“I used [the word ‘power’] to emphasize the power of peace. It is peace that gives strength. It is peace that provides ‘the, force'—an unconquerable, unsurpassable force ... not arms, not bombs, not fear or threat of destruction. Those things just arouse resistance and resentment. They produce the opposite of what they intend. The alleged ‘power of arms’ is a sham. The man with the pistol in his hand blazing away is the pitiful, fearful weakling afraid of another person, killing and marauding like a frustrated child because he’s angry and hurt and alone and desperate, looking for love and finding only hatred and opposition.”
Our Quote of the Week highlights the fact that building peace is an act more powerful than the wielding of any weapon or showing of brute force. We share this quote as we mark the 65th anniversary of Sargent Shriver’s appointment as first Director of the Peace Corps on March 22.
Sargent Shriver’s 1981 Address at the Second National Conference of Former Peace Corps Volunteers and Staff is a revealing speech that gives us insight into his experience of leading the Peace Corps from 1961 to 1966, while also reminding us why acts of service and community building continue to be powerful tools in creating a more stable, peaceful world.
During his tenure as the first Peace Corps Director in the 1960s, Shriver infused the Peace Corps with a belief in every individual’s duty and ability to build peace. This belief went hand in hand with his commitment to service. Of his own time with the Peace Corps, he says:
“The Peace Corps gave me the most memorable, continuing, morally unblemished and uncompromised chance ever given any American to serve his country, his countrymen, and his fellow human beings world-wide, simultaneously, and at the grassroots level with the poor everywhere. Never in war, and I have served in war; never in peace and I have served many places in peace, has anyone ever received, from a secular state, a greater opportunity for pure service.”
Shriver’s profound reflections about service remind us that serving in our communities nurtures a sense of inner peace, and in turn allows us to be more effective in building outer peace. Of Peace Corps Volunteers, he says:
“The power of our peaceful efforts lies within ourselves and can be given to others. But first we must possess it. Many Peace Corps Volunteers have possessed this kind of peace. They were at peace with themselves and with their work. That’s why the Peace Corps nurses in the Dominican Republic were asked to stay when the Revolutionary slogans all said ‘Yankees Go Home’. That’s why no Peace Corps Volunteers were attacked or injured in the Panamanian uprisings against the U.S.A. in 1964 or during the current violence in El Salvador. That’s why ‘terrorists’ have not assaulted Peace Corps Volunteers even in remote locations.”
Shriver admits that a peaceful attitude and acts of service cannot always prevent violence. But ultimately, he notes, the “quality of caring” for others is an invaluable force in creating a more peaceful world. And the stakes for building such a world could not be higher, as he notes:
“The world today is faced with the greatest threat to peace in world history. The threat of nuclear war and human devastation. Nuclear war would produce peace—an imposed, maybe a permanent peace. War and death on an unprecedented scale.”
With these stakes in mind, we offer Shriver’s words as a reminder of a the power of service and the urgency with which we each must cultivate peace within us and around us through acts that can defend and protect us from the unimaginable.
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