Article February 12, 2001 Issue

How I pray for peace in the Middle East

By Gloria Onyuru By Calvin DeLano—Ankara, Turkey

Gloria Onyuru has lived in Ankara, Turkey, for more than 30 years. An American who is married to a Muslim, she was an executive secretary at Lockheed Martin Corporation for over 15 years. She now devotes much of her time to work in spiritual healing.

How do I pray for peace in the Middle East? By expecting to see good now! By resisting the temptation to turn on the television news expecting to see examples of evil overpowering good, "as usual." By knowing that a loving God has given peace, and all good things, to each one of us as a birthright, and that everyone in the Mideast and in the world has the right to have great good at this very moment, without suffering.

The crisis people feel in the Middle East today stems from the habit of not identifying good with the region, of expecting evil to happen there. This situation is something people throughout the world are involved in both individually and collectively. It is customary to see the Arabs and Israelis as irreconcilably at war over some limited piece of land. This is a very entrenched mindset.

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