This week marks 67 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.\u00a0 While many still debate the necessity of such an attack, none could argue that the violence wreaked unimaginable havoc on an entire country and population.\u00a0 According to reports the Hiroshima blast destroyed most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people. A second attack in Nagasaki killed tens of thousands more and prompted Japan to surrender to the World War II\u00a0Allies.<\/p>\n
One of the survivors of the attack, Setsuko Thurlow, graduated from Lynchburg College in 1955.\u00a0 Ms. Thurlow has visited campus and shared her story as well as her commitment to work for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Violence occurs with weapons of smaller magnitude but with still devastating results as we saw most recently in the tragic killings of Sikh worshipers in Wisconsin and movie goers in Colorado.\u00a0 Entire communities continue to reel in shock and grief over the senseless loss of life.<\/p>\n
How tempting it is to see ourselves far removed from such horrors and violent acts and to simply decry the tragedies as each story reveals itself to us in headlines, over the internet, or on the TV screen.<\/p>\n
And yet there is truth to the adage that \u201cviolence begets violence\u201d and most violence begins first in the human heart.\u00a0 As Martin Luther King, Jr. saw it, \u00a0\u201cNonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.\u00a0 You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recent debates over gay marriage, spurred in large part by the words and actions of Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A, have sometimes been filled with hateful and violent words and actions from both sides of the issue.\u00a0 I know truly wonderful people of faith with very different understandings of gay marriage for whom these recent weeks have been especially difficult.<\/p>\n
In sorting through the controversy myself I find some solace in a story about Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit religious order.\u00a0 According to the story, in 1552, Pope Julius III wanted to appoint a Jesuit as a cardinal, a position which brought with it much status, wealth, power, and privilege.\u00a0 Ignatius was adamantly opposed to the idea as he felt Jesuits should be committed to humble lives of simplicity, poverty and service.\u00a0 He protested the idea in writing to the pope:\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cIf I did not act thus, I would be quite certain that I would not give a good account of myself before God Our Lord.\u201d\u00a0 Yet Ignatius also acknowledged the possibility that those who disagreed with him might be justified in their own views. \u00a0\u201c. . .the same Spirit could inspire me to take one point of view for some reasons and inspire others to the contrary for other reasons.\u201d (The pope eventually changed his mind.)<\/p>\n
Even when we hold very strong beliefs and opinions, we might do well to offer them in a spirit of genuine humility and kindness of heart.\u00a0 Perhaps if all of us exercised a more gentle approach to one another, our families, our communities, our countries, and our world might know less of violence and more of peace.<\/p>\n
Peace,<\/p>\n
Anne<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week marks 67 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.\u00a0 While many still debate the necessity of such an attack, none could argue that the violence wreaked unimaginable havoc on an entire country and population.\u00a0 According …<\/p>\n