Monday, December 11: We Belong to Each Other

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other,” Mother Theresa wrote. A friend at church recently shared this quote in a short speech on the first Sunday of Advent, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

All semester my students and I have been reading essays by the great change makers of the last 100 years. Toward the end of the semester, our conversations have begun to focus in on reparations. What it would take for those who have been hurt by oppression to find healing, for those who have oppressed others to understand the impact of their actions and truly seek forgiveness and change?

Sometimes that prospect seems hopeless. The semester will be over after the final presentations tomorrow, and we have no answers, of course. To be honest, I don’t always believe reparations are actually possible. Generational trauma runs so deep in our country. The political climate right now is exacerbating rather than healing that trauma. If we can’t even get people who don’t agree with one another to sit down together, how is deeper change possible?

But if we are seekers of peace, we must believe we belong to each other.

As one of my students pointed out on the last day of class, at least we are asking the questions. That in and of itself proves we haven’t given up.


Peacemakers need to be listeners and storytellers, dreamers and doers. And beneath all that we do, we must hold onto the belief, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we belong to each other—each of us to each and every other person, a web of connectivity that we can’t wholly erase, though we have certainly done plenty to damage it. 

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