#peacebuilding — Public Fediverse posts

🚨 New projects alert! 🚨

Join our mission to map vital areas for peacekeeping in the West African region. 🌍🇨🇲🇳🇬

📍 https://tasks.hotosm.org/explore?location=Nigeria&omitMapResults=1&organisation=UN%20Mappers
🗺 Features to map: Roads and Places
👩‍💻 Open to beginner and expert mappers
⏳ Target completion date: 20 September

Become a #UNMapper! 💙

#UNMappers #UNMaps #MappingforPeace #OpenStreetMap #UNOWAS #volunteering #UNvolunteering #UNvolunteers #peacebuilding

It’s in the Blood

In 1539, a fugitive former-priest-turned-Anabaptist, in his seminal work “The Foundation,” penned the following words:

“Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of God our sword. …Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value.”

So said Menno Simons, principal leader of the Protestant sect which then became known as the Mennonites.

More than 500 years later, his words still resound with a mighty truth.

At the risk of sounding morbid, it has to do with blood.

While Menno specifically refers to the difference between human blood and that of an animal, his larger point is the “value” we place on the blood of another.

My point is quite simple.

Killing will not end through education, conflict resolution, or disarmament, though all of these are important and can help. Killing will end only when there is a fundamental shift in the mind and heart of those who kill.

For how can you kill someone if you believe that their blood is just as valuable as your own?

Let’s call it – for lack of a better term – bloodism.

The other – their humanity, life, blood – is somehow less than I, and therefore, their humanity, life, blood, is not as valuable as my own. It becomes quite easy then to justify killing the other, ie. spilling his/her blood.

The directors of death throughout history from every nation, tribe and religion have understood and disseminated this concept quite well. A person (and those like him/her) is described as having the wrong beliefs, the wrong skin color, the wrong gender, the wrong age, the wrong station in life, the wrong land, the wrong possessions, the wrong clothing, the wrong language —- the wrong blood. These others are not as valued as you are, the leaders of the macabre scream, though they couch their speech in terms such as vigilance, freedom, history, security, and truth.

Then the killing begins.

The Nazis did it to the Jews. Israelis do it to the Palestinians. Hutus did it to the Tutsis. Shiite do it to the Sunni. Palestinians do it to the Israelis. Sunni do it to the Shiite. Muslims do it to the Christians. Christians do it to the Muslims. This country does it to that country. That neighborhood does it to this neighborhood. This race does it to that race. That religion does it to this religion.

And any one of a million other combinations.

STOP!

Do not allow your mind and heart to be filled with bloodism.

We are made in the image of God.

ALL of us.

And that divine DNA resides in the very marrow of our bones and flows through our veins.

It’s in the blood.

July 28, 2014

Builder

For Nelson (May 16, 1944-July 13, 2005)

If I would have my life to live over again,
I would find an old stone wall in disrepair
and I would spend my days seeking the tumbled
down stones hidden in the grass.

By day I would rebuild the wall. At night I
would lie in its lee. I would not be afraid
of the snakes and rodents disturbed from
their dark places in the cracks between the
stones where they sleep.

And when my life came to an end and the wall
was as yet unfinished, I would not moan. I
would lay myself down against the rocks and
let my body fade away into a place of rest in
the cracks between the stones.

March 11, 2005

(Reposted on the anniversary of my dear friend’s passing)

Storm Surge

In the end,
will you be faithful?
That is question.

When the storm has come and gone,
when what you thought was precious has been stripped away,
when you sleep in darkness wondering if the lights will ever come back on,
when your life in the flash of lightning reverts back to the everyday of your sisters and brothers in the warzone,
when your plane to those destinations is grounded by the thunder’s roar?

Will you awake to new resolve for justice?
Will you spend less time before the screen and more time present to loved ones and those in need of it?
Will you leave the ground to alight among the troubled?
Will you listen to them?

Will the power that comes on be in you,
through you,
glowing out through your eyes,
electrifying,
filling you with a compassion so compelling
you become a wire
among many
channeling
love and peace
to the world?

June 2, 2015

In der aktuellen Ausgabe von #RockHard wird der von mir mitherausgegebende Band "Meta/Metal. Open Questions in Metal Studies" lobend besprochen. Für das Buch habe ich einen Essay über " #HeavyMetal as #Peacebuilding" beigesteuert. #MetalStudies #MetalResearch #Metal #Science #CriticalTheory

"Jörg Scheller plaudert in seiner ihm eigenen Art die wir auch schon aus seinem Buch "Metalmorphosen: Die unwahrscheinlichen Wandlungen des Heavy Metal" kennen über einen möglichen Konnex von Metal und Friedenspolitik ..."

#HeavyMetal #Metal #Peacebuilding #MetalStudies #Science #Humanities #MetaMetal

https://stormbringer.at/reviews/19788/pichler-hoepflinger-scheller-dawes-bera-meta-metal-open-questions-in-metal-studies

I am delighted that “Meta/Metal. Open Questions in #MetalStudies” has been published – with texts on #metal and #poetry, #EasternEurope, #peacebuilding, #queerness, #racism, and much more. Edited by Dr. Peter Pichler, Graz. PD Dr. Anna-Katharina Höpflinger, LMU Munich. Prof. Dr. Jörg Scheller, Zurich University of the Arts. Laina Dawes, PhD, Columbia University. Dr. Camille F. Béra, independent researcher.

Open access, free download.

#HeavyMetal

https://shop.kohlhammer.de/meta-metal-43458.html#147=9

#Norway : #Peace / #PeaceResearch / #science / #nonviolence / #Peacebuilding / #obituary / #Galtung

Just for fun, have a look in your daily newspaper to see if Galtung's death has been mentioned there. If not, please think about whether you think it would be worth continuing your subscription…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/21/johan-galtung-obituary

Bullet the Blue Sky*

I went outside 
to watch the 
stars.

It is as if 
all the bullets 
from the war 
have been fired 
into the sky,
tearing holes 
in the black velvet 
for a little bit 
of heaven 
to shine 
through.

Every once 
in a while 
the fabric rips 
as a shooting star 
races across 
the sky,
but then 
it quickly 
mends 
itself.

November 2, 1988
La Esperanza, Nicaragua

Part of the continuing Ugly American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

*From the U2 song of the same title