Relentless Love

This phrase, "Relentless Love," speaks to me, relentlessly, inviting me to return, after a three month respite, to writing, to my blog, where I share a few simple thoughts, a poem, a story, a scripture and a question or two.

A few thoughts: As I relentlessly stumble toward my deepest truth, struggling to listen deeply to the still, solemn voice that whispers in the depths of my soul, I find that some days I live it well and rest in the blessing of the meditation bell, while other days I stumble and flee and resist the invitation to do that which would set me free.

A poem: On these days, in these moments, I am reminded of Francis Thompson's haunting poem, The Hound of Heaven, which begins:  

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat-and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet-
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'

A story: When I was a boy, I loved autumn days when the leaves would fall and float gently down as I ran to catch as many as I could before they touched the ground. I loved to gather the fallen leaves in piles upon piles and jump into their pillowy embrace with abandon. I felt profoundly alive and free. Some days I would simply lie there in the leaves and stare up at the immensity of the sky, surrounded by the naked beauty of the trees, and know somehow that I was at peace, in a sacred place.  I would somehow sense that we "inter-be," as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. Maybe today I would call it grace or gift or just a lovely memory. Despite our family's woes, I would say now that I came to know then that love persists, that something bigger than me relentlessly wants me to be free. This memory stays with me.  It somehow comforts me.  It reminds me of Gandhi's relentless faith in the power of love and grace. As he says,

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.

A scripture: I also remember riding in a car with my family when I was a boy, maybe eleven or twelve. My parents were arguing relentlessly as they often did about finances.  I found myself in my mind's eye resting in the leaves, feeling relentlessly free; and then I found myself reminding my parents of the sacred words that had been read earlier that day at the church service we had attended:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life. - Matthew 6:25

As I grow older, I find that both the grace and comfort of the leaves and the trees, as well as my parents' worry about finances and life's struggles, both relentlessly pursue me down the nights and down the days. When I find myself falling prey to fear or sadness, despair or worry, I call to mind Gandhi's truth, and love's relentless pursuit. I look deeply to see, with Thich Nhat Hanh, that we inter-be. We are connected. We are sisters and brothers. Thus, harm to you results in harm to me, harm to the leaves and trees results in harm to us moving together toward that which would set us free. I sit still, breathe in, breathe out, and relentlessly recite the mantra that love, that still small voice within, speaks to me: "do not worry, do not be afraid, love is relentless, it is for love you are made."

A few questions: How will you relentlessly pursue love today? How will you allow yourself to be relentlessly pursued by love? What is relentless in your life, inviting you to move through fear to deeper truth and freedom?

2013 Global Peace Index (GPI)

This blog is dedicated to Steve Killelea and Vision of Humanity and their recently released 2013 Global Peace Index (GPI).  My hope and prayer is that as we look and listen deeply to the data, reflect upon it given our particular education, experience and expertise, we will be inspired to act, to labor in love, for a more peaceful and just global community. Let us work tirelessly, together, to create peace in our hearts, our home, our community and our world.  Much peace to you.

2013 GPI

The GPI measures peace in 162 countries according to 22 qualitative and quantitative indicators of the absence of violence and fear of violence. This is the 7th annual edition of the index.

The 2013 Global Peace Index (GPI) video explores peace around the world over the last year, and identifies the most peaceful and least peaceful countries. Click link to view video: 2013 GPI Video

Highlights

• The world has become 5% less peaceful since 2008
• Europe is the most peaceful region, with 13 of the top 20 most peaceful countries
• War ravaged Afghanistan returns to the bottom of the index
• Syria’s GPI score has fallen by 70% sine 2008
• The total economic impact of containing violence is estimated to be US$9.46 trillion in 2012

Results

• The top three most peaceful countries are Iceland, Denmark and New Zealand. Small and stable democracies make up the top ten most peaceful countries.
• With a newly elected government and a steady recovery from the 2011 turmoil, Libya had the biggest improvement in peace score since last year.
• The three least peaceful countries are Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
• Syria’s score dropped by the largest margin, with the biggest ever score deterioration in the history of the GPI.

Trends

• Since the 2008, 110 countries have become less peaceful, while 48 have improved their score.
• Three main factors that have contributed to the deterioration in peace scores from 2012-2013: the number of homicides, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP and political instability.
• The number of deaths from internal conflicts has risen significantly. In the past year, the drug war in Mexico claimed twice as many lives as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Economic impact

The total economic impact of containing violence is equivalent to 11% of global GDP, or US $9.46 trillion. If the world could reduce the cost of violence by 50% it would generate enough money to repay the debt of the developing world, provide enough money for the European stability mechanism, and fund the additional amount required to fund the Millennium Development Goals.

Interactive Map

2013 GPI interactive map. Click link to view interactive map: 2013 GPI Interactive Map

Memorial Day tribute - Honoring West Point Graduate, Captain Paul Chappell

"Captain Paul K. Chappell has given us a crucial look at war and peace from

the unique perspective of a soldier, and his new ideas show us why world peace

is both necessary and possible in the 21st century."

 

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

 

In order to celebrate Memorial Day weekend, to remember and lift up our soldiers, all those who have given their lives for a higher purpose, for love, family, community, and the ideals for which our country stands, and upon which it was founded, I share with you the story and message of a soldier and warrior for peace, Captain Paul K. Chappell. 

 

Captain Chappell graduated from West Point in 2002, was deployed to Iraq, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. He is the author of the Road to Peace series, a seven-book series about waging peace, ending war, the art of living, and what it means to be human.

Chappell serves as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Lecturing across the country and internationally, he also teaches college courses and workshops on Peace Leadership. He grew up in Alabama, the son of a half-black and half-white father who fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and a Korean mother. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

You can learn more about his campaign to unite Americans to wage peace, the American Unity Project, by going to: http://www.americanunityproject.com

You can visit his website at: www.paulkchappell.com or www.peacefulrevolution.com.

Silence, Story and Song -

Talk to an Iraqi

I am blessed and honored to call Haider Hamza Abdulrazaq my friend.  Each of the past three years, he has taken time from his busy schedule as a PhD candidate, Rhodes Scholar, Program Officer at Open Society Foundations, and award-winning combat photo journalist to share a bit of his story with my Social Justice and Peacemaking students at NYU.  He shares photos he took as an embedded photo journalist with ABC News during the "Shock and Awe" war in Iraq. They are graphic. They are horrific. They are beautiful. They are powerful and profound.

They are challenging and  invite my students and me to examine the devastation and destruction that is war. They humanize the Iraqi people and remind us of the real cost of war and violence.

They remind us that the children and the people of Iraq, Babylon, are beautiful, that they have lived in the cradle of civilization for thousands of years and have given the world some of its most sacred and precious art and culture.

He invites us, in the spirit of great peacemakers like Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr.), to look and listen deeply to the voices of our "enemy," to the voices of the voiceless, to the voices of those who, on both sides, every side, are the victims of war and violence.

Haider leads by example.  After graduating from Baghdad University in 2006, Haider won a Fulbright Scholarship to study global security and conflict resolution in the United States.  

"New to America and wanting to understand what the American people felt about their country's involvement in Iraq, Haider decided to travel across the US to talk to people about the war. He drove through 35 states setting up a mobile booth with a sign that says 'Talk to an Iraqi.' 

Haider said, 'I always wondered, what do people in American know of what is happening and do they feel responsible...did this war change their lives at all, since it has for sure changed ours dramatically.' 

Part of Haider's journey was aired on NPR and Showtime's 'This American Life'. Haider's powerful and fascinating lecture includes poignant and touching film clips from his road trip in America, a slide of photos he took of post-war Iraq, thoughts on the conflict in his country, the presence of US troops there, his personal struggle to heal the wounds of oppression and commitment today to raise awareness among the young people and send messages of peace and reconciliation."(See: Haider Hamza, Telling the story of his country)

I invite you to 'Talk to an Iraqi', to listen to Haider's story and let it speak to you in the depths of your heart. Let it challenge and inspire you. Let it invite healing and sacred reconciliation in your soul.

May we see in the Iraqi people our sisters, our brothers, and know our well-being, our liberation and peace in our world, to depend on the well-being of our sisters and brothers.

Creating Your Constructive Program

Mahatma Gandhi launched a comprehensive, detailed program of social, political, economic and spiritual uplift for India and called it a constructive program. It was a program that called all to embrace practical steps to improve not only themselves but also their community, country and world.

Joanne Sheehan, in Gandhi's Three Elements of Nonviolent Social Transformation, shares, "We are quick to identify and protest the things we don't like in our society, but we are often asked 'so what are you for?' As revolutionaries we need to start building a new society in the shell of the old. Gandhi said we should not wait for one to crumble before starting the other. Constructive program brings people together to do the kind of community work that is empowering, bringing them to a point of self reliance and being ready to develop a new society. To outline a nonviolent campaign involving all these elements, we need to begin to identify where the change is needed. Gandhi identified 18 elements of constructive program in India that included removal of untouchability, developing village industries, sanitation, basic education, national language, spinning cloth as a symbol of economic freedom, labor unions, involving students, and caring for lepers. These are not a specific model for us, but ones that we can begin to get help from as we look at the changes needed in our society to begin to build a new one."

In this spirit, I invite my students in our Social Justice and Peacemaking course at NYU to create their own constructive program. I challenge them to consider the practical steps they need to take with respect to their lifestyle and personal choices and disciplines in order to connect to their deepest desires and truth, and to create the community and culture they want for themselves, their family and for future generations. I ask them to think about practices that can build and discipline their body and biology, i.e. diet, nutrition and exercise. I ask them to think about what will help them develop their intellectual, psychological and mental health and well-being, i.e. reading, writing, counseling and study. I ask them to consider actions that will better their social, relational being, i.e. joining community organizations and doing service work. I ask them to think about spiritual practices that will help them move toward deeper truth, compassion and deep peace, i.e. prayer, meditation and creative expression.  The purpose of this exercise is not merely to encourage personal growth, but also to challenge students to consider, as Sheehan says, "changes needed in our society to build a new one."

So, my invitation to you is to take the time to create your own constructive program, to join in the liberating labor of love that is our sacred duty, to develop and use the gifts we each have been given to build Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "beloved community." May you know yourself to be a beloved child of our Creator.  May you live your constructive program in the world.  In the process, you will not only become the person you want and were created to be but also you will help others, and all of us become who we were meant to be as well.  Peace and blessings to you.

Their Secret, Prayer

I have asked many great spiritual leaders, like Mairead Maguire, Kathy Kelly, Arun Gandhi and yes even Mother Teresa, with whom I had the privilege of working in Calcutta, India, "What is your secret? How do you remain faithful and continue to do what you do, love in the face of such pain, suffering and violence?  All replied with the same one-word answer, "Prayer."  Their secret it seems, from their perspective, was as simple and as profound as the word, the act of, prayer.

What is prayer? Indeed, there is something mysterious or secretive about it.  Prayer occurs in the sacred and secretive depths of one's being, in the silence of the soul.  Prayer can be a conversation. Prayer can be total silence.  Prayer can occur when one is still or when when one sings or walks or works meditatively.  Prayer requires presence, full awareness and listening. Prayer pays attention. Prayer requires truth and honesty.  Prayer is about relationship.  Prayer is done all alone. Prayer is about blessing and being blessed.  Prayer searches.  Prayer accepts. Prayer can be playful.  Prayer can be pained.  Prayer is melody.  Prayer seeks harmony.  Prayer is question. Prayer is answer. Prayer heals. Prayer reconciles.  Prayer restores right relationship. Prayer liberates. Prayer cries out. And if we believe spiritual mentors and leaders from all traditions, cultures, geographies, across the millennia, prayer is the secret to living life to its fullest, to living a liberated life that sees most deeply the truth that we are mysteriously connected, that we are all sisters and brothers, beloved community.

Yesterday the Catholic Cardinals selected a Pope.  What many, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, seemed to be moved, if not captivated, by was Pope Francis' first relational act with the people, he bowed humbly and asked the people to pray for him.  Clearly, by this simple, sacred act, he was rooting himself in prayer, not merely his own prayer, but the power of prayer, and his own need not only to pray but also to be prayed for.  The secret of prayer is that it simultaneously gives and receives, simultaneously sets the self aside and allows one to touch the depths of one's truest self.  

Call it what you will, we are being invited by these spiritual leaders to take time to pray, to meditate, to enter into silence, to be fully present to both our sacred gifts and our sacred neediness. Let us continue to hold one another in prayer, to bow to the divine present in each of us, to enter into the mystery and secret power that prayer possess, that we possess in prayer.