I sit on my deck as I write. It’s 74 degrees on July 17th—a beautiful gift of a spring day in the middle of a Maryland summer. The only sound I hear is the hum of a distant lawnmower. I see my neighbor, like a real-life version of those tiny Little People children’s toys, on a riding mower across the valley from my house. He makes a final circle around his lawn and stops the mower. The world is silent again. And then the birds begin to chirp as I watch a finch land on the feeder by the pine tree in my back yard.

My world is peaceful.

But in the Ukraine a Malaysian plane bearing 295 people has been shot down by a surface-to-air missile. Continue reading Have We Failed at Peace? →