Seeds of peace

At the recent antiwar rally, people acted the way they wished the government would act -- with goodness and tender respect.

By Anne Lamott

Feb 28, 2003 | I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy. How did America get to this point, when the Bill of Rights is systematically being abolished, and American leaders can bully and buy their way into preemptive war? Haven't these people ever heard of karma? Hitting first has always been the mark of evil. I don't think one great religious or spiritual thinker has said that it was OK. Everyone, from almost every tradition, agrees on three things. Rule 1: We are all family. Rule 2: It is immoral to hit first. Rule 3: You reap exactly what you sow. You cannot grow tulips from zucchini seeds, or peace from murder. And, it helps beyond words to plant bulbs in the dark of winter.

I tried to pray my way out of the fear and hate, but my mind was once again a pinball machine of anger and hopelessness -- I blame this condition equally on Bush and menopause, which have more things in common that you might think. There was very little hope that day. People were no longer using the word "if" we go to war. They were saying "when." And I suddenly realized that I didn't believe in God anymore. It was so frightening, like being 8 years old again, listening to my parents fight, holding my breath. I clutched my cat like I used to, a life preserver in cold, deep water. But then -- a small miracle -- I started to believe in George Bush. I really did: In my terror, I thought maybe he and Colin Powell and Christopher Hitchens are smarter than me, and they have gathered and can grasp classified intelligence and nuance that is well above my understanding.

Then I thought, George Bush? And relief wafted over me like a breeze.

I decided to start from scratch, with a simple prayer: "Hi!" I said, and then I could breathe. I prayed again: "Help! I'm so afraid!" And I felt better. Augustine said that you have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day. Yesterday's faith does not wait for you like a newspaper with the morning coffee. You seek it, and in seeking it, find it. Fra Giovanni wrote, during the Renaissance,

No heaven can come to us
       unless our hearts find rest in it today.
        Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future
        which is not hidden
        in this present little instant.
Take peace!

And millions of us are taking peace. By the time my friends and I got to the march that day, I did feel like a cross between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy, elegant and solemn, goofy and eager to help. We showed up.

Tens of thousands of people were already there, people like us, idealists who had been angry and scared upon waking, but who were now milling around on the Mobius strip of the '60s, together once again on sacred ground. Harangers harangued us from various sound systems unimproved in the last 35 years, like heavy metal played backward on the wrong speed. But the energy and signs and faces of the crowd were an intoxicating balm, and by some marvelous yogic stretch, we all stopped trying to figure who and what we agreed with, and who the bad elements were -- Bush? The socialist haranguers? The Punx for Peace who had come prepared with backpacks full of rocks? The Israel haters? The Zionists? You just had to let go. There was space for us all, and we began to march, each a small part of one big body, fascinatingly out of control, like protoplasm bobbing along.

The endless sea of people looked like a great heartbroken circus, wild living art, motley and stylish, old and young, punks and aging hippies and veterans, strewn together on the asphalt lawn of Market Street; a yard goods peace march. We took tiny shuffle steps, like Zen monks in a crowded wedding procession. It was like being on a kind of conveyer belt, overwhelming and scary, because you might trip and get stepped on, but once you were really in, you could either sit by the curb and sob, or adjust to it. It's so disturbing not to walk with your usual gait, to move with purpose, slowly. It was like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time.

Next Page: Even sheep on stilts were calling for peace

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