Peace and Compassion..........
it is with profound sorrow that i learn of dr. konigsberg's workshop on "something to kill and die for" on any premises...... insult is added to considerable injury that the church center of the United Nations should be a "battleground" instead of a peace field.......
immediately, i thought that it would be appropriate to demonstrate at the entry point on nov 9th and to distribute gratis copies of mark twain's the war prayer.......... upon further reflection, with virtual simultaneity, i contemplated offering my pious prescription and inscription, a UN tour, which i give gratis on treasures in the UN, icons of peace....(while lamenting that atomic alley no longer occupies the strategic ground it previousl did)......... akin to these musing....... i offer my ten commands and my health-medicial propaganda, prescription of peace.....
rather than expend $70 on such a workshop, i would align myself with all who are too poor to go to war........ and would dispense my resources to enhance the humane condition... should u and others wish a workshop on PEACE ON EARTH.......i would be thrilled to explore with such spirits what i consider UNESCO's finest publication, PEACE ON EARTH, A PEACE ANTHOLOGY, UNESCO, 1980.
peace, david inkey, the UN poet.....
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ICONS, OF PEACE
I want to tell you a story about The Pieces of Peace in The United Nations.
It is a story that only I know how to tell and it is meant only for peacemakers:
Once,
just once,
upon a time,
only 3,264 or just 3262 years ago, the great, formidable and fantastic Pharaoh Ramses II of the Egyptians and the mighty , magnificent and mysterious Emperor Hattusilis of the Hittites gave their courage and honor in artisan endeavor to create the First Peace Treaty of Our Story. We are now privileged, during the 50th Anniversary of the UN, to view a marvelous larger than life replica of their text won from tragic wars 33 centuries ago. We honor our own Security Council by juxtaposing it by this codex. I know of no icon more challenging than this cold copper message and when I enter these sacred precincts I practice my prayers before this too disregarded momento.
In close view of the first icon I treasure, I wish to share with you my awe for what I believe is Picasso's most precious presence and present to peace. We have on loan an icon representing one of the frenetic failures of our League of Nations. We have a marvelously entwined, textured text of the terror of Guernica, a total war, totally denounced... The tremors of dictatorship attacking republicans are splashed with paint on the original canvass, but here a tapestry of twisted threads, strings of being and seeing, tie us together in tragic tempo. We do not need nor want prototypes of war, but for memories' sake, we have perhaps the best of the worst of a pre-atomic war in our century.
Beyond the borders of our little, 28 acre international enclave, across the UN Plaza, we have a peace park with Isaiah's wisdom carved in granite, easy substitute for failure to engrave the message into our hearts and habits... Whether old testaments remain valid in our modern times is a much debated topic, but we are here not to see the UN as the East River Debating Society. We come to puzzle together the scattered pieces of peace and to learn rites which transcend warfare to peacefare, and someday to seal the story of PEACE FAIR. I designate the third Tuesday in September in 2031 A.D. for the 3300th Anniversary of Our First Peace Treaty!
If we are obliged to enter The UN Headquarters only as visitors, we see our first icons in the garden north of the principal terrace. Here, our vision and visions are challenged by a great dragon rocket literally being pierced into submission and nearby a worker beats a sword into a plowshare. On the pavement, in humoristic irony, we may stare at an iconic colt whose barrel is knotted to render the weapon ineffective for killing, effective and affective for peace.
Just inside the UN's grand entrance, we may feast our eyes and open our storied visions upon Poseidon, God of The Sea when we still had special deities for all our needs, dedicated to healthy, peaceful activity. We may conclude that we often select icons of peace as portraits of war abated, rather than as intrinsic essences of peace. The ancient Greeks tried to teach us Olympian feats of democracy, though they, too, failed to create a society free of war. As we discover more and more the treasures of civic society, we may choose to honor their Earth Goddess, giving her name to global culture, GAIA. The grandeur of Poseidon may remind us that through many eons we have struggled for simple survival and that now we are engaged in a struggle for complex survival.
The Pendulum in the western bay of the entry is a well-measured, perpetual testimony of our earthness and how we move through time. The Pendulum's movement is regulated beyond our general comprehension and is, for me, a statement of intriguing serenity. No one should want to harness the "vitality" of this icon and no one could harness this dynamic _expression_ without breaking a special, spatial relationship...
Close to our earthometer we have one small gem of extra-terrestrial magnificence, a souvenir of space travel to remind us of our astronomical insignificance in the total dimensions of the Universe: we have a tiny treasure of lunar rock. Let us pause quietly and quickly. Let us not dwell long, we must move on from the Moon Rock lest our lunatic, warrior-driven behaviors become the theme and thrust of further Star Wars. The UN has dedicated many efforts to the peaceful uses of outer space, even before we have begun to learn the peaceful uses of inner space. As we measure our space and our time in the universal experience, we might calculate with Dag Hammarskjold how rare peace is, as we seek inner peace, communal peace and global peace. We are forever failing to juggle these three spheres of our being and we have not even enjoyed and enjoined characteristics of fun into our international forum, though some colleagues see in "fun" an acronym for "Friends of the UN."
“fun”
PEACE...
The most clownish icon on our pilgrimage is the art of Chagall memorializing the gift of life and death Dag Hammarskjold gave to the New World Ordering we commenced on a day late in October half a hundred years ago. We call death a "supreme sacrifice." Here we should laugh with Chagall's clowns and angels to remember that Hammarskjold lived an urgent and urging soliloquy, "There is no Peace, except that of the Soul."
The most horrible icon I know among all the UN's icons of peace is The Atomic Alley, the term is mine. Here, in one of the main throughways of the UN Headquarters, we have aw(e)ful and awesome relics of l945 when allies and axis suffered a different holocaust, killing with a new anemia and efficiency. I am wounded each time I pass through this corridor because my own atomic innocence was struck in l945 and, then, was fully destroyed in l95l when, up-wind, I experienced soul-freezing blasts of white light in pre-dawn winter skies and heard distant, muffled sounds from our early atomic testing at Frenchman's Flats, just 50,000 nuclear warheads ago. I am one of the few, the very few, people I know who have ever seen the paralyzing "darkness" of atomic explosion... In the UN, before the fragments of atomic devastation, I cringe again in sorrow for my childhood playmates. Benny and his family from that wonderful land of childhood were dragged away from Our Town Park and were incarcerated in disgrace and depression, just because they were yellow Americans. The Nisei lost my declaration of human rights only a short time before We The l948 Peoples created The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the commitment I deem the greatest civic act of the 20th Century. This Declaration would be my favorite 20th Century icon if it were an icon. I refuse to let it be such. Rather, I insist on professing the work endlessly and I claim a special response-ability therefore: I am not the champion of lost causes, I am a champion of causes that have not yet been won.
The most humane peace icon in The UN is a fragmented replica of Norman Rockwell's majestic art, THE GOLDEN RULE. Rockwell's original, like Picasso warfare, was a mere paint on canvas presentation of feelings. Here, our gift copy is a mosaic of thousands of pieces of peace, reflecting better than I have ever seen in art form the diversity of humanity and the implicit, impatient, ever patient prayer, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
This short-long pilgrimage through human(e) "his"tory, her-story and our-story will go on and on and on, throughout all time, but for today, perhaps it is time to move on to other endeavors. Before we finish this trek which I have enjoyed taking with you, let us examine one more icon dear to my being... The enormous and finely toned Peace Bell just outside the atomic awe passage usually speaks silent testimony of children's gift to peace. I believe that this bell is rung only once a year, on Earth Day, but I hope that I am wrong... I would have it toll "peace" in solemn ritual at the beginning of each new day.
The Hammarskjold observation about peace and the soul has yet unappreciated truth or insufficiently imagined truth. I believe it is true.
Yet, even if it is only a hint toward further truths, we must include in our search The UN Meditation Room as one of our principal and most secret icons of peace. Unjustly instead of UN Justly; unfairly instead of UN Fairly; unkindly instead of UN Kindly, this sanctuary is locked and not available for refuge from the cares of laboring in international civil service, nor is it open to refugees in this often refuge silent world.
In closing, I have two more thoughts I wish to share with you who have shared with me my often repeated iconology of peace. I challenge you to proclaim The Preamble of Planetary Culture: "Since wars begin in the lives of children, it is in the spirits of children that we must seed the dreams of peace."
Better students of this century than I will tell you that MacLeish wrote beautiful poetry into the Preamble of Unesco's Constitution, and they will note gleefully that just as we can no longer use language referring to the "minds of men" so too we must admit with greatest remorse that wars now affect children more than ever before. Some will tell us that we are not yet ready for this paradigm shift, but I will assert that the paradox has been perpetuated too persistently. Finally, when I am no longer alone as Unicef's Santa and as The United Nations Philosopher, when many have become UN Santas and UN Philosophers, then we might be able to help children--little children like little ones and big children like ourselves--and then, "Children will no longer ask innocent questions for which we have no innocent answers."
I have tried to share with you a few of the pieces of peace I have found most precious in all of my life. I close with ten anonymous little words from long ago and far away, that have been very important to me in the iconology of peace: "Let there be Peace, and let is start with me.”
Thank you for being here.
david inkey (5/95 - 2/97)
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