Identify Your Own Uniqueness

A month ago I posted about a newsletter I'd recently signed up for, My Daily Peace. Today's entry was significant to me on many levels, from improving my home to searching for meaningful work:

Identify your own uniqueness and use it to improve your environment.

Today's website: Mir Movement

International Peace Day September 21

The International Day of Peace, established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly, was first inaugurated on the third Tuesday of September, 1982. Beginning on the 20th anniversary in 2002, the UN General Assembly set 21 September as the now permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

The Assembly's resolution declared that the International Day of Peace

"will serve as a reminder to all peoples that our Organization, with all its limitations, is a living instrument in the service of peace and should serve all of us here within the Organization as a constantly pealing bell reminding us that our permanent commitment, above all interests or differences of any kind, is to peace. May this Peace Day indeed be a day of peace."

(Quote excerpted from the United Nations General Assembly Resolution UN/A/RES/36/67)

The amended Resolution adopted in 2001 permanently fixed the date of the International Day of Peace to September 21.

“The Assembly, reaffirming the contribution that the observance and celebration of the International Day of Peace make in strengthening the ideals of peace and alleviating tensions and causes of conflict, (decided that) beginning with the fifty-seventh session, the Day should be observed on 21 September each year, with this date to be brought to the attention of all people for the celebration and observance of peace.”

The new Resolution added the call for the International Day of Peace to be a Global Ceasefire:

"Declares that the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day..."

(Quotes from the amending UN resolution UN/A/RES/55/282 which fixes the date of the International Day of Peace on 21 September and calls for a Global Ceasefire on that Day.)

There are many ways you can celebrate International Peace Day, but in particular you can join countries around the world in holding a minute of silence at 12 noon. Please pause and spend a minute meditating for peace and nonviolence. Visit the World Peace Prayer Society for more information. Also visit International Day of Peace for more ideas and suggestions. May peace prevail!

Today's website: International Day of Peace

9/11

What to say today?

So many people have died, and why? Hatred, the quest for power, fear... humanity as a whole suffers whenever any of us allow ourselves to see another human being as the enemy, even more so when an entire society is villified. I don't have the answers to how to resolve our differences, but surely history has shown repeatedly that killing each other is not any kind of solution.

"We are one, after all, you and I.
Together we suffer, together we exist, and forever will we recreate each other."
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and theologian, 1881-1955)

Today's Quote: Wake Up!

"Wake up!
If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness - if you had little time left to live - you would waste precious little of it!
Well' I'm telling you ... you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth.
You don't have more than a few years left. No one does.
So be happy now, without reason, or you will never be at all."
(Dan Millman, American philosopher, born 1946)

Today's website: Your Daily Thought

My Daily Peace

This is another wonderful little newsletter I've recently discovered. It's motto is "Increasing peace in the world is as simple as doing one more peaceful thing today than you did yesterday." Every day I receive in my inbox a tip for living peacefully. The tip today: Scatter sunshine to all you meet today and to anyone close to you.



Today's website: Mir Movement Sign up for the newsletter, and have a look around at what else they do.

Going Further

I recently rented a movie from the library titled Go Further, a documentary by Ron Mann about Woody Harrelson’s Simple Organic Living (SOL) Tour. As it states on Amazon, the film “explores the idea that the single individual is the key to large-scale transformational change.” Woody and an assortment of friends toured the Pacific Coast traveling by a bio-fuelled bus and bicycles, talking to anyone and everyone along the way about what we each can do to "walk on the earth with a lighter footprint." It was both entertaining and inspirational, and I recommend it to all.


My reason for renting it had little to do with its focus on environmental issues, but rather its approach to addressing them. I was hoping for some inspiration on how I could get “PeaceRipples” back on track again. I haven’t been posting anything here in large part because I’d lost touch with my original vision of what I wanted to accomplish. I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over various ideas, but couldn’t figure out what the next step should be. A side benefit to renting it was that it reminded me that we can’t separate out the issues – if the environment isn’t take care of, peace isn’t being taken care of either. We need a healthy planet populated with healthy people in order to have peace.


Fortunately, my “ploy” worked, and the movie has renewed my energies for doing more and sharing more, and not letting myself get so hung up that I can’t post anything. Over the time I’ve been away, I’ve encountered several resources that I plan to share here over the next little while. Please, if you have any ideas and/or resources you’d like to see promoted here, email me at peaceripples@gmail.com – I’d love to hear from you.


Today’s website: - Woody Harrelson and Laura Louie’s VoiceYourself - for news and tips on environmental issues. (I was hoping they had a newsletter I could sign up for, but so far haven’t seen anything - if anyone looking through the website discovers one, please let me know!)

March For Peace heading for Washington DC

I just received an email bringing to my attention these two teenagers who are walking across the United States to promote peace. The March For Peace is currently working it's way through Nebraska, having started in San Francisco on May 21 and hopes to arrive in Washington, DC on September 11. If you're anywhere along their route, consider joining them or helping them out in any way. I'm sure they'd appreciate your support!


Meet the marchers mid way through the journey at Levi Carter Park in Omaha, Nebraska on July 14, 2007 for a music festival and rally for peace & social justice. Event sponsored by Nebraskans for Peace. Omaha Indymedia announcement for the rally here.


Check the "Route" page for the march route - catch them in a town near you!!


Objectives of the March for Peace:


1. Urge the U.S. government to End the military occupation of Iraq, and sign the Kyoto Protocol
2. Raise awareness about global issues and generate ideas for peaceful paths.
3. Please see our "Ideals" page for more reasons we march!