As I encountered the words of the contributors to this issue on war and peace, the haunted faces of mostly children made me toss at night. What kind of medicine are we passing them? In Alice Walker’s piece Overcoming Speechlessness, the worldwide torture of mother and child in war zones is never ending. Walker’s essay is unusually long for a magazine, but once you read it you will understand the reason for not cutting this profound piece.   In Caroline Acuña’s essay on training children for war, the thought of guns being designed for the tiny fingers of young soldiers has nothing to with peacemaking and all the more to do with America’s ever- increasing fear and addiction to violence. In Everett Wilson’s interview (also an unusually long piece that deserved to have the space it takes here) with American youth activists in Colombia, there is no doubt that reconciliation must be the path of our young. What is the path of reconciliation?

Rebecca Griffin visited Iran with reconciliation in mind. Her quest to solve the mystery of that country’s attitude toward America resulted in transformative discoveries. Her inquiry “Is Iran the Enemy?” Could the medicine of peace be somewhat like the stories she gathered to balance our media’s depiction of violent Iranians? Perhaps the medicine is in our language, our speech, as Lin Jensen so precisely dissects in his piece, the “Vocabulary of Peace.”

 
The movement of peace is not the shooting of an arrow targeting governments and people, but rather a long spiral of repeatedly setting the wheel of life in motion toward peace. As most American 1960’s baby boomers age, perhaps our final acts of rebellion can be to bring our youth into our circles and let them take the lead. Perhaps we can pass on the medicine of peace by seeing our children as worthy without them proving that they are strong in aggressive sports or the military. Maybe the peace medicine wheel can be redesigned so that tiny fingers can get a hold of the peace movement and turn it faster and faster. Can we leave the children a legacy beyond the material possessions we are sure to abandon in our death? These are the questions that will help us bring forth the medicine of peace.