The following three pieces were shared by Diana Butler Bass on Februay 28, 2026 on The Cottage, her online writing site. These were shared in response to the United States’ and Israel’s attack on Iran and Iran’s subsequent response. Here is the original link.
From “A Wedding Sermon on Peace” shared at a wedding in 2003 by Father Daniel Berrigan just as the war on Iraq had begun. Most of the sermon is connected to the couple whose wedding was being celebrated but he began the message with this, rooted in the Sermon on the Mount’s call for us to be peace makers.
Our country is at war. One of the beatitudes, “Blessed are the makers of peace,” touches closely on our situation, which hovers between predicament and holy opportunity.
What indeed can it mean in such days as we endure, to be ‘peacemakers’? Not ‘just war’ theorists, not ‘pacifists,’ not, surely not war makers. But ‘blessed are the peacemakers,’ ‘the makers of peace.’
The term in the original Greek, is disturbingly concrete, physical. One makes peace in somewhat the way one makes a table or a building, a school or a hospital, something useful or beautiful or both. We make peace in somewhat the way two people make a child. Makers of peace. The task is untidy, unfinished, laborious, always to be started anew. The task may involve crossing a line, getting in trouble with a law that protects war and weaponry, law that makes peacemakers liable to legal consequence.
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” There is a summons here, a calling that reaches out and out… I mean something quite simple. Our country is bleeding. A wasting horrid war is claiming lives by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of those who die are innocent; they are children, the aged and ill, bystanders, non-combatants. The victims include American soldiers, most of whom are young, most from minority families — a familiar story.
Making Peace – Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
from A Litany for Peace by the Reverend Kay Sylvester – Rector, St. Paul’s, Tustin – Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles
O God, who dwells beyond all our names for you,
we pray for the will to be at peace with one another.
We remember this day those who find themselves thrust into war;
We pray for light in the darkness, and hope amid despair.
We pray for peace in ourselves;
help us to breathe in peace, help us to breathe out love;
help us know and accept ourselves as your beloved.
We pray for peace in our families;
help us to speak the truth to one another in love;
help us to respect and value one another.
Let there be peace in our communities;
help us to create a peace born of justice and equity;
help us to honor and serve the common good.
Let there be peace in our nation;
sustain our hope; grant us wisdom;
empower us with courage.
Let there be peace in our world.
Help us to love the earth as our mother;
help us to see other nations as our neighbors;
help us to wage peace.
