![]() ![]() Peace is a state of being, even perhaps a state of grace. ![]() So, has peace work just changed its tune or has it evolved in more substantial ways? But many of the organizations whose goal is indeed world peace have chosen not to include the word in their names and “peacenik,” pejorative even in its heyday, is now purely passé. The porch of a neighbor of mine sports a faded peace flag Trader Joe’s keeps me well-supplied with Inner Peas and peace still gets full commercial treatment sometimes, as on designer T-shirts from the Chinese clothing company Uniqlo. It’s not as if the word “peace” has been cancelled. The few about world or international peace were unnervingly angry and bleak, which also seemed to reflect the tenor of the time. But in this century? Most of the ones I came across were about inner peace or making peace with yourself they are self-care mantras du jour. There was the iconic “ Give Peace a Chance,” recorded by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and pals in a Montreal hotel room in 1969 “ War,” first recorded by the Temptations in 1970 (I can still hear that “absolutely nothing!” response to “What Is It Good For?”) Cat Stevens’s “ Peace Train,” from 1971 and that’s just to begin a list. But a protest song, by definition, isn’t a song of peace - and it turns out that most recent peace songs aren’t so peaceful either.Īs many of us of a certain age remember, antiwar songs thrived during the Vietnam War years. After all, it feels good to sing as a group at a moment when it doesn’t even matter if you can carry a tune as long as the lyrics hit home. (As I found out while reporting then, Rage Against the Machine served that purpose for some post-9/11 antiwar soldiers.) Better yet is an anthem crowds can sing when they gather in solidarity to exert political pressure. There’s a limit to how much significance songs can carry, of course, but a successful political movement does need a good soundtrack. ![]() Little wonder that the Pope, in his recent Christmas message, bemoaned the world’s “ famine of peace.”Īmid all of that, isn’t it hard to imagine that peace stands a chance? It just goes on and on, doesn’t it? And that’s not even to mention all the fragile truces, acts of terrorism (and reprisal), quashed uprisings, and barely repressed hostilities on this planet.ĭon’t get me started, by the way, on how the language of battle so often pervades our daily lives. Meanwhile, militaries are killing civilians (and sometimes vice versa) in places as disparate as Ukraine, Ethiopia, Iran, Syria, the West Bank, and Yemen. Since my summer ramble, International Peace Day has come and gone. So many years later, as I finished the last chorus, I wondered: Who talks, let alone sings, that way about peace anymore? I mean, without irony and with genuine hope? That was before I got older and came to realize that grown-ups don’t necessarily think sensibly. ![]() It seemed such a sensible, grown-up way to think - like, duh! we can all have the good stuff. “My country’s skies are bluer than the oceanĪnd sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pineīut other lands have sunlight too and cloverĪnd skies are everywhere as blue as mine” looked like a promising development, and folk music was just oh-so-cool.Īt my well-meaning, often self-righteous, always melodious camp, 110 children used to warble with such sweet promise: That was the late 1950s, when the miseries of World War II were still relatively fresh, the U.N. Last summer, taking a walk through the corn fields in New York’s Hudson River Valley with no one around but the barn swallows, I found myself belting out a medley of tunes about peace from my long-ago, summer-camp years. I like to sing and what I like best is to do so at the top of my lungs when I’m all alone. ![]()
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