Have you heard the one about the child who was digging a hole in the backyard? The neighbor next door asked her what she was doing. “Oh,” said the little girl, “I’m burying my goldfish.” “I’m sorry your goldfish died,” consoled the neighbor. “But tell me, why are you digging such a big hole for a little goldfish?” “You want to know why I’m digging a big hole? I’ll tell you why. I’m digging a big hole to bury your cat who ate my goldfish!”
The story is funny but the reality that lies behind it is not. What is there about human beings that causes us to heap vindication upon vindication? I can picture the neighbor now digging an even bigger hole to bury the child who killed that cat that swallowed the goldfish. Where does it end?
Every morning I retrieve my newspaper from the driveway and I read of wars and rumors of wars, and I wonder “Where will it all end?” Israelis bomb a settlement on the West Bank. Palestinians bomb a mall in Israeli territory. Iraq’s Sunni, Shiite, Arab, and Kurdish citizens deliver tit for tat. And many of our own neighborhoods are filled with a perpetual Hatfield and McCoy mentality.
Clearly the issues are large. But the proposed solutions are small. I know that alone we cannot solve the centuries-old wars in our own communities to say nothing about those in the Middle East, but we can begin by working on our own individual behaviors that give way to retaliation and vengeance. How we handle the inconsiderate driver on the highway or the person who cuts in front of us in the grocery line may seem unimportant. Yet our responses are the seeds from which the weeds of hateful behavior grow.
Something I’m thinking about as I ponder the ripple effect of war and peace!
- Rev. Ruth Harper Stevens, Minister of Welcome and Hospitality
