Peace Can Happen (Christine Kingery)

I am now reading a book called "THIS I BELIVE (life lessons)" Edited by Dan Gediman with John Gregory & Mary Jo Gediman.

While I enjoy every piece of valuable personal experience shared in this book, "Peace Can Happen" stands out for me.

Below is an extract of it and I hope you enjoy it as I do.

Peace Can Happen (Christine Kingery)

My grandmother was born in northern Russia to a large family of fourteen siblings.  She was sixteen years old when World War II broke out.  Her first job was going on to the battlefield to dismantle bombs that hadn't exploded.

She was captured by the Nazis when she was seventeen and taken to a 'work camp' in Germany.  They shaved off her waist-length hair and tortured her.  Grandma never saw her parents and siblings again.  Her mother died when Grandma was young.  Her father was taken away to Siberia for political reason and never seen again, and most of her siblings died in the war.

My resourceful grandmother escaped the camp and worked for many months as a nurse in underground movements in Germany and Belgium.  She was captured by the Nazis again and put into another concentration camp.  This one was bigger.  A death camp.  There she met my grandfather, and the two escaped.
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When I was young, I heard many stories about the war.  One day when I was eight, I said to my grandmother, "I hate the German for what they did to you.  Don't you just get so mad at them?"

......She said in her broken English, "The Germans are my friends.  When I escaped and had nowhere to go, the Germans gave me food, shelter, and clothes.  They were my friends even in my camps.  The Germans are the kindest people I know".

Her answer shocked me, and it was my first introduction to the meaning of compassion.

A few years later, in high school, I had the chance to visit Japan.  My host family took me to Nagasaki to the Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park.  It was the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing.  I was terrified, being so white skinned and so American.

I walked slowly through the crowded exhibits, looking at the black-and-white photographs.  In every picture, in every Japanese victims's face, I saw my grandmother's reflection looking back at me.  The experience was overwhelming, and I began to cry.  I needed to get air, so I went outside.

There in Peace Park, beautiful, colourful origami cranes-- thousands of them!-were draped over statues and trees. I sat on a bench and cried.  I cried for the suffering of the Japanese people.  I cried for the suffering of my own family in Europe during World War II..........

An old Japanese lady saw me on the bench.........  She sat next to me and put her wrinkled hands in mine.  She said "Peace starts right here.  Peace starts with you and me.  It starts today."

She was right.  I didn't have to suffer personally in order to understand the pain of others.  I believe that through compassion, peace can happen.  It echoes from the heart of a single individual.

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We meet people in our daily life.  They can come from same/different background, religion, social status, ethics and culture.

Our experience with them can be good or bad.  Violence is not the solution and I don't agree releasing our anger and disagreement with violence.  The sin that is committed by the evil soul should never be the reason to harm people from the same background or those we assume are from the same background or sharing the same religion and culture.

When we are about to speak evil and do evil, stop for a second and ask, am I doing/saying something that make it a better world.

"Peace starts right here.  Peace starts with you and me.  It starts today."

Have a nice day.....