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1 " We decided that we would be the first to love every single time. Because Love Never Fails. We were going to throw kindness around like confetti, to love like it was growing on trees, without needing to determine if the person in front of us deserved it or not. This was our family's Battle Cry. Committing ahead of time to show up with people meant our decision was already made. We stopped talking about what peace might mean and started being peace. We did it because peace isn't the absence of conflict it's showing up in the middle of it. "
― Diana Oestreich , Waging Peace: One Soldier's Story of Putting Love First
2 " I wasn't going to Shield my children from the violence of this world, because I don't want to shield them from an even bigger reality; light always breaks Darkness. Love defies hatred when we stand alongside our neighbors and say “No More”, to violence. "
3 " Waging peace requires that we have the courage to face what's broken first- in ourselves-and then in the system affecting those around us and uncover who has been harmed and how we are connected to them. "
4 " Coming home from War as a peacemaker created a battlefield I wasn't prepared for. "
5 " Violence isn't waged only with guns, or war. Words can be violent, and so can the Erasure of wrongdoing. "
― Diana Oestreich
6 " We were supposed to be enemies, Americans and Iraqi’s, Muslims and Christians, newer immigrants and historical immigrants. But here we were, huddled around the table together, with candle lights flickering off cheeks and smiling eyes. "
7 " Giving your life away is the only way to truly find it. Loving our enemies is what transforms fear into Freedom. Love has the power to change us. "
8 " Showing up when violence wounds a community is what love looks like in public. Loving first, with our presence instead of only our prayers, wasn't safe but laying down my weapon in a war wasn't safe either. But it's what you do when you belong to each other. "
9 " No one who goes to war ever really comes back. I had lost things, had parts of myself taken away from me, not all of me boarded the plane to come home. The war also liberated me to love those I've seen as an enemy. It gifted me with knowing what I would die for and what was worth living for; being the first to love every single time and waging peace as if my life depended on it. "
10 " Violence isn't only bombs and bullets, it can be speaking words that dehumanize and looking away when someone needs you to lean in and stand up alongside them to confront the racism, the intimidation, or the belittling. "
11 " It's our responsibility to sift the beliefs we've been given through the lens of self-sacrificing love- because it's not love if it only serves itself. "
12 " Waging peace means we erase lines that tell us whose children are worthy to survive and whose children are disposable. "
13 " If choosing to love first can change enemies into friends on the battlefield of Iraq, I know that it can right here, in our own neighborhoods, churches, and families, who are battling over politics, religion, migrants at the border, and who belongs in America. Love is the foundation I'm planting feet on. "
14 " Love is what I'm arming my sons with to go out in an angry and hurting world. "
15 " The amount of violence against another human being we are willing to accept is a litmus test for our own freedom. "
16 " I'll never stop acknowledging the pain of others, because empathy is the flashlight leading us toward wholeness and healing. If we ignore those in our world and our neighborhoods who are in pain, we will ignore our own healing. We suffocate our own hope, because we are connected to each other. Waging peace is believing that the best for another person is the best for myself, my country, and my world. "
17 " Showing up when violence wounds a community is what love looks like in public. Loving first, with our presence instead of only our prayers, wasn’t safe. Laying down my weapon in Iraq wasn’t safe either. But it’s what you do when you belong to each other. "
18 " We were outsider, yes, but insiders to a hard-won truth: giving your life away is the only way to truly find it. Loving our enemies is what transforms fear into freedom. Love has the power to change us. As Dr. Sabah told me that first day over tea, “when one of us is cut, we all bleed. That is humanity. "
19 " You can build something new, one person, one relationship, one meal at a time. You can build friendships instead of watering the flowers alongside our long-held fences. You can choose to believe in the unshakable goodness of those across the Pew or political divide. You can choose fierce kindness by speaking the truth to people about the impact their decisions make on the vulnerable. You can call Self Supremacy the liar it is. It's a bait and switch. "
20 " I'm fighting for your freedom and my freedom. We must have Brave conversations. We must find out what we don't know. Waging peace requires that we have the courage to face what's broken first- in ourselves-and then in the system affecting those around us and uncover who has been harmed and how we are connected to them. Because we are intertwined together. Love speaks the truth of the harm done, while unshakable goodness holds space for the offender at the table. We all have a seat at the peacemaking table. Love is refusing to take away an oppressor’s chair at the family table while at the same time taking the stick of violence out of their hands. Because violence ricochets and is absorbed by the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. It's time to center their pain and to put ourselves between them and the violence. "
