Music is the GPS of memory. It can take us back immediately to a place, relationship, or experience—painful, exhilarating, transformative—to a moment, month, or year of our lives. Toni Child’s UNION brings me back to 1988, to her song “Walk and Talk Like Angels,” in particular, and dancing with my first child, my angel-faced daughter of delight, then just two. This is such a great album.

Walk and Talk Like Angels

Songwriters: David Jeffrey Ricketts / Toni Childs

I PROMISE I had not intended to lure you here for other less pleasing reasons.

BUT ON THE SAME ALBUM I remembered the moving—in more ways than one—song “Zimbabwe.” This was the late 1980’s mind you. Few things in life are more riddled with delight than a two-year-old dancing. We used to love dancing in our living room to “Zimbabwe.” Little did the little she-one know that we were dancing to a lament. One that is sadly appropos today in these troubled times of ours so saturated not only with violence and hatred but with their justification as well. Zimbabwe is Ukraine is Palestine is Myanmar is Sudan and on and on and on. When will we tire of this madness? Ever?

War is sin writ large. We forget that, I think, so effectively has it been hyped, and SOLD, and dressed in costumes of heroism, bravery, patriotism, and sacrifice. It’s almost become a caricature for those of us unaffected by it. The fact is, there is very little that is original about sin—or war. Their causes are human concoctions rooted in selfishness—I, Me, My, Mine, Myself—greed, the thirst for power, prestige, possessions, jealousy, vengeance, insecurity, prejudice, indifference, callousness, idiocy, and immaturity. The first strategy is to create an amnesia around the idea that each and every person is an image of God. The next tactical decision is the establishment of other persons as the enemy which begins from day one of boot camp where the dehumanization of the enemy is repeatedly drilled into soldiers. The Boot Camp is happening all around us, 24/7/365. We don’t have to go to Parris Island, South Carolina, or Recruit Depot in San Diego.

Most people think waging war is hard. But, in reality, compared to waging peace, it is relatively easy. Waging peace is what is hard and heroic, counter-intuitive and counter-cultural—even counter to the culture in most Christian churches. Unless and until we have more people willing to go to peace rather than go to war, brave enough to give our lives—heck, give an hour, a day, a week—to cultivating and enacting peace right where we are, nothing will change. Only when we stop mocking peace as if it were little more than hippy-dippy nonsense and naivete, only when we stop being embarrassed by love, only when we realize it is a far cry from what’s written on the inside of a Hallmark card, only when we realize like Dostoevsky’s character that “Love is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” will we arrive at that last station home.

Can there be some peace on earth
Can there be a love
Greater than the world we see
Greater than us all
It’s the last station home
It’s the last station home

ZIMBABWE

What you gonna do Zimbabwe
What you wanna do Zimbabwe (repeat)

Zimbabwe is a man who tried
To teach his children what was right
But then there came a time when war
Split the family from inside
He said no fighting no more

What you gonna do Zimbabwe
What you wanna do Zimbabwe (repeat)

The old man sits and shakes his head
While the multitudes insist
Where is the cause of unity
Where is the thought there could be peace
Men gathered in silence the same

What you gonna do Zimbabwe
What you wanna do Zimbabwe (repeat)

Can there be some peace on earth
Can there be a love
Greater than the world we see
Greater than us all
It’s the last station home
It’s the last station home

You ran your heart in those days
When no-one could see days
You want to run in the wind
You want to go back inside
See no more crime in your lifetime
Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
No more crime in your lifetime
Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe . . .

Songwriters: David Ricketts / Toni Childs

What you gonna do, What am I gonna do, What are WE gonna do?

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