I don't even dream such dreams. But the longer I live, the more convinced I am that the only real change possible begins with changing myself. If I want to live in a peaceful world, then I must find ways to live and love and write the peace that I have struggled to find in my own heart. Peace isn't passive. It isn't merely the absence of violence, the absence of war.
Peace is an active, viable, hopeful way of living.
Especially peace is hopeful. Those who are different in culture, ideology, race, religion, class, education, gender, sexual preference. A society can be judged by the way it protects or fails to protect its most vulnerable members. And I believe that this society, racked with violence, rife with neglect, is being tested and found seriously wanting. When we spend as much time talking and listening to one another as we do mesmerized by our television sets, when we are as angry about the steady diet of violence being fed our children as we would be if poison were being slipped into their food, when we are as willing to live our ideals as we are to teach them to our children, then we will begin to see the rewards of peace.