Making peace.Rand Richards Cooper's story about making war and eventually peace with his neighbor and her dog ("Delicate Negotiations," December 5, 2003) went straight to my conscience. His point that every day we each face the choice whether to "opt for diplomacy, or reach for weaponry" immediately brought to mind a choice I had recently made at work. An incident occurred in which one of my colleagues wronged another. In a great show of righteous indignation Righteous indignation is an emotion one feels when one becomes angry over perceived mistreatment, insult, or malice. In some Christian doctrines, righteous indignation is considered the only form of anger which is not sinful. , I counterattacked. After reading Cooper's article, I eventually admitted that I--who had been proud of my courage--was the antithesis antithesis (ăntĭth`ĭsĭs), a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves to emphasize opposition of ideas. of a peacemaker. As fortune, or perhaps God, would have it, I was given an opportunity during the Christmas season to make amends AMENDS. A satisfaction, given by a wrong doer to the party injured for a wrong committed. 1 Lilly's Reg. 81. 2. By statute 24 Geo. II. c. 44, in England, and by similar statutes in some of the United States, justices of the peace, upon being notified of an . I delivered a message of conciliation conciliation: see mediation. and was quite pleased when it was received in kind. Cooper referred to peace-making as recognizing the other person's point of view. To me, it is also reaching out to the God who dwells within each one of us. BETSY DARKEN dark·en v. dark·ened, dark·en·ing, dark·ens v.tr. 1. a. To make dark or darker. b. To give a darker hue to. 2. To fill with sadness; make gloomy. 3. Chattanooga, Tenn. |
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