Teaching Peace

Friday night, as we sat together as a family eating dinner, talking about our days, Ruby and Willis launched in to a discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr, or as Willis calls him Dr. Markin Luther.  He says it like he has a mouth full of marbles.  Both of them had lessons at school about who Dr. King was, about his experiences and why we celebrate his life.  Ruby was part of an assembly at school.  She memorized a little blurb about him, something like "L is for laws, being equal for all.  He stood for civil rights..." I forget the rest.  She spent the week memorizing it, trying to get the word civil ingrained her memory.  It went from cill, to cibil, to civil.  I think she finally did get it.  As she talked about the assembly, she said, "Did you know that there was this lady, Rosa Parks, who got arrested for sitting down on the bus?  They wouldn't let her sit in the front and that is NOT fair.  She knew it wasn't right, so she just sat down in front anyways."  She told more of the story, said she knew another word for being killed, assassinated.  Not a word I necessarily want my 1st grader using, but in the context she spoke of, I felt proud that she understood what it meant.  She described how people were treated different "just because they have different colored skin, isn't that wrong?"  She told us how all the people said, fine, we won't use your buses then.  We don't need them, we can walk or ride bikes...peaceful protest.
Willis on the other hand, true to form, told his story of Dr. Markin Luther.  He said that police shot people with bee-bees, that police shot sombody's eye out.  Lovely, no?  It fascinates me what he took away from the story, which I am sure was age appropriate, at that age they just grab on to certain pieces, and Willis' was of course the part involving shooting.  He also said that a lady with black hair got in trouble for being on the bus and then said to my mom that she kind of has black hair, but not really black.   I'd love to sit in that little mind of his for a moment and know how his little wheels are spinning.
Teaching children about peace and equality is not always an easy conversation to have, parts of it are difficult to explain.  When Ruby asks me "Why would people do that?" wondering about people who are mean or violent towards another, why wouldn't people let them sit where they wanted on the bus...I don't always have the answers or know how to articulate them in a way she can understand.  I'm thankful for her little peaceful heart that knows what is fair and what isn't, that she knows it isn't always easy to stand up for what's right, that it takes being brave and it might be scary, but it's the right thing to do. 
My kids will grow up in a country that I think is more fair and just than the one Dr. King lived in, and one of the reasons why it's more fair is, of course, because of people like him who were brave and wise and stood for peace.  We still have a long way to go.  I know that the best way to teach peace is by example and I hope in little and big ways, my children, too, will march on to be catalysts for peace.