by Ellen Grace O’Brian
Vice-Chair, CPWR Board of Trustees

As a practitioner of yoga, I was aware of the Parliament of the World’s Religions as the watershed interreligious event that opened the door to yoga in the West through Swami Vivekananda’s dynamic presence at the first convening in 1893. What I didn’t know was that beginning in 1993, this powerful global event was now occurring approximately every five years and was open to everyone with an interest in the interreligious movement. Although I had heard about the Parliaments in Chicago (1993) and South Africa (1999), it wasn’t clear to me how to participate and that it was something that could so profoundly affect my life and my community.

Curiosity has a way of helping us discover doorways that we didn’t know existed. In 2002, I learned about a local group of people meeting in someone’s home to talk about the next Parliament event slated to convene in Barcelona in 2004. Between homemade soup, networking, and sharing about why we thought it could make a difference to bring people together, I found myself on the path to the fourth global parliament event. This local connection with people who had been to other parliaments, and those who, like me, were just learning about it, was invaluable. It provided inspiration as well as information. Little did I know I was already engaged in one of the hallmarks of the Parliament: bringing people together in ways that empower and equip them to solve the problems we face in our world today.

When I checked in at my first Parliament in Barcelona, I was overwhelmed by the abundance of programs and events, the sight of so many people from different religious traditions and far reaches of the globe engaging in dialog, and the inspiration that pervaded everything from the meeting place to the program book. After a time of prayerful consideration about what I should chose amidst such rich opportunity, I dove in. One of the things I decided to participate in was a dialog with others who were concerned about the rise of religiously motivated violence in our world.

The dialog group I was assigned to included a Hindu man from India; a Muslim woman from Egypt, a Christian seminary student from the US, a Catholic woman from Rome, and a Lutheran man from Switzerland. We were provided with some questions to reflect upon and discuss. Why was this issue important to us? What in our own experience had contributed to why we cared about violence in our world? What could we see ourselves doing we returned home to our own communities that would make a difference?

As I sat with this group of people from religions, countries, and viewpoints different from mine, something became apparent that changed everything for me: we all shared a deep concern about this issue and a belief, grounded in our diverse traditions, that peaceful change was possible. The experience of connection across differences was profound, I felt like I was sitting in the heart of the world. We were inspired to return home and engage in action. Then it came to me. I live in a large, diverse, metropolitan area. I realized that if people who were concerned about the rise of violence in our own community gathered together, that group would look very much like the one I was with in distant Barcelona. And, with a similar rich diversity, we could find ways together to begin to solve this problem.

When I returned home with this inspiration from the Parliament, I reached out and was joined by leaders from different faith communities, educational institutions, government and nonprofit organizations, students and community members who met to convene a community nonviolence conference. Inspired by the Parliament model, hundreds of people have attended these conferences over the years and brought forth their own commitments to action.

Whenever I think about what the Parliament does, or what it means to attend such a global gathering, I remember my experience of sitting in the heart of the world. And I think about what happens when people come together and share their deepest concerns and aspirations for a peaceful world.

Rev. Ellen Grace O’Brian is the Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment, a ministry in the tradition of Kriya Yoga. She was ordained to teach in 1982 by Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. She is the author of several books on spiritual practice and is the editor of the quarterly magazine, Enlightenment Journal.

Rev. O’Brian is the Founder of Meru Seminary, training leaders in the Kriya Yoga tradition, as well as Founder and Chair of the community nonprofit educational organization, Carry the Vision, which provides educational programs in nonviolence. She received the 2008 Human Relations Award from the Santa Clara County Office of Human Relations recognizing her contribution to positive human relations and peace in Santa Clara County. She serves as a member of the Advisory Council of the Association for Global New Thought; on the Executive Board of the International New Thought Alliance; and as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

by Alisa Roadcup
from Amnesty International

Amnesty’s Women’s Human Rights Coordination Group member Alisa Roadcup was fortunate to sit down with Pamela Hogan, Director of Women, War & Peace, a bold new five-part PBS television series challenging the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain.  The first part of the documentary airs Tuesday, October 11, on PBS.

1. Tell me about your initial idea for this project.  Why “Women, War and Peace” and why now?

It’s hard to remember back that far!  My partners Abigail Disney, Gini Reticker and I had a fateful lunch at which we realized we’d all been noticing the same trend in war reporting: a focus on the men and the guns, and a dearth of stories about the women and families who are disproportionately targeted in today’s conflict zones—but seldom covered in news reports. We’d all individually witnessed this blind spot in the coverage of conflict, and we agreed that the gap between what’s reported and what’s occurring on the ground was enormous. Women, War & Peacewas born!

 2. Why do you think documentary film, specifically, can serve as a powerful medium to ignite social change? 

Documentary film has the power to bring the work of individuals to life in a way that policy reports and court documents, and even the printed word, doesn’t have.  One of the lead funders of Women, War & Peace said it so well: “We’ve been writing reports on these issues for years but in your films the women jump off the screen and people feel an emotional connection and really get the urgency.” Documentary storytelling is a visceral medium, and when the lights go up audiences often feel a call to action.

3. Tell me about a portrayal of women in war captured in “Women, War and Peace” that somehow plays against type or was unconventional.

So often women living in war zones are portrayed as victims.   Big mistake.

In The War We Are Living, two Colombian women – Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez – brave constant death threats to prevent their communities from being forced off of the gold-rich lands their ancestors have lived on for generations.  In Peace Unveiled, Afghan women are excluded from the international conference where President Karzai first suggests negotiating with the Taliban – so they crash the event anyway.  InPray the Devil Back to Hell, ordinary Liberian women who are sick and tired of 14 years of war stand up to President Charles Taylor and the warlords.  In I Came to Testify, sixteen women from a village in Bosnia take the witness stand in the first trial ever to focus exclusively on sexual violence in wartime – and the landmark judgment establishes wartime rape and sexual slavery as a crime against humanity.

All of these women are taking personal risks, risks that jeopardize not only themselves but also their children and extended families.  All of them make me ask myself, could I summon the courage to make that choice if I were in their place? Given the stereotype that women targeted by war are victims; they most certainly break the mold.  These women are revolutionaries!

4. As human rights activists, what can we do to spread the message that violence against women in conflict has to end? 

What a great question.  That is exactly what we are asking people to do: spread the message. I think human rights activists and advocates are crucial members of the Women, War & Peace audience. As broadcast journalists, one of our responsibilities is to investigate and uncover stories that may otherwise go unnoticed and to seek to give them a national and global platform through film and television and the web. The human rights activist community can broaden that platform, ensuring that the world hears these stories not only on their televisions and in their living rooms—not only on PBS—but also from the mouths of those working in the field and on the ground. One first step in ending violence against women is turning the world’s eye on this violence–growing the number of people who can bear witness to instances in which rape, attack, intimidation, and assassination of women is used as a deliberate tactic of war. The activist community can help us accomplish that.

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By Rick Westhead
from Toronto Star

BASTI MAHRAN, PAKISTAN—A single act of kindness, profound because it was so rare and unexpected, transformed this sun-bleached village in a remote corner of the Punjab.

A Hindu man gave his blood to save the life of a Muslim woman who had lost too much in childbirth.

In the seven years since, the 1,600 Muslims and 1,400 Hindus in this town live in peaceful co-existence, extraordinary because sectarian violence has marked the histories of Pakistan and India since the bloody partition of 1947.

“I was afraid, for sure. But it was the right thing to do,” says Bachu Ram, the blood donor. He is smoking a cigarette in the home of a Muslim village elder, who once was so steeped in hatred that he led the charge on the clinic to take Ram’s life.

Hatred and violence once defined life in Basti Mahran. Muslim men routinely raped Hindu girls — “we would have 20 cases a year,” says one local. Muslim men beat Hindus with sticks and fists, seemingly with tacit approval of the local police. Cattle belonging to Hindu families were slaughtered if they strayed too close to Muslim homes.

Mahar Abdul Latif, the host who now pours Ram tea, spent three years during the late 1990s as a member of the extremist religious group Jaish-e-Mohammad. He patrolled the rugged mountain passes and valleys of Kashmir, a region claimed both by India and Pakistan, killing Hindus when they crossed his path.

“I have done much I am ashamed of,” says Latif, a 37-year-old father of three. “But we are friends now. Our kids are friends, too. They study and play together.”

Click here to read the full article and watch the video

by Kim Lawton
from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Nestled in the hills between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is a small village called the Oasis of Peace—in Hebrew, Neve Shalom and in Arabic, Wahat al-Salam. While the Middle East conflict continues to churn all around, here they are trying to create a different reality, one that says Israelis and Arabs can live side-by-side in peace.

Click here to watch the video

Monica A. Coleman

by Monica A. Coleman
from Patheos.com

Interreligious understanding and peace begins in intimate ways: through education, by music, in our homes, with our welcome mats.

How can we have peace in the Middle East
When there’s none at home?

These are the opening lines to one of my favorite songs by jazz vocalist Rachelle Ferrell. The capstone to her self-titled 1992 album, “Peace on Earth,” speaks before and beyond the time of its recording.

I first began using this song in faith communities in the late 1990s when I coordinated a church response to sexual violence. Surprising the congregation with the inclusion of a “secular” song, the ministry asked about how we dare pose questions of global magnitude when we have so much work to do at home. This was not meant as a commentary on current politics. It was designed to raise the issue of intimate violence.

To my left a woman abuses her children
To my right somebody’s beating his wife

As someone who has spent the last fifteen years speaking out against sexual and domestic violence, I can attest to one thing: most of our violence happens at home—quietly, under long-sleeved t-shirts, with lowered eyelids, in shameful fists, between pursed lips and tearing eyes. Most violence in the United States is not the picture of global terrorism; rather, it is the faded photo of our personal relationships.

I hear Ferrell’s lyrics again in new tones at the ten-year anniversary of September 11. I hear it as a reminder that working for peace must begin in our houses and in our communities.

At the 40^th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival, Ferrell lingers over one line of the song that seems particularly relevant now:

Where is the love?
Where is the God in your life?

She asks again and again: where is the God, where is the God, where is the God in your life?

As I suspected in my work with sexual violence, our answer to this question must begin as close as our own relationships. In their popular book, The Faith Club: A Muslim, a Christian and a Jew—Three Women Search for Meaning, Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner come together as mothers in the New York area trying to figure out how to talk to their children about the aftermath of September 11. As a religious scholar, I am simultaneously disheartened and encouraged by the story they tell. I am disappointed by how little each one knows of her own religion as she wrestles with her assumptions about the religion of others. I am forced to remember that this is probably where most Americans are. But I am inspired by how—in conversation and friendship with each other—these women become more rooted and more deeply faithful in their own traditions. They are able to do this inasmuch as they learn from and love someone who believes quite differently from them.

Their post-9/11 peace literally began in their homes, over cups of hot chocolate.

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by Richard Cizik,
President, New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good
from Global Zero

As we observe this week’s International Day of Peace, I can’t help but reflect on a headline that recently caught my attention: “World Spending on Nuclear Weapons Surpasses $1 Trillion Per Decade.”

The source of this information, a recent report from the co-founders of Global Zero, Bruce Blair and Matt Brown, goes so far as to say that this figure of $1 trillion by the 8.5 nuclear states (North Korea is halfway there) is a conservative estimate: “It would go higher still if the true intentions of many non-nuclear weapons countries could be divined and their secret weapons programs added to the total.”

Despite the passage of the New START agreement with cuts in the overall size of their nuclear arsenals, the U.S. and Russia will increase spending due to decisions by both nations to upgrade and replace aging nuclear production factories, missiles, submarines, and bombers. The U.S. alone is on track to increase its investment in nuclear weapons infrastructure at a cost of $85 billion over the next decade, and to spend another $100 billion on upgrading strategic nuclear forces during this period.

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by Lynne Hybels
from Huffington Post

In March of 2011 I walked up a rocky hillside near the Palestinian Christian village of Aboud. I had an olive tree seedling in a plastic bucket hoisted on my shoulder. With a chain link fence topped by razor wire as a backdrop, I scooped earth with my hands and planted the hearty little seedling. My American and Palestinian friends planted a dozen or so olive trees that day while Israeli soldiers watched from a distance. A week later, long after we Americans were gone, the Palestinian villages planted more seedlings, but the Israeli soldiers uprooted the trees and sent the villagers home.

The seedlings were planted to replace the ancient olive trees plowed down by Israeli bulldozers. Though the hillside was owned by the Palestinian villagers and the olive trees provided their livelihood, the land was cleared for the sake of Israeli security. But many people–including Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans–believe the destruction of the olive trees is unnecessary and unjust. So they replant the trees as an act of protest. If, as sometimes happens, the seedling are allowed to grow, so much the better; but if not, at least the empty holes dug by human hands will shout a simple message: This is wrong.

It will also say: Though I believe your actions are unjust, and I need to stand against them, I will not take up weapons against you. I will resist you, but I will not turn to violence. This form of nonviolent resistance, grounded in the teachings and example of Gandhi and MLK, is judged by detractors as weak or ineffectual. But nonviolent revolutions overthrew the British in India and the violent defenders of apartheid in South Africa. It shaped the Civil Rights movement in the US. Of the thirteen nonviolent revolutions in communist nations that occurred in 1989-90 only one failed–in China. We’ve recently seen the tragedy of brutal violence in parts of the Middle East, but also the impact of “people power” grounded in nonviolent resistance.

My personal introduction to nonviolence was through Christian Palestinian Sami Awad, director of the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust. Committed to developing young community leaders and to nonviolently resisting the military occupation of the Palestinian Territory, Sami finds his ultimate inspiration in Jesus’s command to “love your enemies.” You can’t love your enemy, says Sami, unless you know your enemy. So Sami traveled repeatedly to Auschwitz with a group of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. These trips helped him understand how every act of violence by a Palestinian perpetuates the Holocaust fear of destruction of the Jews. While Sami longs for freedom and justice for Palestinians, he also longs for Israelis to be healed of their fear. Only a steady and patient commitment to nonviolence can lead–however slowly–to that outcome.

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by Anantanand Rambachan
CPWR Trustee

Our world has always been characterized by religious diversity, both across and within religious traditions. We have held different beliefs about the absolute, described it differently, and adopted a variety of ways and practices for attaining life’s ultimate goal. What is new about our religious diversity is the fact that it is rapidly becoming a feature of the landscape of many societies where a single tradition was predominant. Our awareness of other religions has never been as great as it is today. We are growing also in the realization, some more slowly than others, that this diversity is here to stay. The world’s religions have emerged from colonialism with a renewed sense of purpose and universal relevance.

We understand better today, our political need for each other in the light of the interdependent character of our lives. All of our religious traditions, in addition to what they proclaim and teach about individual human destiny and fulfillment, also imagine and include a social vision of the ideal human community characterized by justice, peace, and prosperity. Any religious tradition which is today concerned about the social order and its transformation is challenged to reach across historical frontiers, find common values with people of other faiths and strive together to overcome human suffering. Our hopes for just and peaceful communities will only be realized together or not at all.

Less clear, however, is our understanding of the theological need for each other. Our traditions generally understand themselves as theologically self-sufficient and independent and with little or no need for a religious ‘other.’ Our relationships with people of other traditions have not always been informed by theological humility and gratitude. If meaningful human relationships, however, are nurtured in the gratitude of humility and in recognition of the need for an ‘other,’ then our articulation of the theological value of persons of other traditions becomes important. Where do we discern our need for the religious ‘other’ that urges us to seek relationships? Where do I locate my religious need for you? What is my value to you theologically? Are we convinced, at the core of our traditions, of our need for each other? It seems to me that our focus today is on articulating the political dimension of interreligious relationships with much less focus on the theological in this sense. Although there may be urgent contemporary challenges that explain this choice, I want to make a plea for deeper reflection on our theological need for people of other faiths.

The political significance of people of other faiths is not an argument made only by religions and those who observe them. Many have articulated powerfully the pragmatic value of building relationships and of cooperating with people of other faiths. There is also a transient character to such arguments, dependent as these are on the exigencies of the moment. The political arguments needs to be enriched by and grounded in our more profound and enduring self-understanding of our theological needs.

In my own case, as a Hindu, my most profound theological need for my neighbor of another faith arises from my tradition’s teaching that Truth (brahman/sat) is always more than we could define, describe or comprehend with finite words and minds. As the Taittiriya Upanisad (2.9.1) reminds us, brahman is “that from which words turn back with the mind.” The constitutive nature of brahman eludes all direct definition. The consequence of such a radical sense of our human limits ought to be deep attentiveness and openness to considering and learning from multiple ways of speaking about the ultimate that occur in different traditions. It is the wise, after all, as Rg Veda (I.164.46) reminds us who speak differently (“The One Being the Wise speak of in many ways”). By attributing differences of speech to the wise, this text invites a respectful and inquiring response to theological differences. We must not associate wisdom only with our way of speaking, as precious as this must be to us. The possibility for mutual theological enrichment, learning, and sharing is a significant justification for entering into interreligious relationships.

If our theologies cannot limit the limitless, we need each other, and we can all learn and be enriched by the ways in which others have apprehended the absolute and by the values they have derived from such encounters and experiences. This is, for me, the most compelling ground to seek out my neighbor of a different faith. My own religious life as a Hindu has been and continues to be immensely enriched and stirred by my encounters with practitioners of other traditions. I benefit immeasurably from the opportunity to converse and interact with fellow pilgrims. We need each other to help us see and understand ourselves better and to deepen out religious lives. Without the voice of the other, the human proclivity toward self-centeredness and self-righteousness may go unchallenged and arrogance and selfishness, rather than humility and compassion, may become the dominant values of our existence. We should not be hesitant to acknowledge this.

by Sami Awad
from Huffington Post

I was 12 years old when I was introduced to Gandhi. My uncle Mubarak returned from India with four big heavy boxes filled with books. All same size and shape with warn-out green covers. These books included all the writings of Gandhi. They filled two book shelves, double the space taken by the Encyclopedia Britannica. What attracted me in the boxes was a comic book of the story of Gandhi from his childhood to his death. I read the comic book over and over. At a young age, Gandhi became a comic book hero.

Gandhi became a real hero through the work of Mubarak, who started the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Jerusalem. Mubarak traveled from one Palestinian village to the other promoting nonviolence in the same way Gandhi did in India. As he spoke of Gandhi, he never said we need to do what Gandhi did; he emphasized the uniqueness of our own heritage, culture and condition under Israeli occupation and how we were to develop our own approaches to nonviolence and not copy others. In 1988 Mubarak Awad, who became known as the “Palestinian Gandhi,” was arrested and deported by the Israeli authorities.

Over the years I continued to study Gandhi, reading more of the big green books that now sit on two shelves in my office in Bethlehem. I have also traveled to India twice. Once with Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma, and the second to participate in a conference to commemorate the century celebration of one of Gandhi’s most famous writings, Hind Swaraj. There I was honored to give a talk in the presence of His Holiness the Dalia Lama.

As a Palestinian, there are many lessons learned from Gandhi. One important lesson was in seeing nonviolence not only as a tactical and pragmatic tool of resistance but also as a holistic and spiritual approach to life and living. Gandhi was not only passionate about ending the British colonial rule of India, he was also passionate about uprooting the cause of violence in every aspect of one’s life and relations. This is not easy for people who live under daily suffering and oppression, but in my work in nonviolence in Palestine, I now believe that my own liberation as a Palestinian is not only about ending the Israeli military occupation, but also about addressing all aspects of violence — be they political, social, economic or environmental. Nonviolence is not a tactic to be taken out of the box when it seems fit to use. It is a way of life.

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by Katherine Marshall
from Huffington Post

For 25 years, the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic group inspired by the ideals of true friendship with the poor, has organized an annual gathering of religious and lay leaders from all corners of the world. Peace is the theme always, and the event has the character of a pilgrimage, as it takes place each year in a different city. This year it is in Munich, and this sparkling city in southern Germany is witnessing a colorful array of visitors that represents a living pageant of world religious history. Catholic and Orthodox leaders are perhaps the most obvious, in their contrasting red, white and black robes and hats, but a splash of orange on monks from South and southeast Asia, more sober garb on Japanese Buddhists and the meticulous robes of the Japanese Shinto group are testimony to the wide reach of this gathering.

The annual event brings the leaders together to demonstrate that indeed peace is for them a powerful and common bond. Dozens of panel discussions explore different conflict situations and issues. And there is a vivid public face. This year’s title and theme is, with a somewhat stilted but thought-provoking title, “Bound to Live Together: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue.” “Bound to” evokes the powerful links in today’s globalized world. Speaking among many other issues to Europe’s tensions in grappling with immigrants, “bound to” also means that we simply have to live together, like it or not.

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