Scary Newsflashes, The Iraq Invasion, and Chagall’s Peace Window

It seems like every 10 minutes I get “news flashes” on my phone. Government scandals, opioid epidemics, shootings, plane crashes, famines. Each time I pick up to see the flash, my heart does a little skip. What craziness is happening now? And what are we going to do about it? What can I do?

Lately I’ve been thinking about an especially frightening time, mainly because a colleague reminded of an approaching anniversary. In March 2003, just a little over a year after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, I attended a professional conference for college writing teachers in New York City, not far from the scene of the attack. The terrifying images were still fresh in everyone’s minds:  of terrorist-flown planes crashing into the towering skyscrapers, of desperate people jumping, of rubble-strewn city streets and bewildered New Yorkers in heels and suits trying to walk home. America felt vulnerable in a way it never had before. As the country moved toward war in Iraq, New York City seemed to be a prime target for terrorists once again.  But the conference had been planned for years, the location could not be changed, so we carried on. 

Or at least some of us did. Many chose not to attend the annual conference that year, including some of my colleagues at my university. “My husband won’t let me go. Too dangerous!” one said. Another said, “I don’t know if it really is dangerous, but I feel nervous about it. I’ll just skip this year.

I decided to go. I’m optimistic by nature and figured everything would be OK, I guess. Also, this was New York City! I love to visit New York—I love the bustle and the excitement, the museums, the theater, and the sense of being at the center of the world. I didn’t want to pass up the chance to go.

So I went. Between conference sessions, I walked the streets, ate cheesecake, shopped on Fifth Avenue, danced in the aisle at Mama Mia, and ogled Raphael’s Madonna at the Metropolitan Museum. Everywhere I went,  on every corner, I passed soldiers dressed in camo, vigilantly watching, holding M-16s.  

Then, on March 20, right in the midst of our three-day conference, the US invaded Iraq with a “shock and awe” campaign of aerial bombardment. The televisions in the hotel elevators were tuned to the coverage of the war. We mild-mannered writing teachers on our way to sessions on how to encourage more specific thesis statements--we stood shoulder to shoulder in silence, watching bombs and blood and mayhem on the screen above our heads.

In the halls, conference-goers debated the war. Was the war at all justified? Was it a terrible mistake? What is our responsibility for action? They were good people whom I admired.  They were intensely concerned with doing what was right. 

I listened and tried to understand. I felt woefully inadequate to make a judgement. 

So, as my colleagues co-opted writing sessions to denounce the war and plan protest marches, I wondered-- what can I do?

This is what I did.

I walked through the streets of New York toward the United Nations Building, a vague effort at supporting peaceful solutions to world problems. I threaded my way through the ring of media vans surrounding the building: NBC, CNN, BBC, AP, Reuters. Passing through a series of tents, I stood in line to pass through the many security check points. 

Once inside I wandered past closed rooms where peace and war and life and death were discussed. I had no real direction, I just wandered through the public spaces.

Then I happened to stop before Marc Chagall’s Peace Window, created in 1964. It is a striking sight: 15 feet wide and 12 feet high, with small figures floating in a vast sea of blue. On the left of a central tree, humans and animals drift aimlessly. On the right side of the tree, a group of people holding a lighted menorah move from a walled city in the distance to gather at the base of Christ on the cross. A snake nestles in the root of the central tree, but a bunch of red roses blooms from the top. Above the tree an angel reaches out the tablets of the Ten Commandments. 

To the right of the tree, a woman, larger than the other figures, is bowed in grief. Below the tree a small naked baby waves at me cheerfully.

Marc Chagall, the creator of the Peace Window, knew much of crisis and war and violence. A Russian Jew, he suffered through violent pogroms as a child. During the Russian revolution he knew the hunger and danger that followed. He was living in Germany as Hitler waged war again Europe and the Jews, but was able to escape to the United States through occupied France. Chagall’s beloved wife Bella died during the war years, and he grieved greatly over her loss, the near complete annihilation of his home town in Russia, and the unthinkable destruction of his people. 

And yet, this beautiful Peace Window, expressing faith and hope in the midst of grief. And yet, that little baby at the bottom of the window, waving out joyfully.

I looked at that baby--at all the images floating in the sea of blue, the grieving woman, the menorah of light, the Christ on the cross—I stood there thinking of this troubled world and the crisis we now faced and, silently, I prayed.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Some people call us Mormons. As a devout Christian, I believe that we were sent to this mortal world to experience both joy and sorrow. I believe that sorrow is sometimes the natural consequence of living in mortality, such as illness and pain and death. And I believe that often sorrow comes about through bad choices: our own and those of others—and that is where bullying and murder and war come in. 

I believe that God will not intervene in the choices we make. He will not force His people to do what is right. But He did atone for all the sins of the world, and He will help us through every terrible thing that we face, if we come to him, like Chagall’s masses on the right of the window. 

So I stood there and I prayed. I prayed for the leaders of the world, I prayed for those who would fight and those who would suffer. I prayed for peace, if not the peace that is the absence of war, then the peace we can feel in our hearts.

When I walked back through the streets of New York, past the armed soldiers, back to the contentious debates and the blaring TVs in the elevators-- I was still worried, still wondering what was the right response. But, there in the UN, in front of Chagall’s Peace Window, I had found a kind of peace.

And today, when I pick up my phone to see that latest news flash, I hope to hold that peace within me.