The perfect setting for a concert that will promote world peace through music is at Newgrange, a fifty-five hundred-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site north of Dublin. Originally known as Bru na Boinne (mansion on the river Boyne), the structure is central to pre-Christian Irish mythology having been built by the Dagda, the father of the Tuatha de Danaan (people of the light), who was known as the Good Father as a benefactor to all the people. Described as a "passage grave" by scholars, it was considered a "house" where the dead could live and pass in and out of supernatural reality into this world at will. It was also a place where the living could commune with the spirits of the Otherworld and see, hear and feel the bountiful Grail that awaited them in the spirit-world beyond.
According to Joseph Campbell in his book Occidental Mythology, The Masks of God; "By various schools of modern scholarship, the Grail has been identified with the Dagda's caldron of plenty. According to Masonic lore, Newgrange's history and mythology is also central to the biblical Enoch, grandfather of Noah, who is found in all three Abrahamic religions. This ancient mythology can provide a new narrative outside the fracturing framework of today's violent struggles. But most of all Newgrange stimulates something in the imagination; a deeper connection to the past and the evolution of human thought that has been lost and forgotten to both the East and the West.
Let's Fulfill JFK's Dream for World Peace: A Plan For Action. Join Us! A FREE Zoom Event June 29, 2022 3-4:30 p.m./EST RSVP Required HERE
Key Passages from JFK's June 10, 1963 American University Speech
"Some say that it is useless to speak of peace until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude... for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward... by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union and toward freedom and peace here at home.
"First, examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many think it is impossible. But that is a defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. Our problems are manmade. Therefore, they can be solved by man. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we can do it again.
"Let us focus on an attainable peace based on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. With such a peace, there will still be conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just settlement.
"So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
"And second, let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to read a Soviet text and find claims, such as the allegation that 'there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union, and that the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and to achieve world domination by means of aggressive wars.' It is sad to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.
"No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. No nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland.
"Today, should total war break out our two countries will be the primary targets. It is a fact that the two strongest powers are in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. We are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be devoted to combat poverty and disease. We are caught up in a dangerous cycle with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter weapons.
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