Peacemaking
By Bob Bongiovanni, MA
In his sermon on the mount ,
Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of
God.” I have always been intrigued by
this title of “peacemaker.” Most would
think of ambassadors, doing their best to avert international warfare. But I think the work of the peacemaker is
much more common, though perhaps not common enough. I would bet there are a number of peacemakers here this morning,
even if you don’t know it
1. The more biologically inclined Jungians have defined archetypes as
the pathways that psychic energy has a propensity to follow in the psyche.
2. The more mystically inclined Jungians have defined archetypes as
veritable gods, embodying essential qualities of what we define as human,
inspiring myth as well as modern phenomena.
1. In the realm of the collective unconscious, archetypes are in
balance, their positive poles exactly counterbalancing their negative poles.
2. They inspire and shape human thought and behavior, and thereby
become pinned in space and time. This
is something they long for, because until they are so pinned in space and time
they cannot transform.
3. You might think of human beings as receiving units for archetypal
energy, like your TV at home can take the intangible and inaudible signals and
transform them into sound and picture. However, unlike televisions, we don’t
all have the same tuning capability.
Our lives have shaped us in certain ways that predispose us to receive a
certain spectrum of archetypal energy and not receive the rest of the
spectrum. For instance, if we
experienced nothing but negative mothering, we are tuned only to the negative
pole of the archetypal Mother. Through
analysis and other methods, we can widen our capability. Ideally, we become able to receive and
transform the full spectrum of every archetype.
4. Realistically, though, only a very few people go much beyond the
originally programming. They spend
their entire lives knowing only one pole of most or all archetypes. Their lives are tragically diminished.
5. Tragic as this is on the individual level, it also spells trouble
for communities and cultures. As I
said, archetypes long to be pinned in space and time. If they do not achieve full expression in a given individual,
they express themselves by possessing one individual with one pole and a
separate individual with the opposite pole, and war it out. So, we have saints who turn themselves over
to the positive pole, seeing God the Father as purely good. And, just to even things out, we have ghoulish
people who turn themselves over to a God who is dark and dreadful, lusting for
blood and chaos. These two people meet,
and it’s a battle to the death. What
seems to be a battle between people is actually a battle between archetypal
energies, but the blood that is spilled is very human.
6. Just to complicate matters, sometimes both parties to a battle
claim to be defending the true God, and project the evil pole onto the other
side. In reality, what you find is that
both sides are possessed by both the negative and positive poles. As they listen to their respective leaders,
they are elevated to the heights of perfection and possibility, drunk with the
positive energy of the archetype.
Moments later, they are on the battlefield drenched in blood, and the
negative energy of the archetype reigns supreme over both sides.
7. Let me state it plainly:
Archetypal possession always harms human beings. The archetypes may get something out of it,
but humans pay the price. Archetypes
are inhuman and collective. They do not
weep when humans die, any more than viruses weep for their victims.
8. The fact that archetypes long to be lived in the human realm is
not, in itself, the problem. The
problem arises when individual humans cannot or will not live the fullest
possible spectrum of each archetype.
The part that is neglected emerges out of the shadow in the most
horrific way imaginable.
1. The ones among us who attempt to live the fullest spectrum of the
archetypes, without possession by any of them, are the ones whom I call
peacemakers.
2. It’s not that they are immune to archetypal energy. They feel it, and appropriately fear
it. But they are conscious enough of
what’s going on to stand apart from the fracas and seek resolution through
transformation.
3. Peacemakers have ultimate faith in that phenomenon that Jung
called the transcendent function. This
is the function that mediates opposites, expressing itself through symbols,
facilitating a transition from one psychological attitude to another. The transcendent function stands in
compensatory relationship to both side of a warring conflict, enabling the
poles to encounter one another one equal terms.
4. That means that peacemakers resist the temptation to take sides
when opposites collide. They wait,
instead, for some new insight to arise that makes the conflict no longer
necessary. When this amazing third
emerges, peacemakers give it expression and form. Millions of people have died in a vain attempt of one archetypal
pole to triumph over the other pole.
Peacemakers are willing to die, but only in an attempt to aid in the
birth of something that transcends archetypal poles.
1. Jesus found himself in a world possessed by the archetypal
Father. His middle eastern world was
marked by a marauding Roman empire, capable of incredible feats of innovation
in engineering and philosophy, yet ultimately brutal. Opposing the Romans were the Jews, also sublimely spiritual and
advanced, yet warlike like their Yahweh.
Much to the disappointment of his zealot apostle Judas, Jesus refused to
take the side of the Jews in calling the Jews to arms against their Roman
oppressors. Instead, Jesus leveled his
criticism against those most possessed by negative Father among the Jews -- the
Pharisees -- and urged his followers to follow the path of love that was far
beyond the influence of the Father. Indeed,
for Jesus, love was the antidote for the poisonous Father that was strangling
the life out of the world. Love was the
transcendent function worth dying for.
2. Mahatma Gandhi found himself in a similar situation, but this time
the invaders were British. He, also,
disappointed some people by not rallying Indians against British, and Hindu
against Moslem. Instead, he embodied
nonviolence, returning love for hatred.
Ultimately, the British were shamed into departing. Very interestingly, Gandhi was once asked
about his stance on World War II, which was raging during the time. He said it was too bad that people did not
trust nonviolence enough to resolve the conflict. True, the war was inflicting incredible pain on the people of
Europe, but Gandhi believed that nonviolent resistance to him would have
triumphed, at great cost in terms of human life and suffering, but no more so
than the horror of the war. It’s an
interesting point to consider. If enough peacemakers had descended on Germany,
instead of soldiers, preventing the transportation of Jews to the gas chambers,
laying down their lives to contain the Nazi horror, and also containing the
fury of the Allies, would the German people have allowed Hitler to slaughter,
bully, and lead them mindlessly down the path to destruction?
3. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inspired by both Jesus and Gandhi,
adapting the philosophy of nonviolence to challenge the brutality of racism in
the United States. Here, also, was the
voice of the transcend function. “We
Shall Overcome” could be the anthem of the transcendent function, expressing
that undying certainty that the conflict cannot last forever. Who among us remains faithful to his dream
that we will transcend the racist hatred that so divides us?
C. Peacemakers
as Witnesses
1.
I
have been asked many times, “In a world that is so full of violence and pain,
seemingly on the brink of disaster, what can I possibly do as an individual to
be a peacemaker? Must I lay down my
life, like Jesus, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Must I play out some dramatic battle on the dramatic, collective
stage?”
2.
Well,
maybe some of us will be called to that sort of collective destiny, and
I, for one, am grateful for those who take up the challenge. But, that is a very tiny minority of the
human population.
3.
For
the rest of us, I believe the critical task is being a good witness to the
struggle. That may seem like a very
passive act – just observing the warring archetypes – that is unlikely to
produce any meaningful peace. Actually,
I would argue that has always been the critical ingredient – the ones who take
the heroic, visible roles depend on a legion of silent witnesses who pay
attention to what is happening and make many small moves in response.
4.
Let’s
take Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as examples. In both cases, these men were born into horribly violent and
inhuman systems, which very few outsiders knew or cared about. The secret to their success was their
ability to draw the world’s attention to the violence and inhumanity, to ignite
the compassion and indignation of the silent masses throughout the world. Winston Churchill would never have given
India its independence if the British public had not felt shame at the
treatment of the Indian people and world opinion had not shamed the British parliament
into action. In the American south,
African Americans had suffered hundreds of years of lynchings and
beatings; it took a few brave souls to
sit down at cafeteria counters and ride buses, and be beaten in the presence of
the media, to make the rest of America feel shame and compassion. A
critical moment in the civil rights struggle actually occurred in Japan. The head of the Birmingham, Alabama Chamber
of Commerce was visiting there as part of a trade mission when the mistreatment
of the Freedom Riders hit the worldwide media.
His Japanese hosts suddenly cooled to his ideas of establishing better
trade relations – they were clearly horrified at the incivility of his city. They had witnessed the real Birmingham on
the front pages of their own papers, thousands of miles away.
5.
That’s the very practical way of looking at
it. There’s also an esoteric way of
looking at it, but that requires you to truly have faith in the reality of the
Self and the psyche, as envisioned by Jung.
Recall Jung’s pivotal work, Answer to Job,
in which he argues that much of the world’s suffering arises because God is
unconscious and internally conflicted.
God does not fully understand what it means for human beings to suffer. What he needs is for us to confront him –
ever so carefully, as Job did – and mirror back to him what it means to
suffer. We must bear stark witness to
the violence and suffering of the world, because God sees that suffering
through our eyes, and therein lies the only hope for God’s conflicted nature to
be healed. In that sense, the greatest
and most inhumane thing we can do is avert our gaze because it is too painful,
to remain blissfully ignorant of the sufferings of our neighbors, both close
and far away. I remember a recent
conversation I had with a friend about the suffering of the people of India as
I had witnessed it, and their increased suffering that I fear will soon
come. He said, “Why do you care? Just stop watching the TV, stop reading
newspapers, and let them suffer if they must without being affected
yourself.” I replied, “That would
conflict with my deepest belief system.
I MUST bear witness – that is my call, as I see it. Even if it horrifies me – particularly if it
horrifies me – I must mirror back to God the consequences of his shadowy
unconsciousness. Otherwise, all hope is
truly lost, for me, for those I love, and for them.” So, when I see something horrific, in person or via the media, I
direct a comment to the Self – “Don’t you see?
How much longer will this continue?
Can you not have mercy on suffering humanity?” To those who do not believe in the reality of the psyche and
Jung’s concept of the Self, I am sure that sounds like a pathetically feeble
act that will change nothing. I beg to
differ, but that is a matter of faith.
D.
Conclusion
1. I would like to close with a brief quote from Mindell’s book, Sitting
in the Fire:
The fire that burns in the
social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of humanity can ruin the
world. Or, this fire can transform
trouble into community. It’s up to
us. We can avoid contention, or we can
fearlessly sit in the fire, intervene, and prevent world history’s most painful
errors from being repeated.