Standing for Peace

I’ve struggled to know how to describe what Standing for Peace is all about. Not because I don’t have my own ideas, but perhaps precisely because I do—but I don’t want my own ideas to be all that this project ever becomes. Peace, though a simple concept in theory, is complex and multifaceted in practice. On top of that, peace likely looks a little different to each of us, even at different times in our lives. Generally, I can say that the kind of peace this project is seeking is not peace for a prize or peace at any price. It is the kind of peace in which freedom is found: at the balanced intersection of individual action and social law, undergirded by a framework of morality.

Yes, I started this effort in response to the major invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Though I am not its citizen, Ukraine is a part of me. Over the course of the several years I have lived in Ukraine, I have come to understand and appreciate its people and culture. All of this might help you to understand that the invasion felt to me like a personal affront. When it started, I felt intense guilt, perhaps as some form of imposter syndrome, that I was not there in harm’s way. Only a small distance of time, in fact, kept me out of physical danger. Those in Ukraine were no different than I, only there at a different time. Who would have thought that time could make such a difference? But beyond this feeling of gut-wrenching unfairness at the difference between my own relative physical safety and the safety of our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, the invasion brought with it a different sense of dread. Even at the time, I recognized that the world I had grown up with had died. There would be no going back. For eight months I was in a state of grief and denial. I would wake up each morning to a living nightmare from which I could not escape. In a spin on the often misunderstood apocalyptic song, it was the end of the world as I knew it, but I didn’t feel fine. It was only through my own efforts at trying to do something about it that I was able to pull myself out of a victim mentality and find some peace.

So this project is at least an attempt to give myself a space to act and share my voice in support of a better and more peaceful world. I’m not yet sure what will become of it. While I am personally familiar with Ukraine and its plight, I do not intend to constrain this project to Ukraine or even to my own limited views of peace. Growing numbers of countries and peoples around the world are finding themselves in uncertain circumstances. These and other voices need to be heard and considered. I hope that this project will be more than an space for my own self-expression and will increasingly become a space where the voices of others who have spoken out for peace can be heard, understood, and recontextualized—the voices of poets, artists, musicians, and writers, some of whom have already played out their lives, as they stood for peace in their own times and places.

I hope that others with their own personal experience and vision will join this effort or do something else in their own way to stand up for peace. The world needs all of us.