Let There Be Peace on Earth
I wanted to be a writer when I was still a little girl. Dad was a newspaperman and, longing to imitate him, I learned to type on his old manual Royal typewriter. I still cannot set down a drink to the right of my keyboard because, as I learned the hard way, the carriage return would send it flying. (I can just hear my children: “Carriage return? What’s that?!”)
My going-away-to-college present was a portable electric Hermes typewriter in a cute mint-green case, and I was thrilled. Then I discovered the IBM Selectric. On that baby I could type 110 wpm (that’s words per minute) with no mistakes. In the eighties, I had the first personal computer at the parish office. Now I carry my laptop to the coffee shop (or occasionally even back to bed) and e-mail my column to my editor, sometimes without seeing it on paper until the magazine arrives in my mailbox.
The world changes, and it’s changing faster all the time. My husband and I like to make note of the things we say today that would make no sense to our grandparents. “Fast food,” for example. Or “Do you want to rent a movie?” Or “You can read his blog on MySpace.” Or Pat’s favorite: “I can’t find my phone.”
A few weeks back I read a note from my granddaughter’s school that would have mystified my grandparents. It read, “We are asking you to provide a nonperishable snack to be stored in your child’s homeroom in the event of a security lockdown.”
Security lockdown? A few days later I was talking with some mommies at the park. One remarked that her son is still terrified of the school fire drill (he hates noise), but he doesn’t have any trouble with the lockdown drill. I must have looked confused, so she elaborated. When the principal announces Code Red over the PA system, the teacher dims the lights and locks the door while the kids hurry into the closet. In rooms without a closet, there is a designated hiding place where they can’t be seen through the glass in the hall door. The teacher closes the window blinds and joins the huddled kids until the all-clear is sounded.
Maybe the world doesn’t change nearly enough. Our grandparents endured their 9/11, which they called Pearl Harbor, followed by yet another War to End All Wars; their economic meltdown, which they called the Crash, was followed by the Great Depression.
Today we prepare for terrorist attacks and send snacks for our children to eat in the closet. When I was in grade school, we practiced “duck and cover” drills in the event of nuclear war. I wasn’t traumatized by those rehearsals for the end of the world because the adults did a good job of maintaining a sense of normalcy.
We’re made for peace and goodwill, and if we can’t have peace and goodwill we at least try to keep our children innocent and untroubled, even if it means making a game out of the unthinkable and providing a snack for the end of the world.
God promises to make all things new. Forecast in Isaiah, confirmed in the Book of Revelation, we are assured that God will wipe every tear from our eyes “and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain” (21:4). Until then, we must be as much like God as possible—feeding our little ones, creating peace, doing the best we can to make the world as it should be.