Dot Walsh – Engaging Peace

Something has gone very wrong

Posted on August 7, 2019August 7, 2019 by kathiemm

Participants at vigil, Sherborn, MA, August 6, 2019, commemorating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and latest mass shootings in the USA. Photo courtesy of Lewis Randa, the Peace Abbey

by Dot Walsh

In the years from 1982 to the present, there have been 110 mass shootings in the United States; according to statistics, 107 of these have been perpetrated by young to older men.

As I reflect on the carnage and suffering engulfing our country, I am bewildered and angered by how our Congress has resisted passing a simple law banning assault weapons and requiring a background check for all gun buyers, including those who buy guns online. Something has gone very wrong in this country when we cannot see clearly what is happening or gather the courage to stand up for the values that will promote peace and love.

Some men and women do show that courage. Among them are a group of people who have been standing up and speaking out, holding vigils, and praying for many years, remembering the people who bear the suffering that comes with the loss of their loved ones to violence.

The Life Experience School and friends gathered Tuesday, August 6, 2019, at the Peace Memorial in Sherborn, Massachusetts, to honor those who were killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The group gathered at the Stone that memorializes all victims of violence, both past and present.

To promote resistance to violence, I want to send a message to all the young men in our country who are being abused by corporate America and taught to hate. Social media, Hollywood, and others have gained power over you and led you down a path of ignorance and submission. But you have been gifted by a Higher Power with talents and energy as yet undiscovered. Stop for one minute and list in your mind two things you are grateful for. Then ask yourself how you can pay forward for the gifts you have received. We all have reasons to be thankful for living in this country. Maybe the problem facing the country today is not having enough positive role models and not absorbing enough LOVE in our hearts to take a stand to make things right. Can you become one of those role models? Can you find and share the love in your heart?

References: Washington Post Statista research department

Dot Walsh is a Peace Chaplain. Shi is also host of Oneness and Wellness, a cable TV show from Dedham, Mass.She is dedicated to changing the world with peace and love.

Note from Kathie MM: Pegean says, Now’s your chance to get it right. Be the candle, be the light. Be the beacon, be the dove. Be the voice of peace and love.

Peace Within The Creases

Posted on August 27, 2018August 27, 2018 by kathiemm

~Deana J. Tavare

by Deana J. Tavares Tavares

At 94 years old, Ora Spadafora still dreams and inspires within the process. Peace is her dream, and she makes sure that it flies into the hands of everyone along her path. When she goes out to eat, she always thanks her server with a bright representation of kindness and connection. The colorful paper cranes that were gifted to me will serve as a reminder that we must pass on whatever fragments of peace that we possess within our bones, to the next generation.

e dotention has conn Within each crease of her paper creations live her shared experiences, words, energy, and spirit. One simple gesture done with great intention has connected our hearts and created another link in the chain of peace. I absorbed the energy and light that she so generously rained down on me.

Beauty upon beauty is what I witnessed. I saw her many layers of light unfolding and folding right in front of my eyes. She still questions. Maybe when we stop questioning is when we truly stop living.

Ora Spadafora with Alan O’Hare and Dot Walsh on Dedham TV’s Oneness And Wellness) You too can be inspired by her words and presence. Stay tuned to see her interview on: dedhamtv.com

Ora mentioned that her granddaughter says, “It is what it is,” and then she responds by saying “But what is it?”

Every day I am blessed, but today I was blessed to be in her presence. I felt her words of peace curl up in the sunniest part of my heart, and there they will remain. It takes many pieces folded together to create a better world. My dreams of peace were gifted one thousand cranes’ wings to fly that day by the beautiful bright aura that is Ora.

Note from Kathie MM:

Follow Ora’s lead. Speak out for peace, for disarmament, for social justice at every opportunity. Join together with some friends and contact your local cable TV station with a suggestion for peace talks.

Deana’s original and somewhat longer post can be seen on her blog at https://jummyjeenz.com/2018/08/08/peace-within-the-creases/

bsorbed the energy and light that she so generously rained down upon me. Beauty upon beauty is what I witnessed. I saw her many layers of light unfolding and folding right in front of my eyes. She still questions. simple gesture done with great intention has connected our hearts upon me. Beauty upon beauty is what I witnessed. I saw her many layers of light unfolding and folding right in front of my eyes. She still questions. created another link in the chain of peace. I absorbed the energy and light that she so generously rained down upon me. Beauty upon beauty is what I witnessed. I saw her many layers of light unfolding and folding right in front of my eyes. She still questions.

Time to join in

Posted on July 6, 2018July 20, 2018 by kathiemm

Note from Kathie MM: I received this essay today from fellow peace and social justice activist Dot Walsh. I believe that, increasingly, everyone who believes in, values, and seeks peace and social justice needs to find ways to support organizations like the William Joiner Institute for War and Social Consequences, along with Engaging Peace. Read. And don’t weep. Act.

From Jimmy Jeenz’s website: https://jummyjeenz.com/2018/07/01/the-origin-of-peace/

The Origin Of Peace (shortened and lightly edited)

by Deana J. Tavares 7/1/18

Where exactly does peace begin, and where does it end? I believe peace begins with the individual. Peace dries the tears of oppression, hate, injustice, and unites us. Heals us. It softens our chains by growing flowering fields of beauty within the seas of fear and distrust. One bloom at a time.

I believe peace ends when we lose faith in its possibility and turn angrily and violently towards the pursuit of hatred and war. I believe it ends when race, culture, class, and our various differences are demonized instead of celebrated. I believe it ends the very moment a bright-eyed child full of potential is shot and killed because lines have been drawn, and enemies have been forged.

Peace also ends when we don’t acknowledge the loss of innocence and light within our veterans’ eyes, young women and men alike. When the darkness of war pervades every pore of their being, we lose 22 vets a day as a result of suicide, due to morals and values being questioned when weighed against patriotism. This is the reality of war.

So, how do we collect, cultivate, and harvest peace, and distribute it out into the world? There are many organizations of activists, artists, writers, and performers actively engaged in pursuit of peaceful paths in which to educate and create change. These are also the types of programs that don’t receive adequate funding in order to continue their mission of growing community, promoting peace, and healing our world.

One such program is the William Joiner Institute For War And Social Consequences. For 31 years, the Joiner programs have actively brought together writers across cultures, socio-economic backgrounds, religions, and countries. The programs have united Vietnam and United States veterans in hand to hand friendship, together healing the scars of combat. The Joiner summer writers workshops allow individuals to learn by sharing their perspectives about war and social issues in a safe, understanding, and nurturing environment where the consequences of war are no longer avoided, but processed, and healed.

Graduates of the program give peace a voice within their own countries, communities, schools, organizations, and individual creative practices. In organizations like the Joiner Institute, change begins when we use our voices to find the common threads weaving us together, strengthening our collective quilt of compassion and understanding.

To find out more about The William Joiner Institute for War and Social Consequences, go to their website: https://www.umb.edu/joinerinstitute

#savethejoiner

Enlightenment and Social Hope, Part 4

Posted on April 18, 2018April 16, 2018 by kathiemm

For Enlightenment by Kathie Malley-Morrison

By Stefan Schindler

The recent triumph of anti-democratic Republican Party politics was made possible with the criminal complicity of the Democratic Party, the mainstream news media, and the rise to political power of Christian fundamentalism.

In the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, the Supreme Court halted the counting of votes, and then appointed George W. Bush the winner, in what was nothing less than a judicial coup d’état.

The Cheney-Bush Administration then launched a lie-based war against Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of which now exceeds two trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the Middle East, and widespread Muslim hatred of America. In 2008, the Cheney-Bush Administration climaxed its reign of deficit spending and global terror with a domestic economic meltdown which saw American citizens suffer the greatest recession since the Depression of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, America’s homegrown economic apartheid becomes more extreme with every passing week; the Pentagon budget blooms to finance more wars; fifty percent of university teachers are slave-wage adjuncts; more than fifty million Americans are deprived of healthcare; and the planet careens toward nuclear war and ecological apocalypse.

Hence we might conclude that Immanuel Kant implicitly points to a national motto that ought to read: “Treat all people always as ends in themselves, rather than merely as means” to personal gain.

Hence also – as Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, I. F. Stone, Buckminster Fuller, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Dot Walsh, Kurt Vonnegut, Lewis and Meg Randa, Howard Zinn and John Lennon would applaud – we should revise America’s Pledge of Allegiance to read:

“I pledge allegiance to the planet, and to all the people and creatures on her; one ecosystem, universally sacred, with nourishment and beauty for all.”