Love is how we'll ask for peace.
Gentlefriends: Here is a step into another world, the Beloved Community. Our friends and colleagues in the Olympia FOR, and especially Doug Mackey, are nurturing our introduction and support of this group of Afhgan Peace Youth Vigilers.
Watch these Afghan peace youth vigilers say with the world “Love is how we’ll ask for peace.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLKR6iEdZGs
Please take our next small steps with us. Love and peace from Afghanistan,
Hakim http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Our call to stand and act together in
”˜Love is how we’ll ask for peace’
Most of us in our disparate world today would hardly believe or be affected by our ordinary, almost mundane burden.
But we’ve always imagined that when people come together to stand for love, life changes.
Most often, changes happen in only a tiny part of the world, a little community, a small fraternity; and though all of which will, like human civilizations do, eventually pass away, the changes are worthwhile for holistic, consistent growth.
In standing for love, there’ll be the un-welcome laughter of cynical disbelief and hopelessness which we’ve seen much of but will not cower to.
We’ll be hurt by self-righteous censure that has forgotten human empathy but we’re ready for that too.
The cold ”˜alone-ness’ of such difficulties is common to humankind, but because love is also common to all people, these challenges cannot touch those restful places of love within humanity. We believe it is love that will triumph.
It is this love that would keep us journeying in the snow and the rain, even if we fall.
It is this love that lends meaning to any family or friendship.
It is this love we’re counting on not to fail.
This love is how we’ll ask for peace.
I remember a 12 year old girl dying from leukemia. In her final hours, she urgently asked the nurses to phone her estranged and separated parents to come to her hospital bedside. They did come and she did die but before she passed on, she asked that they would lay aside their conflicting differences and to reconcile, not just for her sake as she was soon leaving them, but primarily for their own sake. That was not an urgency of desperation. It was the clear, sincere urgency of a love that would not let go. There was nothing for her young heart to lose. I’d like to believe that she recognized what many of us may spend all our proud lives denying, that when bodies and tongues cease, love remains.
It is with this urgency of love that we ask fellow human beings all over the world to restore wide-scale humane relations everywhere through love and reconciliation and thus build a kinder future.
We believe that the world is historically waiting (see “Is this our Afghan moment of peace?”), especially those of us waiting meekly in the shadows for light and warmth to arrive.
Yes, we’re asking the Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama to respond to our ordinary message of peace from Afghanistan, the place of wars.
Yes, we’re asking for true peace and reconciliation.
But above all, we’re asking un-ashamedly to raise the possibility of love, with hope that we may smile at one another in affirmative, dignified greetings once again.
Our immediate goal
With love, we request the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate, President Obama, to answer the Afghan youth peace message ”˜Reconciliation of Civil Hearts’, as part of his wider message of peace to the peaceful future of our shared world, on or about the 10th of December, the day he will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
Our larger goal is to encourage Afghanistan and the world towards concrete love and peace, through wide scale reconciliatory and humane relations.
How we’ll work towards our immediate goal in the next one month , before the 10th of December 2009
The road had opened before us when the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, kindly visited our Afghan peace vigil group at the Bamiyan Peace Park in Afghanistan on the 28th of October 2009. During the visit, he promised the Afghan peace youth vigilers that he would get a response from President Obama, to their message of peace “Reconciliation of Civil Hearts”
Internationally, in the next one month before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, we will garner the heart-to-heart support of Afghan and international youth peace volunteer supporters by collecting the signatures of supporters with pictures of their individual smiling faces.
We will put them all into growing landscape-style pictures / motages. To rally a heart-storm of love in this effort, we’ll encourage all supporters to blog at the blog-site http://youthpeacevolunteers.blogspot.com/, entitled “Afghan & international youth peace volunteers say together, ”˜Love is How We'll Ask for Peace.’
In Afghanistan, we hope to hold a Afghan national youth peace convention in Bamiyan in the month of November.
All updates can also be found at http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Our current partners
Our Journey to Smile ( the 10 Afghan peace vigil youth are part of this peace-building group in Afghanistan, with international volunteers from Singapore )
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Contact person : Hakim at journeytosmile@gmail.com
ContagiousLoveExperiment (2 Iraq veterans’ Josh Steiber and Conor Curran who are actively promoting peace)
http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com/
Contact person : Josh at desertcamel87@yahoo.com
Olympia WA Fellowship of Reconciliation USA and Iraq Memorial to Life ( who had up to 100 persons who kept the vigil with the Afghan youth peace volunteers concurrently in Olympia, USA )
http://www.iraqmemorialtolife.org
Contact person : Douglas Mackey at douglas.mackey@youthpeacevolunteers.org
This is the group we have now and with this small number of supporters we ask for your support — because it will take more of us to deliver the message to enough people so that it makes a difference.
We know our support will grow as we reach our list of individual personal contacts with international peacemakers and peace groups.
How to support each other immediately
Any individual, young or old, who wishes to stand with the Afghan and international peace volunteers, in support of their peace request to President Obama, can
- Sign in as a Fan of Youth Peace Volunteers on Facebook ( click below )
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Youth-Peace-Volunteers/206186386153?v=wall
By becoming a Fan, you are indicating your support for the Afghan youth peace volunteers’ appeal to President Obama
- Send a quick email to youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com
Simply indicate: Yes to Youth Peace Volunteers!
Provide your name and nationality and if you are willing to have your smiling face put together in a collage picture, send us your picture too!
We will begin to compile these hearts of love, peace and reconciliation into landscape and collage-style pictures and watch humanity’s love grow!
Given the global picture of war and peace today, we believe that this is a unique, historical chance for all of us to raise the possibility of love in Afghanistan and beyond.
How to support each other on a wider scale and for the long run
Tell others about our shared effort of love and encouragement towards true peace and reconciliation, that is, let’s seed a heart-storm! We live, love and perish in the same world!
You can also blog with us at http://youthpeacevolunteers.blogspot.com/
