Getting practical about peace.

There are so many people in the world, all with their own webs of relationships, daily struggles, and earnest dreams, that it can get overwhelming when you think about it. Often when I am driving on the highway, my son Brian asks me where everyone is going, and I realize just how many travelers there are. I find I wish I knew a familiar face in a passing car, find I wave more enthusiastically than the situation warrants when I do.

I like knowing people in many places. Something about Alaska feels like home because Patty and Peter live there. Somehow Singapore is not such an alien place because Bradley, Jon, Amelia, and Jack are there. Morocco doesn't seem so strange because of Liz.

That is why I was happy to be a participant last fall at the World Conference on Religion and Peace Sixth World Assembly in Italy. The idea behind the WCRP is to draw people from all over the world and from different faith traditions, and for the group to be a united voice for peace and understanding. Since its birth in 1970, WCRP has developed a large network of people with a commitment to building human bridges. Before attending the assembly, I was excited but skeptical, thinking I might be spending the week with a lot of "pie-in-the-sky" folks without any grasp of the complexities of conflict and violence. What I found instead came as a welcome surprise: practical people dedicated to concrete steps that ordinary religious people can undertake to build peace.

More than a thousand people attended the gathering; 270 of them were voting delegates. Pope John Paul II and major religious leaders from other traditions opened the ceremonies in Rome. The visual image of the pope sitting with a Muslim youth  from South Africa, a Shinto priest from Japan, a Hindu leader from India, a Jewish woman from the United States, and others was quite striking. After the opening ceremony, the assembly moved to Riva del Garda, in the lake region of Northern Italy. There, daily plenary sessions were held with a grand lineup of speakers, including Cardinal Francis Arinze from the Vatican, Gustavo Gutierrez from Peru, Hans Kung from Germany, a high-ranking UN representative, the ecumenical patriarch from Turkey, a former prime minister from Japan, and many others. The youth committee of the WCRP offered a stimulating sideshow. In what at first seemed to be an excessive amount of attention paid to the politics of the assembly proceedings, they ultimately imparted a valuable message to the overall assembly that immediate, concrete actions are more important than assembly declarations.

For me, the most interesting things happened in small groups formed around various themes. I participated in the "Children in Social Conflict" group, a subcommission of the "Children in Conflict" commission. We were all women--from Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, South Africa, Australia, and the U.S.--and we were Buddhists, Christians, Ba'hai, Shinto. It was extraordinary to be in a small room with so many people from different backgrounds, all of whom shared a religious commitment to giving children the best possible chance to live fully and without the fear of violence. Instead of talking vaguely about that fuzzy goal, however, we shared specific strategies about ways religious people can respond to children living amid poverty and violence.

A young Catholic woman from Sri Lanka, Ursula, told of the children's community center that she and a Buddhist woman had founded under the auspices of WCRP. The Children's Center, located in a poor village called Wanathamulle, houses a Montessori preschool, a health clinic, parenting support, and other services for the children's families.

I learned of another sensible effort to respond to violence and misunderstanding, a joint project involving Jewish and Arab physicians who provide medical treatment to children injured in the Bosnian war. Another model of the spirit of cooperation was represented by the residents of Neve Shalom/Wahat As-Salam, a co-operative village located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. There, Arabs and Jews live together and their children attend school together. The villagers also run a school for peace in which Arab and Jewish youth and adults learn about one another and come to understand one another.

Spending a week with all these people and experiencing the benefits of their various efforts shrank the world for me. But the effects of the conference go far beyond the personal. For by reducing estrangement, bit by bit, religious people can play an important role in the complex task of peacemaking. We might even find some clues for dealing with the violence raging on our own city streets--and city outskirts.

Reducing estrangement is a part that religious communities can play by bringing people together across some of the great divides in our country. For example, religious leaders in Kansas City, Kansas, and Washington, D.C., have sponsored gang summits in an effort to mediate conflict between gangs, and to promote mutual understanding and respect. I wonder if this and similar approaches couldn't work to diffuse some of the intense political tensions that are breeding divisiveness and hatred in our country these days. There is a movement called Common Ground, which began in Missouri but has spread nationally, which brings together prolife and prochoice activists in an effort to find shared values and concerns. The effect on those involved has been powerful and positive.

Our country's political life is based on the notion that instead of obliterating one's opponents, you face them--on the Senate floor, in the courtroom, in a town meeting--and you talk. In the Senate, as arcane as it may sound, arch opponents still address one another as, "My distinguished colleague." But even this thin veneer of civility and respect seems to be missing in the country at large today. Learning about the reconciliation efforts in other countries, I know there is certainly room for many creative efforts to foster respectful interaction here.