At this time of war, my heart is with the people of Ukraine. I always want to write you a letter of hope, a letter of inspiration and love and encouragement. I almost didn’t write to you this month because I almost couldn’t. The questions are more than the answers I have. I do want to ground in hope, but I can’t do it by pretending that this isn’t really hard. What stirs me to action today is anger.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been horrific to witness, and mirrors the Gulf War of 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and my family had to flee as refugees. We were the lucky ones, who survived and had a place to go. So many lives have already been lost in Ukraine, as well as on the Russian side, by people who don’t believe in war. There hasn’t been enough pushback from the U.S. I want to remind the American people that in the parallel situation of the Gulf War, the U.S. did step in to help with troops on the ground, some of whom remain in Kuwait, a small oil-rich country. War is always about the possession of land and natural resources, for the sake of extraction and profit for a few. The United States allied with wealth, not values. Like the people of Ukraine, we must fight back against this ideology and its practice, everywhere. Call your senators, and protest this unjustified war. The U.S. government must step up its actions. Even Switzerland has taken significant action which is actually breaking with its usual stance by freezing Russian assets – money speaks to power.
For those of us who believe in peace, we have to build it with care and rigor. We cannot have peace without intentional practice. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said - “If the flower is on her way to become a piece of garbage, the garbage can be on her way to becoming a flower… I think we have suffered a lot during the 20th century. We have created a lot of garbage. There was a lot of violence and hatred and separation. And we have not handled — we don’t know how to handle the garbage that we have created, and then we would have a chance to create a new century for peace. That is why now it’s very important for us to learn how to transform the garbage we have created into flowers.”
We have to practice peace in the daily realms of our lives - with our loved ones, our coworkers, with strangers, and even with people we vehemently disagree with, and especially with the people we have conflict with. Thich Nhat Hanh also says “You have the right to be angry, but you don’t have the right not to practice in order to transform your anger. You have the right to make mistakes, but you don’t have the right to continue making mistakes. You have to learn from your mistakes.” We have to de-escalate our hearts and minds, our words and actions, much sooner than we do. We can, it takes practice. It’s hard, but the alternative is much harder.
Watching the news yesterday I heard this — “At this time the city of Kyiv remains free and defiant.”