“Peace is not a field of flowers. It’s
hard work.”
Despite personal tragedy, Aqeela Sherrills
seeks peace on the mean streets of Los Angeles.
By Tijn Touber
There are seals swimming in the bay in front of the hotel where
Aqeela Sherrills is staying. The sun is struggling to chase away
threads of mist hanging over the San Francisco hills in the distance.
The hotel lobby smells of fresh coffee and pancakes. The sense
of serenity that dominates this morning in Tiburon, an upscale
town across the bay from San Francisco, in no way resembles the
place where Sherrills comes from: a rough gang-dominated district
of Los Angeles. In that place, you’re asking for trouble
if you hit the street without packing some means of self-defence.
It’s estimated that over the past 20 years, at least 10,000
murders have been committed in these Los Angeles neighbourhoods.
That’s far more than all the victims of the conflict in Northern
Ireland.
But Sherrills has managed to accomplish what has eluded negotiators
in many international conflicts: getting two rival, violent groups
to the negotiating table and then making sure that the terms of
the ceasefire agreement stick. Ultimately, the Crips and the Bloods
signed an honest-to-God peace treaty. Sherrills then created an
entire structure involving 80 people dedicated to safeguarding
the terms of the treaty and teaching the gang members self-respect
and “life skills.” The treaty, signed in 1992, continues
for the most part to be upheld and has become an example to other
cities. But this is just the beginning for Sherrills. “I
expect that the next major peace movement will come from these
neighbourhoods,” he says.
The baggy sweater Sherrills wears this morning cannot hide his
muscles, important for self-protection as a young man. He doesn’t
need to fight today, but his eyes remain watchful. Sherrills is
no longer fighting with others, or with himself. He is fighting
deeply-ingrained patterns and prejudices: poverty, racism and
feelings of inferiority. They are so deeply-rooted that most people
don’t see them and even fewer dare to name them. “Black
folks hate themselves,” Sherrills says plainly. “And
they feel inferior. White folks have been conditioned to feel
superior. It’s so deeply rooted that it’s subtle; people
don’t even see it most of the time. But it’s there,
and it really needs to be addressed.” The problems of violence
aren’t limited to American ghettos, they’re everywhere.
And if there’s someone who can point out these problems and
has found a solution to them, it is Sherrills.
Watts was one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Los Angeles when
Aqeela Sherrills was born there 35 years ago. The area was split
in two by railroad tracks. One side was the territory of the Bloods
and the other belonged to the Crips. Conflicts over territory
and drugs were fought out on the street using state-of-the-art
weapons. Executions and drive-by shootings were daily occurrences.
In the early 1980s, Sherrills was just a kid at the time gang
violence in American ghettos started to escalate.
Sherrills grew up as the youngest of 10 children surrounded by
this horrific backdrop of violence. But in Watts, children never
stay young for long. Sherrills had his first son when he was 14.
That same year, his best friend, also 14, was shot to death. Sherrills
looks back, “I went completely crazy. We wanted revenge and
we hit the streets. Fighting. Shooting. Robbing.” By the
time he was 16, 13 of his friends had already died in gunfire
between the Bloods and the Crips.
The subculture of American gang life is dominated by violence
and drugs. But it’s more than that. It is also where fantastic
music, dance and clothing styles are created, which have a major
impact on global pop culture. Just watching MTV for a half-hour
makes it clear that gang culture has become hip. This makes Sherrills
laugh. “It’s cool now to say you come from a ghetto.
When I was young it wasn’t so cool; most of us wanted to
get out as quickly as possible.”
But Sherrills eventually pulled back from the gang life. Fantasy
is what saved him. “Together with my brothers and sisters
I fantasized a lot about a better world,” he remembers. “My
parents weren’t home much and we would tell each other never
ending stories. It usually started with a Chinese master who gave
us supernatural powers. We used those super powers to make the
world a better place. Those stories made me trust, at a young
age, that another world was possible and that I could do something
about it. I knew I was destined to do something big. I just didn’t
know what.”
Sherrills’ oldest sister was the first to get out of the
neighbourhood. She was accepted to college and moved on campus.
This sister had always been a major inspiration to Sherrills—albeit
because she was the one who always told the best stories. With
her help, Sherrills also got into college when he was 18, where
he studied electrical engineering. It appeared to be his ticket
out of the violence in his neighbourhood.
Initially, Sherrills didn’t want to return home, even on
weekends. Although he didn’t show too much interest in his
studies, he hung around campus. His first year was mostly spent
partying and dating lots of girls. But that summer, something
happened that changed Sherrills’ life. He read a book entitled
The Evidence of Things Not Seen by eminent African American writer
James Baldwin. The book describes what Baldwin saw as a plot against
black people, involving the shipment of drugs and guns into poor
neighbourhoods— with drugs and weapons. “The idea was,
Baldwin wrote: let the black people kill each other off. I was
furious and wanted to warn my brothers,” Sherrills recalls.
Sherrills joined the Nation of Islam, an American spiritual black
separatist movement. When he rejoined his fellow students after
the summer, some didn’t recognize him. He had lost 35 pounds
(15 kilos) and had given up alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and sex.
As befits a devout Muslim, he prayed five times a day. Meanwhile,
he began acting as a kind of Robin Hood, stealing money from drug
dealers and giving it to the neighbourhood’s poor.
The big task for which Sherrill was destined, started to take
shape. He continued to pay little attention to his studies; he
wanted instead to go back to the ‘hood” and help his
brothers break out of the vicious circle of drugs and violence.
Sherrills organized gatherings for fellow students around the
theme of defending black rights. He reminded his fellow black
students of their roots-–“People died so you could go
to college!”—but he didn’t get many to the point
of returning to the ghetto they came from. They simply didn’t
want to be associated with their old neighbourhood, Sherrills
discovered, and he slowly turned bitter.
Sherrills continued to have run-ins with the law and even landed
in jail once for physically resisting a police officer who was
beating on him. But what transformed Sherrill into a peace activist
was not being arrested, joining Islam, or reading Baldwin, but
by the love of a woman. “Before my celibacy stint,”
he explains, “I had a girlfriend: Lisa. I was crazy about
her, but very insecure about myself. I thought I was ugly and
couldn’t believe that she really wanted me. I couldn’t
handle her love and cheated on her—to break up the relationship
and to prove that I was right. But I regretted it so much that
for the first time in my life I did something noble: I confessed
everything.”
That confession had a miraculous effect. He suddenly saw the world
through different eyes. “Before that I didn’t trust
anyone,” Sherrills explains. “If things weren’t
going well for me there was always someone I could blame. Now
I was looking at myself for the first time in my life. It was
as if spirit came into me, as if I had become a new person.”
This rebirth gave Sherrills the wings and courage he needed to
go into his neighbourhood with a few friends with the aim of making
peace. He talked, discussed and listened on every street corner
to members of the Crips and the Bloods. That was in 1989. A short
time later, Sherrills got help from an American football legend,
Jim Brown, who made his house in the Hollywood hills available
as a neutral place where members of various gangs could meet.
Sherrills looks back on those early days: “We held six meetings
involving hundreds of cats from different neighbourhoods. We couldn’t
bring off a ceasefire, but relations got better and better.”
Brown was generous enough to donate a monthly sum so that Sherrills
and his buddies could rent a retail space and take their activities
to the next level. The cooperation with Brown led to the founding
of the Amer-I-Can project, which offers a program for “life
skills.” Sherrills explains, “Jim had been offering
this program to prisoners for awhile. It teaches you to develop
self-respect, solve conflicts, create a life vision, make decisions—that
kind of thing.” Sherrills followed the program himself and
started giving lessons, something he would do for the next 11
years.
Brown’s fame, combined with Sherrills’ street credibility,
turned out to be a golden formula for getting the unique peace
process off the ground. But it remained a tall order; after all,
how do you get young men who consistently confuse the concepts
of “forgiveness” and “revenge” to take a seat
around a negotiation table? Sherrills: “It’s not magic.
It’s a step-by-step process. It’s about communication.
I appeal to their deepest feelings. I try to touch their heart,
so that each of them can get back in touch with their humanity.
This process is based on relationships and cannot be motivated
by anything but love. We simply talk about the important things
in life: what makes people happy or sad, what are we afraid of,
what can we do better? That kind of thing. Again and again it
becomes clear that we ultimately believe in the same things.”
In 1992, Sherrills finally sees a breakthrough: the Crips and
the Bloods sign a historic treaty. Sherrills describes that amazing
day this way: “Everyone was happy, grandmothers were crying,
everyone was calling each other, for the first time fathers were
able to visit their children on the other side of the railroad
tracks… Everyone was so excited. It totally changed the quality
of our lives.”
After this success in Los Angeles, there was no stopping the
initiative. What started out locally, expanded into an international
organization active in 15 cities. At the highpoint of his peace
activities, Sherrills’ Community Self-Determination Institute
had 80 employees and its budget included $ 3 million U.S. (2.3
million euros) in government subsidies. For three and a half years,
he lived like an urban nomad travelling from ghetto to ghetto
to initiate peace negotiations and exact a ceasefire. The success
of Sherrills’ approach is partly due to the fact that he
does more than just treat the symptoms of gang violence. He wants
to tackle the problem at its roots. “Violence on the streets
is a symptom of a deeper problem,” he notes. “As long
as there is poverty, we will never have peace. Poverty destroys
families, neighbourhoods, countries.”
Sherrills doesn’t see the problems of violence and despair
as confined to gang areas. “In fact there is no difference
between what goes on in Watts or in Beverly Hills. The emotional
pain that people experience is expressed in Watts by murder and
in Beverly Hills by suicide.” Sherrills then reveals a staggering
statistic: “Last year there were more suicides than murders
in greater Los Angeles.”
Sherrills shifts effortlessly between street slang and clearly
formulated spiritual and political statements. His charismatic
energy is both tough and loving. You can just as easily imagine
him both on a street corner in the ghetto and in a meeting with
top level government officials.
Sherrills’ approach works, in part because he speaks the
language of the street. “I honestly love my neighbourhood
and my brothers,” he remarks. “There is so much beauty,
so much talent. Sometimes in the roughest places, you find the
most beauty. Aside from the violence, there are few other places
in California where you find so much sense of community. That
gang feeling is a part of it; it was always there, even before
the violence escalated. A gang is like a kind of surrogate family.
For young men, fighting is a way to be initiated. You can’t
give up a gang without replacing it with something else. You have
to keep them intact and help the members start living according
to new values.”
The problem Sherrills runs into time and time again is the marginalization
and criminalization of gang members. “The word ”gang
member” is a way of dehumanizing someone. When someone gets
killed people say: “Oh well, it was a gang member.”
But that gang member was someone’s son, friend or loved one.
The perception is that people in these neighbourhoods are hardened
against this type of grief. That’s not true. They are deeply
wounded and use this way to express it.”
Nearly everyone in South Central Los Angeles is suffering from
a kind of post-traumatic stress, Sherrills believes. “We
have got to address our own illnesses. How? You have to take a
step back and look at the issue from a more fundamental perspective.
In order to be able to do that, the heart has to be bust open.
We try to do everything in life to keep our hearts from being
broken. But there is so much beauty in having a broken heart –-there’s
pain, but you discover things in yourself that you never thought
about before.”
And then in 2004 came the horrible test of Sherrills’ beliefs.
His oldest son, 18-year-old Terrell Sherrills, is shot while on
vacation visiting his father in Watts. Terrell had gone out to
a party with a friend, and around midnight a few gang members
arrive. Terrell is shot in the back and dies a short time later
in the hospital.
“Terrell led a peaceful life,” says Sherrills. “He
didn’t have anything to do with gang violence. He was in
college and was very popular—and not only with the girls.
He came with me sometimes when I did my work. It was a huge blow.”
He falls silent for a moment, showing that none of us can ever
defend ourselves against this pain. No one gets used to murder.
Sherrills says he had no choice but to choose love over revenge.
“It’s not about who killed my son, but what killed him:
a culture with no respect for life. I am not surrendering his
life to death, but reclaiming it and giving it new meaning.”
The man who killed Terrell has not yet been caught. When that
happens, Sherrills wants to talk with him and his parents. “I
want to ask them what kind of pain drove the guy to commit this
act. When did he become disillusioned? Where did it go wrong?
Of course, my son’s killer deserves to be punished, but mainly
I want to keep him alive. I want to invest in him towards a better
future for us all. My dream is still that children can grow up
in Watts safely and without fear.”
The main problem the United States is struggling with is that
it is a country built around violence, according to Sherrill.
“We can be angry with George Bush, but he’s doing just
what his predecessors did. We have to wake up to our culture.
We have killed millions of indigenous people. Our foreign policy
still means death for millions around the world. We can say Bush
is evil, but we are evil. We are trapped in a culture based on
revenge.”
Sherrills sees the same thing in his neighbourhood of Watts.
The treaty continues to be upheld, but not without problems and
obstacles. Sherrill says, “When two brothers have problems
with each other, everyone joins forces to take revenge. The treaty
is broken!, they shout. But I say: ”Wait a minute: a certain
person has a problem with someone else. That’s their problem,
not all of ours.” I believe that conflicts are healthy, but
you have to learn to deal with them in a constructive way.”
“Peace is a process, not a destination,” Sherrills
continues. “Peace is not a utopian field of flowers you parade
through together. It’s hard work. Sometimes the peacemakers
lose their lives. The point is that we continually return to the
peace talks and solve the problems. And we’re getting one
step closer all the time.”
Sherrills’ work in various U.S. cities has made him an authority.
Not only in the eyes of government officials and peace organizations,
but gang members as well. It’s becoming increasingly easy
to go into problem areas and start peace negotiations. Sherrills:
“We’ve been given a kind of carte blanche to go into
the neighbourhoods. Within a few days we have an idea of who is
playing what role in the community and what’s going on. Then
we make contact with the key figures to reach a ceasefire.”
When the peace treaty in Watts had been in place, and mostly
followed, for 10 years, Sherrills launched a 10-year plan entitled
The Passage to Peace to completely put an end to gang violence.
“We appointed key figures in neighbourhoods to keep the peace
in their community. We make people responsible for their own neighbourhood,
for their own problems. I say: ‘I don’t want to move
to a better neighbourhood. This is a better neighbourhood.’
Instead of seeing it as a ghetto, we have to see the beauty and
the potential. We have to get together; then we have a chance.”
Sherrills conveys that same message at conferences and seminars
where he is invited to speak. “Whether it’s environment
movements, peace movements or cultural creative movements, they
all want the same thing: respect for life. My suggestion would
be to get together and create one big movement I would call Reverence
Movement. After all, the violence we inflict on ourselves and
one another is the same violence we are using to destroy the planet.
If every movement continues to treat the symptoms, we won’t
get anywhere. We’re only wasting time and energy.”
“We have to create a culture where authentic emotions are
allowed to be expressed. That would create a real release. If
the head of the Los Angeles police department would apologize
for the injustice we have suffered under the guise of justice,
it would create a landslide. If George Bush would apologize for
the slavery in this country, it would give so much release. You
can only conquer hate with love.”
The hotel lobby has now filled up with people coming to attend
the conference in which Sherrills is participating. Every few
minutes someone gives him a hug. The conference is set to begin.
We’ve only spent one morning together, but it feels like
a couple of days. For Sherrills, this intense solidarity has become
a way of life. He has learned that every meeting can be the last
and that every strong connection between people can set something
major in motion. The meetings he has are seldom informal. There
is usually a lot at stake. The intensity of his presence can mean
the difference between forgiveness and revenge, between war and
peace.
Outside, the seals are still swimming happily. The wisps of fog
hanging over San Francisco in the distance have cleared. The impressive
Golden Gate bridge sparkles in the sun, a symbol of American accomplishment.
This is a country where newcomers founded a culture that became
an example to the world—a model of freedom, democracy and
limitless possibilities. Aqeela Sherrills stands squarely in that
American tradition. He, too, is working to establish a new culture—a
culture promoting reverence for life.
For more information about the Community Self-Determination
Institute: 9101 South Hooper Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90002, USA,
telephone +1 323 586 8791, www.wattsrecords.com,
e-mail: aqeelas@msn.com.
San Francisco -- His legs were cramped. Worse, Richard Ironcloud
said he couldn't see and was going nowhere.
Nearly an hour into his Alcatraz-to-San Francisco swim Monday
-- the wind picking up speed, the tide working against him --
Ironcloud came close, very close, to giving up.
"I thought about my family. I knew I couldn't just stop,"
said Ironcloud, minutes after he finished the frigid, 1.2-mile
swim in one hour and 35 minutes.
It was an impressive feat, swimming aficionados said -- the 47-year-old
Lakota Sioux from South Dakota had never swum at a beach, much
less in San Francisco Bay, until just a week ago.
Monday's swim was, in fact, the longest time Ironcloud had spent
in the water. Together with 22-year-old Armando Blackbear, a fellow
Sioux who finished the swim in one hour and 55 minutes, the thickly
built Ironcloud spent a week training -- dog-paddling and free-styling
at Aquatic Park -- with Dr. Nancy Iverson, a San Francisco pediatrician
and a native of South Dakota.
Iverson brought Ironcloud and Blackbear from South Dakota's impoverished
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where half the people over 40 years
old have diabetes. She planned the swim to promote healthy living
and alternative healing.
"It's more than just swimming -- it's about spirit, it's
about courage," said a teary-eyed Iverson, whose nonprofit
organization, PATHSTAR, made the men's trip and swim possible.
"There were times when I thought he wouldn't make it."
She paused and started to cry. "But he made it. They both
did."
Iverson swam alongside Ironcloud, guiding him toward the South
End Rowing Club at Aquatic Park, riding the swells that make the
Alcatraz swim difficult for everyone, even those who have swum
it before.
Fred Crisp, a San Francisco police officer and friend of Iverson,
paddled on a surfboard just a few feet from Blackbear, who spent
more time on his back kicking the water than actually stroking
and swimming.
Riding in one of two inflatable boats alongside the swimmers
was Bob Roper, chief pilot of the swim who is known to South End
club members as the "Master of the Bay." Roper, a pilot
for 35 years, was there to ensure that everything was safe before
and during the swim.
Ironcloud and Blackbear began their quest with a prayer, which
included several minutes of gazing at the bay. They shoved off
from the west side of Alcatraz at 9:16 a.m. Twenty-two minutes
later, they weren't far from where they had started, and Roper
was concerned. "You didn't tell me these guys can't swim!"
he called to Crisp.
"No one ever said they could," said Crisp, his eyes
fixed on Blackbear, who stopped more than once and looked around.
At one point, there was a freighter behind Blackbear; a seal,
which Crisp dubbed the "good luck seal," greeted him
in front. He looked nervous.
This was a test not just of physical fitness but of mental strength
-- one they could not fail, Ironcloud and Blackbear said later,
because it wasn't just for themselves but also for those back
home.
So, the two persevered. They kept on dog-paddling and doing back
strokes, sucking in water ("I must have swallowed a gallon,"
Ironcloud said) and kicking as hard as they could. It wasn't exactly
Olympic-style swimming, but it was, to those who witnessed it,
something.
To longtime members of the South End club, the swim was the stuff
of heroism, of the impossible being possible, fueled by nothing
more than pure guts.
And this was Alcatraz, its history well known even back in South
Dakota. Over the years when it was a federal prison, five inmates
escaped who were never accounted for. More tried. No one made
it.
Swimming from Alcatraz takes a special effort, said Pedro Ordenes,
who says he has done it 182 times, most recently Sunday.
"This is not an easy swim," said Ordenes, 56, a civil
engineer who piloted one of two boats that accompanied the swimmers.
"Not just anyone can do it. And for these guys to do it,
with only a week's worth of training, is just, well, incredible."
To Ironcloud's wife of 23 years, it was mainly nerve-racking.
"I asked him all the time, 'Why are you doing this?' "
Arlene Ironcloud, 46, an assistant to a health educator in Pine
Ridge, said in a phone interview from the reservation. "I'm
just glad it's all over.
"I still can't believe he did it," she said. "But
people have always looked up to him. Even though he's overweight
the way he is, he can still do a lot of things." She paused.
"Like swim the Alcatraz!"
A young man learns what's most important in life from the guy
next door.
It had been some time since Jack had seen the old man. College,
girls, career, and life itself got in the way. In fact, Jack moved
clear across the country in pursuit of his dreams. There, in the
rush of his busy life, Jack had little time to think about the
past and often no time to spend with his wife and son. He was
working on his future, and nothing could stop him.
Over the phone, his mother told him, "Mr. Belser died last
night. The funeral is Wednesday." Memories flashed through
his mind like an old newsreel as he
sat quietly remembering his childhood days.
"Jack, did you hear me?"
"Oh, sorry, Mom. Yes, I heard you. It's been so long since
I thought of him. I'm sorry, but I honestly thought he died years
ago," Jack said.
"Well, he didn't forget you. Every time I saw him he'd ask
how you were doing. He'd reminisce about the many days you spent
over 'his side of the fence' as he put it," Mom told him.
"I loved that old house he lived in," Jack said.
"You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped
in to make sure you had a man's influence in your life,"
she said.
"He's the one who taught me carpentry," he said. "I
wouldn't be in this business if it weren't for him. He spent a
lot of time teaching me things he thought were important...Mom,
I'll be there for the funeral," Jack said.
As busy as he was, he kept his word. Jack caught the next flight
to his hometown.
Mr. Belser's funeral was small and uneventful. He had no children
of his own, and most of his relatives had passed away.
The night before he had to return home, Jack and his Mom stopped
by to see the old house next door one more time.
Standing in the doorway, Jack paused for a moment. It was like
crossing over into another dimension, a leap through space and
time.
The house was exactly as he remembered. Every step held memories.
Every picture, every piece of furniture....Jack stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong, Jack?" his Mom asked.
"The box is gone," he said.
"What box? " Mom asked.
"There was a small gold box that he kept locked on top of
his desk. I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside.
All he'd ever tell me was 'the thing I value most,'" Jack
said.
It was gone. Everything about the house was exactly how Jack
remembered it, except for the box. He figured someone from the
Belser family had taken it.
"Now I'll never know what was so valuable to him,"
Jack said. "I better get some sleep. I have an early flight
home, Mom."
It had been about two weeks since Mr. Belser died. Returning
home from work one day Jack discovered a note in his mailbox.
"Signature required on a package. No one at home. Please
stop by the main post office within the next three days,"
the note read.
Early the next day Jack retrieved the package.
The small box was old and looked like it had been mailed a hundred
years ago. The handwriting was difficult to read, but the return
address caught his attention.
"Mr. Harold Belser" it read.
Jack took the box out to his car and ripped open the package.
There inside was the gold box and an envelope.
Jack's hands shook as he read the note inside.
"Upon my death, please forward this box and its contents
to Jack Bennett. It's the thing I valued most in my life."
A small key was taped to the letter.
His heart racing, as tears filling his eyes, Jack carefully unlocked
the box. There inside he found a beautiful gold pocket watch.
Running his fingers slowly over the finely etched casing, he unlatched
the cover.
Inside he found these words engraved: "Jack, Thanks for
your time! Harold Belser."
"The thing he valued most...was...my time."
Jack held the watch for a few minutes, then called his office
and cleared his appointments for the next two days.
"Why?" Janet, his assistant asked.
"I need some time to spend with my son," he said.
"Oh, by the way, Janet...thanks for your time!"
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but
by the moments that take our breath away."
Have a great day and thank you for your time...
Arrived in mailbox without name of author
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The Blanket of
Hope
This is the blanket of hope. Prophecy is woven in its threads.
It is an ancient design that speaks of a time when the world is
in despair and famine because TRUTH has not been spoken. It speaks
of a time of great suffering and injustice because our world is
out of balance.
Our civilizations have been like a great bird. As in all things
created, there must be a balance so the bird has two wings. One
wing is strong. The other has been kept tightly bound. In this
condition, it will flap around knocking things over, going in
circles, creating chaos, but will never get off the ground. The
strong wing is the masculine consciousness, enforcing its vision
and its will. It has been writing history and making all the decisions
that have effected us and will continue to effect us for a very
long time.
The other wing is the feminine consciousness. It has not been
allowed equal place at the seats of power. This treacherous and
sorry imbalance has brought about our histories of war, subjugation,
mighty armies, and poor schools. Our societies are rushing headlong
into complete annihilation because only the masculine voice is
being heard. If we are to survive, women everywhere and the Sacred
Feminine that is in every man must be freed and allowed to step
forward to affect the general welfare of the earth's populations.
The blanket shows three corn maidens standing and holding arrows
of truth - arrows of ascending and descending truths. If we are
to survive, they must choose to act by stepping forward now, and
if those arrows find their mark, the blanket shows the corn growing.
This corn growing promises abundance for all people of the earth.
We will have abundance because finally there will be peace. There
will only be peace because finally there is justice. There will
finally be justice only because TRUTH has been spoken. We will
survive only because of the return of this balance - the MASCULINE
and the FEMININE side by side as equal strengths. Our societies,
our priorities, have been masculinized for too long. We are truly
out of balance. The men cannot do it by themselves. Feminine TRUTH
must step forward now.
There is a story of wisdom that goes with the border. It was
explained to me by a Maori elder (New Zealand, 1990).
It goes like this: The Border of the Blanket is the story of
our lives, our purpose, and the roadmap or book of instructions
that, in fact, is clearly in the laws/sacred ways of nature. That
is the spirals that emanate from the Earth-line (dark red/black
borderline) around the blanket. Then notice the stairway that
is supported by the spiral. This she called the "staircase
to heaven." She said that this represents the obstacles in
our lives. We must change our attitude about the obstacles in
our path and understand that the obstacle is the path. As each
obstacle presents itself we are to say THANK YOU and take another
step, and another, and another until its done. It is then we will
have our completion and our peace.
It is said by the elders that, "It is not the events in
our lives which cause the pain, it is our resistance."
It is my prayer and my deepest hope that knowledge of the existence
of this blanket and its meaning will inspire and give us a new
place to stand as we transform this terrible rush to vengeance
and inevitable world destruction.
The
amazing journey of Fran Bennett (formerly Frank) and Erika Taylor,
soulmates
Married couple Erika Taylor, left, and Fran
Bennett have stayed together through Fran's gradual process
of changing from male to female anatomy. Chronicle photo
by Christina Koci Hernandez
Such a gift being
human at this moment,
our cells holding memories of all we have been,
rounding another spiral of unfoldment
to embody this Light that flows from within.
Universe, thank you! for
ripping open our hearts
with your thumbnail,
for spilling the fear blindly hoarded,
for blowing in breath and the hunger for Love.
Keep swirling us, whirling us with your
lessons
till your mere whisper rocks mountains in us.
Seed our paths with co-conspirators --myriad others
you've stung with your match to the heart.
Kindle in our circles a sense of mission
and shared vision bigger than anything that singly
we've dared to conceive.
Free our ears to hear the promise of
voices long silent,
and widen our eyes to peer into worlds that are living
and linked, where willows & whippoorwills & the realms
of invisibles are our sisters & brothers.
Let us lose in forgetfulness the veil
of I-ness & my-ness,
celebrating in others the colors of rainbow,
seeing in them our own light & our shadow,
drinking deeply of the well of belonging.
Drum our days into dizzying dance of
community
& solitude, compassion & mastery, labor & laughter.
Bugle our backs to stand up for justice
and our voices to sing! for the joy of it.
Plant our feet so firmly on earth that
the taste
of her clay chocolates our tongues, and the stream
of her sap in our veins echoes thunder of ocean,
torrent of river, rush of mist into ether.
And beckon each of us --and every last
one of us--
to creep all the way out to the edge of our being
and find our way back fingers singed
on our own unique gift
pouring forth all that we are,
accepting your invitation... to co-creation!
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967
at a meeting of
Clergy and Laity Concerned
at Riverside Church
in New York City
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
gestures and shouts to his congregation in Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta on April 30, 1967, as he urges America to
repent and abandon what he called its "tragic, reckless
adventure in Vietnam."
I come to
this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience
leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because
I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization
which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about
Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are
the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord
when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence
is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt
but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one.
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily
assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially
in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty
against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own
bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at
hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful
conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty;
but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break
the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak
is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak
with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision,
but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this
is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number
of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying
of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based
upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps
a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement
well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its
guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness
that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved
to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the
burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures
from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned
me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns
this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking
about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?
Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting
the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though
I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless
greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have
not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their
questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they
live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstandings,
I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I
trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began
my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make
a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed
to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed
to China or to Russia.
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity
of the total situation and the need for a collective solution
to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North
Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor
to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution
of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to
be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and
history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are
never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with
Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with
me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that
has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose
it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing
Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset
a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in
Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America.
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It
seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor --
both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were
experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam
and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were
some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and
I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or
energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like
Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic
destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see
the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of
reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was
doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home.
It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands
to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative
to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young
men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight
thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which
they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we
have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro
and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for
a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same
schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts
of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on
the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of
such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper
level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes
of the North over the last three years -- especially the last
three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected
and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and
rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them
my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social
change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But
they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked
if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve
its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions
hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against
the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first
spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the
sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands
trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't
you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me
from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957
when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America."
We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain
rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that
America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants
of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still
wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black
bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear
that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of
America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes
totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can
never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men
the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined
that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent,
working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to
the life and health of America were not enough, another burden
of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget
that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission
to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood
of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national
allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have
to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus
Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making
of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask
me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do
not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist
and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for
white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten
that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies
so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong"
or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can
I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
Finally, as I try to delineate for you
and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place
I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said
that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men
the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling
of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood,
and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially
for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight
to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and
the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances
and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and
which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims
of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from
human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam
and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to
compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula.
I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta
in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under
the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think
of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful
solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear
their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators.
The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945
after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the
Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even
though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in
their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead,
we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese
people were not "ready" for independence, and we again
fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned
the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision
we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination,
and a government that had been established not by China (for whom
the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces
that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government
meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their
lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied
the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years
we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to
recolonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting
eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French
were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless
action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial
and military supplies to continue the war even after they had
lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of
this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated it looked
as if independence and land reform would come again through the
Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined
that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the
peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious
modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants
watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition,
supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss
reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this
was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers
of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's
methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been
happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer
no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and
peace.
The only change came from America as we
increased our troop commitments in support of governments which
were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All
the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises
of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under
our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the
real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them
off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal
social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed
by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the
aged.
They watch as we poison their water, as
we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the
bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious
trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties
from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted
injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly
children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the
children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets
like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers
as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters
to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves
with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our
many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test
our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new
medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?
Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be
building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished
institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their
land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the
nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the
unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the
peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children
and killed their men. What liberators?
Now there is little left to build on --
save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining
will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the
concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may
well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds
as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak
for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too
are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less
necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated
as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that
strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must
they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted
the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them
into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think
of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up
of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak
of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing
more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge
them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge
them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into
their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we
do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men
we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see
that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their
greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials
know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist
and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they
be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control
of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow
national elections in which this highly organized political parallel
government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free
elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by
the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind
of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only
party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political
goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which
they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.
Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then
shore it up with the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion
and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view,
to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For
from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own
condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit
from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where
our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways,
we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for
them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and
especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi
are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese
and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth
and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness
of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle
against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded
to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and
seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954
they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which
would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam,
and they realized they had been betrayed again.
When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate,
these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the
leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in
support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach
of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind
us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies
or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused
to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures
for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they
had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has
spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely
heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans
for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling
and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy.
Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when
he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression
as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than
eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that
while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to
the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those
who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops
there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting
them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that
goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy.
We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must
know after a short period there that none of the things we claim
to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must
know that their government has sent them into a struggle among
Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we
are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create
hell for the poor.
This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must
stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering
poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste,
whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.
I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price
of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam.
I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands
aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the
leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is
ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist
leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:
"Each day the war goes on the hatred
increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of
those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even
their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that
the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities
of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are
incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of
America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and
democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt
in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable
intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation
is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain
from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war
so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop
our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will
be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly
clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America
that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that
we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam,
that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people.
The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply
from our present ways.
In order to atone for our sins and errors
in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to
this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things
that our government should do immediately to begin the long and
difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish
conflict:
End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the
hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other
battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup
in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the
National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam
and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations
and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign
troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might
well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese
who fears for his life under a new regime which included the
Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can
for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid
that is badly needed, making it available in this country if
necessary.
Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues
have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage
itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise
our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam.
We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out
every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military
service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam
and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection.
I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by
more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College,
and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam
a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all
ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions
and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times
for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when
our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive
its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on
the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting
about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles
has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say
we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something
even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a
far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore
this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy-
and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They
will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned
about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique
and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other
names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant
and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts
take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of
the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas
said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side
of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen
emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence
of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need
to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for
the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala.
It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas
in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have
already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity
in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to
haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful
revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident,
this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who
make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the
privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits
of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on
the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo
a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift
from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented"
society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property
rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets
of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause
us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and
present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good
Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial
act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must
be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten
and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True
compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not
haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which
produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values
will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and
wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas
and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums
of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits
out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries,
and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance
with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is
not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything
to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A
true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and
say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling
our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous
drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending
men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped
and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom,
justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend
more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful
nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution
of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent
us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace
will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing
to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised
hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values
is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer.
Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or
nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through
their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish
its participation in the United Nations. These are days which
demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call
everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating
of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate
and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these
turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism,
but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that
our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action
in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove
thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are
the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over
the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation
and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems
of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot
people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people
who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West
must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because
of comfort , complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our
proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated
so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now
become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to
feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore,
communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy
real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only
hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary
spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal
hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful
commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust
mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall
be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and
the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in
the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather
than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty
to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual
societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that
lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation
is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love
for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept
-- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak
and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for
the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking
of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force
which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying
principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door
which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist
belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the
first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God
and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another
God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before
the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent
by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the
wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating
path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate
force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against
the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope
in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the
last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow
is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In
this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing
as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time.
Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a
lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does
not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for
time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and
rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous
civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our
vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and
having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent
coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action.
We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice
throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our
doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long
dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess
power without compassion, might without morality, and strength
without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate
ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle
for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and
our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds
are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will
our message be that the forces of American life militate against
their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or
will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity
with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the
cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise
we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James
Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
In mid October,
after Congress voted the unelected American President
extensive war powers to inflict the nightmare of modern technology
on
Iraq, a dream taught me that spirits are real. A woman's face
appeared above me, her features perfect, her polished skin the
color
of olive wood, her face serene. You are a "peacemaker,"
she said.
"Yes." I answered, "but I don't know how to do
it. Will you guide
me?" I needed more than the theory and techniques of peacemaking;
I needed hands-on direction.
This month, I have been grieved by the
amount of mail that I have
received that has chronicled arguments between people and
organizations who have fallen into bitter disagreement about one
issue or another though sharing at least one passionate point
of
affiliation on behalf of peacemaking and/or the environment. Reading
these letters, I thought back to the dream and wondered how a
peacemaker might respond?
If we are going to save anything, we must
give up our insistence that
we are the righteous and good ones, must relinquish our reflexive
intention to gain, win, protect or impose our own position and
truth.
We must give up our reflexive defensiveness and its inevitable
hostilities. We cannot continue to favor our own survival, safety
and self-preservation over the survival of all. We cannot. We
must
not. This is the time for constant and repeated self-scrutiny
in
order to see where we are inadvertently contributing to the
hostilities, and so losing sight of the essential places where
we are
in agreement and are inter-dependent. I am speaking now about
our
behavior as individuals as well as our behavior as a nation. Not,
"I
want" or "I believe," but "How do we work
this out?" We will be more
successful when we begin to think consistently and reflexively
in
terms of mutuality, alliance and cooperation.
A respected friend said, "The bottom
line is the earth, the
preservation of the natural world." She could have easily
said, "The
bottom line is peace for everyone and all beings and what contributes
to it." The power of alliance will come to us when we can
agree on
these bottom lines while very honestly recognizing that each of
us
has been given a different but effective vision of how to accomplish
them. This is not the chaos described by the legend of the tower
of
Babel. This is the visionary wisdom of ecological models. In order
for an ecosystem [and a human system] to survive and function
extraordinary diversity is required. Vitality depends on each
diverse eco-niche combining with all other diverse eco-niches
to form
the single piece of music we might call the natural world.
My colleague, Valerie Wolf, a dreamer in
the Nez Perce tradition has
also dreamed the advent of peacemaking spirits, as have others
we
know. What distinguishes these dreams is that they do not announce
the appearance of a messiah, but offer individuals the role and
responsibility of peacemaking.
Her dreams have led us to study the tradition
of White Buffalo Woman,
who brought the Sacred (Peace) Pipe and its practices to the Sioux.
The Pipe ceremony enjoins us to pray for others, to be at peace
with
all things and within ourselves. The ceremony of the Pipe initiates
one into peaceableness.
The question behind peacemaking is: How
be consistently peaceable
within oneself and with others? As a nation, we have a mistaken
idea
that peace can be achieved through the diplomatic efforts of
intrinsically argumentative, belligerent people. We strategize
peace
without living it. We thrive on debate and conflict. We honor
competition and winners. We define others as losers. Some of these
ways are seemingly innocent but their far-reaching consequences
are
grave.
The cliché regarding American's
fascination with violence obscures
its horrific reality. Violence is imprinted on each of our interactions.
The media is saturated with it. Our economic, political and military
policies systematically undermine all indigenous and wisdom traditions
devastating peacemaking traditions everywhere. Despite our spurious
rationales, we have made our lives, and lives all over the world,
grotesqueries. We are responsible. That a nation, even the United
States, 'legally' declares war or insists on the righteousness
of extreme
'defense' policies does not justify anyone's participation in
such hostilities.
International law, as established in the Nuremberg Trials after
World
War II, asserted the primacy of individual responsibility.
As a child, I was taught that the Messiah
would come when everyone
was ready, that is at peace and living an ethical life. Being
peaceable,
a most difficult spiritual practice and way of life, is more difficult
and
demanding than warfare. Among other qualities, peaceableness accepts
diversity. We need to awaken our hearts to other ways of seeing
and
being.
There is still time to change the trajectory,
but no Messiah will save us
though peacemaking spirits or peacemaking intelligence will probably
appear to guide whomever volunteers his or her life. To have peace,
we must have peaceable cultures and hearts first; to achieve these
is a
challenging inner adventure.
Cultures develop from the integrity of
the innumerable lived details
that underlie what is believed, taught, enacted, from the art
created
and the ways all beings are treated. At this time in human history,
each individual's original, daily, on-going contributions and
commitment are critical.
***
As I was about to post this, I focused
again on the heartbreaking
divisiveness in our communities and realized that such behaviors
occur when people are terrified, exhausted and hopeless or when
they
are traumatized. We are all being driven mad by the tension of
the
war mongering, the incitement and exaggeration of terrorism, the
valorization of torture and destruction, the horrific possibility
that the US might make pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons, the
horror
of the erosion and destruction of our democracy, and what all
of this
might mean for each of us, our families and the people and beings
in
the rest of the world. So, in addition to everything we must do,
let
us be very kind to each other and forgiving and understanding
of each
other's fears. Let us awaken our hearts to other ways of seeing
and
being.
If we ground ourselves in the future, rather
than in history,
decidedly imagining a vital future that includes the natural world
and all of us, the task becomes easier. We see the future in our
mind's heart and we take the small next step that will enable
us to
get there together. This is the activity of radical hope.
Peace and Blessings,
Deena Metzger
[An expanded version of "Where
Peace Begins, Local Activists Speak Out,"
The Whole Life Times, Issue 248, December 2002.
Be the still pool.
Let your face reflect
the glory, the wonder.
Be the dragonfly,
silent but joyful.
Be the bud.
Prepare to blossom.
Be the tree.
Grant shelter.
Be the butterfly.
Accept the riches of the moment.
Be the moth.
Seek the light.
Be the lantern.
Guide the lost.
Be the path.
Open the way for another.
Be the wind chime.
Let the breeze blow through you.
Turn the storms into song.
Be the rain.
Wash away, cleanse, forgive.
Be the grass.
Grow back when you are
tread upon.
Be the bridge.
Reach in peace
toward the other side.
Be the moss.
Temper your strength
with softness and mercy.
Be the soil.
Bear fruit.
Be the gardener.
Create order.
Be the temple.
Let the spirit dwell in you.
Be the seasons.
Welcome change.
Be the moon.
Shine through the darkness.
Be the pebble.
Let time shape and smooth you.
Be the leaf.
Fall gracefully when your time comes
to let go.
Trust in the circle.
To end is to begin.
(From the book In
a Japanese Garden
Charmaine Aserappa, author
Akiko Naomura, woodcut artist)
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A
Mechanism for Peace
Pamela Sodi
From monthly Peacebreath Newsletter
Last month
we spoke about how 1/10th of one percent (.1%) unified by a single
cause can change the consciousness of the world. This incredible
statistic has been recorded by prophets and sages of times past,
and recently proven by the research of David R. Hawkins. In his
book, 'Power vs. Force', he presents and synthesizes years of
research by assigning vibrational energy values to different attributes.
Fear is measured at 200; Love at 500; Peace at 600.
Based on his research, David Hawkins has
shown that one person (that's ONE person) at level 500 (Love)
can counterbalance 750,000 people of a lower vibration! And one
person at level 700 can raise the consciousness of 70 million
people! So each time one person shifts into a higher state, it
causes a tidal wave effect on the mass population.
Scientific research has begun to further
validate the powerful effect that we as
individuals have. Our military has done experiments in which leukocytes
(white blood cells) were collected from donors to measure electrical
changes in the DNA. The donor was
placed in one room, and his collected DNA in a different room
in the same building. The donor was subjected to 'emotional stimulation'
from video clips, and emotional peaks and valleys were measured.
What they found was that the peaks and
valleys of the collected DNA exhibited IDENTICAL RESPONSES AT
THE EXACT SAME TIME! No lag time, no transmission time! They then
moved the DNA up to 50 miles away, and found that the donor and
the DNA still had exactly the SAME responses at the same time.
They concluded that living cells
communicate through a previously unrecognized form of energy that
already exists everywhere, all the time!
Today a connection between all life is
being uncovered as never before.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle shows that an object is affected
by the act of being observed. And contemporary biologist, Rupert
Sheldrake, has presented the theory of 'morphic resonance', which
suggests that there is a unified field of consciousness that connects
all life.
Chief Seattle, a wise American Indian leader,
over 100 years ago said:
'We are part of the earth, and it is a part of us. This we know:
all things are
connected like the blood which unites one family. Man did not
weave the web
of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web, he does to
himself.' Chief Seattle, 1854
These words written by Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. in the '60's speak about
oneness: '"Through our scientific genius we have made of
the world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual
genius we must make of it brotherhood. We are all involved in
the single process. Whatever affects one directly affects all
indirectly. We are all links in the great chain of humanity".
We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension
of love into the veins of our civilization.'
We are, each of us, extremely powerful!
Inside each of us we house the potential to change the world.
But what is this mechanism by which one can attain the higher
levels.
How does one go about raising their vibrational
energy?
The first step is awareness. Simply be
aware of what the world looks like that
you want to live in! In other words, create a VISION of what you
want your world to be. See that vision with great clarity, feel
what it is like to live in that world, live each
moment as if you are living in that world.
Sound strange to you? This begins to make
more sense when you look at the ancient laws of energy that modern
science is beginning to find proof for today. One of these laws
says, 'energy flows where attention goes.' What does this mean?
Let us take a simple example. Did you ever notice that positive
upbeat people tend to attract positive upbeat friends. By the
same law, people that are whiners and complainers tend to be surrounded
by people who also whine and complain.
Did you ever have a perfect day when everything
goes your way, and you know that nothing can go wrong? Did you
ever have a day when from the time you stepped out of bed things
did not go right, and this continued until the time you went to
bed. Did you ever notice that the more money you have, the easier
it is to borrow money easily? Did you ever notice that people
who don't have a lot of money, not only have a hard time borrowing
money, but they quite often pay dearly for it.
The ancient principle says, 'like attracts
like.' So the first step is creating the vision of your world
the way you want it to be. The second step is to LIVE the vision.
In living the vision you are raising your own personal vibrational
energy. So, what does live the vision really mean?
Marianne Williamson in her book, 'Healing
the Soul of America', put it so well
when she said: 'The love so many of us would like to see injected
into the veins of civilization must first pour into us. Society
will not transform until we transform; what's wrong 'out there'
is but a mere reflection of what's wrong 'in here'. This is liberating
news if we see it that way. Once we recognize that our minds are
the causal level of worldly events, then we are free to seek to
change the world by changing our thoughts about the world.'
By changing the way we see the world, by
noticing what we are thinking about the world, by becoming aware
of when we are judging, of when we are criticizing, of any time
we are coming from anything other than love, and learning to shift
that immediately, we are bringing the world one step closer to
peace.
Monitoring these inbred patterns of thinking
and feeling could be a full-time job, and so it should be. It
is the job of a group of people committed to peace. But remember,
it only takes a very SMALL portion of the population to shift,
in order to make a difference here. YOU ARE the difference. WE
ARE ALL CONNECTED.EVERYTHING WE DO, THINK, OR FEEL, EFFECTS (and
affects) THE WHOLE. WE ARE INDEED ONE!
Our next newsletter will cover shifting
your polarity in more detail, and talk about the most powerful
way to shift polarity today.
May the spirit of peace be with you on
your journey,
by Swanee Hunt
Published November 5, 2002 by the Boston Globe
TWO YEARS AGO the UN Security Council took
an unprecedented step
towards creating global peace, a cause more urgent - and elusive
- now than
ever. The Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1325
on Women,
Peace, and Security, which insists on the full inclusion of women
in peace
processes.
The mandate of 1325 is echoed in similar
positions taken over the last two
years by the European Union, the Group of Eight foreign ministers,
and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. All have
essentially
agreed that women should be included in all phases of conflict
resolution --
preventing, stopping, and recovering from war -- and at all levels,
from
grass roots to the highest government offices.
Why women? Around the world, they're already
''waging peace,'' to borrow a phrase from the newest Nobel Peace
laureate, Jimmy Carter. Examples abound:
In the Middle East, a coordinating body
of two independent women's centers,
one Israeli and one Palestinian, has bridged a seemingly bottomless
chasm
and recently issued a joint statement setting forth concrete steps
toward peace.
Northern Irish women have helped calm the
often deadly annual ''marching
season'' by mediating between Protestant unionists and Catholic
nationalists,
including going into the prisons to work with political prisoners.
A young Colombian human rights law professor
organizes busloads of thousands of women to converge on the capital
to demand an end to the kidnapping and massacres.
Rwandan women are using drama and song
to prepare citizens for the
reintegration of hundreds of thousands of perpetrators of genocide
into their
decimated communities.
In Southeast Europe, more than 20 women
in Kosovo's new Assembly have
banded together across seven party lines in a women's caucus,
the only
nonpartisan effort in that traumatized community.
An Afghan woman has traveled the desolate
countryside on behalf of the UN,
encouraging local women to risk their lives and family honor to
travel to Kabul
to participate in the Loya Jirga, the national assembly.
A prize-winning Russian reporter has been
repeatedly apprehended by security forces as she investigates
military abuses in President Putin's ''war on terrorism'' in Chechnya,
making her way through checkpoints disguised as a peasant.
Despite these and hundreds more examples
of women's innovative work in
intractable conflicts, in the two years since the passage of Resolution
1325
little progress has been made towards translating word into action.
A
memorable failure to comply with their own resolution was the
international
fact-finding mission to the Middle East led by former US senator
George
Mitchell in November 2000, shortly after the second intifadah
and the passage of the council resolution. There wasn't a single
woman included in the mission, nor were any women's groups consulted
by the delegation during its visit to Israel and the Palestinian
territories, an act mandated by 1325.
A similar scene was repeated in Kosovo,
where complaints of troops and
contractors under the aegis of the UN frequenting brothels with
sexually
trafficked women were brushed aside by the secretary general's
special
representative, who refused to support ''the sexual repression
of 10,000
men.'' That attitude is no great surprise given that there have
only been
five female special representatives of the secretary general in
UN history.
Prospects for a more secure world are growing
dimmer by the day. Indeed,
if those in positions of power were doing all they could to ensure
peace, there
would be reason for despair. Happily, we have more options. Among
the most promising tools available to creating a safer world are
the talents of the many women around the globe who are qualified
and ready to work inside formal peace processes instead of only
outside.
A coalition of forces is building: On Oct.
16, Secretary General Kofi Annan
released a strong statement insisting on the necessity of bringing
women
into the peace process. Meanwhile, the primary UN women's organization,
UNIFEM, has come up with its own study on the difference women
can make in war areas. And this week, some 120 policy makers will
convene at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to meet with
40 women from more than 20 conflicts to learn how they are bringing
new energy to the weary work of ending war.
These women are waging peace outside the
system. It's time to bring them to
the table.
For the sake of their children
they killed some of ours
in the battle for more
the circle game is an endless game
When soldiers came to claim by
right the land
our fathers had won (in an earlier fight)
For the sake of our children we killed some of theirs
and the circle game is an endless game
But I do believe a new breed
of heroes
will arrive sometime refusing to fight
with anything less than the only solution:
that every child is everyone's child
Then the circle game will prove
to be
a circle the brave will break
Twenty-five years ago, I stood at a turning
point. I had to rethink everything about my life. I was the
single mother of two children, working as a family attorney, doing
research, writing, lecturing, looking for the life companion I
yearned for, grieving over the death of both my parents, not getting
enough sleep, not paying attention to what I ate, pushing myself
until I nearly collapsed. I became so ill that at times I thought
I might die. When I walked, my heart pounded and my breath got
so short I had to stop. I hurt everywhere, so much that I sometimes
cried. I finally realized I couldn't go on this way -- I had to
make major changes in my life.
I began with simple things. I stopped taking
all the drugs my doctors prescribed and instead radically changed
my diet. I stopped eating the rich foods and pastries of my Viennese
childhood: no more apple strudel and Sacher torte, more vegetables
and fruits. I realized that I carried a great deal of pain
that I had to process if I was going to heal. I began to meditate.
I found a wonderful therapist. I became more accepting of
myself and found new joy in my relations with others, particularly
those closest to me.
I also began to think seriously about what
I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I gave up my law practice
and devoted myself to what I really wanted to do. For ten years,
I researched a book I called The Chalice and the Blade: Our History,
Our Future, which was published in 1987. It was a rereading of
Western history going back over thirty thousand years. It showed
that what we think of as natural and inevitable -- destructive
personal and social patterns such as domestic violence, chronic
warfare, racial and religious prejudice, the domination of women
by men -- are not natural or inevitable at all.
Writing this book changed me and changed
my life. The Chalice and the Blade became a best-seller translated
into seventeen languages, but more significant for me was that
I now saw clearly that the problems in my life were part of a
much larger problem. As it turned out, thousands of readers felt
the same. Letters poured in, and continue to pour in. I had hoped,
naturally, to touch people. But I was astonished by the powerful
response to The Chalice and the Blade -- especially how women
and men worldwide said it was empowering them to transform their
lives. The knowledge that I was able to make this kind of contribution
gave a whole new meaning and purpose to my life.
So while I didn't know it at the time,
the turning point I faced twenty-five years ago -- and the changes
I then began to make -- eventually led to the fulfillment of dreams
I hadn't even let myself dream and of potentials I would not otherwise
have realized.
You too may have been at such a turning
point at some time in your life. You may be at one now. Perhaps,
as I did, you suspect there must be a better way to live, that
your life can be filled with more passion, joy, satisfaction,
and love. You may also suspect something even more fundamental:
that today we all stand at a turning point when changes in how
we view our world and how we live in it are more important than
they have ever been before.
As the new reality of our lives demonstrates,
the self can't be helped in isolation. All of us are always in
relationship -- and not just with the people in our immediate
circle, in our families and at work. We are affected by a much
wider web of relationships swirling around us and impacting every
aspect of our lives.
If we don't pay attention to these less
immediate relationships, then just trying to fix ourselves alone
is like trying to go up on a down elevator. No matter what we
do, we're trapped and headed in the wrong direction. Many people
are beginning to realize this, as they go from self-help book
to self-help book and workshop to workshop. Certainly working
on ourselves is essential. But it is not enough.
We all want to be healthy, safe, and happy.
We want this for ourselves, and we especially want it for our
children. We work hard so we can send them to college and leave
them well-provided financially. But, in our time when so much
is happening we wish we didn't have to think about, many of us
are beginning to realize that much more is needed. The Power of
Partnership deals with the seven key relationships that make up
our lives. First, our relationship with ourselves. Second, our
intimate relationships. Third, our workplace and community relations.
Fourth, our relationship with our national community. Fifth, international
and multicultural relationships. Sixth, our relationship with
nature and the living environment. And seventh, our spiritual
relations.
There are two fundamentally different models
for all these relationships: the partnership model and the domination
model. These two underlying models mold all our relationships
-- from relationships between parents and children and between
women and men to the relations between governments and citizens
and between us and nature. As you learn to recognize these two
models, you will see how both individually and collectively we
can influence what happens to us and around us. As you learn to
move relationships toward the partnership model, you will begin
to make positive changes in your day-to-day life and our world.
While the terms domination model and partnership
model may not be familiar to you, you've probably already noticed
the difference between these two ways of relating -- but lacked
names for your insight. When we lack language for an insight,
it's hard to hold on to it, much less use it. Before Newton identified
gravity, apples fell off trees all the time but people had no
name or explanation for what was happening. The partnership and
domination models not only give us names for different ways of
relating but also an explanation for what lies behind these differences.
In the domination model, somebody has to
be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control
those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to
obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice
in their heads telling them they're no good, they don't deserve
love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based
on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt,
fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups,
with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or
destroyed.
In contrast, the partnership model supports
mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there is no
need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in
need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate
capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families,
and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to
be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather
than disempower others.
Remember how the father treated his children
in the movie The Sound of Music? When Baron von Trapp (Christopher
Plummer) blows his police whistle and his children line up in
front of him, stiff as boards, you see the domination model in
action. When the new nanny (Julie Andrews) comes into the picture
and the children relax, enjoy themselves, and learn to trust themselves
and each other, you see the partnership model in action. When
von Trapp becomes much happier and closer to his children, you
see what happens as we begin to shift from domination to partnership.
You may have worked for a boss who watches
every little thing you do, who's afraid that if you don't follow
orders to the letter everything will fall apart, who has to be
in full control all the time. This is how the domination model
manifests itself in management. If you work for someone who inspires
you and facilitates your work, who gives you both guidelines and
leeway, and encourages you to use your own judgment and creativity,
you've experienced what happens when organizations begin to move
away from the domination model toward the partnership model.
If your spouse abuses you emotionally or
physically, you're in a dominator marriage. If you're in a relationship
that gives you and your partner the freedom to be fully authentic
and at the same time mutually supportive, you're experiencing
partnership at home.
The famous "horse whisperer"
Monty Roberts applies the partnership model to how he relates
to horses. When Roberts "gentles" rather than "breaks"
a young horse, he is using the partnership model. He does not
force horses to obey using violence and inflicting pain (the domination
model). Instead, he partners with them in learning -- and these
horses regularly win races all over the world. They are also a
pleasure to ride, because they are your trusted and trusting friends
rather than your fearful and hostile adversaries.'
If you look at the difference between people's
lives in Norway and Saudi Arabia, you see how the partnership
and domination models play out on the national level. In Saudi
Arabia, where dominator habit patterns and the social structures
that support them are still very strong, women don't even have
the right to drive a car much less vote or hold office, and there
is a huge economic gap between those on top and those on the bottom.
By contrast, in the much more partnership-oriented Norway, a woman
can be, and recently was, head of state, about 40 percent of the
parliament is female, and there is a generally high living standard
for all.
You can dramatically see how these two
models play out on the international level when you compare Gandhi's
successful nonviolent tactics in dealing with the British in India
with the terrorist tactics of Muslim fundamentalists against the
United States.
No organization, family, or country orients
completely to the partnership model or the domination model: it
is always a continuum, a mix more or less one way or the other.
But the degree to which these two models for feeling, thinking,
and acting influence us in one or the other directions affects
everything in our lives -- from our workplaces and communities
to our schools and universities, from our entertainment and health
care system to our governments and our economic systems, from
our intimate relations to our international relations.
HIDDEN HISTORICAL BAGGAGE
The domination model is unpleasant, painful,
and counterproductive. Yet, we live with it and its consequences
every day.
Why would anybody want to live like this?
I don't think anybody really does, not even those on top if they
stop to consider the huge price they're paying. But what happens
is that when people relate to each other as "superiors"
and "inferiors," they develop beliefs justifying these
kinds of relations. They build social structures that mold relationships
to fit this top-down pattern. And as time rolls on, everybody
gets trapped in them, as these ways of relating are passed on
from generation to generation.
Sometimes people blame their parents for
their problems. But our parents didn't invent their habits. They
learned them from their parents, who in turn learned them from
earlier generations, going way back in our cultural history. If
we look at this history, we see that many of our habits -- whether
in intimate or international relations -- come from earlier times
when everybody had to learn to obey their "superiors"
unquestioningly. In those times, despotic kings, feudal lords,
and chieftains had life and death powers over their "subjects,"
as they still do in many parts of our world today.
Think of how only a few hundred years ago,
if you balked or back-talked, your life was in danger. Think of
the Inquisition, the witch burnings, and all the ways people were
terrorized in the Middle Ages to instill habits of absolute obedience.
Think of how kings were in the habit of chopping people's heads
off, even those of their wives, as the English king Henry the
Eighth did. Think of how slavery and child labor under the most
brutal conditions were legal, and of how male heads of household
also had despotic powers. Think of commands like "spare the
rod and spoil the child" justifying child-beating, of laws
that not so long ago gave husbands the right to beat their wives,
of how husbands until very recent times were given legal ownership
of not only their wives' bodies but also of any property they
had or any money they earned.
You might say that was then, and it's different
now. Certainly in the United States we are fortunate to live in
a country where despots no longer rule and the human rights of
children, women, and people of color are gradually being recognized.
But even here, the hidden baggage from earlier times still lives
on. Over and over, habits we inherited get in the way of more
fulfilling lives and a better world.
Once we become aware of what we carry unconsciously,
we can change. Change involves two things: awareness and action.
As we become more aware of what is really behind our problems,
we can begin changing what we do and how we do it. But this is
a two-way street.
Awareness and action are always in a dance
together that takes us farther and farther from where we started.
It's like when we stop eating junk food because we become aware
that, despite all the ads about how good it is, it's bad for us.
When we change this habit, we discover how much healthier we feel,
less nervous and jumpy from all the sugar, stronger, more energetic.
This new awareness in turn leads to other changes, perhaps avoiding
foods high in fat, eating more balanced meals, and getting more
exercise.
So new awareness and changed habits go
together. As our personal relationships move toward partnership,
the beliefs that guide our behavior change. As our beliefs start
to support partnership rather than dominator relations, we begin
to change the rules for relationships. This in turn helps us build
more partnership-oriented families, workplaces, and communities.
We then begin to change the rules for the wider web of relationships,
including economic and political relations as well as our relationship
with our Mother Earth. These rules, in their turn, support partnership
relations all across the board, so that the upward spiral is given
yet another boost.
One of the striking things about history
is how many great visionaries, thinkers, and writers have pointed
to exactly what we're looking at here. From Jesus and Buddha to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr., they all recognized
that just working on ourselves is not enough. They point to the
road from the self to society and back again -- that we also have
to change the cultural beliefs and social structures that imprison
us in a life we don't want. In essence, they point us to a partnership
spiritual path.
THE TURNING POINT
Martin Luther King, Jr., historical baggage,
social structures, international relations -- these may seem a
long way from my life crisis twenty-five years ago. But they are
all related and interrelated.
I know from my own experience that personal
change is possible. I know from my research for The Chalice and
the Blade and subsequent books that, in our age of biological
and nuclear technologies, the old dominator ways can lead to disaster,
even to the extinction of our species. I know from my research
that the turmoil of our time, as upsetting and confusing as it
is, also offers an opportunity to make fundamental changes.
As a mother and grandmother, I feel a great
urgency to do what I can to help bring about these changes. The
good news is that we don't have to start from square one. We've
already left many dominator beliefs and structures behind and
started to replace them with partnership ones. If we hadn't, I
couldn't have written this book. Nor could you be reading it.
This book would have been burned, and you and I would have been
condemned for heresy.
Partnership is already on the move all
over the world. In fact, the movement to shift from domination
to partnership in all aspects of our lives -- from the personal
to the political -- is the fastest growing and most powerful movement
in the world today.
Millions of people are going to workshops
and seminars to learn how to have better personal, business, and
community relationships. Hundreds of thousands of grassroots organizations
-- from environmental and peace groups to human rights and economic
equity organizations -- are working to create the conditions that
support our deepest strivings for love, safety, sustainability,
and meaning. One of the most important aspects of the partnership
movement is the search for young people for their voice. Indeed,
young people are today often in the forefront of the partnership
movement, intuitively manifesting partnership in their individual
and collective actions, in innovations that are sparks for systems
transformations.
Worldwide, the movement toward partnership
is at the heart of innumerable causes with widely differing names,
transcending conventional categories such as capitalism versus
communism and religious versus secular. However, we don't read
about this movement in the media because it is not centralized
and coordinated -- and because it has lacked a single unifying
name. Without a name, it's almost as if it didn't exist, despite
all the progress around us.
At the same time, there is also powerful
resistance to this forward partnership movement. And there are
regressive forces pushing us back toward the kinds of relationships
we have been trying to leave behind. Our future hinges on the
outcome of this still largely invisible struggle. There are those
who would reimpose patterns of domination. Some are terrorists
from faraway lands. Others are in our own nation. And most of
us carry inside us dominator habits that get in the way of the
good life we yearn for.
Gandhi said we should not mistake what
is habitual for what is natural. Indeed, changing what is habitual
is one of the goals of self-help.
The Power of Partnership is about changing
dominator habits -- both personal and social. It's about small
habits and huge habits. It's about the underlying causes of painful
and dysfunctional habits. It's about what you and I can do to
make partnership a reality.
This doesn't mean that every one of us
has to do everything. But wherever we are and whenever we can,
every one of us can do something to move us from domination to
partnership.
I know from the joy, imagination, and creativity
that are my grandchildren's natural gifts -- as, given half
a chance, they are every child's -- that the human spirit can
soar into as yet unimagined realms of possibility. We have been
endowed by nature with an amazing brain, an enormous capacity
for love, a remarkable creativity, and a unique ability to learn,
change, grow, and plan ahead. We were not born with the unhealthy
habits we carry. We had to learn them. So we can unlearn them,
and help others do the same.
We can all learn partnership ways of living.
I invite you to join me in the adventure of creating a way of
life where the wonder and beauty latent in every child can be
realized, where the human spirit is liberated, where love can
freely do its magic.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They are all children when they sleep.
There is no war in them.
They open their hands and breathe
in the slow rhythm given to humans by heaven.
Whether soldiers, statesmen,
servants, or masters
they purse their lips like small children
and they all half-open their hands.
Stars stand watch then and the arch of the sky is hazed over
for a few hours when no one will harm another.
If only we could talk
with each other then,
when hearts are like half-open flowers.
Words would push their way in
like golden bees.
After racing up and down Mount Rainier in less than
a day, 77-year-old Bronka Sundstrom returned at 5 a.m. Sunday
to her home near Ashford to get some sleep.
Two hours later, the oldest woman ever
to climb Rainier awoke to make her usual call to her son in New
Jersey.
"We always call Allen at 7. I didn't
want to break the ritual," Sundstrom explained.
And today, free from a regimen of solo
speed hiking designed to prepare her fit 5-foot frame for the
summit attempt, Sundstrom will take a leisurely trek with her
85-year-old husband, Ake. He has been feeling a little under the
weather lately, so the pair will cover only seven or eight miles.
"Mazama Ridge is beautiful, with the
flowers," she said. "It would be nice to get Ake broken
into shape again."
Just another walk in the national park
for Bronka Sundstrom.
But the climb was special. Despite 22 years
of hiking Mount Rainier's trails and snowfields, Sundstrom had
never tried to reach the peak's 14,411-foot summit.
"I just never thought I could do it.
I'm an old lady," Sundstrom joked. Anyway, Rainier's high
camps aren't nearly as comfortable as the Sundstroms' warm cabin
just outside the park's Nisqually entrance.
"You're much better off in your own
house," she said.
Those who know Sundstrom had no doubt of
her strength and stamina, and most are amazed at her spirit.
"I think what she did was incredible,
and that's what I wrote in the summit register," said Jason
Edwards, a longtime Mount Rainier guide. Edwards persuaded Sundstrom
to finally make the summit attempt and accompanied her on the
climb, in part to inspire others her age.
"I think people like her prove that
life doesn't stop at any given age," Edwards said. "It
stops when you give up, and she's hasn't given up."
Sundstrom hasn't even slowed down. Next
year, she said, she probably will climb Rainier again.
"I was happy to go, and I was happy
to come back. It was a nice trip," Sundstrom said.
Mount Rainier officials aren't sure who
held the previous record as the oldest woman to climb the peak,
but they believe it was Eva Meassick of Steilacoom. Meassick was
a few weeks short of her 65th birthday when she reached the summit
in July 2000.
The oldest man to climb Rainier was Jack
Borgenicht of Long Valley, N.J. Borgenicht was 81 when, led by
guides, he climbed the peak over a three-day period in August
1992. Sundstrom's total time on Rainier was 19 hours.
Most climbers take at least two days to
go up and down the mountain. Rangers say one-day round trips are
attempted by only the fittest climbers.
"A one-day climb would be an extreme
event for most mountaineers," said Mike Gauthier, lead climbing
ranger at Mount Rainier. "There's probably around 50 ascents
like that a year out of 12,000 climbers, maybe less."
Edwards and fellow Rainier Mountaineering
Inc. guide Ryan Stephens set off from 5,420-foot Paradise with
Sundstrom shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday. Sundstrom reached 10,080-foot
Camp Muir in 3 hours 15 minutes - about 45 minutes longer than
Sundstrom's normal pace.
After a short break, the trio walked past
the tents of Camp Muir and headed toward the 14,411-foot summit.
Most climbers take six to eight hours to reach the summit; Sundstrom
was there at 7 p.m., after 4 hours, 40 minutes. They spent about
an hour on the summit, despite wind gusts that Edwards estimated
hit 50 mph. Sundstrom signed the summit register and walked up
to the highest point on the summit's crater rim.
They started down just as night was falling.
Sundstrom said she had trouble in the dim light, so she stayed
close to Edwards and Stephens and often held onto their packs.
They considered sleeping at bit when they returned to Camp Muir
at midnight, but Rainier Mountaineering Inc.'s hut was still full
of people. Instead they continued down.
Sundstrom said she might climb to the summit
again next year. She said she enjoyed seeing the lights of cities
like Seattle and Yakima glimmering in the distance.
"It was just fun to see something
that I never saw before," she said.
In August
of 1998, I summited this 14,411' volcanic glacial mass. My journey
to the mountaintop was a spiritual and blessed one. I began training
5 months prior on the nearby trails surrounding Seattle. The last
Sunday of June, I decided to test my altitude capabilities and
develop a sense of the mountain by climbing up to Camp Muir. At
about 7,000', experiencing peaceful solitude in the vast snowfield,
I was approaching an older man and woman conversing at a stand
still. I soon began overhearing their conversation. He said he
was not feeling well enough to continue upward. She empathetically
responded, "You go back. You have the car. I go up. I get
a ride home." I interrupted and said, "I'll take her
up and give her a ride home." She smiled and warmly accepted.
Her name was Bronka (73 years of age). The handsome white-haired
man with the Swedish accent and striking legs was her husband
of 52 years, Ake (81 years of age).
He was ill due to the tetanus shots they
both received 3 days before. Otherwise, this was just another
ordinary hike in the wilderness for them. And so, as Ake descended
back home to their cabin by the river at the base of Mt. Rainier,
Bronka and I ascended to Camp Muir together. Shortly after, I
would realize that my offer to take her up was well intended but
delusional. The older woman image disappeared and the image of
a mountain goat appeared!
Ascending 3,000' with this woman far exceeded
my desire of developing a sense of the mountain. Her joyous spirit
filled the mountain air. When I remarked on her extreme optimism
for life, Bronka began to speak of her past as a Holocaust survivor.
Emotion flooded my eyes and silence overcame me... She let it
be. I would look back at her over my shoulder when she wasn't
looking and I could feel the presence of God... He was climbing
with us in Bronka's tiny frame.
When Jesus went up on the mountainside
to give the Sermon on the Mount, He said, "Blessed are the
meek, for they will inherit the earth." Marianne Williamson
speaks of how their strength will literally take over the place.
I have witnessed this truth through the life of Bronka.
The night before my summit attempt, I gave
her a t-shirt with Rumi's inscription. No explanation of the quote
was necessary. Meeting God's children in the field is her nature.
Two days later as I was arriving at Camp Muir from the summit,
I looked over the ridge and there were Bronka and Ake just arriving
to congratulate me. I will never forget that.
¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
¤ ¤
We're
wired to cooperate
Photo: Chris Christo/
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
A
Sister's Helping Hand
Who can measure the special bond of twins?
by Nancy Sheehan
Heidi and Paul Jackson's twin girls, Brielle
and Kyrie, were born October 17, 1995, 12 weeks ahead of their due date.
Standard hospital practice is to place preemie twins in separate incubators
to reduce the risk of infection. that was done for the Jackson girls in
the neonatal intensive care unit at The Medical Center of Central Massachusetts
in Worcester.
Kyrie, the larger sister at two pounds, three ounces,
quickly began gaining weight and calmly sleeping her newborn days away.
But Brielle, who weighed only two pounds at birth, couldn't keep up with
her. She had breathing and heart-rate problems. The oxygen level in her
blood was low, and her weight gain was slow.
Suddenly, on November 12, Brielle went into critical
condition. She began gasping for breath, and her face and stick-thin arms
and legs turned bluish-gray. Her heart rate was way up, and she got hiccups,
a dangerous sign that her body was under stress. Her parents watched,
terrified that she might die.
Nurse Gayle Kasparian tried everything she could
think of to stabilize Brielle. She suctioned her breathing passages and
turned up the oxygen flow to the incubator. Still Brielle squirmed and
fussed as her oxygen intake plummeted and her heart rate soared.
Then Kasparian remembered something she had heard
from a colleague. It was a procedure, common in parts of Europe but almost
unheard of in this country, that called for double-bedding multiple-birth
babies, especially preemies.
Kasparian's nurse manager, Susan Fitzback, was
away at a conference, and the arrangement was unorthodox. But Kasparian
decided to take the risk.
"Let me just try putting Brielle in with her
sister to see if that helps," she said to the alarmed parents. "I
don't know what else to do."
The Jacksons quickly gave the go-ahead, and Kasparian
slipped the squirming baby into the incubator holding the sister she hadn't
seen since birth. Then Kasparian and the Jacksons watched.
No sooner had the door of the incubator closed
then Brielle snuggled up to Kyrie - and calmed right down. Within minutes
Brielle's blood-oxygen readings were the best they had been since she
was born. As she dozed, Kyrie wrapped her tiny arm around her smaller
sibling.
By coincidence, the conference Fitzback was attending
included a presentation on double-bedding. This is something I want to
see happen at The Medical Center, she thought. But it might be hard making
the change. On her return she was doing rounds when the nurse caring for
the twins that morning said, "Sue, take a look in that isolette over
there."
"I can't believe this," Fitzback said.
"This is so beautiful."
"You mean, we can do it?" asked the nurse.
"Of course we can," Fitzback replied.
Today a handful of institutions around the country
are adopting double-bedding, which seems to reduce the number of hospital
days. The practice is growing quickly, even though the first scientific
studies on it didn't begin until this past January.
But Heidi and Paul Jackson don't need any studies
to know that double-bedding helped Brielle. She is thriving. In fact,
now that the two girls are home, they still steep together - and still
snuggle.
Reader's Digest - May 1996
Condensed from Worcester
Telegram & Gazette
November 18, 1995
Why We're So Nice: We're Wired
to Cooperate By Natalie Angier
What feels as good as chocolate on
the tongue or money in the bank but won't make you fat or risk a subpoena
from the Securities and Exchange Commission?
Hard as it may be to believe
in these days of infectious greed and sabers unsheathed, scientists have
discovered that the small, brave act of cooperating with another person,
of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the
brain light up with quiet
joy.
"Let me win;
but if I cannot win,
let me be brave
in the attempt."
~Special Olympics Athletes Oath~
A few years ago at the Seattle Special Olympics,
nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the
starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun, they all started out,
not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish
and win.
All, that is, except one boy who stumbled on the
asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times and began to cry. The other eight
heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. They all turned around
and went back. Every one of them.
One girl with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed
him and said, "This will make it better." All nine linked arms
and walked across finish line together.
Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering
went on for several minutes. People who were there are still telling the
story. Why? Because deep down we know this one thing: What matters in
this life is more than winning for ourselves. What truly matters in this
life is helping others win, even if it means slowing down and changing
our course.
Author unknown
A
Higher Education
1 - The Most Important Lesson
During my second month of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I
was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until
I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans
the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning
woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how
would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question
blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question
would count toward our quiz grade. "Absolutely," said the professor.
"In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant.
They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and
say 'hello'." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned
her name was Dorothy.
2 - Second Important Lesson - Pickup in the Rain
One night, at 11:30 PM, an older African American woman was standing on
the side of an Alabama highway trying to endure a lashing rain storm.
Her car had broken down and she desperately needed a ride. Soaking wet,
she decided to flag down the next car. A young white man stopped to help
her, generally unheard of in those conflict-filled 1960s. The man took
her to safety, helped her get assistance and put her into a taxicab. She
seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his address and thanked him.
Seven days went by and a knock came on the man's door. To his surprise,
a giant console color TV was delivered to his home. A special note was
attached. It read:
"Thank you so much for assisting me on the
highway the other night. The rain drenched not only my clothes, but also
my spirits. Then you came along. Because of you, I was able to make it
to my dying husband's bedside just before he passed away. God bless you
for helping me and unselfishly serving others."
Sincerely,
Mrs. Nat King Cole.
3 - Third Important Lesson - Always remember those who serve
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10 year old boy
entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass
of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?"
he asked "Fifty cents," replied the waitress. The little boy
pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it. "Well,
how much is a plain dish of ice cream?" he inquired. By now more
people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient.
"Thirty-five cents," she brusquely replied." The little
boy again counted his coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream,"
he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table
and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and
left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down
the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels
and five pennies. You see, he couldn't have the sundae, because he had
to have enough left to leave her a tip.
4 - Fourth Important Lesson - The Obstacle in Our Path
In ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on the roadway. Then he
hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some
of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked
around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear,
but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way. Then a peasant
came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder,
the peasant laid down his burden and tried to move the stone to the side
of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After
the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying
in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold
coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person
who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many
of us never understand. Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve
our condition.
5 - Fifth Important Lesson - Giving When it Counts
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know
a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease.
Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her
5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and
had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor
explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy
if he would be willing to give his to his sister. I saw him hesitate for
only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll
do it if it will save her." As the transfusion progressed, he lay
in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color
returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He
looked up at The doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I
start to die right away?" Being young, the little boy had misunderstood
the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of
his blood in order to save her. You see, after all, understanding and
attitude, are everything.
(Author unknown)
We've
come a long way!
Boston Marathon
1967 - A member of the Boston Athletic
Association tries to enforce the rule that says no women shall
run and tries to pull Kathey Switzer out of the race. Marathon history
April 15, 2002
Edith Hunkeler of Swizterland
Winner of the women's wheelchair
Thank
You
for
the Inspirations!
Joanne Cronin
Sue Broxholm
Lynda Ellis
and many more
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