arun Gandhi when ACN was being founded 20 years ago. It's got to be nonviolence rather than non-violence. Otherwise it's a problematic word because it can imply that violence comes first, that violence is the more fundamental reality of things, and then some of us feebly come along try to oppose it.

But it is nonviolence that comes first just as peace is a deeper reality than violence. We must not let violence set our agenda. Many of us have made this point countless times. But it's always a challenge to accept and believe since there is clearly so much to oppose. How does one hold onto and convey the conviction that peace is a deeper, more fundamental reality than violence?

I think about Keon, a student leader here who started Ashland's Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. He would sometimes shout at passing drivers, "We love you no matter what!" It occurred to me that this, more than anything else, was what made our demonstrations on Ashland Main Street peaceful. It's not so much that we kept from using violence. That's not the heart of nonviolence. It's as King said: "The foundation of such a method is love."

I must not shame or humiliate my adversary. I need to work to identify shared problems and figure out what shared solutions might be. This work is itself already peace-work and it's easily swept aside when we're self-confident, self-assured, self-righteous. What if my adversary is actually part of my truth-finding process? What if she is speaking something that I need to hear? How will I make sure that I'm open to hearing it?

There is, as Gandhi taught, an experimental quality to all of this: experimental and risky. Satyagraha, we remember, literally means "truth-force" and Gandhi would talk about his own experiments with truth. All of this is an experiment with truth—the truth that love is the foundation of all things. It would be very foolish to try to live as though that were true if it isn’t. But this is why nonviolence must be dared. 

Craig Hovey

Executive Director, ACN