Global Strategy of Nonviolence Summary Another World is Possible

Sister Joan Speech

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The Sufi, for instance, reminds us of the relationship between the political

and the spiritual. Once upon

a time, the Sufi master tells us, water raged

over

the banks of a river, up to the level of the branches of

the trees, and at

the frailest end of the lowest branch, a scorpion clung quivering to the one

leaf that

remained above the rising water. A Sufi, seeing the situation, knelt

down in the dust, stretched himself

out on a slender branch and extended his

hand towards the scorpion as a bridge. Each time he

reached for the leaf,

however, the scorpion bristled and sprang to sting. Sufi, a passerby shouted,

are

you crazy? Don’t you know that every time you touch that scorpion you will

be stung? And the Sufi

shouted back, Ah, perhaps dear friend, but just

because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, should I lose

my nature to save? It would have been a very

political thing for the Sufi to crush the scorpion, so he

never has to fear being stung by that scorpion

again. But it was spiritual for the Sufi to take the risk of

saving the scorpion for both their sakes.

Clearly, we are in that situation now. Everywhere we turn, we come across borders, as nations, to talk of

peace loaded down with the stings of the past. We come heavy with the fear of the future. We come

more interested, too often, in justice for the wrongs of yesterday, than thirsting to peace for the children

of tomorrow. But if we truly seek peace, we cannot get locked in to the past, not even today. We must

give our hearts to constructing the future. To speak of peace, we can not be shrunken in spirit by the

miseries of our ancestors. We must be enlarged in spirit because we have learned too much from their

suffering to continue the old entanglements that destroyed them. Indeed, we learned from the Sufi that

new life depends on our being our best selves, our most feminine selves, ourselves most open to the

other.

The second question we must deal with if we are to hear the voices of women in a war torn world is

whether or not the spiritual can ever be real if it ignores the political. In the second story, the Talmud

shows us the relationship between spirituality and politics. The Talmud tells

us why we’re here, and

what it requires of all of us, both politically and

spiritually. The Talmud teaches that the miracle of the

Red Sea was not that

the waters parted, the miracle of the Red Sea is that when the waters parted,

the

first Jew walked through! One Jew, on solitary Jew had the faith to be led

beyond the political pressures

of the moment to begin the new beginning.

When we see a path through the water bed beginning to

clear before us, we

must run, one at a time, to link arms with those on the land on the other side

who

are also braving the waves in the hopes that together, we can meet half

way and all of us come safely

through together. But, we must remember, we

must remember, that it is the one who goes through the

waters first, who

gives the rest of us courage. It’s the one who braves the water bed first, who

gives the

rest of us hope. It’s the one who believes in miracles who becomes

a miracle to the rest of us. To be

holy, we must, each, whatever deluge we

have in our own lives or together face before,

whatever tidal wave of distrust we may be drowning in right now, we must be

the first to take that step

into the sea.

We cannot allow fear or hate, vengeance or victimage to make that first step

impossible. We must, with

Jesus say, when full of fear and facing the

frightening others, Peter, put away your sword, and on a

cross, forgive them.

Finally, we must refuse to ignore the question, what do women have to do

with war.

And we must cry out the answer to the ends of the globe, women

have everything to do with war!

Everything! Everything! Everything! Women,

as a class, excluded from the war making systems, on

every major

determining level, go to war in the worst possible way. They go unprepared, unarmed, and

unasked

whether they want to be defended or not. Women are the booty of war. Their bodies have

become an

instrument off war. Their children have become the fodder of war. Their homes have

become the rubble

of war. Their daily struggles to live have become one of the horrors of war.

Their

futures have been left shattered in the shambles of war. They die, too,

from bombs and bullets. They

die in large cities and small villages today for

lack of food, then they die left behind from lack of water or

they die years after

that from drinking water destroyed by war and left filthy with human feces.

They die in

tent cities without medicines, without clothing, without sons and

husbands and hope and they die

seeing their daughters do the same. So

much for the commitment of men, to the protection of women!

So munch for the notion that men spare women the suffering of war! Oh yes,

when all the warriors have

finally left the battlefield, it is the women who are

left abandoned there either to die alone in the ashes of

war and the cemeteries of anguish. If truth were

ever told, war falls hardest, longest, and cruelest on the

backs of women. Indeed, women must have a

role, not only in the reconstruction of societies already

ravaged by war, but more than that, they must take

a voice until they are given a voice in the development

of peaceful alternatives to war, as well! But, is it

possible? Can it be done? Will our spiritual traditions

support such a thing? The fact is that in another

of our commons stories we have a model of why we’re

here this week, why we’re talking about this

subject this week. We have to remember, in a special way,

today, the story of Moses’ mother and

Pharaohs’ daughter.

The baby Moses, you remember, doomed to die simply because his presence was a threat to the

control of the Pharionic powers of the time, was taken by his mother to where the daughter of the king

would see the baby and take pity on it. There and then, then and there, two women together connived

the baby’s survival. Two women together, one Jewish, one Arab, one Arab, one Jew, subverted the male

system in which they lived to save the impoverished, the outcast, the other, and because of them a

whole people were saved. Moses’ mother sent her child into the house of the enemy because she

knew what the men did not know, no mother is an enemy to a child! And Pharaohs’ daughter took into

her own life the mother and the sister of the very ones that her father said must die. Pharaohs’ daughter

defied her father, the king, made a mockery of his laws. Moses’ mother put her hopes, not in military

revolution, but in the open heartedness of women and peaceful co-existence. The presence of the

women in the Moses story, its empowering cooperation of Moses’ mother and Pharaohs’ daughter was

an antidote to extremism then, was the beginning of community then, was the seed of another newer

nurturing world that was needed then, and its even more needed now!

The lives of our children, the protection of millions, the hopes of all humankind, wait again now for

women, from opposite cultures, opposite tradition, to step over the line of political hatred to save them.

We cannot afford many more male military mistakes! The UN is very clear about the needs of women

being ignored here and the need for women in the political arena and the peacemaking process. Kofi

Annan puts it this way, the future of the world depends on women!

So, goaded by the now unconceivable, God awful conditions of women everywhere, thanks to the

women’s movement everywhere, the United Nations has taken leadership to provoke governments of

the world to civilize their attitudes toward women. As Margaret Meade put it once, we can judge the level

of civilization in a culture only by the way it treats its women. With those realities in mind, the UN is

calling, first, for an international truth and re-conciliation commission on violence against women in

armed conflict. If you want to be a woman peacemaker, you must pursue that passionately! Two. The

want sanctions against the trafficking of women and girls in order to criminalize it everywhere. We must

demand that passionately! They want protection officers deployed at the highest levels to shield, secure

and sustain displaced populations, all of them largely women. You must insist on that passionately!

They want HIV aides programs in conflict situations to address the disease burden, now being carried

almost entirely by women whose very bodies have been made a weapon of war. We must demand that

passionately! They want gender training programs to guide government officials in dealing with women

victims and we must press for that passionately! They want gender based conflict resolution processes

that seek peace through understanding rather than force and we must seek this passionately! They

want gender equality, not tokenism in all the peace processes, so that the agenda of both men and

women, women and men, will be integrated into peace building programs. We must prod and prod and

prod them to this passionately! And finally, they want Resolution 1325 implemented in every country of

the world. Consider yourself blessed if you’ve ever heard of it.

In October, 2000, the first UN Security Council resolution on women and peace and security, Resolution

1325 passed unanimously! It’s a watershed resolution. It makes women and gender perspective an

essential of all peace agreements, all refugee camp plans, all peace keeping operations and

reconstruction plans in war torn societies. Have we, has this government installed that in the so-called

new government in Iraq? Resolution 1325 finally gives political legitimacy to the long history of women’s

peace activities, like Peace Links, the International Solidarity Movement of Women, the Global Peace

Initiative of Women, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and countless, countless,

countless, others, all of which have been ignored for years. It’s time for women indeed. Indeed it’s time

for women.

You and I must take responsibility for making real the religions this country says it believes in. It’s time

for women to be an organized international voice for peace, a religious critique of national policies that

threaten the life of the world, a sign of peace on the local level everywhere! It’s time for women to reach

across the borders that men will not breach, to take the hands of the other, not to bind them, but to bond

them. It’s time for women’s analysis of world situations and women’s solutions to conflict to be heard.

The Global Peace Initiative of women is asking therefore, that people, that women like this, women like

you, prod, press, provoke, so that in the name of Brahman, the Buddha, Yahweh, Jesus, and the

prophet, that the UN’s institutionalize, what they alone have had the courage to create, a public rostrum

and a universal call to the women spiritual and religious leaders of this world, to monitor, create, and

publicly critique new initiatives for peace, under the status and aegis, politicians and even religion itself

has not given us up to this time.

The philosopher Camus wrote, the saints of our time are those who refuse to be either its executioners

or its victims. It’s time for women to refuse to be either victims or executioners! Not only to make safe

the world, but to make real the religions the religions teach. So that before death can come, as God

wants, life will come for us all. The question for us all then, today, isn’t why is it happening and what

does that have to do. The question is that the answer is you. The answer is crucial now. When we

need to develop the kind of religion that finally makes us love one another, when we need to foil the

dictators who are using religion as a prop to keep themselves in power, when we clearly need to

release women, the boldest and most unmanageable of all revolutionaries, then perhaps we too, this

country too, this government too, the Samurai of this time too, will finally come to see things differently,

do things differently, deal with things differently, then we too will come to know the real difference

between heaven and hell.

Transcribed from video by Andre Sheldon – subject to error from punctuation,

run-on-sentence, or incomplete sentences. (reflects speaking style)

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PEACE and LOVE

How beautiful the world is when we live and work together in peace.

Global Strategy of Nonviolence

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Mother Theresa said, “Peace begins with a smile.”

Welcome! A Global Strategy of Nonviolence
FOR the CHILDREN A World-Wide Unity Campaign
A Strategy to Bring Peace For the Children and Stop War

(GS of NV)

GUIDELINES

In 3 years, we the
people, can change the
world.

PLAN ALL 3 PHASES

PHASE ONE:

Mobilize, in every village,
town, and city,in every
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One year awareness
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September 11, 2021
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PEOPLE POWER

The People must be
HEARD, the Moderate
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see an overt exhibit of
nonviolence.