“The Call to War can only take us so far. Instead of it, I say what our nation needs now is a ‘Call to Peace’ and to Service!! Peace and Service on a scale we have scarcely begun to imagine.”
Our Quote of the Week comes from a powerful call to peace that Sargent Shriver made at the Shriver Center UMBC in Baltimore, Maryland. Sarge made the point that “now more than ever, we depend on one another for our very existence.” And with advancements in technology that in some respects have brought us closer together and in some respects have made large-scale destruction easier than ever before, it is imperative that we use every strategy and tool that we have to create a more peaceful and prosperous environment for ourselves and for future generations.
Speaking six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Sargent Shriver alludes to the limits of military force in the creation of a more stable world. He scrutinizes his own past efforts towards peacebuilding and diplomacy with the Peace Corps, and urges us to go much farther than we could have possibly imagined in the past to promote peace through our institutions and through our daily actions. Note that in this message as in his career, serving others is central in Sargent Shriver’s conception of peacebuilding.
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