Waging Peace through Peaceful Hearts Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.

I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war. Psalm 120:6-7 I am a peace warrior, always have and always will be. As long as there are those who hate peace, we must make our stand. But my fight for peace is no longer as simple as it used to be. Back then, there was a quiet presumption that government and big businesses were inherently bad, and non-government organizations were inherently good. Understandably, I started my fight for peace in non-governmental organizations ranging from such international ones as Amnesty International and the Southeast Asian Network for Human Rights Studies, to more local ones as the Centrist Democratic Movement and the Youth for a First World Philippines Initiative. After finishing college with a degree in Political Science, I was exceedingly happy and proud to be serving in these reputable institutions for peace. However, over the years my faith in these institutions (and eventually the entire movement for peace) was put to the test. In the course of my young advocacy work, I have seen peace advocates compromise the tone and quality of their platforms for the sake of greater monetary support from certain interest groups. I have seen cultural minorities verbally and physically abuse other members of their own race simply because these latter members refused to join a particular parade or demonstration for their rights. I have also seen the irreconcilable tragedy of spouses and children of peace advocates suffering domestic violence at the hands of the peace advocate. These were all shocking to me. But it was then that I was convinced that darkness and violence indeed resides in every human heart, and mere membership in a peaceoriented organization does nothing to change that. I have witnessed the harsh reality that one may fight for peace and be a man of or woman violence at the same time. In law school, I came across a particular legal doctrine that those who seek justice before the court must come with clean hands. That is, one forfeits the full protection of the law when one has committed some injustice in order to exact justice on his or her opponent. But if I really wanted to exercise integrity in my fight for peace, I knew it had to be more than just a simple dichotomization of society into the good guys on one side and all the bad guys on the other. Our real enemy is our own innate violent selfishness that desires personal advancement at the cost of peace. Those who cannot control the violence within cannot be expected to truly carry on the fight for peace with You cannot give something you do not have. You cannot bring people to a place youve never been to yourself.

A man of peace fights to achieve peace in the world not so that he may peace within himself once that task has been achieved. Rather, he seeks to bring peace into the world as an overflow of the abundance of peace that he himself already has within him. Certainly, the man who has not achieved peace within himself may do useful things in the social movement for peace. However, while the ones motivations in the fight for peace are generally emotional, religious, and/or philosophical, the solutions one seeks for peace cannot help but be political at the end of the day. The fight for peace is also in part a fight for power, and where that power falls into the hands of a peace advocate who has not a peace-full mind and heart, it may simply turn out into a tragic case of the oppressed becoming the oppressor. The man of peace must be ready to fight for power, and be ready to steward it peacefully once it has been achieved. I was forced to check my own life whether I showed any of those characteristics of a man who was still held to some form of bondage from the past that would corrupt the purity and integrity of my fight for peace. I was shaken by the realization that if I sought my worth as an individual into the work I do for peace advocacy, So right now, I still maintain my membership and support for the organizations I mentioned at the outset. However, I am now

I am aware that this was supposed to be about my story of inspiration So what was my great change? Nothing much, I suppose; nothing much that can be observed quickly on the surface, at least. But it does make me feel existentially secure in my position as a peace warrior. And it does ensure that in my fight for peace, I am forced to continually check myself and improve myself first, before I seek to check and improve others, for I cannot achieve more on the outside than what I have already achieved on the inside