| |  Amatul greeting Arun Ghandi after his cool keynote
Nate and I just got a report on the NM World Peace conference we took Amtrack across America to attend - its a pretty good summary of the keynote speakers and some activities. The best aspect for us was the personal connections we made with native american medicine women and other indiginious elders at the conference, who not only drove us around Santa Fe but gave us free tickets to the Richie Havens/ Indigo Girls concert out at the Santa Fe Opera House - a great night! Thank you Pacal! Boy, Richie STILL rocks it out hard and deep! Go go go Mr Havens! and then in the cold and rain he sat out at a table for two hours signing autographs and taking pictures with eager fans age 16 to 70 years old - He is incredible! "...FREEDOM! FREEDOM! FREEDOM!" -----the report by Louise Diamond, world peace conference designer----- "Building a Culture of Peace" Santa Fe Conference a Huge Success Nearly 500 people gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico in mid-May to explore the question, ‘What would it take to transform the current culture of violence in our society to a culture of peace?’
To inspire and challenge us, we had four keynote speakers, spread over the two days. Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Nobel Peace Laureate, 1992) opened the conference by speaking of harmony between the material and the spiritual. She told of the Mayan Calendar’s No Time Zone, coming in 2014, when the natural clock will move in one direction and the material in the other, after which there will be a new era of collaboration, coalition, and balance of the masculine and the feminine. To prepare for this, we need to be a light for others, not letting pessimism, bitterness, or too much comfort overtake us. She invited us to be the best example of peace that we can be, and to work from that place for the well-being and dignity of all.
Jody Williams (Nobel Peace Laureate, 1997) shared her own journey to ban landmines as a model for how one person can make a difference. Seeing herself as just an ordinary person, she was exposed to the issue of landmines and the incredible harm they did. As she became motivated to do something about this, she rallied others to the cause, eventually finding and building collaborative networks all over the planet. Fueled by anger and determined to succeed, she did indeed help build a worldwide movement and support that resulted in an international treaty to ban all landmines. Not willing to stop there, Jody said she was turning her attention now to cluster bombs, and after that, to nuclear weapons.
Arun Gandhi (Founder, the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence), took us on an incredible journey of learning about peace from Mahatma Gandhi, through the eyes of himself as a rebellious teenage grandson. In one story after another, we saw and heard Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence, love, and respect for all beings played out in simple family relationships and everyday events. In one story, young Gandhi cavalierly threw away an old pencil stub, assuming his grandfather would get him a new pencil. Instead he received a teaching about how discarding that pencil was showing disrespect to the earth (all the elements that made up the pencil) and to the people who were involved in making it. He also received a flashlight, to go and retrieve the stub he had tossed aside, as he was not, in fact, going to get a new pencil.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Nobel Peace Laureate 1989), by video, ended the conference by speaking of the need for a culture of peace, especially given the way the media focuses so much on violence. He reminded us that the heart of peace is to recognize we are all one family on this earth, and that we need to care for each other. He acknowledged that transforming the culture of violence to a culture of peace could take a long time, but with perseverance, determination, and hope, it could be accomplished. He invited us each to go out and offer our unique gifts to realize this vision.
In between these talks, six Peace Councils met and discussed a variety of topics. Small groups examined, for instance, the need to build bridges to the military, and to illegal immigrants rather than seeing them as ‘the enemy;’ the difference between indigenous cultures for whom spirituality is integrated into daily life and industrialized cultures where religion tends to be a separate part of life, and the implications of these different perspectives for peace; the importance of bringing spirit into our businesses and economic life and developing new models for corporations that share ownership with employees and build community.
Other groups spoke of creating a statewide peace curriculum; of building on the rich aggregation of scientific and healing skills present in New Mexico to create a new economic base for the state so it doesn’t have to rely so much on the nuclear/military industry, and of funding the nuclear labs to focus instead on alternative energy; of how important art, music, poetry, and even T-shirts are to youth for expressing their views on peace; of how important it is to re-connect with nature in order to remember our unity with all creation; of how to use the new internet modalities to help transform the need for security through power and control to a paradigm of security through mutual collaboration, understanding, empathy, and communication.
And so much more! A fuller report on the conference and its outcomes will be available later this summer. Next steps are still under discussion. We know that further small- and large-group dialogues and working groups are in the picture, and that new projects are emerging. More on this as it becomes solidified.
At the end of the conference, as each of the Peace Councils gave a brief report to the whole assembly on the highlights of their work, we realized that most of all, this two-day gathering of peace leaders (from ages 10 to 84+ and from five continents) was a moment of planting seeds, seeds that will grow, through our continued care and tending, to eventually become that great Tree of Peace that shelters us all.
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