Wisdom IN Literature: Glorious Exploits and the Galaxy and the Ground Within on Peacemaking

One of the most compelling, if challenging, teachings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the Beatitude that says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5.9). It’s compelling because it’s a clear New Testament example of God’s desire for peace. It’s challenging, because it’s hard, awkward, and often dangerous to do. (Not to mention that, if we’re not careful, it’s easy to justify any action, no matter how horrific, as ‘peacemaking’.) This Summer, I’ve read two gorgeous books that in very different ways explore the theme of peacemaking, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits (2024) and Becky Chambers’ The Galaxy and the Ground Within (2021).

Glorious Exploits is a high-concept novel, a hilarious but surprisingly insightful romp set in ancient Syracuse (which was the most important city on Sicily), in the aftermath of a disastrous invasion attempt by Athens during the Peloponnesian War. In the novel, hundreds of Athenian soldiers are being held captive in a quarry outside the city, and two unemployed potters entertain themselves by taunting them. That is, until one of them realizes that Athens’ destruction could mean the end of Athenian theatre, and decides to put on a production of Euripides’s Medea — with the captives as his cast. I’m not exactly sure what the Geneva Convention might say about all this, but what follows is a story of unlikely, difficult, peacemaking. Both sides have reasons to hate the other: The Syracusans hate the Athenians because Athens had not only invaded them in an attempt to reassert imperial domination over them, but had also undertaken a scorched-earth campaign across Sicily in the process. The Athenians hate the Syracusans for siding with their enemies in the War (despite the long bonds between them), and for keeping them captive in atrocious, barely livable, conditions. But through the course of the book, first through the Syracusan protagonists’ recognition that Athens contributed something beautiful to their lives, then through a slow process of relationship-building, they get to the other side of enmity. It’s not a resolution that ends in good feelings or a new alliance between the communities — far from it — but in self-sacrificial acts in recognition of their mutual humanity. What I like so much about it is that it doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of peacemaking — at one one point a character recognizes that it makes no sense, but then responds that “Common sense is common, has no imagination, and only works by precedent. It leaves the man who follows it poor, if not in pocket, then in his heart.” But peacemaking is also an imperative of shared humanity — what we Christians would call our mutual createdness in the image and likeness of God. In the end, “The hearts of men are alike wherever you go. The rest is scenery.”

For its part, The Galaxy and the Ground Within, the fourth and final book of Chambers’s magnificent Wayfarers series, is essentially a cross between Star Wars and The Breakfast Club. In it, a group of alien travelers with at best no common cause and at worst lots of reason to hate each other end up stranded together at a remote way station. There’s a member of a powerful but xenophobic culture that fears outsiders because outside influence could disrupt their society, a military commander on leave from a brutal war, someone whose species is condemned to endless travel after their home world was exploited and left in ruins by a former imperial power, and whose short lifespan makes formal negotiation with the powers that be all but impossible. And there’s the mother who runs the station and just wants everyone to get along. It’s a book with little in the way of plot, but full of hard conversations and circumstances that force these unlikely allies to work together as a team. There are moments of connection and moments of alienation. Each character gets their due, an empathetic portrayal of their point of view, and in the end you have to accept, as they all do, that the universe is far more complex than simple right and wrong:

People – a group comprised of every sapient species, organic or otherwise – were chaos, but chaos was good. Chaos was the only sensible conclusion. There was no law that was just in every situation, no blanket rule that could apply to everyone, no explanation that accounted for every component. This did not mean that laws and rules were not helpful, or that explanations should not be sought, but rather that there should be no fear in changing them as needed, for nothing in the universe ever held still.

There are no easy answers here at all, just a recognition that everyone is right and everyone is wrong, and there’s no way around that. But that there’s still the real possibility of genuine relationship, whether that’s a collaboration on obviously shared goals or a gift, of food, or a listening ear that truly wants to hear.

Peacemaking is not an easy task. It looks differently in every situation. Some differences are too deep to resolved, but these books suggest that perhaps they can still be transcended and genuine connection and reciprocity are possible in our world.