The 12th-Annual Season For Nonviolence is upon us!

Happy Season for Nonviolence, family! In my effort to help "be the change," I am committing to keeping a daily blog on iPeace as well as my own website, www.janis-kelly.com during this powerful 9-week period. I will also be posting music, videos and lyrics to my original music as well as some of my favorites from within the peace movement (thank you, John Lennon, for showing me how to be a voice for peace...) and I hope you will find great value in them. Here, then, is my first entry, drawn from the Association For Global New Thought resource material (www.agnt.org):

January 30 - April 4: A Season for Nonviolence is a national 64-day educational, media, and grassroots campaign dedicated to demonstrating that nonviolence is a powerful way to heal, transform, and empower our lives and our communities. Inspired in 1998 by the 50th and 30th memorial anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this international event honors their vision for an empowered, nonviolent world.

All who are called forth in Spirit to live the principles of nonviolence in themselves, their daily lives, their community, and in the world are invited to dedicate these 64 days to universal spiritual practices for peace and non-violence. Through the services and youth programs, we will honor great teachers and leaders of many of the world’s religions, traditions and philosophies, and gain a clearer understanding of the Global Heart vision of a world free of homelessness, violence, war, hunger, separation and disenfranchisement.

Day 1, Jan 30: Today, I contemplate Mahatma Gandhi’s statement: “Be the Change You Wish to See in the World.”

COURAGE Eleanor Roosevelt urged, “You must do the things that you think you cannot do.” Light a candle and accept the courage to practice living in peace.

"I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."
-Anne Frank

When you discover that everyone is contained in you and you are contained in everyone, you have realized the unity of life, which is the divine ground of existence. Then you are not just a person; you have become a beneficial force. Wherever you go, wherever you live, those around you will benefit from your life. Even one unassuming man or woman in a community has the courage to lead a nonviolent life, she will make her contribution, and she will slowly inspire others to make the same contribution, because human nature responds to such an example.

When we can say, “Whatever comes, we will not be afraid because the divine Self is within us,” then this resoluteness and faith will enable us to work free from tension, agitation, and fear of defeat. The person who works in this way is at peace, because he or she is not anxious about results.

Hindu prayer for peace:
O God, lead us from the unreal to the Real.
O God, lead us from darkness to light.
O God, lead us from death to immortality.
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti unto all.


AIN’T IT TIME? (Janis Kelly @2007) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7ym2ASviI)
If we could see ourselves connected,
If we could see ourselves as one,
If we could see our only difference,
Is the place that we come from;

If we could know we’re all God’s children,
If we could know God has a plan,
If we could know we’re all responsible,
For every woman, child and man—
Would it be time? Ooh...

If we could hear each other’s stories,
If we could hear each other’s prayers,
If we could hear the hope in all our hearts,
That our God is everywhere;

If we could learn to love our neighbor,
If we could learn to be their friend,
If we could learn to let the hatred go,
All the fighting could just end—
Then it’d be time! Ooh...

Well, ain’t it time? Ain’t it time? Ain’t it time—
To be free?
Ain’t it time? Ain’t it time? Ain’t it time—
For peace to be?