The Language of Peace and Justice

Welcome to my new monthly column The Present Tense.

In each edition I will take a pressing issue and frame it within the larger story of faith, memory, and moral vision. Not to catalog crises, but to discern pathways—however narrow—toward justice and peace. Not to retreat into private spirituality, but to embrace faith as a public responsibility.

We live at a moment when the past presses urgently on the present, and the future strains toward realization. The wounds of colonialism, racism, economic inequality, and ecological destruction still shape our lives. Yet faith insists that despair is not destiny. The God who calls us to remember also calls us to repair. The Spirit who brings conviction also gives birth to imagination.

It is my hope that this column serves as a companion throughout your journey—a space where storytelling intersects with vocation, belief with civic engagement, and language becomes a means of healing. We shall repeatedly revisit the question: what does love demand of us at this moment, in the present tense?

I begin this new column with a story about language—because language has been both my struggle and my liberation. English is not my mother tongue; it entered my life as a colonial inheritance. At the United Methodist–affiliated high school I attended in the Philippines, we were required to speak English at all times. Whenever I slipped into Ilocano or Filipino—languages of home and identity—I was fined five cents.

Years later, when a colleague asked why I use “difficult English words,” I smiled and replied: “I learned English the hard way, and as a good steward, I am simply using the English words I paid for.”

Behind that humor lies a deeper truth: language became a teacher of resilience. I learned that words carry memory and meaning, that grammar shapes imagination, and that even an imposed language can become a vessel of truth when filled with purpose, justice, and faith. This column grows out of that journey, especially my fascination with tense as both grammar and tension—a description of what we live through and what we live under.

My work in the global public square has taught me that peace has its own grammar and syntax—a structure as demanding as any language I have learned. Peace requires verbs of courage, nouns rooted in dignity, prepositions that connect rather than divide, and punctuation that slows us enough to listen. To speak peace is to practice it. This column will explore the ‘grammar and syntax of peace”: how we shape society through the moral architecture of our words and actions.

This exploration is inseparable from my Wesleyan identity. Wesleyan theology insists that grace is active, not idle; that faith must take form in the world; and that love of God is expressed in love of neighbor. The United Methodist Social Principles deepen this conviction, offering a rich ethical vocabulary for living justly and honoring every person’s sacred worth.

I often turn to John Wesley’s charge: “Do all the good you can.” It is a grammar lesson in moral action—an invitation to live our faith in the present tense, especially in tense times.

In The Present Tense, we dream of a future we can build together—a future, like the one the Peace and Justice Center of Marin, California envisioned, where “at the table of peace shall be bread and justice.”