Dahlia in September by author

It is my birthday month. This year, September 21 coincides with International Peace Day, so I decided to celebrate peace for my 75^th birthday. On short videos, friends of mine sang and /or created songs, poetry readings, a piano improvisation, and two verbal offerings for finding peace within and the circumstances necessary for creating peace. These have now been linked in one half hour video. I will share that movie with my community as an invitation to share our own feelings and thoughts. Then we will gather outside at our peace pole and return to have a piece of peace cake also acknowledging that it is my birthday and that cultivating peace is my wish for myself, our community, our country, our world, and our planet.

A simple wish, I know. Hah! Keeping my heart open to the world as it is requires my daily attention. I am learning every day to pay attention but not allowing my body/mind to absorb the poison of the destruction of peace. The horrors are cascading on so many levels for so many people all around the world. It is a lifework to find peace inside of myself.

I share this longish essay I wrote in the early 2020’s that is sadly even more relevant today.

Serpent’s Bite

I have never been bitten by a snake, though as a child I was bitten by a baby woodchuck that I thought was cute as it chittered at me on top of a woodpile, and by an ostrich in a small zoo in Holland when my hand rested on top of the fence, and my elderly dog while cleaning his upchucked barely digested breakfast that he suddenly reclaimed, and my cat, just because. But I have never been bitten by a snake.

Poisonous creatures have always frightened me when reading about them as a child. Scorpions, spiders, jellyfish and other sea creatures, amphibians, plants…from one quick inadvertent contact, you could even die and die painfully as their poison reached the heart. Medically speaking, folk wisdom and scientists have found ways for humans to utilize venom and poisons counteracting the entity’s deadly defenses. Transforming poisons has also been found uses like Botox which is made from a poisonous bacterium. Some treat illnesses like the yew plant which yields Taxol to treat cancer, or the synthetic replication of Gila monster venom for a medication treating diabetes.

Turning poisons into healing medicine is a reality. Transforming the poison of hatred into love might need the same methodical dissection of hatred’s power to render it into the beneficial power of love. Hatred can be taught, handed down in families, or as an inheritance of the culture that surrounds you. A hateful attitude can become so ingrained that it becomes unquestioned, unconscious, and as normal as breathing. It can be personally nurtured by repeated threats, wounds, and cruelty inflicted on us by others.

My mother was suspicious of wealthy people. I had absorbed her attitude until I looked at it as an adult. Having made friends with people who grew up with wealth and those who hadn’t (like me), I came to understand that my mother’s attitudes were based on her own past experiences, not mine. I had grown up in a town of many artists- the “poor starving artist” was an acceptable description of many talented people in my childhood. It was a relief to develop my own belief systems where someone’s worth, or talent, was not based on monetary considerations.

There is safety in numbers and gathering a tribe that reflects your grievances empowers and amplifies the righteousness of your position. “We hate you,” means you will no longer be the singular point of attack from the identified enemy. A group can inflict more pain in retaliation on the attacker/oppressor than an individual can. Groups inflamed with rage can run amok to become mobs which hide the individual’s responsibility for horrific acts as they are swept along on the heady sensation of group violence. Hate feels like power in the face of helplessness, an antidote to being a victim.

In Boston, in 1968, protesting peacefully against the Viet Nam war with my future husband, we were surrounded by a mingled crowd of those who were both ‘for’ and “against” the war. There were busses of police encircling the park where we had gathered. The atmosphere was increasingly tense. Microphones were in the hands of those against the war and many songs were sung while angry people shouted us down. A man in front of me turned around and spit at us yelling,” Go back to Russia!” I felt afraid that day. The rally ended with no one being injured. With today’s escalating violent responses to conflictual stances, those same circumstances might well have produced a different ending.

I see that what underlies hate is always fear and pain. As a species, we are so prone to pain in body, mind, and spirit. We are all afraid of feeling pain of any kind. Loss always involves pain. The loss of pride, success, ownership, money, beloveds, country, way of life, or loss of a healthy body can be traumatic. To me, the opposite of love is fear, not hate, but fear of pain in all its many forms that humans inflict and endure. Hate is the top layer of the wound that will not heal. It is an inflamed, poisonous scar that demands but cannot find resolution. Revenge- an eye for an eye, the destruction of the “other”- appears to be the most effective response.

Taking apart the impulse to hate and discovering the wound underneath smacks of being weak, the opposite response needed to free yourself from feeling victimized. Yet, to pull off the hardened scab and release the underlying infection of the original wound is the only way to truly heal. That act requires the power of conviction to address the lurking issue. That act begins to summon the healing forces of mind, body, and soul, with the power of a creative healing force, not a force of destruction.

It requires strength of purpose, and positive aggression directed towards perseverance. That aggression is empowered by love. Some of our strongest world political advocates for addressing injustice have promoted non-violence, the thousand acts of standing together, with repeated calls for change, all in the name of Love. To be held in a community of love will never be perfect in its corpus or the way it enacts its ideals. Communities are made of human beings; fallible, imperfect human beings.

But we do have choices to make. Where do we look for our allies in life? Who walks their talk without aggrandizing themselves? Who is willing to stand up with us when the going gets tough? Who aligns with a path that helps the most people while doing the least harm? Who is willing to grab the serpent behind its head before it spews poison trying to defend itself in a perceived life or death moment? 

Representing a completely different perspective of serpents is the caduceus. Because snakes shed their skins, they are an ancient Greek symbol of renewal and healing symbolized by two serpents entwining a staff.  Asclepius was a famous Greek healer and thanks to him, the AMA still uses that symbol today. Love is a potent antidote to the poison of hatred based on fear. When loves enters the blood streaming into the heart, hatred has no chance to survive.

Kendal Peace Pole displayed in eight languages photo by Ellie Stock