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The International Day of Peace

One of the most beautiful things that my daughter does is to wish you "peace" when you leave our home.  We have taught her this as a way of blessing those as they go.  It's less of a "peace out" thing and more of a "may grace and peace be upon you" thing.  She even tries to get her little hands to make a peace sign.  It's one of my favorite things in all the world.

In 1981 the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 36/67 declaring an International Day of Peace. In 2001, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a new resolution 55/282 declaring 21 September of each year as the International Day of Peace.

The resolution: "Declares that the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, and invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day...

"Invites all Member States, organization of the United Nations system, and non-governmental organizations and individuals to commemorate, in an appropriate manner, the International Day of Peace, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in the establishment of the global ceasefire."

You can learn more at The International Day of Peace website.

If you're in the greater Philadelphia area you might want to join Shalom House tonight...consider this your invitation...

Prayer Vigil for Peace
organized by Shalom House
Friday September 21st, 2007
7:00-8:00pm
Germantown Mennonite Historic Meeting House
6121 Germantown Ave.

Shalom House is planning a time of prayer on Sept. 21, the International Day of Peace, when people of faith throughout the world will be collectively praying for peace.

We ask all who are weary, hopeful, mournful, greiving, yearning, joyful, numb to come together to pray for the violence that pervades our lives and our world and to pray for the redeeming, transformative power of God to be manifested.

We plan to have a quiet, reflective time with readings, songs, witness, and space for open prayer. It will go for roughly an hour and afterwards we invite you to our "after-vigil" Open House. Light refreshments will be served. In lieu of using disposable cups/mugs we ask that you bring your own; a small gesture that reminds us that we need to tread lightly on God's creation.

-----
If you do nothing else...
PLEASE PRAY FOR PEACE TODAY.

Psalters, Shane, Changing the World

I really love the Psalters.  Their connection to Circle of Hope is transformative and inspiring.  Their work in the world is prophetic and worthy of our investment.

I came across this interview that they did with Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way last year.  Thought it was something that needed to be posted here.

To learn more about the Psalters, visit them on myspace or check out their website (with free downloads)!

To contribute to their prophetic/nomadic/ world changing cause or to drop them a personal note of grace and appreciation, checks and letters can both be sent to:

Circle Venture
c/o Psalters
1125 S. Broad
Philadelphia, PA 19147

"we are the cry of the exodus.
there is no home for us here.
we are a nomadic tribe of psalters,
walking in the footsteps of ancients past
to the far corners of the present,
united as one voice against the
oppression within and without.
one more echo in the eternal song of our
First Love, our Hope, our Pillar of Fire.”

Communal Focus in Germantown

Len shared this quote at NextReformation yesterday...

Today there is a considerable desire for greater communality in living. But the reason most so-called communities usually cannot keep their members and exist on the fringes of society, often as its parasites, lies in a crucial misconception about communal life. Most of these communities are formed “to live the communal life,” and therefore concentrate on it. I am convinced communal life can flourish only if it exists for an aim outside itself. Community is viable if it is the outgrowth of a deep involvement in a purpose which is other than, or above that of being a community. 

~ Bruno Bettelheim. A Home for the Heart, 1974

Shalom House Philadelphia is about 2 weeks away from being founded in the Germantown section of Philly near the Germantown Mennonite Historic Trust.  Let me share a little from their plan...

The vision...
Shalom House is a tool for proactive peacemakers to use to grow in their faith, to express the gospel of peace, to provide the option of reconciliation for people in Philadelphia, and to secure a place for Circle of Hope among God's worldwide peace movement.

The mission...
Shalom House provides community for committed peacemakers to spend at least two-years deepening and applying their calling in Philadelphia and learning about and connecting to God's worldwide community of peacebuilders.  The house lives in peace, works in the community for peace daily, creates a network of peacemakers and includes Circle of Hope in it.

The distinctives...

• We gain life and give it out of our relationship with Jesus.  We are the new humanity.
• The community operates with the rhythm of the age-old disciplines of work and prayer, balancing contemplation and action.
• All ages and status are welcome.  Circle of Hope has a vision to equip the next generation; likewise, Shalom House focuses on recruiting young adult peacemakers to make a long-lasting impact in Philadelphia and among God's world-wide peacemaking network.
• The house operates according to a general "strategic plan" set by the team but reflecting the gifts and desires of the residents.
• The members of the household act as part of the Circle of Hope network.  Their training and opportunity is not only for personal growth, but is designed to build up the Church, primarily Circle of Hope, in Philadelphia.

I think this communal living situation might just work out - after all, they're centered around Jesus and peacemaking, not just trying to live communally.  Pray for the now four people who will be making the Shalom House their home for the next two years!

A Liturgy of Peace (from Christine Sine)

Try this on today...

God blesses those who work for peace.
For they will be called the children of God (Matt. 5:9).

(Silence)

God of peace you call us to peace.
Peace within and peace without
Peace before and peace behind
Peace on the right and peace on the left
Christ of peace you call us to peace.
Peace with brother and with sister
Peace with neighbor and with stranger
Peace with friend and with foe
Spirit of peace you call us to peace.
Peace in work and in play
Peace in thought and in deed
Peace in word and in action
Grant us peace O God of peace.

Psalm 122 (New Living Translation)

I was glad when they said to me,
   "Let us go to the house of the Lord."
And now here we are,
   standing inside your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is a well-built city;
   its seamless calls cannot be breached.
All the tribes of Israel - the Lord's people -
   make their pilgrimage here.
   They come to give thanks to the name of the Lord,
      as the law requires of Israel.
Here stand the thrones where judgment is given,
   the thrones of the dynasty of David.
Pray for peace in Jerusalem.
   May all who love this city prosper.
O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls
   and prosperity in your palaces.
For the sake of my family and friends, I will say,
   "May you have peace."
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
   I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem.

John 14:23-27 (Contemporary English Version)

Jesus replied: If anyone loves me, they will obey me.  Then my Father will love them, and we will come to them and live in them.  But anyone who doesn't love me, won't obey me.  What they have heard me say doesn't really  come from me, but from the Father who sent me.  I have told you these things while I am still with you, but the Holy Spirit will come and help you, because the Father will send the Spirit to take my place.  The Spirit will teach you everything and will remind you of what I said while I was with you.  I give you peace, the kind of peace that only I can give.  It isn't like the peace that only I can give.  So don't be worried or afraid.

Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, you will be done n earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass again us.  Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for your is the kingdom the power and glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

God all powerful and all knowing encircle us
Keep love within and fear without
Keep peace within and violence out
Circle us with your presence
God all loving and all embracing encircle us
Keep wholeness in and disease without
Keep care within and selfishness out
Circle us with your love
God all mighty and all caring encircle us
Keep truth within and injustice out
Keep acceptance in and prejudice out
Circle us with your peace

God may we be instruments of your peace today
In a world divided by war and strife
May be we your reconcilers
In a world of hurt and pain
May we be those who care for our enemies
In a world that kills and maims
May we be those who heal and restore

God lead us with your peace.
Through the pathway of your love.
To the promise of your kingdom,

The blessing of God be upon you.
The blessing of the God of life.
The blessing of Christ be upon  you.
The blessing of the Christ of love.
The blessing of the spirit be upon you.
The blessing of the spirit of peace.
The blessing of the triune God be yours, now and evermore.
Amen.

Relocation Update

Last week, I posted a quote from John Perkins about incarnational living and my family's relocation plan.  I found this quote at inward/outward (a site that has a thought provoking quote just about every day - add it to your daily reads).  Reflecting on the Perkins quote, Kayla McClurg writes...

I have been prodded and challenged by the comments on Tuesday’s message by John Perkins about Relocation. Thanks to Anna, M.J., Gary, Janine, Wilsonian and Sarah Louise for inviting us to think and feel our way a bit more deeply into a subject that, sort of like a blackberry bush, is known to yield a bit of pain before we get to the sweetness.

I, too, have experimented with Relocation over the years. First, in my 20’s when I simply got tired of waiting for ‘racial and cultural diversity’ to find me and I went in search of it. I was teaching high school English in a white flight suburb of Oklahoma City when I learned of an opportunity to go to New York City as a volunteer for six weeks one summer. I asked if I could be placed in Harlem, where I worked as an intern at a large Baptist church and lived with a woman in the neighborhood. This was a decade before the more recent waves of gentrification in Harlem, and I was both warmly and suspiciously received. Scales began to drop from my eyes and newfound friends began to teach me about racism, the kind that impacts both the oppressed and the oppressor and how we all are each of these in varying circumstances.

Later that summer I traveled with a group from the Harlem church to Nicaragua, where we began to learn about the oppression that we as a country, black and white together, were condoning against our brothers and sisters there. Another necessary layer of complexity was added to this rural white farm girl’s reality. I wrote a booklet at the end of that summer to try to share the experience with friends and family, and I called it “Never the Same Again.” And I wasn’t.

A few years later, during which I became active in the OKC Peace House and various efforts toward reconciliation, I traveled again to New York, this time to volunteer at Providence House, an experiment in community modeled after Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement. Together with other white women, mostly nuns, I helped create several homes for women in transition out of prison or homelessness or domestic abuse. Even as we did it, we questioned if we were doing the right thing, moving into neighborhoods not ‘our own’ in Brooklyn and Queens (renovating abandoned convents was the strategy) and inviting persons of radically different cultures from our own, from each other’s, to be with us and to share life together.

One night the sisters and I were returning from some event and an African-American man yelled at us from his car, “Go back to your own neighborhood!” I found it almost funny when he drove on by, while we pulled into the driveway of our home. But I know what he meant. What WERE we doing there? Did we ‘belong’ in that neighborhood?

Did Mother Teresa belong in the slums of Calcutta? Did Dorothy Day have the right to move into a ghetto neighborhood of New York and share her home with the homeless poor? Should Gandhi have stayed in his place? Now, I’m no Mother T or Dorothy Day or Gandhi…but I am a child of God all the same, called to share life with and care for my sisters and brothers. Shall I wait until I have this question of ‘gentrification’ vs. ‘being with’ figured out before I step out of my comfort zone and into places where the discomfort can reach me and teach me?

This is what I’m wondering as I ponder the rich comments from Tuesday. In John Perkins’ book, The Quiet Revolution, he speaks of Relocation as one strand of a three-fold movement toward authentic discipleship. The other two parts are Reconciliation and Redistribution. In my experience it’s absolutely vital to hold these three together. Relocation then brings the joyful possibility that we can join Jesus’ reconciling grace in the world and, together with others, begin to figure out what belongs to whom and redistribute it. [find responses here]

Julia Ward Howe and Mother's Day

Mother's Day is this weekend (May 13 - don't forget!).  Thanks to Erica for passing this along...

In a new video by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films, in collaboration with CODEPINK, Gloria Steinem explains the original intent behind Ward Howe's Mother's Day idea: "Mother's Day really was in its origin an anti-war day, an anti-war statement. Julia Ward Howe was sickened by what had happened during the Civil War--the loss of life, the carnage. And she created Mother's Day as a call for women all over the world, to come together, and create ways of protesting war, of making a kind of alternate government that could finally do away with war as an acceptable way of solving conflict."

"Say firmly: 'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience….'"

Read the full post here.

Guns into Plowshares

Regarding the Virginia Tech shootings and gun control, Ben Witherington writes...

It is interesting to me that even most American Christians, when they discuss these things, discuss them in terms of their Constitutional rights to bear firearms. They don’t ask whether the New Testament might have anything to say about Christian conduct in this regard...My question is--- are their ethical teachings in the New Testament that have a bearing as to whether Christians, as private citizens, should be bearing arms? Well yes, in fact there are texts to consider.

Here's the rest of an insightful post worth reading...
Christians and Gun Control: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Early Evening April 4

At 6:01pm on April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN.  Today marks the 39th anniversary of this tragic event. 

Video 1:  Though the U2 song Pride (In the Name of Love) erroneously refers to the shooting as occurring in the "early morning" (a mistake which Bono readily admits and amends to "early evening" in live performances), the video below is a moving tribute set to it's lyrics.

Early evening, April 4, shot rings out in a Memphis sky.  "Free at Last", they took your life, they could not take your pride.

Video 2:  This second video is the end of the speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave in Tennessee the night before he was murdered.  The full PDF text for the speech can be found here. 

Video 3:  Another U2 song.  This one, entitled MLK was written as a lullaby to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take a moment early this evening (6:01pm) to remember the legacy and love of MLK (especially in light of Holy Week).

John 17:24-26 (NET)
Father, I want those you have give me to be with me where I am, so that they can see my glory that you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world.  Righteous Father, even if the world does not know you, I know you, an dthese men know that you sent me.  I made known your name to them, and I will continue to make it know, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them, and I may be in them.

The Mostly Unrelated Comment that Turned into a Majorly Relevant Post

Yesterday my dear friend Laura left a comment under my Speaking of Jesus post that had nothing to do with the actual post, but as is often the case, it was easier to quickly comment than to dig up an e-mail address or comment under a more relevant post (we've all done it).  And though I'm still looking for your thoughts on that particular post, her "mostly unrelated" comment interested me and is majorly relevant...

She writes...
My comment is mostly unrelated. I was at Starbucks just the other night, and while I am slightly ashamed that I spent my money on a Starbucks brewed cup of coffee, I think that it was worth it for the quote on my cup: "Peace is more than just the absence of war. People everywhere seek an inner peace that comes from the human rights to voice their views, choose their leaders, feed their families and raise healthy children." -Jimmy Carter.

So, while this may seem like a very simple way to look at peace in the world as opposed to peace only in warzones, I've been thinking a lot about bringing peace as a megaphone to those who have lost touch with their voices, recognizing that the freedom of expression is often a path to healing. Thoughts?

I responded...
Carter's quote seems to be pushing the American dream as the way to peace...not so sure about that. While I agree that peace is more than the absence of war, I'm not sure peace = democracy, which seems to be where he's headed.

I like the idea of peace as a megaphone for people who have lost their voice...but it's all about context. Sometimes people who have lost their voice need a cup of hot tea with honey.

So if peace in some contexts needs to be a megaphone, we also have to reserve the space for other contexts to drink in peace as a soothing hot tea. Mmmmm...tea.

So...time for your thoughts...

a)  What's your take on Starbucks coffee and the Starbucks franchise?

b)  What do you think about this Jimmy Carter quote?

c)  What other metaphors for peace can be used (other than megaphone and cup of hot tea) as we pro-actively try to promote peace amongst a people who have lost touch with their voices?