On my way into a restaurant the other day, I interrupted a middle-aged man who was leaning in to talk to the young hostess. The situation made me so uncomfortable that I walked around him and stood where she could see me. She immediately slipped into business mode, and asked me questions about seating. As the man started to walk out, he said, “well, if I don’t see you, I hope you have a great rest of your life.”
After lunch, I asked the hostess if he had been hitting on her. “Oh, ick, I’m 17.” “Exactly,” I said. She looked a little troubled and then confided she no longer felt safe going into some stores and visiting certain areas of the Valley. She and I then had a conversation and did a little role-playing in the empty entrance about occupying her space when there were bullies around.
It was a good conversation —and yet I felt disheartened that young women need to be trained to protect their safety. How can there be peace in our Valley when women need to be coached in ways to occupy and feel safe in their space? Who is instructing our boys and men to treat girls and women with respect, acknowledging their individuality? And of course, it’s not just women. For all of us, what reminders are we both offering and receiving to treat our neighbors and strangers among us with courtesy, dignity, and respect?
Now I admit, actions of disrespect set my teeth on edge. I will do anything to make sure that all women, children, and any other vulnerable individuals feel safe. I have learned to speak up for myself and for others. These are scary times. I have seen threatening posts on Social Media, suggesting that if women want to be married, they need to learn to be docile, gentle, and quiet. And there are other posts of hate and discrimination proliferating and going unchecked hinting at violence against those who do not look like or think like us.
Several days before the restaurant incident, Governor Shapiro and his family were asleep in the Harrisburg Mansion after celebrating Passover Seder. An intruder broke in and set the house ablaze. Allegedly, the confusion and complicated ugliness between Gaza and Israel allowed the intruder to focus his fury about Government support for Israel and focus it on a Jewish Governor.
The common threads of these events are that some people believe both that they have the right to put their hands on others and that certain types of people must live in fear. These are both unacceptable. Violence and fear shred our hopes and dreams of Peaceful community.
What if there were another way? What if we could build community where people are not only safe but also able to thrive? Where we knew we had a right to that safety and well-being? Some of you may say to us, well, that’s in the Constitution. Honesty would tell you, that long before the turmoil of this period in our country, that was not true for our entire population. Now, however, the papers carry daily reminders that established citizens and legal inhabitants in our country are in jeopardy from the highest levels of our government. Women’s and people of color rights to vote is are being destabilized. Individuals are being deported without due process. Resources to feed and house the poor and the disabled, the responsibilities of Universities to educate their students truthfully, and suggestions of denial of life-saving health care — all of these are under threat. The already vulnerable are being made even more so. Many of us who are unaccustomed to thinking of ourselves as vulnerable, are not as secure as we may have thought. We must be careful with ourselves and as community, so that everyone may feel that they are welcome, included, and protected.
It helps me now to remember the words from the preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Our forebearers intended that we live in Peaceful community. The Constitution guarantees those rights.
We are enjoined as members of this Nation to build our lives and community around these principles. Peaceful Community is something we build together. We both participate in it and are benefited by it and by our participation in creating it. This may be the most rewarding community we will ever make and it will endure because it is woven of many people’s skills, strengths, stories.
It may feel like a bold action to step in to support someone in need, yet once you begin, the conversation strengthens us all.In the same way, any actions we take to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, or tend the sick may feel unfamiliar and daring at first, yet these actions uplift and help to establish Peaceful community.
Even in challenging times, we can create Joy and Peace together. Why wouldn’t we do that? Why wouldn’t we become the Peaceful communities, large and small, that will change people’s awareness of the ways we can support and encourage one another? Let’s build the Peaceful community that stands for all we believe.
Salaam, Shalom, Peace, Blessed Be.