Peace is a good place to start

Peace is a good place to start

Dec. 21, 2000

STRAIGHT TALK
By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

Last evening our kids watched a concert by Garth Brooks in which he sang of a Christmas Eve during the second World War. Most Americans know the story: The night was very cold, when on the front lines, a German soldier began to sing Silent Night. The men who heard him said he had a beautiful voice, and they, in their foxholes, joined him one by one as he sang. The guns fell silent as the men reflected on the miracle of that holy birth.

The war started again all too soon, though for that brief period, soldiers on both sides of that brutal and bloody conflict remembered the birth of Him who is called the Prince of Peace.

There may have been only two times in the history of our country when our people were as much at war with each other as they are at the present. Each of those periods ended in a real war, a shooting war.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, many of those on the losing side went to Canada. At the end of the Civil War, the only place the losers could go was to the West, and many of them did. After all, the West was still pretty empty, back then.

Canadians and their American cousins fought for years before there was any degree of real peace after the Revolutionary War. They even succeeded in burning our White House.

The Civil War seemed to end with greater finality, but those of us who have lived in the South know there is an anger that still burns in the hearts of many Southerners. Even though they are slightly confused concerning a label for us Westerners, they have no such problem with Northerners. They call them Yankees, and that’s when they are feeling magnanimous.

At all other times, they call them "DamnYankees," and they say it as one word. They not only say it that way; they mean it that way. The Civil War has been over for around 135 years, but to some extent, the uncivil war is still going on

Our citizens seem to be philosophically divided, almost down the middle. Our Congress is the same. Will we modern Americans still be engaging in an uncivil war two, four, six or eight years from now? Is this really the legacy we want to leave our children?

The story of the holy birth, of which the German solider sang, is told in the Bible, the same book in which we are warned that a house divided against itself cannot stand. That is not an idle warning, We have proven that twice in our history, and the blood shed by our own ancestors in those terrible wars stands as a witness to the veracity of that warning.

This is the time of year during which most of us raise our eyes from our busy lives and pay greater attention to the needs of our fellowman, and it is right that we should do so. It is also right that we should pay attention to the condition of our country, because a quarreling citizenry makes for a quarreling country.

At Christmas time we are reminded that the Prince of Peace is the model most of us grew up emulating. There can be no greater model, nor one more designed to remind us that peace in our country always starts with peace within the walls of our homes. From there we can say, as I say to you, peace on earth, good will toward men.

Merry Christmas.