Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/valerie/page/17/)
Could this be the year that we lay down our weapons of warfare and study war no more? Could this be the year when we make the ploughshare our weapon to wage a just peace? Our prayers for peace are powerful to make us all better, more righteous, more patient, more joyful, more loving. Our prayers can make us fierce and fearless to re/create the world.
The intent of the holiday is to emphasize seven moral principles, the Nguzo Saba, that arises from the cultural unity of African peoples. Kwanzaa is a time of remembrance and of rededication to a struggle for freedom.
Much of the initial reporting and commentary surrounding President Obama’s Nobel lecture focused on his explication of just war theory and read his remarks as a defense of his sending more warriors into Afghanistan. This is understandable. Just war theory is thousands of years old. The United States has been engaged in perpetual warfare since its birth. A vast majority of people do not know just peace theory. However, these initial reports failed to note President Obama’s emphasis on just peace principles.
Commensalsim is a relationship where living things live in close association. They benefit from each other without causing parasitical harm. The concept is kin to the idea of communion. It is mutual participation. It is Eucharist. It is a reciprocal indwelling of the divine in the human. It is gratitude. It is grace.
Terror is a response. Terrorism is a tactic. A terrorist is a criminal. Attorney General Eric Holder is right to try the people accused of plotting and of helping to execute the 9/11 attacks in criminal court.
Halloween is a moment to look into the paradox of ourselves, see the demons and monsters living inside us and purge them through our love.
The American Revolution is not over. The principles, morals and manners of a representative democracy, of a republic,require an insistence that our representatives act in accordance with the public good. It requires manners based on a heart of love.
In awarding the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace to President Barack Obama, the Nobel Committee has put its faith in the ability of the president to inspire the world and thereby to push it closer to peace. I think he is a worthy recipient of this honor.
Confessions of effort say what we are doing toward achieving a greater goal. Confessions of effort are a kind of confession of innocence while it admits that if our efforts stop or falter, we will be guilty of stopping too soon.
September 21 is Peace Day. It reminds us that peacemaking is not only a top down process of diplomatic acumen and strategic military deployment, but peacemaking is a bottom up process of person to person relationships.