By Dot Maver

A Culture of Peace Emerges

A new story is emerging. Humanity is the storyteller. The story line is ancient and the global community is right on time as it wakes up. The global community is appalled by many of its own creations and strives to take responsibility for creating a Culture of Peace. Let us call it the Path of Beauty. Ultimately, humanity shifts from living with pain and suffering to realizing joy and achievement.

By David Bollier

Governments are so accustomed to dictating their will, through coercion if necessary, that they find it unimaginable that people might willingly – and with creativity and enthusiasm – self-organize themselves to take care of urgent needs. So pause a moment to behold the remarkable Zaatari Refugee camp in Jordan. This settlement of 85,000 displaced Syrians is showing how even desperate, resource-poor people can show enormous creativity and self-organization, and turn their “camp” into a “city.”

By Rhonda Fabian

Filiz is coming home. In the great scheme of things, it is a small story, but for the several thousands of us who follow her posts and blogs, it is one of those moments that must be noted, honored. For the last five years, Filiz has been, in the truest sense, a citizen of the world. It’s not so much that she left her community behind, more that wherever she goes she creates community, or more precisely it springs up around her. She lives ‘from the gift’, meaning that she shares her wisdom, her energy and her talents freely and by the alchemy of sharing finds places to lay her head, break bread and create her sacred spaces of learning, healing, and celebration. Wherever Filiz lands, women soon gather, circles form, hips shake, bones rattle, and drums rhyme their way into the sky.

By Duncan Jefferies

“Get these cars out of the way, we want to play!” a child chants through a loudhailer, as he and his young comrades march down a street in the Pijp area of Amsterdam. This remarkable scene comes from a 1972 documentary, which follows a group of inner-city Dutch children as they attempt to turn a busy through-road outside their homes into a play street. Adults in the area are both supportive and dismissive of the children’s plans. “All these cars are unbearable”, says one small boy, in an effort to explain their actions. “There is no space left. Thousands die in accidents and air pollution increases. Everything is devoted to parking. Why don’t we all ride bicycles?”

Hiroshima Remembrance – Join us live and send your prayers for peace

August 5th/6th

The Peace Bell at the Hiroshima Peace Park will ring at 8:15 am the exact time the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. One Minute of Silence is observed throughout Japan on this day.