I have family over, from “Bernie’s side,” as we sometimes say, family I love very much. We spend tons of hours together hanging out, eating breakfasts of bagels, cream cheese and lox (last night baked ziti with spinach and garlic bread, this evening sushi), roller skating, driving through the U of MA/Amherst campus. Small, mundane things that mean so much when you do them with family.

I plan to return to my usual blog output next week. Tomorrow in the morning we’ll walk the dogs, and right afterwards visit the Peace Pagoda in Leverett. Let’s see what a 13-year-old boy has to say to that.

Why do I wonder if a young teenager can relate to a pagoda containing a relic of the Buddha and dedicated to peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide? How many young people still believe in peace anyway? How many older people believe in it—notwithstanding the fact that the past 80 or so years have seen fewer wars in the West than ever before?

I do. Why? Maybe because of this spring’s daffodils in our back yard. I don’t remember such beautiful and long-lasting daffodils in previous springs, perhaps because our spring started out very cold and has stretched out so long. See how the flowers talk to each other, how they awaken from a winter’s slumber like sleeping beauties, ready to line a path or rest in the still-to-come shade of a large oak in back. How they greet the uncertainties of life with bashful, teasing color, unafraid of the coming rain on Saturday or the steadily increasing heat during the day signaling their demise.

Everything around me is more fearless than I could ever be.

I remember meeting Fr. Bob Maat, a Jesuit, 31 years ago, the first time I visited Auschwitz. He was there as part of a big pilgrimage and was assisting the Cambodian saint, Maha Ghosananda, who was there as well, taking time off from walks throughout Cambodia through the worst of the fighting there. We corresponded by letter several times, and he wrote me that his job now was to go from village to village in Cambodia and start teaching Cambodian children about peace. They had seen so much war and violence that they had no sense of what peace actually meant.

I don’t have his letters with me anymore, but I remember one in which he wrote that if people can’t believe that there really is such a thing—not some abstract concept but something with a practical path and results—they will not work towards it. They will not live it. So, his work at that time was to go from place to place and remind them what peace was, and how it could be achieved.

How do our current young teenagers respond to peace? Most haven’t been through wars and violence, but social media makes one so old so early, and cynical to boot. How will he respond?