A Peace Plan
Yeshua, many centuries ago, proclaimed, "Welcome home all you peace builders", with the emphasis on "builders". Building peace begins with activating your Sacred Imagination: see it! Know it! Peace is possible! Building peace means activating more and more of your life with purposeful living. You haven't been given the gift of breath to waste it in collecting stuff you'll leave behind with your last breath! You are here to participate actively in re-creating the world!
So, you imagine it possible, and now you're ready to commit... to what? To manifesting peace with every step that you take. Where do you wake up in the morning? Start there with kindness. Going out the door, there is your community. How are you practicing beauty in your neighborhood? Where do the children play? What are their dreams; do they even know what it means to dream? Do you wear shoes? Where do they come from? Everyone touching your life in any way should be making a living wage. Now, you've got a great focus: simplify and advocate and organize for social justice. Do you eat? What do you eat? You've got to work on compassion and earth-care there too because everything is factually connected to everything else. Remember, you want to live awake and aware and conscious of being alive!
We need to understand that peace will never happen "out there" if we fail to take care of our homes and neighborhoods. This is the vital work of place that gives value and meaning to every effort to extend the foundation of "Our Place" to elsewhere in the world. When beauty exists here, we will inevitably want beauty everywhere for every person. As soon as we invoke the holy word of "person" for our neighbor and then for the "different", the "stranger", and the "other", we have the key in our hand for ending violence. Our enemy, too, is a person. If our enemy is a person, then we will discover the ways and means of surrounding that person with justice. We will educate his children. We will find meaningful work for him and make sure that his neighbors too have reasons to live. We will make justice flow as living water about all the Earth! When economic oppression and social injustice cease, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
When we will have deconstructed the systems of violence that control and feed off the violence and misery of the marginalized, and at the same time have taken all of the profit out of war making, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua! Nonviolence means not only active resistance to the root causes of violence and injustice, but also the development and implementation of an international constructive program of liberation. Working to eliminate every injustice towards women and children is first. Women must be guaranteed absolute equality in every way with men. Women everywhere must have free access to birth control -- only when women have reproductive (total) control of their bodies do they then have access to economic and political power equal to that of men. Every system of domination needs to be demythologized and deconstructed -- especially those rooted in every male dominated theology / religion.
Hunger and malnutrition must be totally eliminated. Access to water must be guaranteed and developed for all. The super-rich must grow up, and as adults, focus their lives, corporations, and nations on purposeful human life! Every economic decision, on every level, must be transparently focused on human equality and liberation, not on greed or power. When we will have developed an international constructive program of liberation, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua! A "green cooperativism" is the path to an economics with a human face. By seeing clearly the path of peace and justice before us, we can re-imagine and reconstruct our national and international economic institutions to serve our human liberation. By honoring the world's cultures and respecting their unique drives toward development, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
The goal of nonviolence is always reconciliation into wholeness and community. Violence will only be transformed through a living practice of peace and justice. Nonviolence implies the struggle for the redemption of time itself. We have such an incredibly long collective memory of violence, oppression, and injustice! Those memories need the healing balm of new memories formed from renewed relationships -- in the transparent practice of justice. We can look forward to a new day and a new time in which everyone will be free from terror; that day will come when we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
The powerful of this world will never be satisfied with however much power they have already accumulated for themselves. Why? Because power is the ultimate drug, the ultimate diversion, and, ultimately, both the original and only "sin". The lie of power requires an endless list of follow-up lies, each necessary to cultivate its mythology and fear amongst and between people. Nonviolence, as the "force of truth", is the only weapon capable of defeating the force of lies. Why? Because nonviolence is also the "force of conversion"... Power always seeks to control, to dominate, to justify, or to destroy. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is the political application of the wisdom teaching of Yeshua: "Love your enemies". Love means to practice justice and to create all the conditions necessary for peace to flourish. Power is always fundamentally opposed to peace! Therefore, it pays only "lip service" to any genuine effort to deal with every root cause of violence, while the goal of nonviolence is always personal and social transformation. Transformation and peace will come when we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
Finally, we need to take up a phrase of Yeshua's as our sacred political / spiritual mantra: "... But I say unto you..." We need to tell every single one of the representatives of the religions rooted in the dominator paradigm that it is time for them to change their minds! Their roles as agents of power are roles that we no longer need (did we ever?)! Their theologies that would marginalize us from our inherent dignity and divinity are no longer going to be tolerated: the "salvation" they all offer has brought this precious blue Planet to the very edge of catastrophe -- Say it loud and say it strong: "But I say unto you 'an eye for an eye' was never holy -- neither are any of your judgments, condemnations, justifications, and obfuscations. We love our children way too much for you to bless them for going to war or scar them with your un-original stories of sin! We are activating our minds, hearts, and lives for compassion and peace, for justice and equality, and for kindness and for beauty. You've had your way for about four thousand years -- we are laying claim to equal time! Don't let the door hit you on your way out!"
The way of the peace-builder must be rooted in a "new" understanding and relationship with the Holy One -- though it be older than the hills, as the saying goes. Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of the yogi saint Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi), has written: "We are destined to be fulfilled in God. Coincidental with our outer sojourn in space and time, we are on an inner quest for ultimate meaning and purpose which will be completed when all considerations and conditions of limitation are transcended and we again rest in soul-satisfied realization of wholeness... There is a natural way to live which allows progressive soul unfoldment... it is the eternal way..." This "eternal way" is the return of the Divine Feminine to the forefront of our collective human consciousness -- it is the return of the Divine Feminine to re-establish "right relationship" between humans and this precious blue Planet and at the same time, the "righting" of relationships between women and men: with neither superior to the other, but with both facilitating the others' full development and liberation: in partnership. The divinely feminine qualities of service, self-sacrifice, gentleness, creativity, and wisdom are the very qualities most needed by that which is now passing for "civilization". The "mythic" story of Adam and Eve in the Garden has been used by men to justify the elimination of the Divine Feminine from human consciousness and for the plundering of this precious blue Planet -- but that was a re-telling of an old story to suit their dominator quest -- the real point of the story was that of disobedience, but not the disobedience we've been taught: The Holy One wanted us to disobey! The Holy One wanted us to refuse to leave the Garden -- not to accept the line that anyone might tell us that we are not worth the very best! The work of the peace-builder is to construct the doorway that will allow each one of us to cross its threshold and re-enter Paradise -- with no one left out or left behind!
Little Seeds from the Garden of Paradise
The Holy One loves you! Every breath that you breathe is sacred; every breath is the Holy One gifting you with life and saying to you, "I love you." With every breath that you breathe, the Holy One is hugging you from the inside out. Practice reconciliation. Nurture a reverence for life.
You are special! You are unique. You are lovable. Your life is an unfinished work of art. Make your life extraordinary by doing little things with great love. Do not be afraid! Dream!
Life demands your passionate response! Commit your life to making a difference, to making the world a better place by your having been here. Make peace. Build justice. Live simply. Take responsibility. Do not accept the seeming flow of history... make new history!
Recipe for a Planetary Transformation
Read, study, and apply the social, revolutionary, activism of Mahatma Gandhi and the spirit-filled, luscious poetry of Rumi. Build "sacred circles" of 6 - 12 people who will honestly, seriously, and playfully transform their own minds and hearts -- and then work vigorously to transform the world around them. Connect with others in networks of sacred circles, all in service of justice and nonviolence. Form work co-ops and creative economic options for wider communities; build viable alternatives to the dominant culture. Ensure that the dominator paradigm does not infiltrate the imagination of any paradise possibilitarian through deep meditation, mindfulness trainings, listening, and conversation -- we are each one of us worth the very best! -- (and the very best cannot be delivered by either Power or Greed... the "reality" they have for sale is only for those afraid of Imagination)... Liberate the Divine Feminine... Meditate... Practice Beauty... Work the soil... Embrace the Earth as a living entity of "inter-being"... Recognize our Planetary union in One Love... Trust in the Beauty of Love, Kiss More, and Welcome Home!
So, you imagine it possible, and now you're ready to commit... to what? To manifesting peace with every step that you take. Where do you wake up in the morning? Start there with kindness. Going out the door, there is your community. How are you practicing beauty in your neighborhood? Where do the children play? What are their dreams; do they even know what it means to dream? Do you wear shoes? Where do they come from? Everyone touching your life in any way should be making a living wage. Now, you've got a great focus: simplify and advocate and organize for social justice. Do you eat? What do you eat? You've got to work on compassion and earth-care there too because everything is factually connected to everything else. Remember, you want to live awake and aware and conscious of being alive!
We need to understand that peace will never happen "out there" if we fail to take care of our homes and neighborhoods. This is the vital work of place that gives value and meaning to every effort to extend the foundation of "Our Place" to elsewhere in the world. When beauty exists here, we will inevitably want beauty everywhere for every person. As soon as we invoke the holy word of "person" for our neighbor and then for the "different", the "stranger", and the "other", we have the key in our hand for ending violence. Our enemy, too, is a person. If our enemy is a person, then we will discover the ways and means of surrounding that person with justice. We will educate his children. We will find meaningful work for him and make sure that his neighbors too have reasons to live. We will make justice flow as living water about all the Earth! When economic oppression and social injustice cease, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
When we will have deconstructed the systems of violence that control and feed off the violence and misery of the marginalized, and at the same time have taken all of the profit out of war making, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua! Nonviolence means not only active resistance to the root causes of violence and injustice, but also the development and implementation of an international constructive program of liberation. Working to eliminate every injustice towards women and children is first. Women must be guaranteed absolute equality in every way with men. Women everywhere must have free access to birth control -- only when women have reproductive (total) control of their bodies do they then have access to economic and political power equal to that of men. Every system of domination needs to be demythologized and deconstructed -- especially those rooted in every male dominated theology / religion.
Hunger and malnutrition must be totally eliminated. Access to water must be guaranteed and developed for all. The super-rich must grow up, and as adults, focus their lives, corporations, and nations on purposeful human life! Every economic decision, on every level, must be transparently focused on human equality and liberation, not on greed or power. When we will have developed an international constructive program of liberation, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua! A "green cooperativism" is the path to an economics with a human face. By seeing clearly the path of peace and justice before us, we can re-imagine and reconstruct our national and international economic institutions to serve our human liberation. By honoring the world's cultures and respecting their unique drives toward development, we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
The goal of nonviolence is always reconciliation into wholeness and community. Violence will only be transformed through a living practice of peace and justice. Nonviolence implies the struggle for the redemption of time itself. We have such an incredibly long collective memory of violence, oppression, and injustice! Those memories need the healing balm of new memories formed from renewed relationships -- in the transparent practice of justice. We can look forward to a new day and a new time in which everyone will be free from terror; that day will come when we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
The powerful of this world will never be satisfied with however much power they have already accumulated for themselves. Why? Because power is the ultimate drug, the ultimate diversion, and, ultimately, both the original and only "sin". The lie of power requires an endless list of follow-up lies, each necessary to cultivate its mythology and fear amongst and between people. Nonviolence, as the "force of truth", is the only weapon capable of defeating the force of lies. Why? Because nonviolence is also the "force of conversion"... Power always seeks to control, to dominate, to justify, or to destroy. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is the political application of the wisdom teaching of Yeshua: "Love your enemies". Love means to practice justice and to create all the conditions necessary for peace to flourish. Power is always fundamentally opposed to peace! Therefore, it pays only "lip service" to any genuine effort to deal with every root cause of violence, while the goal of nonviolence is always personal and social transformation. Transformation and peace will come when we will have given life to the words of Yeshua!
Finally, we need to take up a phrase of Yeshua's as our sacred political / spiritual mantra: "... But I say unto you..." We need to tell every single one of the representatives of the religions rooted in the dominator paradigm that it is time for them to change their minds! Their roles as agents of power are roles that we no longer need (did we ever?)! Their theologies that would marginalize us from our inherent dignity and divinity are no longer going to be tolerated: the "salvation" they all offer has brought this precious blue Planet to the very edge of catastrophe -- Say it loud and say it strong: "But I say unto you 'an eye for an eye' was never holy -- neither are any of your judgments, condemnations, justifications, and obfuscations. We love our children way too much for you to bless them for going to war or scar them with your un-original stories of sin! We are activating our minds, hearts, and lives for compassion and peace, for justice and equality, and for kindness and for beauty. You've had your way for about four thousand years -- we are laying claim to equal time! Don't let the door hit you on your way out!"
The way of the peace-builder must be rooted in a "new" understanding and relationship with the Holy One -- though it be older than the hills, as the saying goes. Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of the yogi saint Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi), has written: "We are destined to be fulfilled in God. Coincidental with our outer sojourn in space and time, we are on an inner quest for ultimate meaning and purpose which will be completed when all considerations and conditions of limitation are transcended and we again rest in soul-satisfied realization of wholeness... There is a natural way to live which allows progressive soul unfoldment... it is the eternal way..." This "eternal way" is the return of the Divine Feminine to the forefront of our collective human consciousness -- it is the return of the Divine Feminine to re-establish "right relationship" between humans and this precious blue Planet and at the same time, the "righting" of relationships between women and men: with neither superior to the other, but with both facilitating the others' full development and liberation: in partnership. The divinely feminine qualities of service, self-sacrifice, gentleness, creativity, and wisdom are the very qualities most needed by that which is now passing for "civilization". The "mythic" story of Adam and Eve in the Garden has been used by men to justify the elimination of the Divine Feminine from human consciousness and for the plundering of this precious blue Planet -- but that was a re-telling of an old story to suit their dominator quest -- the real point of the story was that of disobedience, but not the disobedience we've been taught: The Holy One wanted us to disobey! The Holy One wanted us to refuse to leave the Garden -- not to accept the line that anyone might tell us that we are not worth the very best! The work of the peace-builder is to construct the doorway that will allow each one of us to cross its threshold and re-enter Paradise -- with no one left out or left behind!
Little Seeds from the Garden of Paradise
The Holy One loves you! Every breath that you breathe is sacred; every breath is the Holy One gifting you with life and saying to you, "I love you." With every breath that you breathe, the Holy One is hugging you from the inside out. Practice reconciliation. Nurture a reverence for life.
You are special! You are unique. You are lovable. Your life is an unfinished work of art. Make your life extraordinary by doing little things with great love. Do not be afraid! Dream!
Life demands your passionate response! Commit your life to making a difference, to making the world a better place by your having been here. Make peace. Build justice. Live simply. Take responsibility. Do not accept the seeming flow of history... make new history!
Recipe for a Planetary Transformation
Read, study, and apply the social, revolutionary, activism of Mahatma Gandhi and the spirit-filled, luscious poetry of Rumi. Build "sacred circles" of 6 - 12 people who will honestly, seriously, and playfully transform their own minds and hearts -- and then work vigorously to transform the world around them. Connect with others in networks of sacred circles, all in service of justice and nonviolence. Form work co-ops and creative economic options for wider communities; build viable alternatives to the dominant culture. Ensure that the dominator paradigm does not infiltrate the imagination of any paradise possibilitarian through deep meditation, mindfulness trainings, listening, and conversation -- we are each one of us worth the very best! -- (and the very best cannot be delivered by either Power or Greed... the "reality" they have for sale is only for those afraid of Imagination)... Liberate the Divine Feminine... Meditate... Practice Beauty... Work the soil... Embrace the Earth as a living entity of "inter-being"... Recognize our Planetary union in One Love... Trust in the Beauty of Love, Kiss More, and Welcome Home!
