The prompt for this week’s Līgo Haībun is peace. Today I felt the need to be very serious.

In 1873 Colt started delivery of the Model P, Peacemaker, M1873, Single Action Army, SAA. As the name says it creates peace, but only for the one wearing it. As humanity have proven many times this type of one-sided peace is very far from being sustainable. History has repeated itself and shown that the creation of even more efficient way of killing does not create peace.

After realizing that dynamite would never deter anyone from war, Alfred Nobel created his price for peace to partly compensate the world for his invention. The creation of an atomic bomb called “Little Boy”, only ignited the world into yet more investment in arms, and we entered a world of distrust and a prospering military–industrial complex, an organism that need a fair amount of war and conflict to survive. Today we live in a world were just a single spark on the Korean peninsula could send the world into destruction and chaos.

Instead of being victims we know deep within ourselves that true peacemaking lies in the understanding that there is only one humanity and that we are more similar than different. We need to forgive all sins and go on building a world that unites us.

a peacemaker
reaches out his empty hand
and forgives

—
April 17, 2013