文章基本信息

标题：Tracing many paths to peace
作者：Delloff, Linda-Marie
期刊名称：The Lutheran
印刷版ISSN：0024-743X
出版年度：2005
卷号：Nov 2005
出版社：Augsburg Fortress Publishers

Tracing many paths to peace

Delloff, Linda-Marie

Book offers wisdom from great religions

I frequently see compilations of prayers and meditations. An unusual recent collection is Pathways to Peace: Interreligious Readings and Reflections (Cowley; 800-225-1534 or www.cowley.org). A. Jean Lesher, the book's editor, is an ELCA member who has long been an activist for cooperation among the world's religions. She has worked toward this goal with her husband, William E. Lesher, retired president of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He chairs the board of trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions.

This international organization promotes interreligious cooperation to address such world problems as debt forgiveness for poor nations, the growing number of refugees and supplying fresh water to underdeveloped areas. Its international gatherings (the last in Barcelona in 2004) attract thousands of participants.

A touchstone for the book is a statement by renowned Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung: "There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions." Spoken at the 1993 Parliament, they seem even more pertinent now.

The outstanding feature of Pathways to Peace is its breadth of selections-from biblical writers and sages of Buddhism and Confucianism to an American astronaut and the Chinese composer Tan Dun, who wrote the music for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

There are selections from famous people such as former President Jimmy Carter and from others you've never heard of. One of the most poignant is a poem by Langston Hughes, a Harlem Renaissance writer. "Mother in Wartime" was written about World War II, but it could be recited today about mothers of soldiers fighting in Iraq. It concludes:

Believing everything she read

In the daily news,

(No in-between to choose)

She thought that only

One side won,

Not that both

Might lose.

Delloff writes on the arts for a variety of publications and organizations. E-mail: lmdell@aol.com.