We have been in the Peace Quad all day and all night since Monday, March 22.

We have gathered there to fast and pray and stand witness for peace, mindful of our service men and women and the many victims of war, to insist that war is a “defeat for humanity,” and, most importantly, to extinguish the violence within our hearts.

What we do is important.

We have developed community in a nation that encourages individualism, have struggled for peace in a world that jumps too easily into war.

We have chosen the narrow and precarious path of love in a time when millions prefer the wider and easier road to power.

We have fasted, we have prayed, and we have laughed.

We have gone to sleep together in a narrow tent to the sound of gossip and late night trips to the computer lab.

We have woken together to birdsong and the whine of leaf-blowers.

We have stayed up late in a small camping tent talking about what violence means and what it means to work for peace and be patriotic and how frustrating and overwhelming all of this can be.

We have cried.

We have gathered together as a witness that peace begins in our hearts and that war must end with ourselves.

Whether or not we believe that this war is the necessary solution, we can all agree that war is never a good solution, that peace is always preferable to war – in short, that life is always preferable to death.

War necessitates death, and not only the physical death that many will suffer and inflict, but also the spiritual death that comes as an inevitable result from saying that killing is somehow OK, from the dehumanization of people and the creation of enemies.

Some might say that these enemies were thrust upon us and must be fought for the good of freedom.

Perhaps. But let us not forget that the only true source of freedom is the destruction of those violent enemies within our own hearts.

Indeed, it is this spiritual commitment to self-mastery and interior peace that is the only hope for world peace at all.

Of course, it doesn’t stop with us.

Once we recognize the power of violence in our hearts, once we recognize

the massive systems and industries and governmental policies that compel us to see violence as the only appropriate solution, we realize that we must act.

This is not a liberal thing, a pacifist thing or even a Christian thing.

This is a simple decision – in every encounter, in every governmental policy, in every thought.

It is the decision of love over power, peace over violence, life over death.

We have made our choice.

And this choice must continue when the tent comes down.

It must continue when the war is over, because war will never really be over.

It must continue when we’re convinced everything is fine. Because, when there is war, everything is not fine.

What we are doing is important.

We have gathered together to proclaim the importance of life.