partyin' peeps

i spent the evening at an umphrey's mcgee concert. they are a band that, according to most people, falls within the jam band crowd. i was surrounded by lots of drugs, alcohol, apathy, and ridiculousness tonight. it is very troubling because i found myself being sucked into the lifestyle and attitudes of the music scenes and did not like it. my prayers, my fears, my hopes, are being answered and it is difficult to see a new me emerging out of the fresh ashes, if not still burning, old me. im scared life will not be as fun without the constant pleasure of music and party. i fear losing friends, family even, because now im considered "too cool." my will is being torn, pulled in different directions, but ultimately, my broken heart will yield and give way to the nonviolent life and love of god.

Navidad

Merry Christmas! The Spanish greeting for this happy holy day, feliz navidad, captures all the love and grace one needs: happy nativity and birth. Let us celebrate the birth of Jesus and the nonviolent love of God by asking God to fill our hearts with love and compassion so that the world may know war no more. Peace, friends.

everlasting

i am fighting god for my peace. i think god is winning.

distillations

BE FREE. Fight for my liberation. Suffer for peace > love God. givesomething.giveanything.giveeverything. Just let it be. Open my life to love + peace. HATE. HATE WAR. Hate injustice. Hate racism, sexism, ageism, capitalism, communism, every -ism. BELIEVE in something Real. Live peace. Choose purity and life. Believe God. CHANGE is possible.

she lies...

and says she's in love with him...can't find a better man. she dreams in colors, she dreams in red; can't find a...

does this song effectively engage in nonviolence with regards to personal emotion and feeling? how does one deal with personal relationships in nonviolent means?

Nonviolence in Action

Nonviolence is all about, at least at some level, the body politics. I want to do justice to the ethos of understanding nonviolence through sacrifice, but first, I have a story a friend told me:

There was a conference on the individual response to the war in Iraq that got a bit out of hand. A number of different perspectives on how to deal with such responses clashed and chaos ensued. Names were called and violence was threatened. A man and woman were in each others' faces yelling, calling names, etc. My friend threw his body between the two to break the tension, create a space between the building violence, and tried to engage the two in discussion (no luck though). Nonetheless, the body politic essentially forced a space for nonviolence to disrupt a moment of potential violence between people. Well done, friend.

Preserving What?

This is an email I received the other day from my alma mater requesting donations for a Veteran's Memorial. I am troubled very much by how the only way we understand peace is through force, and violent force at that. The preservation of peace, semantically, implies that peace is foreign, something that is strange and hard to hold on to. Preservation seems to be employed when something cannot exist on its own. In our current dominant ideology, this is the proper way to characterize peace: it is something that must be preserved (if wanted). The reason is cannot flourish naturally, much like our beautiful forests, wetlands, rivers, etc. is that there are structures in place to prevent it from growing, limiting the extent that it may prevail. This is because we cannot imagine a world otherwise. We cannot imagine or envision a world where peace is the standard, the status quo, the natural flourishing. Instead, our world is informed by an ideology that violence always has and always will be a part of human life and interaction. It is inescapable. Because it is inevitable, peace must be "fought for." Peace is not is what is preserved, but a way of life, a lifestyle, a certain ethic of an excluding group of people is what is really preserved. The logical inconsistency aside, the fighting for peace has so pervaded the souls of our world that to even dare to dream of this ideology not only being wrong, but there being a possible third way in the global drama of war or extinction is incredulous. But it is not. It is a necessity, a necessity kept alive by a few liberated, haunted, troubled, holy people: Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Dr. King, Rumi. Theirs is a dream that inspires and proclaims a vision, although yet to fully be realized, entirely possible. The preservation of peace falls on the shoulders of the war-makers and the politicians of nation-states. The building of peace falls on the shoulders of peace-makers and believers of a nonviolent Spirit of God. Of which is more worthy of the service and honor we should dedicate our lives to?