For too many years, the American Jewish community has held back from its true vocation to bring peace to America and to the whole region that Abraham and Sarah and Hagar walked, from what is now Iraq to what are now Israel and Palestine and Egypt and Arabia.
For too many years, even the Jewish desire for social justice in America has been blunted by refusing to connect that hope with the need to end the Iraq War and to work toward peace with Iran and Afghanistan. How can a trillion dollars for destruction NOT be a domestic issue?
November 23 will be another step on the path that we must take. If you live anywhere from Boston to Washington, try to come. And if you can't, please support the work. To come or to help, click to --https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/602/t/7445/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=3732
And the next step: Senator Obama will become President at noon on Tuesday, January 20. The day before is Martin Luther King's Birthday! (Still believe that God didn't plan this moment?) In Washington and all throughout the country, all our religious and ethical communities must honor this miraculous convergence by committing ourselves as a body both politic and spiritual to join in covenant to make King's deepest vision real: to end the destructive "triplets," as he called them, of racism, militarism, and materialism in America. To move forward in a revolution of values toward becoming the Beloved Community.
To see a fuller explanation of this MLK/ Inauguration effort and to join in it, see --
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1432
And a third step into this journey: This spring will mark 40 years since the original Freedom Seder that, on the first anniversary of Dr. King's death, honored the freedom struggles of Blacks in modern America as well as Jews in ancient Egypt. On March 29, in Washington and all around the country, The Shalom Center will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Seder. Once again this Seder will be interfaith, multireligious, multiracial. This time it will focus on the "Ten Plagues" that our modern Pharaohs are bringing on the earth - and on what we can do to bring Ten Blessings on the earth instead.
For fuller information on this 40th anniversary Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth, see --
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1457
For January 19 and March 29, The Shalom Center is working with the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership and The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah. One crucial aspect of the new path to the place that God will let us see is that path in which Jews and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and Wiccans walk together.
And let me end, for today, on that note: The path that we have only begun to walk. The path toward healing the earth from the damage we human earthlings have wreaked upon it, and therefore on ourselves. The path toward a just world economy, within America and for all humanity. The path toward not just ending the wars we are already in and the genocidal civil wars already killing people, but toward a compassionate world in which conflicts are addressed without violence and hatred.
No President, no Congress, can walk that path unless there is a community in motion - a movement - demanding and creating those changes in private behavior as well as public policy. That is our task. Let us begin.
With blessings of shalom, salaam, vriede, shantih --- PEACE!
Arthur
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