A step surpassing everything we have ever done so far

There again are the rumours about an upcoming war from the US against the Iran in the internet. They now talk about August 2008.

What do we do with such news? Instead of an own comment I want to quote from the book: “GRACE. Pilgrimage for a future without war” by Sabine Lichtenfels. She describes her decision facing the threat of a possible war against Iran in 2005. Her words are as actual as never before:

“The idea bothered me day and night of another war where I would just watch without taking any action. Feverishly my mind was looking for peace and quiet, for protection, for perspectives. I studied books of art: Klee, Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz. All of them had been witnesses to wars, to insoluble political situations and had consoled themselves through art and in joining communities too. Alas, I did not come across any such consolation. (…)

What are your reasons for hope? The history that those in the West are proud of is nothing but a never ending tale of war. I hear the words of a typical patriarch who said smilingly: war is a law of nature and will always exist. My father spoke like this, although he was a convinced pacifist; Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, wrote like this, although he sincerely followed the path of God; our pastors preached like this and so did most of our textbooks. And the matriarchies to which our female souls turn for comfort and appeasement have no evidence to offer that there ever existed a more peaceful Earth. There is no evidence for a non-violent culture. All that exists is the yearning, the untamed hunger for a better world, and this only, as long as we still admit to it.
How I can understand those people who prefer to go numb, become indifferent rather than be aware! To grow up means to adapt oneself to a given reality. It takes much strength to not “grow up” in this sense.
I cannot grow up. I have friends in Israel and Palestine, in Africa, in India and in Colombia. The nearer the world of the oppressed comes, the more indignant becomes my outcry against the world of the rich, the protected, against the world of my own roots. But alas I do not find any consolation in this outcry against it all!

I search for empowering literature in the peace movement in order to be able to quote it in the Ring of Power, a spiritual and political peace network that I founded. With the texts I send out I want to remind the peace movement that the world contains things of beauty and gentleness, of happiness and music. If it is not to create beauty, what is it then that we are fighting for?
A revolution which wants to find a way out of the dead-end street has to be accompanied by the development of a positive alternative. The revolution has to go to the trouble of including the inner psychological processes of us human beings in order that we can offer real answers to inner questions. One of the causes of war is to be found in human longing and in human life energy that are wrongly channelled. Or, do we seriously believe that young soldiers really stand ready to go to war, or really would follow orders, if they had another perspective for their strength, their courage, their longings for adventure and community? How would it be if they were to be guided by different archetypical soul images instead of those of heroism which prevail in our patriarchal culture? Could there be a military world at all based on order and obedience if human beings learned to follow their longing for love and thereby find and return to their own true source?
The unquenched thirst for community, love and religion has driven us into this present collective madness. If we only knew how to integrate rather than suppress the longing for love, the hope for trust and community, the surplus of vitality and life energy and the immense power of sexuality in our lives, then war would long have ceased to exist.

I have been to Israel/Palestine often enough to study this phenomenon closely. Many Palestinians who have witnessed Israeli attacks want revenge. This is only too human a reaction if one really knows the means with which the State of Israel acts against Palestine. The Israelis act the same way when a close friend, a child, a husband or wife is killed in a suicide attack. They feel continually threatened by the radical Hamas and by the suicide-bombers and their insatiable raging need for revenge. One needs to have been in the country in order to get an impression of the feelings an Israeli has when he steps on a bus, goes through a department store or sits in a restaurant. The whole of Israel is under the effect of a subconscious ghetto of habitual fear. Where fear has become daily life, the call for violence is easily followed. Our peace messages will be of no avail as long as we do not know how men and women feel when their child is shot by hostile neighbours, when their land is stolen from them or when their wives are violated and their husbands killed. One single voice cries out of all those hurt: I want revenge! At such times no one bothers to ask: How do we stand by a commitment to love? Hardly anyone is interested or has the strength to find the background political reasons or finds the necessary peace and quiet to be able to look for real solutions.

We, however, who participate on an international level and watch with dismay from afar, we ought to be asking ourselves what could it be that would give power to the peace movement? How can the spreading powerlessness be turned into a source of belief and power? Everyone who is seriously concerned must set themselves to finding a solution to the question ‘Is it possible that the Earth can still be saved?’
Much of the population, when asked whether they want war or peace, will answer: ‘We want peace, but what can we do about it all alone?’ But if all these people could only be brought together in an initiative that offers peace knowledge and a peace vision, one that is more powerful than the globalisation of violence, then this could lead to a turning point in peace work. To express it somewhat paradoxically: powerlessness is one of the biggest latent potentials for power! If the worldwide feeling of powerlessness could be transformed into a force for peace, if it could be changed into knowledge that pursues a defined goal, then the peace movement could easily succeed.
It is obvious that the international power systems rely on the weakness of their people in order to make them more governable and to keep them quiet. They do this so that ever more atrocities will be tolerated across a world where no one dares to stand up against them.
A turning point must be found. The immense reality of war needs to be countered with an immense dream. Our source of strength lies in the courage to remain true to this dream and to feed it with power and knowledge so that it can be realised. We dream the dream of a large and strong movement: the Movement for a Free Earth.
The purpose of this movement is the dissemination of a credible alternative; its task is to initiate a strong, joyous and non-violent revolution, one that is full of the zest for life and one that has the ability to provide everyone with the perspectives that will show how we can leave behind the global system of violence. Let us get out of being an accomplice to the system and get into the system of peace! This calls for a change of all our daily habits, it calls for a profound personal decision, a social revolution and a global alternative.

My decision started to take shape. I wanted to take a step, one which would surpass everything I had ever done so far. I strongly believed, and still do now believe, that we could have an effect with but a few people, if only we were to search seriously enough for new solutions.

I hope to reach out to these “few” people and invite for comments!