The Resolutionary" is a newsletter for individuals committed to examining their life and work with a desire to improve the quality and results of their experience - for themselves, and those around them. It's purpose is to share insights, tools and resources for people who desire to authentically engage in meaningful dialogue with themselves and others. (The Resolutionary is in three parts) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1. FAITH, TRUST, AND LOVE OF GOD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here's a letter I recieved this week:
I want to make sure that everyone is aware of an incredible opportunity that we have to create peace this coming January. On January 24, 2002, the leaders of the major religions of the world will be meeting in Assisi, Italy to pray for world peace. The invitation came from Pope John Paul II and is the second time the leaders have been asked to come to Assisi for this purpose. (The first time was in September of 1986) There has been so much dialogue about peace, but what is needed is prayer, understanding and compassion. The Assisi event does not aim at finding solutions to the problems we face, but becoming the solution; not asking questions, but becoming the answer. The aim is to simply pray the prayers of peace from the major religions of the world, and let the energy of those ancient prayers do their job. I hope you will all spread the word about this gathering, and perhaps even follow the example of these leaders in your own community. Here's what we are doing in Ashland, Oregon where I live, for example. We will be inviting representatives from the different religious traditions in the area to join us for an evening of "Praying Peace." Each representative will be asked to bring a prayer of peace from their congregation and share it publicly. We will then share the traditional prayers of peace from the 12 major religions of the world that will be shared in Assisi. (A copy of these prayers can be found on my website: JamesTwyman.com) Magic happens when we set aside our fears and judgments and hold the space of peace. It may be one of the most important services we can offer at this time. If you want to create peace, in your life and in the world, this may be a simple way to do it. Sponsor a peace prayer gathering in your area, and let us know if you do. (Send an email to BelovedShelley@aol.com) Imagine hundreds of prayer gatherings like the one taking place in Assisi in the month of January. Imagine what it could mean. For more information on this powerful modality of prayer you may want to check out a book I wrote along with Gregg Braden and Doreen V May Peace Prevail on Earth, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4312570,00.html Guardian Tuesday December 4, 2001 He is a 78-year-old Israeli patriot, a veteran of the 1948 war of independence and the proud bearer of a scar given to him by three Egyptian bullets. He has served three terms in the Knesset and is a national legend in his home country. Yet don't look to Uri Avnery for a typical Israeli reaction to the latest calamities to befall his land. Nothing about Avnery is typical. He will not endorse yesterday's Israeli onslaught on the Gaza headquarters of Yasser Arafat, with whom he says he shares a special "bond". The two met as Israeli shells rained from the sky "Arafat has the same standing among Palestinians as George Washington in America or David Ben-Gurion in Israel: he is the father of the nation," says Avnery. "He led them on a long march for 40 years from the brink of oblivion to the threshold of their own state." Israel should forget its fantasies of replacing him; Arafat is the only man with the moral authority to make peace. Nor will Avnery serve up the standard-issue condemnation of Palestinian violence, even after a weekend in which 25 Israelis, many of them teenagers, were killed by a string of suicide bombs. Instead, he says he understands the killers; he even identifies with them a little. "After all," he says, "I used to be a terrorist myself." To It all adds up to the unique mix of soldier and peace activist, ex-terrorist and radical dove that has made Avnery one of the most intriguing, controversial and divisive characters in Israeli history. Since the founding of the state, Avnery has been a self-styled conscience for Israel - whether as a serving politician or A national hate-figure, regularly denounced as a traitor, he has spent a lifetime thinking the unthinkable. For five decades he has been the raging voice in the wilderness, complete with the ancient prophet's white beard, condemned by almost all who hear him. But never quite dismissed. For Avnery's life story reads like a That CV should have made Avnery a Sharon-style Likud hardliner. But that's not how it worked out. Even before the Jewish state was created in 1948, he began to see the other side - to see how things looked from the Palestinian point of view. Asking Israelis and Palestinians to do the same, to understand each other's national "narratives", is now his life's work, carried out through his organisation Gush Shalom, or Peace Bloc. "You now have the fifth generation on both sides born into the conflict, which impacts on every sphere of their lives. They have two completely separate narratives, which can describe the same set of events, and yet which could have happened on two different planets." Take this weekend. "For the Israelis, these were terrorist outrages committed by criminals under the direction of the tired, corrupt Arafat. For the Palestinians, these same events were acts of liberation committed by heroes, led by the father of the nation, Yasser Arafat." The two sides are so far apart, they cannot even understand what the other side thinks or feels. He constantly tries to put himself into the shoes of the Palestinians and, he says, his background helps. When he ponders the current wave of terrorist violence, he remembers his own mentality as a young man in the Irgun. "My own memories from that period are a very good guide for me today. We joined those who fought, not those who didn't," he says, explaining why young Palestinians are flocking to the flag of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. If they didn't fight, those groups would become irrelevant. If Arafat was not associated with resistance to the Israeli occupation, Palestinians would leave him, too, says Avnery: "He would be a general without an army." This is not new, he says: this is the dynamic of any people fighting occupation. Equally, he remembers that the extremist Jewish groups melted away the moment the United Nations promised a Jewish state in 1947. If Israel and the United States made clear now that the Palestinians would get a Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza (with any small border changes mutually agreed) then, he believes, the likes of Hamas and Jihad would go the way of the Irgun and Stern Gang: they would become redundant overnight. The immediate priority is for an end to violence, which he believes has to be imposed by an external, international presence enforcing a ceasefire. Then there should be talks, aimed at creating a Palestinian state, compensation for refugees displaced in 1948 and a sharing of Jerusalem - the west as Israel's capital, the east as Later, there needs to be a truth and reconciliation process where both peoples can at last look at each other. He wants the Palestinians truly to realise and accept "the impact the Holocaust has on every Jew in the world today" and for Israelis to understand the naqba, the catastrophe that Palestinians believe befell them in "I saw what happened," he says. "I saw more than most people because I was in a mounted commando unit which went around, all along the front. So I saw the naqba as it happened: I've been in 'emptied' Arab villages where the food was standing on the table and it was still hot... I came out of this war completely convinced that we must make peace with the Palestinian people." He started saying it right away, even in the early years of the state when such talk was heresy - when Golda Meir denied there was any such thing as a Palestinian people. The result was a string of arson attempts and bombings against his magazine offices, a serious beating which left two arms broken and, in 1975, an assassination attempt. Later, it emerged that Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, had officially branded Avnery and Ha'olam Hazeh as Public Enemy No. 1. Today, he keeps up the scathing rhetoric that earned him his radioactive reputation. In denouncing the loyalty of diaspora Jews to Israel, he says: "If Israel elected the House of Caligula, I'm sure American Jewry would follow it with total support." But, if they listened closely, many Jews and Israelis would find Avnery is not quite the treacherous monster of modern myth. For one thing, he insists he is not an anti-Zionist: he says he is a post-Zionist, one who recognises the movement for a Jewish state had many "beautiful" aspects as well as darker ones. He speaks with great passion for Israeli society and Hebrew culture, describing himself as a patriot. He disagrees strongly with Edward Said's previous advocacy Most appealing of all, he retains his optimism even in this hour of darkness. He says the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic is that the former says two and two equals five, while the latter admits two and two is four but is angry about it: "Israel is moving from the psychotic to the neurotic phase," finally facing up to the reality of what happened in 1948 and after. And does he, at 78, believe he will see all his dreams and schemes realised? "Oh, yes. I've decided not to die until all this happens." Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 6. ASK NOT WHAT December 9, 2001 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN News anchor Tom Brokaw tells the story of meeting a young New York City fireman a week after Sept. 11. The firemanhad just participated in a memorial service for some of his fallen colleagues and the two of them talked about the tragedy. "As I said goodbye," Mr. Brokaw recalled, "he grabbed my arm and his expression took on a tone of utter determination as he said, `Mr. Brokaw, watch my generation now, just watch us.' " As the author of the acclaimed "The Greatest Generation," the story of the World War II cohort that saved America from Nazism, Mr. Brokaw told me he knew just what the man was saying: " `This is our turn to be a greatest generation.' " There is a lot of truth to that. I have nothing but respect for the way President Bush has conducted this war. But this moment cannot just be about moving troops and tracking terrorists. There is a deep hunger in America post-Sept. 11 in many people who feel this is their war in their backyard and they would like to be summoned by the president to do something more than go shopping. If you just look at the amount of money spontaneously donated to victims' families, Imagine if tomorrow President Bush asked all Americans to turn down their home thermostats to 65 degrees so America would not be so much of a hostage to Middle East oil? Trust me, every American would turn down the thermostat to 65 degrees. Liberating us from the grip of OPEC would be our Victory Garden. Imagine if the president announced a Manhattan Project to make us energy independent in a decade, on the basis of domestic oil, improved mileage standards and renewable resources, so we Americans, who are 5 percent of the world's population, don't continue hogging 25 percent of the world's energy? Imagine if the president called on I don't toss these ideas out for some patriotic high. There is a critical strategic point here: If we are going to be stomping around the world wiping out terrorist cells from Kabul to Manila, we'd better make sure that we are the best country, and the best global citizens, we can be. Otherwise, we are going to lose the rest of the world. That means not just putting a fist in the face of the world's bad guys, but also offering a hand up for the good guys. That means doubling our foreign aid, intensifying our democracy promotion programs, increasing our contributions to world development banks (which do microlending to poor women) and lowering our trade barriers for textile and farm imports from the poorest countries. Imagine if the president called on every U.S. school to raise money to buy The world's perception of us and our values matters even more now, and it is not going to be changed by an ad campaign, or by just winning in Afghanistan, as important as that is. It will be changed only by what we do - at home and abroad. This war can't end with only downtown Kabul on the mend, and not downtown Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. Remember: the victims on Sept. 11 were a cross section of America - black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor andmiddle class - and that same cross section has to share in the healing. If we've learned anything from Sept. 11, it is that if you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you. The first Greatest Generation won its stripes by defending America and its allies. This Greatest Generation has to win its stripes by making sure that the America that was passed onto us, and that now claims for itself the leadership of a global war against evil terrorists, is worthy of that task. Mr. President, where do we enlist? Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company |
||
 
To subscribe to this list, please send an e-mail message to:
|
