Plan Be - The Beatitudes And The Be-Attitude Revolution » be.encouraged

The Imam and The Pastor

dave — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:13:09 +0000

GEOFF STRONG

IN THIS age of suspicion they seem the oddest of couples: a Muslim imam and Pentecostal Christian pastor, who once wanted to kill each other.

At one time both were militia leaders — and also victims — of religious conflict in Nigeria. Now they have found answers in their own faiths to become best friends.

Visiting Australia with their tolerance message, they hope to harness our multiculturalism into a global demonstration that different beliefs are no impediment to peace.

Pastor James Wuye lost most of his right forearm to a machete attack, and Imam Muhammed Ashafa lost family and a spiritual adviser before they met and to their surprise discovered common ground and eventually trust.

Their journey sparked the establishment of a body called the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Centre in the religiously divided city of Kaduna in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria.

However, even the name became contentious, as Pastor Wuye recalls: “Some Christians objected that we had the Muslim name first. I told them the order did not matter.”

Eventually the organisation reached out to a growing Nigerian Jewish population, as well as people of traditional animist beliefs, and evolved into the Interfaith Mediation Centre.

Nigeria, one of the most religiously committed nations on earth, is divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south with both wanting to get more territory. “The Christians wanted to plant the Bible on the Niger border and the Muslims wanted to take the Koran to the sea,” said Imam Ashafa.

They were brought together at the provincial government houses in Kaduna and a journalist linked their hands. Soon after, Imam Ashafa heard a sermon at his mosque that said forgiveness of his enemies was a central tenet of true Islam.

For Pastor Wuye the journey to trust was longer — about three years by his reckoning. Now he has a message for fellow Pentecostals and other Christian fundamentalists who think their religious path is the only truth.

“There is more than one way to truth, and remember what Jesus said about loving their neighbours.” Imam Ashafa has a similar message for Islamic extremists.

Both have travelled to other world trouble spots to carry their message and are the subject of an award-winning documentary by Palestinian filmmaker Imad Karman, The Imam and the Pastor.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/imam-and-pastor-unite-for-message-of-peace-tolerance-20081029-5bha.html

Robin Hood Tax Action

dave — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:54:28 +0000

Around the world, crowds took to the streets in a dozen cities last week to call on the world’s financial institutions to take greater responsibility for their actions.

The Robin Hood Day of Action was a global event coinciding with Make Finance Pay, a week-long initiative pushing for a Financial Transactions Tax or FTT.

Dressed as Robin Hood, Maid Marian and a host of merry characters, demonstrators from a dozen cities urged their countries to consider introducing an FTT, also known as the Robin Hood Tax.

In Canada, a whopping six cities took the campaign to heart, with events in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Saskatoon, Ottawa and St. John’s, while in Washington thousands rallied on 17 May, calling for the tax as part of broader financial reform.

In Berlin, campaigners attacked a bankers’ carriage loaded with money bags, while in Glasgow Robin Hood and his merry men rode down Buchanan Street throwing Fairtrade chocolate coins to passers-by. In London, campaigners marched to the Houses of Parliament where they delivered giant photography mosaics of more than 3,400 supporters to new MPs and in France the campaign received a huge amount of publicity with the launch of the Make Finance Work petition.

In Sydney, the Robin Hood Tax coalition saw a town crier join Robin Hood and his crew as they marched through the CBD, while in Perth a crew of campaigners took to the city streets armed with arrows and a giant kangaroo.

Finally, a film of the Sydney Action will be ready for viewing next week!

For the full story see the Robin Hood Tax Australia website; for a compilation of global photos, see this FlickR group.

Smile, You’re an Activist!

dave — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:09:49 +0000

Marching or signing a petition is a surefire way to find happiness, researchers say.

By Robin Petré

May 12, 2010

People engaged in political activism are more likely to live happier and more fulfilling lives than the average person, according to two psychologists writing in a recent issue of the journal Political Psychology.

“There is something about activism itself that is beneficial for well-being,” says Tim Kasser, co-author of the research paper, which is based on studies of college students. “We found that activists were feeling more autonomy and more personal growth. They also felt they had better relationships, more purpose in life, and they liked themselves better.”

Kasser teaches psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. His collaborator, Malte Klar, is a professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany. In one experiment, they asked one group of students to think about food in an ethical way–that is, about whether the food was traded fairly and organic. They asked a second group to think about whether they liked the taste of the food and its price. Both groups were then asked to write letters to the head of the dining services, discussing their particular perspective.

“The people who had been thinking and writing about the ethical aspects of the food ended up feeling more vital, alive and energetic than did the people who had just been writing about the more self-oriented, hedonistic aspects of the food,” says Kasser, who adds the positive effects were clear despite the small amount of effort the students expended. “Basically, all they did was write a letter.”

Activism fulfills human needs on several levels. According to the study, it satisfies one’s eudaimonic needs–the need for a sense of meaning and purpose to life. More superficially, it fulfills the hedonic need to feel pleasure.

Kasser says that activism “does a fairly good job at satisfying” the four psychological needs that must be met for a person to be happy: autonomy, competence, security and connection to others.

“I don’t doubt that part of the reason activism is good for people’s well-being is that they experience higher levels of connection to other people,” Kasser says. “We are not trying to say that the only way to increase your well-being is through political activism, but we are saying that it is a good one.”

Kasser reckons that being mad about something–environmental degradation, for example–can motivate some people. He resists the idea that activism should be a catalyst for anger. On the other hand, activism will benefit you no matter what the motivation.

“You can be angry about some social injustice that you see, and if you engage in activism, it may not make your anger go away, but it seems like it provides you with other kinds of well-being, probably because you know you’re trying to do something about the thing you’re angry about,” Kasser says.

In their first two studies, Klar and Kasser measured two different kinds of activism. One is conventional activism. It includes actions like marching on the street, signing a petition or writing a letter to your senator. High-risk activism, on the other hand, is engaging in radical behavior like breaking windows or directly confronting the police.

“High-risk activism showed to be a little positive, but not nearly as positive as conventional activism, which was consistently associated with being happier,” says Kasser. High-risk activism could result in harm or arrest, and as a result, “is not going to be associated with this high level of well-being.”

Kasser adds that activism is one area where the close connection between the personal and the political–the individual and society–is very clear. “The data show that it may improve your well-being,” Kasser says. “[A] thriving democracy can only survive if the people are politically active.”

This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/5955/

To Hell And Back

dave — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 01:09:59 +0000

Aid worker Shane Dolan sits a stone building with a young Ethiopian girl. (ABC)

Let me tell you the story of Shane Dolan. I met him two decades ago, when I was in Ethiopia for Four Corners, filming The Forgotten Famine.

Shane was an aid worker. Not the kind who hands out food at emergency relief centres, but the kind who works for the long term.

His work was all about building wells; in that parched country near the Horn of Africa, nothing is more valuable than water.

Without a well, the women of the village have to walk miles carrying huge jerry cans of the precious fluid from the nearest source.

One well can transform the life of a village.

But Shane’s work with the charity then known as Community Aid Abroad (now merged into Oxfam), was not just in digging the wells themselves.

His mission was to go a step beyond direct aid of that kind, and teach Ethiopians how to build their own wells.

It’s the aid philosophy that says, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day: teach him to fish and he and his family can eat every day”.

It was almost unimaginably difficult work. The philosophy was to use local materials and local technology to build the wells.

It wasn’t as if there was much choice about that; there was no electricity, very little access to fuel, and very few vehicles.

Even when there was petrol, people like Shane had to be able to strip down their own truck engines if anything went wrong, on top of their central tasks – finding and shaping local stone to dig and reinforce the shallow wells appropriate to the terrain, and teaching untrained workers to do the same.

And remember, all of this was in the middle of a war zone, with the ever-present threat of attack from the Ethiopian Air Force.

For years, I held the image of Shane Dolan in my mind as one sort of ideal of what an Australian abroad might be: tough, practical, but caring, and able to relate to all kinds of people in any situation.

But Shane Dolan had been doing it hard, as I found out when he rang me last year.

He had come back to Australia in 1992, depressed and shattered, feeling perhaps defeated by the sheer enormity of the problems; this man, who I had depicted in a film as achieving so much, felt himself a failure.

Call it a breakdown, call it post-traumatic stress disorder; whatever it was, Shane’s life and career fell to pieces for a while.

But that’s not how the story ends.

Yesterday I opened a letter from Shane Dolan, telling me that he’d been back to Ethiopia: I’ll let him tell the tale in his own words.

“The trip back … was absolutely incredible. The program we started some 22 years ago, where we trained 19 shallow wells technicians, has expanded to 63 technicians and provided 1.2 million Tigrayans in remote rural areas with clean drinking water. It has been a huge success and recognised throughout Ethiopia and Africa as a model for community development and self determination.”

“My colleague Peter and I were treated like long-lost sons and war heroes. We had no idea as to the success of the project or in fact whether people would even remember us. Everywhere we went people were able to recount stories of our time there. They couldn’t understand why all that time ago we came halfway around the world into their war-zone and famine situation for over a three-year period.

“There were endless hugs and tears as we were reunited with old friends and colleagues. We were the guests of honour at many celebrations. We dined with the President of Tigray.”

Shane’s letter moved me deeply. Depression works in part by distorting your view of yourself in relation to others, so that you lose sight of how greatly you are valued by others. For Shane Dolan, going back worked literally like a cure.

“For many years”, he writes, “I felt like such a failure … Returning after 17 years and witnessing what has been achieved and the respect from the people has allowed me finally to validate my experience and start the process of rebuilding my self-esteem. So after crying a river of tears, and many reunions and hugs, the healing process has begun. It feels like I have been holding my breath all these years.”

Now that he can (metaphorically) breathe, Shane Dolan is working for Ethiopia again. Having identified gaps in the supply of quality construction equipment, he’s organising a shipment, financed by the Australian NGO Planet Wheeler Foundation.

And he’s trying to put together a documentary about his experience of going back, using 23 hours of footage that he shot on the trip. I, for one, look forward to seeing it.

Mark Colvin is the presenter of ABC Radio’s current affairs program PM.

Four Steps to a Better World

dave — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:56:03 +0000

By Madison Mullen April 12, 2010

Joanna Macy has dedicated her life to peace, sustainability and coexistence with our environment. Though she lives in Berkeley, Calif., her work has taken her to Asia, Europe and Australia, allowing thousands of people to experience with her the possibility of turning despair into social activism.

A scholar of systems theory and a long-time Buddhist practitioner, in the 1970s Macy began developing “The Work That Reconnects,” experiential workshops that help people contribute to the development of a life-sustaining society. Macy offers Work That Reconnects workshops around the world and has written several books, her most recent being Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect our Lives, Our World.

The Work That Reconnects leads people through what Joanna calls “The Spiral”–a process that begins with “gratitude,” moves to “grief for the world,” then to “seeing with new eyes,” and finally to “going forth.” Macy calls this “The Great Turning”–a necessary, revolutionary transformation from the present-day industrial growth society to a future life-sustaining society.

You write, “This is an incredible time to be alive, a great privilege.” What do you mean?

This is a time when such big changes are happening–they’re so big that most people aren’t aware of them. People who lived during the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions were probably not aware that historic forces were underway that would change people for centuries to come. In our case these changes are happening because the mainstream society is not listening, and the current political economy is not working in more and more ways. We’re consuming, we’re making money out of extracting goods from the earth that cannot be renewed. We’re driven by the economy to make money by engaging in processes that create huge amounts of waste–whether it goes into the seas, the atmosphere or the soil–that will contaminate the living biosystems for centuries to come. For life to continue, we must invent a whole new way of supporting human life on earth. That change is coming. It’s not visible to many people because it is not being reported by mainstream media–written press or electronic. But it’s happening and that’s what I see as the third revolution.

What’s happening is breaking through at the grassroots level–in peoples’ minds and behaviors. This is the big adventure, the third revolution that some of us call The Great Turning: the transition from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. To be alive at this time, with all this uncertainty, even when we’re not sure we can make it, is our immense good fortune.

You have said that the spiral of your work begins with “gratitude,” goes to “grief for the world,” then to “seeing with new eyes,” then “going forth.” How exactly does this work?

We start with gratitude because that helps us be fully present, and shows us that we have a right to be here in this miraculous world. This evolving life on earth is a wonder, and gratitude helps open our senses–our hearts and minds –to this miracle, to this beauty. It brings us into presence, and I have come to realize that the most precious gift that we can give our world is to be fully present to it. Gratitude is a revolutionary act because it counters the thrust of the industrial growth society, or the consumer society, which breeds dissatisfaction. You have to make people dissatisfied with what they have and who they are in order that they keep buying.

Gratitude is an age-old practice, very strong in North American culture. When we’re fully present, then we have the grounding and confidence to look at what is inside of us as well. There is, in every person that I have met, regardless of their party politics or background, grief for what is happening to other beings. And there is fear about what is happening to our country and to our future. This pain for the world is present in everyone, but most people are afraid of it and cover it over, repress it.

When people discover that they don’t need to be afraid of the pain they feel for their world, there is great liberation of their energy. People find that these feelings of anguish for the wider planet are living proof of their interconnectedness, their radical interdependence with all life. This brings a new way of seeing and experiencing life.

The third stage of the cycle is to see with new eyes–that is, this new paradigm thinking that you hear of now and again, coming from science as well as from ancient teachings. It is this new way of seeing that will enable us to create the life-sustaining society we are committed to in “The Great Turning.”

The fourth stage is where we gather what we’ve learned in the first three stages and look at our own niche in life–where we happen to be living, what we happen to be doing, what our real relations are. This allows us to see how we can collaborate in building a sustainable, peaceful, and ecologically sane world.

What is your goal with The Work That Reconnects?

To open people up to the power of life that can flow through them, to release the energy that we need from each person for creating a life-sustaining society. The main thrust is the assumption that we are lucky to be living now, that we don’t need to be afraid of our pain for the world, that we can turn it inside out and see that it comes from our inter-being with all life forms, that we can speak for other life forms. We are in league with life. I see that The Work That Reconnects brings out peoples’ laughter, strength, collaboration; it brings them from loneliness into community.

How did you become involved in this in the first place?

I’ve been a social activist all my life. I was involved in the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. I was involved with the Peace Corps in village development work. I’m very interested in the global south. I have been active in the movement to stop nuclear weapons and waste. After 30 years of this, I saw that things were going so out of control because there was a widespread avoidance of facing the dangers. The repression of painful information is particularly widespread in the United States. We don’t want to look at the inequalities that our lifestyle has generated. We don’t want to look at the ways that we’re endangering the future of life on earth. This is a phenomenon that some people call “psychic numbing” and others call denial.

You work a lot with youth these days.

What’s striking to me about this millennial generation is that they see how bad things are. For the last several months, most of my work has been with youth. I am moved and inspired when I see the readiness of young people to awaken to the role they can play in service to life continuing on this planet. I am nearing the end of my life and now pulling up beside me are people from their late teens to early thirties–the millennial generation.

They have less denial than their parents. Often middle-aged people get so caught up in having to “play the game” and get ahead to support their families that it’s hard for them to see how the very basis of our culture is hostile to life itself.

People aren’t thrilled to have you tell them how terrible things are. At first I thought there was this big public apathy, but I learned that it was not that people were indifferent and it’s not that they didn’t care and it’s not that they didn’t know–they did know and they did care but it seemed too painful and too enormous to do anything about.

That’s when my work changed and I began working with peoples’ responses to information about the conditions of our world. It started out with what I called despair work, where people could speak their pain for the world so that they would not have to be afraid of it.

How can people begin to move from denial through despair, and on toward participation in The Great Turning?

Right off the bat, don’t try and do it alone. Know that if you have sorrow or grief or despair, don’t be afraid of it–it’s normal, it’s natural and it’s not evidence that anything is wrong with you. That’s what our culture would have us say–that if you feel huge grief about what’s happening, or fear or outrage, that this is your personal problem. Actually, your sorrow means you are able to suffer with your world. “Suffering with” is the literal meaning of compassion. Your grief shows that you’re a compassionate being. These are realizations that you make on your own but also allow you to engage with other people in The Work That Reconnects.

Madison Mullen, a junior at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, is the editor-in-chief of The Weekly, the oldest student-run newspaper in North America.

Barca – A Beacon Of Hope

dave — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:48:01 +0000

by Pete Redington

April 6, 2010

Last year, the soccer team FC Barcelona achieved one of the greatest seasons in the history of sports by winning both the Spanish League title, the European Champions League and four other trophies, becoming the first team ever to win the sextuple.

But Barca (as it is popularly known) is more than just a formidable soccer team. By fighting humanitarian battles off the field, it is a rare example of a successful franchise that manages to keep sports in proper perspective.

For more than 100 years, Barca has conducted itself as a “defender of freedom and democratic rights,” as team president Joan Laporta puts it, “facing up to others in a time of governments without tolerance.” The team’s immense stadium is adorned with paintings by Joan Miro and Salvador Dali, and the club is owned by its fans–more than 150,000 of them.

Today, when Barca is at least as successful financially as it is athletically, the team continues to manage its wealth in accord with its democratic values. For years, Barca’s jersey was easy to distinguish: It was the one without a corporate logo emblazoned across the chest. “If you take into account how much they could have made from selling to a conventional sponsor,” observed the Guardian’s Paolo Bandini, “the decision is staggering.”

In 2006, the team finally made a deal to fill the space on their jerseys: It agreed to wear the logo of UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund), announcing that it would donate 1.5 million euros (over $2 million) to the organization each year for five years. And this spring, Barca’s best and most marketable player, Lionel Messi, took on the new role of UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

On April 11, Barca will face its fiercest rival, Real Madrid. The contest will feature not only the two teams tied for the league lead, but teams who symbolize divergent Spanish political undercurrents with powerful historical significance.

Even now, the events of the Depression-era Spanish Civil War have lost little of their power to provoke passion. The Barca-Real contest is a perfect embodiment of those passions. Literally and figuratively, Real Madrid represents the historical winner of the war. “Madrid is a club that inspires admiration among football fans all over the world,” says Real’s captain Raul Gonzalez Blanco. Its crest includes the royal crown, and in the 1930s it was the favorite team of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Real Madrid has won more Spanish League and European Champions League titles than any other team.

In contrast, Barca had widespread support from Catalonia’s left-wing politicians and intellectuals during the Civil War. As a result, Franco harassed and persecuted the club mercilessly. His troops bombed the building in which the team’s trophies were kept and he closed its stadium for six months and ordered the execution of its president. “When you lose against Madrid,” observes Barca captain Carles Puyol, “you lose more than three points. It’s the moral blow that hurts most.”

Last summer, Real Madrid spent upwards of 160 million euros ($218.7 million) to acquire two world-renowned soccer players, Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo. Barca won the first meeting of the season, 2-0, in November. When they meet again this month, Barca players will wear the UNICEF logo across their chests, and Real Madrid will wear the logo of its current corporate sponsor. The action will be broadcast around the world.

Many viewers will enjoy the spectacle of watching world-class athletes compete. But for other viewers, Barca will represent a beacon of hope that has stayed true to its traditional values of citizenship and democracy.

A former history teacher and Outward Bound instructor, Pete Redington lives and writes in western Massachusetts. He is an associate with Class Action, a national nonprofit working for economic justice. His website is RedingtonPete.com.

This article is permanently archived as The Spanish Soccer War at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/5741/

In Death Giving Life

dave — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:25:39 +0000

Within hours of his death in an Israeli hospital, Ahmed’s heart, kidneys, liver and lungs were restoring life to six other people.

It’s November 2005. Israeli soldiers raid a refugee camp inside the small Palestinian city of Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank occupied territories. The soldiers had been there before. This time, they shoot a young boy holding a toy gun. This, too, has happened before. Twelve-year-old Ahmed Khatib dies, as have many children before and after him.

But this story of Ahmed in Jenin is more than a blip in this stream of predictable news. Ahmed’s parents, in an act of peaceful resistance and anger, chose to donate his organs to save other lives. Within hours of his death in an Israeli hospital, Ahmed’s heart, kidneys, liver and lungs were restoring life to six other people. And his parents, knowing these gifts of life might well go to the “enemies” on the Israeli side of the wall, decided to make the donation without restriction.

Shot in the back of the head, Ahmed had no real chance of surviving after the bullet exploded into deadly fragments. He had been playing a dangerous game.

In the bleak world of the refugee camp, pestering soldiers on raids is one of the few entertainments available to kids. Ahmed’s mother, Abla Khatib, candidly acknowledged that her son used to throw stones at the soldiers. The kids lived in a partisan world and regarded the armed fighters on the Palestinian side as their heroes. Those armed fighters were the usual targets of the raiding Israeli soldiers. Ahmed had collected posters of death notices for the Palestinian “martyrs,” 59 of whom had been killed just blocks from his home in a fierce attack three years earlier.

The day Ahmed was shot should have been a special day. It was the first day of Eid el-Fitr, the close of Ramadan’s month-long fasting typically celebrated with numerous festivities. Ahmed had new clothes for the occasion, and he arose before dawn to help his mother with preparations. He left for the mosque just after daybreak, passing along the graveyard where his heroes, the “martyrs” of the intifada (armed resistance of the occupation) were buried. But when word of the soldiers’ arrival on yet another raid spread through the streets, Ahmed and many other youngsters swarmed into action. His parents say he did not own a toy gun, for they knew that would be dangerous. But he must have found one in that moment. And the toy he grabbed made him a target.

How deeply must parents reach for the courage to turn such a tragedy into a peace-seeking protest? Ahmed’s father, Ismail, knew suffering firsthand. He had lost a brother to kidney failure two decades earlier after a lengthy struggle, in spite of Ismail regularly donating blood for him. Had this and other hardships of living under the Israeli occupation deepened their compassion for others’ suffering? Or perhaps the parents’ compassion sprang from encountering people awaiting organ transplants while Ahmed lived out his final days on life support in an Israeli hospital.

Ismail consulted with his local religious authorities to check whether Islamic law permitted donation practices and received clear affirmation. Ahmed’s heart was given to a 12-year-old Israeli Arab girl. His lungs went to a Jewish teenager with cystic fibrosis. One kidney went to a three-year-old Jewish girl and another to a five-year-old Bedouin Arab. Ahmed’s liver was divided between a seven-month-old Jewish girl and an older Jewish mother with hepatitis.

A flurry of news coverage widely reported the surprising story, and leading Israeli politicians including then Deputy Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, called to apologize to the parents for the shooting death of their son.

Ahmed’s mother, Abla, gave this perspective: “To give away his organs was a different kind of resistance. Violence against violence is worthless. Maybe this will reach the ears of the whole world so they can distinguish between just and unjust. Maybe the Israelis will think of us differently. Maybe just one Israeli will decide not to shoot.”

Ahmed’s father adds, “The hope is that those people will learn the lesson from what I have done. Those six people will learn the lesson that we are human beings; their families, even if they were serving in the army, will consider what I have done.”

Compassion more widespread than violence in Haiti

dave — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:01:49 +0000

A group of Haitians found a 6-year-old boy still alive in the rubble three days after the earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was weak but alive. When Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) worker Ben Depp happened upon them, he was able to get a hacksaw and a flashlight that helped them complete the boy’s rescue. This kind of compassion — Haitians working together to help neighbours and strangers — is far more prevalent than the incidents of violence that are being reported on the national media, said Depp.

http://mcc.org/stories/news/compassion-more-widespread-violence-haiti

The Imams’ Invitation

dave — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:45:53 +0000

Many of us feel we are caught in the middle of a clash of civilizations. Where extremists wage wars of terror against terror and moderates run for cover. Well recently 138 moderate Muslims came out ‘from under the rubble’ as it were and called upon moderate Christians to form an alliance together against extremism.

In an historic open letter a coalition of imams, muftis and ayatollahs called upon Christians to recognize that ‘Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population’. They wrote that ’the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians’. On what foundation can we build a lasting peace? they asked. Then they answered the question by saying ‘ the basis for this peace already exists. It is part of the very found- ational principles of both faiths: love of God, and love of neighbour.’ If we practice this, there can be peace.

As a Christian I have responded to the Imams’ invitation and signed on as a public supporter of the Muslim call to be committed to this ‘Common Word’.

There are many Aussie Muslims and Christians who are showing us simple ways we can practice our love for God and for our neighbour – and rebuild the bridges between us that the extremists keep blowing up.

After the attack on the World Trade Towers on 9/11, the first mosque burnt down in retaliation anywhere in the world was in Logan. However, the Imam Mohamed Abdallah, did not call for retaliation in return. Instead of seeking vengeance, he extended forgiveness. The local Uniting Church responded by offering the use of their church for prayers until the mosque was rebuilt.

In West End Marty and Evonne Richards have built a joint social venture with Ali Karimi who first came to Australia fleeing persecution in Afghanistan as a boat person. Together they manage E.P.M. (Ethical Property Management) which provides environmentally sensitive local pest control services. And Ali’s wife Malika works with Marty and Evonne at Blackstar Roastery, a social venture that not only provides gourmet organic fair trade coffee but also creates a hospitable space for disparate groups of people in our community to come together.

As for me, I have joined AMARAH (Australian Muslims Advocating for the Rights of All Humanity) and together with a Muslim colleague, Nora Amath, host guided interfaith conversations at the Multi Faith Centre on peace, justice, community, economy and sustainability.

Each of us are discovering we can be the change we want to see in our world.

Dave Andrews

A Common Word www.acommonword.com AMARAH www.amarah.org

BlackStar Coffee www.blackstarcoffee.com.au EPM www.epm.onthenet.com.au

The Gaza Freedom March

dave — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:25:34 +0000

The Gaza Freedom March is truly an unprecedented, historic event for the global grass-roots peace movement. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, mass international solidarity action ever undertaken. Some 1,362 people from 42 nations have traveled here to Cairo in order to journey through the Sinai Peninsula into Gaza to join 50,000 in a march commemorating the first anniversary of the Israeli attack and siege which left 1,400 Gazans dead and 5,000 wounded. Such a massive outpouring never happened during the Vietnam, Central America or Iraq wars. It is a sign of the world’s outrage of the U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Gaza, and the continuing strength of the peace movement.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/hunger-strike-gaza

Building Bridges For Peace

dave — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:38:57 +0000

On Sunday 18th October, Jo Berry officially launched Building Bridges for Peace at the Duke of York Cinema, Brighton.

Following the screening of the film, Soldiers of Peace, Jo addressed an audience of over 100 people setting out the aims and aspirations of the charity.

Accompanied by her friend and colleague, Pat Magee, and supported by writer and broadcaster Simon Fanshawe, Jo took questions from the audience.
(Picture: Brighton Argus)

“The fact that I am standing here with Pat and launching this charity in Brighton, the place where my father was killed 25 years ago, is a sign of how the world has moved forwards.“

The event was filmed by the production company, Positive TV, and you will be able to watch it here shortly.

Earlier in the day, Jo gave an interview with the BBC in which she introduced the charity and its work. (see below)

Bombing Daughter launches charity

reprinted from BBC News Online Sun 18th October

‘The daughter of one of the five people killed in the bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel 25 years ago has returned to the city to launch a new charity.’

Jo Berry’s father, Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry, died in the explosion which came close to killing members of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet.

Ms Berry’s charity, Building Bridges for Peace, is the result of her 25-year quest to forgive those responsible.

Brighton bomber Patrick Magee was joining Ms Berry for the launch.

He was convicted and sentenced to serve at least 35 years in jail, but released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.

He and Ms Berry have been in contact ever since.

“I have learned that rather than just being the enemy, there was a human being we could have communicated with,” she said.

“I think we have to find ways to communicate with people before they choose violence.”

She and Mr Magee are featured in a film about reconciliation, Soldiers for Peace, shown at the Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton on Sunday.

Afterwards they were to answer questions from the audience together.

Ms Berry said she was not surprised by the continuing interest in their friendship.

The Grand Hotel was bombed on the morning of 12 October 1984

“I can see it is an unusual friendship and sometimes it surprises me,” she said. “I hadn’t planned for this to happen but we will carry on meeting as long as I feel it is contributing in some way.”

She said the charity would work on projects at home and overseas.

“I live near Manchester and I am going to be helping some work there with families of knife crime. “It is about raising awareness in schools and with children. I feel that learning the language of reconciliation and mediation and if how we resolve our conflicts is very important for children.”

She said Mr Magee was aware that his presence in Brighton might cause distress to people. “We are looking at what we can learn and where we go from here and he is hoping he won’t cause distress to anyone,” she said.

Reconcilable Differences

dave — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:27:34 +0000

Fifteen years after genocide, Rwanda is showing signs of healing…I went to Rwanda recently—just a few weeks before the 15th anniversary of the genocide—to see how the church, which itself needs healing and forgiveness for its role in the affair, is dealing with the trauma today. While some wounds still run deep, and problems remain, I became convinced that something remarkable is afoot in a nation whose soul has been so tragically torn.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/june/26.28.html