peace out

It’s the hap-happiest time of the year and everything seems to be lining up like reindeer in front of a sleigh to remind me of it: snow is falling, cookies are baking, lawsuits are being filed. Ah, yes! Christmas is right around the corner.
There’s a woman in the small town of Pagosa Springs, CO (not far from me) who put up an evergreen wreath in the shape of a peace sign. Her name is Lisa Jensen. Some neighbors complained that it was a protest against the Iraq war. The home owners’ association board agreed, and ordered the wreath removed, or Jensen would have to pay $25 a day. Actually, some of the board members agreed. Those who didn’t were fired.
This wasn’t the first peace sign that had to be removed. Before Thanksgiving, another resident was asked to take down a wooden one from her yard. Peace just can’t catch a break.
To be fair, the home owners’ association does have a rule against signs and flags that anyone might find offensive. That’s pretty specific wording, isn’t it? That would mean just about everything, including Santa, pumpkins, and those silly paper hearts my mother used to hang in the window. The board president said some people thought the peace wreath was a symbol of Satan himself. He said that others might want to put up signs that say, “Drop bombs on Iraq.” Then he said, “If you let one go up you have to let them all go up”. Yeah, that makes sense.
Lisa Jensen got cards and letters and offers of cash from people all around the world. She won’t need it, though, because her association has rescinded the order to remove the wreath.
I won’t point out the irony of a person being fined for being pro-peace at a time of the year when many of us stop to remember the story of a baby whose birth was announced with the words, “Peace on Earth.” Too many other people have done that aready.
Instead, I’m wondering about the logic of allowing the wreath to stay. It was determined by the board that the wreath doesn’t really say anything. Jensen herself said, “It’s a spiritual thing.” Apparently, the wreath wasn’t saying anything about any current conflict; it’s just a general sentiment for peace. It strikes me as odd that it’s ok to be in favor of something in a general, conceptual, metaphysical, ethereal sense, but not in any real, specific, hard, on the ground sense. If part of the Christmas tale is peace on earth, doesn’t that include Iraq?
I’m also curious about the folks who protested the wreath. Some of them have children serving in Iraq. Wouldn’t the people who stand to lose the most be the ones wishing and praying the most for peace to come to that place? After all, those parents have children who might have to kill other people or even be killed themselves, or be maimed, so long as there is open, direct violence in Iraq.
Ironically, I think the only person who really understands the implications of the peace wreath is that board president. He understands that symbols are more than mere signs, that their presence is an invocation of sorts, a plea for action.
I’m going to get myself a peace wreath. I’ll hang it up and think of it like those Tibetan prayer flags, flapping and unraveling peace to the breeze, working for me, even while I sleep. I’ll remember it like those little pieces of paper tucked into the Wailing Wall, beseeching God for peace after I am gone home for soup. I’ll let it glimmer like those candles in a church, burning hope for peace: real, specific, hard, on the ground peace, in Iraq and everywhere else the words “on earth” might include.