Peace Project
Yesterday, I didn’t celebrate 4th of July. I don’t like the idea of fireworks when I know my taxes fund bombs.
I was thinking about how conscious and unconscious we are. I don’t live with the expectation that there will ever be a time where wars won’t exist. But I need to feel that we can make conscious decisions with our governments when they should end.
To be clear, I do appreciate the freedoms I have. I have freedom to say I don’t believe in gods and not be burned at the stake. I have the freedom to write this blog and not have to be shipped to be “re-educated”. I have the freedom to research how democratic tax dollars were spent on non-democratic practices. I do celebrate the freedoms I have every day. I also forget and take them for granted and I probably need a government holiday to remind me to celebrate it with the other citizens.
Yesterday, the fireworks made me feel sad and hopeless. They remind me of bombs.
I was thinking about some of the ongoing be the cause projects. Every week we meet to serve outside the jail. Every month we meet once or twice to serve women at the Downtown Women’s Center. I was thinking a few of us could meet once a week or once a month to create something towards peace. Maybe Rahul and Adnan can help us produce a youtube video that helps people take a look at all the wars that we don’t get to think about and maybe we can promote it til 1,000,000 see it. Maybe we can research about how much money is spent on wars. Maybe we can think about how to change some of the obfuscation that governments do like call the department that deals with weapons contracts the “Department of Defense”. Maybe we can discuss how to talk about this stuff with people outside be the cause without it becoming an argument.
I don’t want to allow people to think that I’m being critical about just the united states. I think all governments are flawed when it comes to this stuff. I can’t think of any government that promotes peace or constitutes non-violence. I was just thinking this stuff last night as there was a big fireworks show outside my house and wanted share. People make governments and we should be able to write up or somehow express economically or creatively that “We the people do not want war.”
Gil Scot Heron said something like If we all worked for peace like we say we believe in it, it would happen already. I’m happy to see so much intention going towards ending wars. I want to learn to have conversations about how it should be easier to end a war than it is to start it. The direction my thoughts are going towards is that how to bridge that intention into fruitful effort.