Featured Blog Posts – December 2008 Archive (20)

BLACK - WHITE - AND GREY

I just received a lovely note, and the following letter from Robi Damelin, who I wrote about in my previous blog post "The Courage to Forgive in the Holy Land." She found my recent blog on Ipeace. With Robi's permission, I share this letter from her, written yesterday...

BLACK - WHITE - AND GREY

By Robi Damelin

Of the Bereaved Parents Circle - Families Forum

How I wish I could view life through certain eyes of black and white, and that this grey picture… Continue

Added by Velcrow Ripper on December 31, 2008 at 7:34pm — 2 Comments

Let Peace Begin With Me

copy of today's post from my blog "writer's flow"

I was very happy to find the iPeace site this week, especially because I was in time to participate in their first “iPeace Day”. There are some physical gatherings occuring around the world and a lot of virtual events happening too. I could say a lot about the idea of peace, though I believe that most people already get it, or refuse to try to get it. I have been contemplating what to… Continue

Added by janflora on December 31, 2008 at 5:30pm — 3 Comments

My iPeace Day

I case you were wondering how I am spending iPeace Day. I will drive now to Beer Sheva, my home town, to pick up my parents and bring them over to my house. My father is 87 and has difficulty walking, my mother is 78. There is just no possible way for them to get to a safe place in the 45 seconds which take a missle to get from Gaza to their house.

Since early this morning 5 Grad missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza hit my home town. One… Continue

Added by David Califa on December 31, 2008 at 11:58am — 46 Comments

THE COURAGE TO FORGIVE IN THE HOLY LAND

In 2004 I visited Israel and Palestine, to film for Scared Sacred, for what was to become the powerful, moving conclusion of the film. Below are some excerpts from my journal. It features a remarkable group of people known as the Bereaved Families Circle, parents of both Israeli's and Palestinians who were killed in the conflict, who have banded to together to say: enough. Enough killing. It's time to stop this… Continue

Added by Velcrow Ripper on December 30, 2008 at 11:00pm — 28 Comments

The Lepufology Project >>> Introduction and Participation Guide

The Lepufology Project : Stop Tar Sands Development ! from Poligraf on Vimeo.

I would like to call your attention to my current project, which aims mainly to raise public awareness of the issues and impacts of the non-consensual development of oil sands in Alberta, and of the various organizations taking action against it. It also advocates the use of… Continue

Added by Christopher Stewart on December 30, 2008 at 12:06pm — 1 Comment

I refuse to give up hope

These are dark days for peace lovers. But I refuse to give up hope for better days.

Please watch and listen to Noa & Mira Awad - singing 'We can work it out'

Noa said: "I feel peace is like the rings created by a rock thrown into water. One small rock creates one small ring that becomes wider and wider but weaker at the same… Continue

Added by David Califa on December 29, 2008 at 11:38am — 14 Comments

IRONY AND PEACE -- nothing to laugh about?

Is humour out of place in peace? Is there nothing to laugh about here? Is it hard to smile when such news shocks us and we glare into space asking "Why?" Do people "get it" if they see something with double meaning, a play on words about peace, something cheerful, when newspapers and television broadcast gloom and despair?

An interesting experience I had was when I exhibited ninety photographs of China in Foligno, Italy during the event… Continue

Added by Stephanie on December 29, 2008 at 10:43am — 6 Comments

Working Together - Dialogue

Good morning. A little cool in Santa Barbara today -- we're not used to that! But it's warming up, and the sky is clear. That dog across the street is still barking now and then. The birdies on the balcony have had their breakfast...

It was fun showing up here this morning, to discover my blog post on the front page -- right next to the story on the Nobel Prize! That was beautiful. What does the Nobel Prize winner say? "No crisis can't be solved..."

I took a minute to… Continue

Added by Bruce Schuman on December 28, 2008 at 8:21pm — 11 Comments

Portal to Unity

Dearly Beloveds...

Greetings from Santa Barbara California USA, Planet Earth....

It's late afternoon here now, the sun is just going down over the mountain, the sky is a soft blue with fine fingers of white clouds...

Today has been another very creative day. There is a kind of power flowing, something is pushing its way through. I keep coming back to this iPeace site, and all the lovely attractions here. Maybe it's that song, Imagine -- is it being sung in… Continue

Added by Bruce Schuman on December 28, 2008 at 2:30am — 41 Comments

A New Blog------------This I believe

This Christmas I received a most extraordinary gift I would like to share with all of you-about the power of actions toward another and our ability to help influence others and expand their thinking.

I spent this Christmas with my wife and her daughter (to whom I always refer lovingly as "my daughter."

I have known Danielle about 11 years, since she was about 17-18, and in many ways typical of that age.

As I have always been so aware of mistakes made by my parents I… Continue

Added by Sandman on December 27, 2008 at 8:34pm — 5 Comments

Considering the roots of war

On this Christmas Day I find myself thinking about the roots of war. An odd turn of mind, which I'm afraid only my friends on iPeace would understand. I’ve recently discovered the films of Victoria Foyt, a lovely actress who is also an accomplished writer. She has co-written several of the scripts for her movies, and in 2007 published her first novel, The Virtual Life of Alexie Diamond.

I am copying a couple of paragraphs from a 2003 essay written by Victoria Foyt, titled ‘A… Continue

Added by Dave Willsey on December 25, 2008 at 8:30pm — 3 Comments

IMAGINE A WORLD

Imagine a World where each and every one of was committed to discovering who we are truly here to be, committed to unwrapping our gifts, to living from our deepest being. Imagine a world where we support each other in that quest. Imagine a world where we see in each other our potential to become – Buddha to be, Gandhi to be, Einstein to be. Imagine a world where we greet each other with compassion and an open heart – Dalai Lama to be, Amma to be, Mother Theresa to be. Imagine a world where we… Continue

Added by Velcrow Ripper on December 24, 2008 at 11:38pm — 21 Comments

Thank YOU

I want to thank YOU, all members of Candle4Tibet and iPeace for pouring so much meaning into my life. Please don't forget to thank whoever is dear to you. Please promise to never take them for granted.

Happy holidays to all of… Continue

Added by David Califa on December 24, 2008 at 5:35pm — 49 Comments

How I Began Conscience Living

How I Began Conscious Living

The following is a story of how I began living life with conscious clarity. What I expected to happen is for my daily life to change like a big, grand, eye opening whammy of an event. You know, the clouds part and the sunbeam shines directly on me as I extend my hands in blissful ecstasy. It has not exactly happened like that; although, there have been very intense moments of happiness.

Now I understand that I am made of energy and vibrations, and I… Continue

Added by Tasha on December 22, 2008 at 2:36pm — 1 Comment

A Critical Look at Living

About 75 years ago Mohandas K. Gandhi took a critical look at the present structure or the society in which he lived. He saw that city life created a large number of people in poverty, and suggested self-sustaining villages in order to foster a more efficient way of living.

I look at life in this country right now, and I see disaster waiting to happen. We have built a foundation on the grocery store ideal. The problem with that is, if something ever happened to the grocery store, or… Continue

Added by Michael on December 15, 2008 at 9:42am — 2 Comments

My personal IPeace heroes

I want to dedicate my IPEACE DAY to two people very dear to me: my parents

Not only because they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next januari , and share their love for half a century, wich is exceptional enough, but what makes it extra special is the happiness they enjoy now and the way they 'love their neighbours' like they learned from their parents, even after the horrors they encountered as children in the second World War.

Being from 1930 and 1935, my parents were… Continue

Added by General Mojo on December 12, 2008 at 11:33am — No Comments

Serlingpa Retreat Center in Peace

SERLINGPA RETREAT CENTER´S CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD PEACE IN MEXICO

Origin of the name of the Retreat Center:

Serlingpa was a grat scholar and a very revered teacher around the year 1000 from India who went to settle His temple in Borobudur, Jakarta. He was the fundamental piece in being the person who clarified organized and transmitted the teachings of impersonal/ altruistic love which one of His most relevant students, the pandit… Continue

Added by Serlinpa Retreat Center Mexico on December 12, 2008 at 8:00am — 1 Comment

The peace people of iPeace.

The peace people of iPeace

Today I shared with you 2 profiles of iPeace members that I thought are interesting.

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Right at this moment we are 12379 people in iPeace. We come from over 180 countries. The aggregate of our cultures is the culture of this planet. I believe that we subscribe to every single religion and… Continue

Added by David Califa on December 10, 2008 at 10:54am — 15 Comments

words and memes

I write like some people doodle. Words are like baubles I take pleasure in stringing together. I delight like a baby at the phantasms of thought that emerge from this mechanical process. The sun heats the earth, and weather spins out clouds. Similarly, language produces these "rows and floes of angel hair," and the wide eyed mind reads them like the I Ching, projecting imagery, and calling it thought.

There is something magical about language. Naming was the human power in the garden… Continue

Added by Kelly on December 2, 2008 at 10:06pm — 3 Comments

True Peace via Generation Z ?

"While the baby boomers had a placid childhood in the 1950s, today's twenty-something generation [X] grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain. . .They feel influenced and changed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, fractured families and federal deficits...." (Time Magazin 1990; nowadays even more applicable).

Thus, to me it is the most wise, provident and precious mission to educate our kids (the neXt generation "Z", Z… Continue

Added by Dirk Boehmer on December 1, 2008 at 7:08pm — 1 Comment