• Rev. Rachel Schwab • Pastor Wayne Patton • The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Koloa • Rebecca DeRoos Editors note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective
• Rev. Rachel Schwab
• Pastor Wayne Patton
• The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Koloa
• Rebecca DeRoos
Editors note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday a topic is printed inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on faith. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Rev. Rachel Schwab
Hanapepe Hawaiian
Congregational Church
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9)
As a Christian woman, mother, pastor, sister, daughter, wife — I have many roles toward “keeping peace,” but before I can speak for others, I must find that peace within as best I can.
Jesus calls us in the verse from Matthew to remember our peacemakers and bless them. Whether we agree or disagree how peace in this world should be maintained, it is certain that peace should begin within us.
No matter what faith background we have, if any, we all desire peace — peace in our hearts, in our homes, our busy lives and for our world. To be peaceful requires us to respect and honor one another as fellow human beings should. Peace also means standing up for injustice, giving a voice to the voiceless and hope for the hopeless.
Peace also means being willing to humble ourselves like children, as well as be that voice as Ghandi, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr. did before us. They did not go out seeking fame and fortune as peacemakers. It was their faith, their walk with their God and their passion for peace and justice that made these names stick forever in our hearts and minds.
Who will be the peacemakers for today? Who is willing to do what the Lord requires of us, “to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God?” (Micah 6:8) These are the question that I ask myself every day as I shepherd my faithful congregation in an increasingly secular world. Let us pray for peace — both within and for all of those peacemakers that need our blessing — and most of all God’s blessing.
Pastor Wayne Patton
Anahola Baptist Church
Here’s the way it should be … When we wake up in the morning and look out the window, we should say, “Lord, this is the day you have made. I will rejoice and be glad it in.” That’s the way it should be: An attitude of peace; a firm confidence that God is in charge of every day; an absence of fear and failure.
I’m not describing a carefree life or a life without stress and strain, but I am describing a life that carries with it a sort of “heavenly carelessness” that trusts God with all things, prays without ceasing, rejoices in all things and lives in the abundance of God’s peace.
That’s the kind of life Jesus Christ wants to develop in us, for He is the prince of peace. (Isaiah 9:6) The apostle Paul said, “For He himself is our peace.’” (Ephesians 2:14) Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace, I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27) In other words, Jesus Christ died on the cross that our lives might dwell in the midst of this kind of peace, for He is our peace offering.
How then do we enter more earnestly and successfully into God’s peace? Here are four suggestions. First, make Jesus Christ the Lord of all your difficulties. Give your problems to Him. Let go and let God. Cast all your cares on Him for He cares for you. Do this consciously and deliberately. Second, memorize the great verses in the Bible about God’s peace, some of which I mentioned above. Third, meditate on those verses. This is the missing ingredient in Bible study. We have too much noise, too many technical contraptions around us all the time.
We need quiet walks, quiet bicycle rides, quiet car trips and quiet moments to think. When we study and memorize scripture, it’s like swallowing a jewelry box whole. Meditation is the key that unlocks that internalized box and allows us to start bedecking ourselves with the jewels. Fourth, master your emotions. In the power of the holy spirit and using the tools of the scripture you’ve memorized and meditated on, cast out discouragement and fear, anger and anxiety. Make up your mind that you aren’t going to let these emotions and moods master your heart. Take yourself in hand and choose to live in God’s peace. Sometimes it’s a matter of sheer, sanctified, spirit-empowered will power.
Here is an acronym of “peace” — practicing and enjoying the attitude of Christ everyday — that can help us wake up each morning, look out the window, and say, ‘Another day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.’
The Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Koloa
Peace and unity are the major tenets of the Baha’i Faith. Peace, however, must be achieved at many levels. To achieve true peace, the rights of everyone must be honored and protected. Any group suffering from injustice is a potential source of unrest.
The following quotes from the Baha’i writings speak to this issue.
Equality of men and women: “The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged prerequisites of peace.”
Elimination of extreme poverty: “The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the brink of war … It is an issue that is bound up not only with the necessity for eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty but also with those spiritual verities the understanding of which can produce a new universal attitude.”
Elimination of racism: “Racism, one of the most baneful and persistent evils, is a major barrier to peace. Its practice perpetrates too outrageous a violation of the dignity of human beings to be countenanced under any pretext. Racism retards the unfolding of the boundless potentialities of its victims, corrupts its perpetrators and blights human progress.”
Elimination of religious prejudice: “The challenge facing the religious leaders of mankind is to contemplate, with hearts filled with the spirit of compassion and a desire for truth, the plight of humanity, and to ask themselves whether they cannot, in humility before their Almighty Creator, submerge their theological differences in a great spirit of mutual forbearance that will enable them to work together for the advancement of human understanding and peace.”
Elimination of nationalism: “Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of humanity as a whole. Baha’u’llah’s statement is: ‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.’”
When equality is achieved by individual groups, then peace can be manifested in the most basic unit of society, the family. “If love and agreement are manifest in a single family, that family will advance, become illumined and spiritual; but if enmity and hatred exist within it destruction and dispersion are inevitable.” This is likewise true of a city and a nation. The true destiny of mankind is to achieve world peace.
Rebecca DeRoos
SOM Practitioner
Peace is release, a letting go. It can be an allowing of God’s input to resolve our problems and differences and it can go deeper than that with the quieting of the mind.
Peace is even a celebration of death — a letting go of the human experience to continue on with the embracing spiritual experience. As Teilhard de Chardin reminds us: “We are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings immersed in a human experience.”
Ernest Holmes and Gibran each expressed themselves poetically regarding physical death and the approach of peace. Holmes said, “When death shall come / And the spirit, freed, shall mount the air, /… Hinder not its onward way, / Grieve not o’er its form of clay, / For the spirit, freed now from clod, / Shall go alone to meet its God” … to meet its peace.”
Gibran said: “For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”
Peace is a realm available to us at any time and at any place. To sit quietly and accept all that is, allowing the human experience simply to happen is the ultimate of peace with meditation as our conduit.
Topic for two weeks from today:
• Will you speak to us of
honor?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com
• Deadline each week is
Tuesday, by 5 p.m.
