Peace and Goodwill

 After many months of not having the bandwidth to continue this blog, I am game to make another try.  I can't say how long this enthusiasm for writing and opining will last, but I am happily up to my elbows in old documents and new ideas about Ethical Culture.  I will start with something that is very close to my heart right now:  Peace and goodwill.

Here's what I wrote about it a few weeks ago:

I sign my emails with a formal closing:  “Peace and goodwill.”  Many of us carry that habit of providing a closing formula from those “old days” when we all wrote actual letters and closed with “Sincerely” or “With kind regards” or something to reflect our positive intentions or respect for the person we are addressing.  Since becoming more active in AEU, I have seen some more creative responses more tailored to our Ethical community:  “In fellowship,” “In community,” or similar phrases.  None of these seemed natural for me, so I played around with some version of “best” or simply my first initial.  The latter remains an ingrained habit (sorry), but I did finally come up with something that fit me better when I closed a message with “Peace and goodwill.”

The “peace” is, in fact, a reflection of our Ethical community.  AEU passed a resolution in 2021 that renewed our commitment to a Culture of Peace.  The resolution referenced not only war but violence and systemic racism as some of the factors that have pushed back against a culture of peace.  As a response to that resolution, I spent some time trying to think of ways in which I could work to support a culture of peace in my daily life.  One way, I thought, would be to shift my language away from military and warlike statements.  That’s one reason you’ll (sometimes) hear me correct myself when I blurt out phrases like “battle plan” or “the cavalry arrived” and reframe my words (and my thinking) in more peaceful images:  “work plan,” “timely assistance.”  Trying to make that change (it’s a work in progress) also made me think about ways to positively and proactively inject peace, non-violence, and cooperation in my speech.  I started by signing my messages with “peace.”

Not long afterward, during that winter holiday that seems increasingly difficult to escape, I received a greeting card that spoke of the “season of goodwill.”  Why, I wondered, was goodwill limited to only one season?  It was not, I told myself.  And so I added “goodwill” to my closing, partly to expand my sense of what a culture of peace would include and also as an “Ethical seed” that would (could?) remind whoever I might be writing that my intentions are positive as well as peaceful in all seasons.

It’s a small thing, but it is meaningful for me, and I hope it will have meaning for others.  It is certainly more than empty words.

 

We have been talking about the culture of peace a little more in the Ethical Society of Austin, and I think I want us to do more of that.  I will certainly do a bit more in my next post.