Just a thought: Pillars of fire

That passage came to mind last Monday as I was watching the Memorial Service for Yitzhak Rabin, the murdered Prime Minister of Israel. The last and most memorable person to speak was Rabin's granddaughter, Noa Ben-Atrzi. She said, "Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire before the camp, and now we are just a camp left alone in the dark, and we're so cold." Though speaking very personally for herself and her family, Rabin's granddaughter was speaking for all the rest of us. For whenever a peacemaker dies, a light goes out.

Yitzhak Rabin had spent most of his life as a warrior. He served in an elite corps during World War II and the fight for Jewish independence. During the six day war in 1967, he was the head of the Israeli armies which recaptured Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. He had been the Defense Minister who had tried to brutally put down the Intifada, the uprising of the Palestinians on the West Bank in the late 1980's. In 1992, for the second time Rabin was elected Prime Minister of Israel.

In this second time around as the leader of Israel, something in Rabin changed. He articulated the change this way: "How can we (Israel) with our history be a people who occupies another people." With that conviction, Rabin became a peacemaker. With his blessing, his foreign minister began secret talks with Rabin's enemy, Yassir Arafat. The result was a historic handshake with Arafat in the White House Rose Garden, and those words he spoke on that day, words I will never forget, "Enough of blood and tears, enough!"

We know now that Rabin was just getting started as a peacemaker. Next came the peace agreement with Jordan and King Hussein. Who could have imagined even 5 years ago that King Hussein would attend Rabin's funeral, once his sworn enemy and there call him brother. And at the time of his death, Rabin was preparing for Israeli security forces to evacuate towns on the West Bank so that Palestinians could take over their own security. Yitzhak Rabin was a pillar of fire indeed.

On the last day of his life, Rabin attended a peace rally and at the close of the rally sang a song of peace. The final stanza of that song says, "Do not look for the day of peace, bring that day with you." Instead of waiting for and looking for and hoping for the day of peace, he brought it with him in his role of a peacemaker. And for his people in Israel, and for all the people in the Middle East, and for all of us on this planet, he became a pillar of fire.

Now as his granddaughter has said, we are "just a camp left alone in he dark and we're so cold." But we do not have to stay here. We should not get stuck in our mourning for Yitzhak Rabin or other pillars of fire we have had the privilege of knowing such as Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr. We have to warm each other with our hugs and our hopes for peace. And we have to get up, and move out of our camp and become our own light. As the Song of Peace says, we must not look for the day of peace, but bring it with us. Each deed of kindness, each act of reconciliation, each hand extended across racial and ethnic barriers helps us bring that day of peace closer.