by Rose Mary Dougherty

A friend recently gave me a photo of Gerhard Marcks' statue erected in Germany--a mendicant looking man with eyes and mouth open wide, hands cupped to his mouth. The title of the statue is The Caller, and Marcks chiseled into its base the words, "Friede, Friede, Friede," or "Peace, Peace, Peace." Later, when the statue was moved to another location, new words were added: "I walk through the world and call peace, peace, peace."

Each time I look at the photo, words from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Inversnaid," come to mind:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
...Crying 'What I do is me: for that I came.'
I say more: the just man justices...
Acts in God's eyes what in God's eyes he is....

The Caller, it seems to me, is acting in God's eyes what in God's eyes he is. Eyes wide open in the place where he is, he sees what is his to do and sounds his call for peace. And he doesn't let himself stay in one place. He walks through the world, perhaps only symbolically, guided by his heart's eye. But with each step he sees more, and he lives his call more fully.

The Caller is doing what you and I, and I suspect every person reading this article want to do. We want to live our fullness and speak the peace that is ours to proclaim, do the justice that is ours to do. We, too, want to be the manifestation of peace that is ours uniquely. What is it, then, that stifles us? What thwarts our living into that which we say we most want?

Perhaps for some of us our desire is not quite as strong as we would like to claim it is; it is not strong enough to motivate us. So we live this half-existence where we are neither happy nor challenged to step out. We live wearing the blinders of the comfort and safety of our own prejudices and perceptions so we don't need to see too much, relinquish too much, change too much. And we won't change much at all unless some cataclysmic event comes crashing into our lives, forcing us to see our choices for what they are.

For others of us the blinders are not a conscious choice but they are there and we only begin to realize it when we allow ourselves to be touched by the unfamiliar, the unbidden awareness of suffering, injustice, or whatever the unbidden might be for us. Once we realize that the blinders are there, we can begin to put ourselves in places where we will be given the opportunity to see more, to see clearly. And then the choices that are ours to consider begin to show themselves.

The difficulty for others of us is that we see too much, or at least we believe we do. We are bombarded with choices each day. We've heard words like Thomas Kelly's that not every cross is ours to climb upon, but we honestly don't know what our cross is. So we either try to take on too much, as though it were all ours to do, or we become paralyzed into non-action. Our blinders narrow our field of vision, making it difficult to see our place in the web of interdependence that assigns each of us our unique responsibility.

For some of us, the exigencies of our lives--young children, aging parents, ailing spouse, our own failing health--seem, in our eyes, to limit the possibilities for any substantial contribution to peace and justice. So we do what is ours to do, albeit with some disappointment, biding our time until we can do "the real thing." These blinders of self-deprecation or comparison with others prevent us from seeing that our faithfulness to life as it is at this time is our proclamation of peace.

Many of you could probably write scenarios which offer reasons why we cannot/do not live that which is ours to live. Yet the truth is that knowing reasons does not necessarily change our perceptions or our actions. Rather, the knowing often secures us in our inactivity.

Albert Einstein once reminded us, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." What is needed, then, is an active willingness for a new level of consciousness and an active willingness to be changed. I think of the term courageous willingness, because, in fact, it takes great courage to relinquish things like privilege and power, or whatever may stand between us and our just actions.

Some of us may find that contemplative practice will be the way we choose to honor that which we want. The forms may vary, depending upon our leanings; however, all contemplative practices have certain common elements. All involve an openness to what is, to seeing ourselves just as we are, without trying to change ourselves or what we see outside us. They all involve a letting go of our own agendas to be present in the moment and a letting go of expectations of what will happen or should happen during our practice. They encourage us to cultivate a "don't know mind" that allows us to reverence mystery. All are ultimately about allowing the eyes of the heart to see freshly and clearly so that we might realize our true nature, our oneness with all, and act in justice for the good of all.

Zen sitting is a form of contemplative practice that I have found supportive. I find it particularly helpful to practice with others and do this twice a week. At the end of our evening sitting we chant a verse called, "Four Vows for All Creation," as an expression of our intent to carry our practice beyond the time of sitting and to live our interconnectedness with all of life. One line of that verse is, "Reality is boundless; I vow to perceive it." In this we make explicit what we implicitly want: Here, now, in this moment and the next and the next, we want to see what there is to see, we want to see with our eyes and our hearts so that we might know the action that is ours to take.

Perhaps there will come the day when we, too, each of us, will be the Callers right where we are in our world. Each of us will sound the uniqueness of our own being. And the truth is, that if we each did what is truly ours to do, if each of us lived/realized the fullness of who we are, there would be justice for all. Peace would be the air that we breathe.