Voices of sanity. (Webbsite).

Little of the news from Washington is calculated to raise the hopes of a world that urgently needs answers. Yet clues to those answers often arrive here from abroad. The question is whether our policy shapers grasp them.

Case in point: the recent visit of two Muslims from Beirut, journalist-academic 'Hisham Shihab and banker Abbas S el Halabi, a Druze member of the Lebanese National Committee for Muslim-Christian Dialogue. The message of these two men was one of Christian and Muslim working together for a just and peaceful society. During Lebanon's long civil war Shihab had come to the point where he tossed his gun aside. Later, in an extraordinary moment, he embraced his onetime enemy, Assaad Shaftari, who'd led a Christian militia. In February 2000 Shaftari apologized publicly for deeds he'd committed in the name of his faith.

I was reminded of the time when I was one of a group of journalists in a Lebanese village where buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes. I'll never forget the faces of the children who swarmed around us, their eager, smiling faces projecting the kind of warmth that penetrates. Three days later, I read that fighting had broken out there again, and I've long wondered what happened to those youngsters. Thankfully, the children of today's Lebanon have a brighter future, though many problems remain in their country once known as the 'Switzerland of the Middle East'.

We're all familiar with the renaissance in South Africa. In 1980, on a clear, sunny afternoon on the tip of the Cape of Good Hope I could see the Robben Island prison which held Nelson Mandela. Even then, I found South Africans, especially a group of Stellenbosch University students whom I met over lunch, ready for the evolution that would transform their country. The rest, as they say, is history. The civil war, long feared, was averted. Change, while difficult, was peaceful. As a freely elected president, Mandela reached out to enlist his former captors in building a new country.

Stories like these refresh, give hope. They are keys to the future, and they are detailed in British author Michael Henderson's latest book, Forgiveness: breaking the chain of hate (Book Partners Inc, Newberg, Or, and Grosvenor Books, London, 2002). The book carries many other stories which suggest that no matter how desperate a situation, no matter what the grievances, change and renaissance are possible. The book's appeal is universal, but clearly every policy shaper in Washington should have it. Some surely do, thanks partly to Henderson's speech last December to the Women's Democratic Club in Washington. Drawing heavily on his book he told of what can happen when we take an honest look at ourselves, at where we have been wrong, make apologies where appropriate, seek forgiveness and reconcile even with those we have bitterly fought.

Another voice of hope, former British Ambassador Archie MacKenzie, came to Washington last fall to launch his book, Faith in diplomacy (Grosvenor Books, London, 2002). He expressed the conviction, based on solid experience, that listening to one's inner voice on a disciplined daily basis can be transforming--can, indeed, accomplish miracles. I heard him give his experience over lunch to several influential Washington thinkers. These are the kinds of voices we all need to hear--not least the highest reaches of government.

Robert Webb is a former editorial writer for the 'Cincinnati Enquirer'.