Peace and Justice... Background & Articles

CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM DIALOGUE | Australia

PRAYER AS MEETING: THE 2006 WAY OF PEACE

"Dear Timorese Friends," | July 2006

International Prayer for Peace - Washington, D.C.

"A Sense of Belonging in Belfast" by a Northern Irelander

Australia: "Fr. Ted Kennedy"

Forgiveness in Zimbabwe

"The Spirituality of Engagement" by Susan Connelly, SSJ

Starvation in the Sudan

Haven of Peace

Nonviolence of the Eucharist

Letter to the Editor....

Lent 2005: A Season of Repentance

What do trees have to do with Peace?

A New Confession of Christ

Meditation and Social Responsibility

Meditators March with Thousands in New York

We all know that the daily practice of meditation, if undertaken with faith and love, increases our awareness of Jesus' indwelling presence and makes it possible for us to experience that peace that He promised to leave with us. Many entries on this website are dedicated to strengthening our personal meditation practice and deepening that inner peace that is a wonderful fruit of meditation. The Peace and Justice pages remind us that meditation is a way of love and compassion that has not only individual but also global significance. Meditation is a practice that can bring peace, not only to individual meditators, but also to the whole world. The pages also remind us that peace and justice are inextricably linked, for, as Pope Paul VI stated, “If you want peace, work for justice."

The Way of Peace initiative is the centerpiece of The World Community for Christian Meditation's commitment to meditation as a common ground for seeking peace and justice. Undertaken in partnership and friendship with the Dalai Lama, the original three-year program began in 1998, included a pilgrimage to India and a retreat in Tuscany (right), culminating in an extraordinary three-day gathering of over 450 people in Belfast in 2000. Entitled “The Way of Peace: Religious Harmony in the Third Millennium," and led by Laurence Freeman and the Dalai Lama, the event was attended by 450 people from around the world, and included meetings with community leaders, religious leaders, politicians, young people, victims and survivors of violence, and business leaders. In a warm letter of encouragement, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated: "The purpose of the Seminar could not be more relevant to our goal of establishing lasting peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland."

In 2004, Father Richard Rohr, OFM was chosen to continue the Way of Peace initiative because of his personal, powerful and eloquent witness for peace. After giving the 2004 Way of Peace Address in Houston on April 22, 2004, Father Richard participated with Father Laurence in a conference entitled “Seeking Peace: A Dialogue on Jesus."Father Laurence and Father Richard (photo left to right) focused on the gospel link between contemplative consciousness and non-violence, emphasizing that they both served as twin pillars of Jesus' witness to the truth. They emphasized that those who have purified the eye of the heart through prayer, whereby the truth can be seen, can also see through and resist the deceptions that justify violence and injustice.

The Peace and Justice pages of the WCCM website support the continuing work of the Way of Peace initiative. The pages will report on the peace and justice activities of WCCM members around the world, and will include other peace and justice items of interest to the community.

"Meditation in East Timor" - Updates

January 25, 2005
Paul and Judi Taylor and the Australian meditation community send us blessings of peace and love in this new year, and ask for our continued prayerful support for their project to bring meditation to East Timor. We are so very grateful for these efforts at peace making, and we appreciate their diligence in keeping us informed. The following is a summary of their report on the current status of the project:

Continued progress has occurred since the July 2004 visit. Four Sydney groups have paired up with contact people and parishes in East Timor, and other sponsorships and relationships are forming. Susan Connelly will be going to East Timor at the end of January and hopes to meditate with those who received the teaching in July. She will take a supply of the meditation cards in Tetum produced last year. She hopes to produce a CD in Tetum, which could reach beyond those who can read.

It is difficult to measure how much the 2004 visit has borne fruit in establishing the meditation practice, and both Richard Cogswell and Michael Kelly OSB, who participated in the visit last year believe a follow up trip is needed to reinforce their earlier efforts and to prepare for the possibility of a visit by Father Laurence in 2006. They indicated that their trip last year gave valuable experience which would allow them to better use their time on a return visit.

The community has concluded that despite the difficulty involved, there should be a 2005 visit, perhaps in August or September. The East Timor appeal last year was generously supported, but there is concern that other areas of the Community's finances are currently depleted. To fund this year's endeavor, the Australian National Coordinators will write to each group leader asking for their assistance. If there is widespread support among the 310 groups nationally, the project can be funded without detriment to the other activities of meditation community. Keeping this outreach in our awareness and holding the people of East Timor in the silence, we go forward in trust.

July 18
Our pilgrims have now been in Timor 3 nights, according to the plan. They have traveled to Aileu and this morning Michael and Richard return to Dili to meet with the Bishop. I am sure we all join with Pauline Peters and the Guiding Board in their prayer for them.

Know that we will hold you and the East Timorese in the silence of our meditation over these weeks. John Main said, '' We are called, we are chosen. Meditation is our response to that call from the deepest centre of our awakened consciousness.''
Peace and blessings and love from the Guiding Board.

Trish accompanied them to the airport on Friday early.

On Friday 16th I said farewel to Colette, Michael and Richard as they boarded the flight to E.T. via Adelaide and Darwin. (Michael was driven to my place and I then drove to the airport).

Their luggage was an assortment of bags containing practical items -- very few personal items -- both for their own use in opening up the gift of meditation for the East Timorese and items for the people. (e.g. Richard was given some blankets from the Good Samaritan Sisters; Colette had a chalice.) Going through the first check-in Michael was asked to remove his shoes and jacket, and his Power Point equipment, taken piece by piece out of the case. This all took time to replace as you can imagine.

Their task ahead was known, yet largely unknown, and contained last-minute hitches in translating Michael's talk from English to the current spoken Tetum, which I am sure Colette will relate later. They each had worked 'beyond normal limits' in the last few days preparing for their departure, yet I sensed a 'light within' each of them.

As I listened to some of the changes and uncertainty of what lay ahead, of not even knowing if they would be allowed to take all they had with them on the Darwin to E.T. leg of the journey; of needing to buy food, and to fit in with the ever-changing 'appointments' previously set up; I thought, this is the reality of Mission.

As we each hold them tenderly in the silence of ever-expanding love, I am experiencing yet another dimension of the "Prayer of the Faithful" in the context of Fr John's words: "The all important aim of Christian meditation is to allow God's mysterious presence within us to become more and more not only a reality, but the reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, to everything we are...."

We give thanks for so many blessings on this journey and pray that this, too, is a time of grace such as has been for us at each stage, as we hold each other in the silence in love.

Judi and Paul Taylor

In Aileu, where Colette worked previously as a doctor with the Maryknoll sisters, the group's visit is eagerly anticipated, and a number of meetings are scheduled over a couple of days. They will then return to Dili where the possibilities include public meetings, meetings with parish groups, retreat days for religious and lay people. There will be an interpreter with them the whole time to give them the ability to address their listeners in English, Tetum, or Indonesian.

Materials they are taking with them include Laurence Freeman's books “The Pearl of Great Price", which they have in English and Portuguese, and “Your Daily Practice" in Bahas Indonesian thanks to the contributions of the Indonesian and Brazilian meditation communities. Colette has put together a double-sided newsletter style sheet in Tetum with some background information about Christian meditation, including a short article about Andrew MacNaughtan, whose vision inspired this trip. Power Point presentations will be used when power is available. The whole trip is being financed as the result of a direct appeal made to the ACMC members.

Colette, Michael and Richard, along with Paul and Judi Taylor, express their deepest thanks to all who have supported this outreach and pray that the Spirit will continue to accompany the group during their journey to Timor and their sharing of our way of prayer there.

Contact: Paul & Judi Taylor

Send submissions to "Peace and Justice" Webpage Editor: Claudia Morgan

"Give East Timor a Chance - Give Them a Fair Go"

In the 1970s hundreds of thousands of people died on Australia's doorstep from oppression, violence and hunger. They died silently and few voices in Australia cried out over their deaths. Behind the clinic in which I used to work in a small village in East Timor is an inconspicuous mass grave of over 90 people who died in 1977. Their resting place is a single small memorial of three crosses, their names scratched in cement. When I spoke to older women they would tell stories of immense hardship and of the death of many children. One lady, dying now of tuberculosis had borne 13 children all but one of whom had died. Many children continue to die of preventable causes.

If a video camera recorded the mass murder of hundreds of children we would be outraged at their deaths portrayed on the evening news but children die silently and unheralded. Life goes on outside the clinic as if nothing had happened. Is an inconspicuous death any less culpable or regrettable? Is economic violence more pardonable than pulling a trigger?

John Howard described our intervention in Timor in 1999 as one of our finest achievements so why now are we being so inconsistent? In March 2002 Australia withdrew from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the Tribunal for the law of the Sea. Why did it do this? Was it to avoid being subject to international arbitration regarding its sea borders with East Timor. The conflict over resources in the Timor Sea is not just about oil and gas it is about life and death. Timor has very few other resources. The newest country in the world has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. More than half the population cannot read or write. They need schools clinics and roads. With no means of communication and terrible roads cut off in the wet season women die in obstructed labour, children die. If the rains fail without any reservoirs of water or grain reserves many people die silently. The budget of the fledgling country depends almost entirely on the resources in the Timor Sea which are now locked up in a border dispute with Australia. What is happening to us ? Why can't we see? We lead paradoxical lives in our privileged cocoon. With all our labour saving devices we are frenetically busy. Despite all the opportunities we have we are depressed. We find incomprehensible the violence threatening us but can't we see that as Laurence Freeman said recently: The gap between the rich and the poor is increasing and that gap is being filled with violence. Billions of dollars are being spent on security just for the Athens Olympics alone - we expend huge resources on weapons to protect ourselves but pay little attention to our spiritual inheritance of compassion. This inheritance may show us a more effective form of self defence - a path of understanding, of seeing through another person's eyes, of generosity of spirit. We trot out our religion on ceremonial occasions and pay lip service to it but what principles guide us now? Do we ever act because it is innately right to do so or are we motivated only by economics and what 'the International Community' think of us? Where is the Spirit of Australia?

We spurn ancient wisdom with our mobile phones and computers but if we are so advanced why can we not think of a more advanced way of settling our differences than by killing each other. We have learnt nothing from any of our religions - they all tell us to love each other and to have compassion, they all tell of our essential unity and of human interdependence and yet the twentieth century was the century of genocide - Europe, Cambodia, Kosovo, Rwanda.

The Timorese helped Australian soldiers in WW2 and thousands paid for it with their lives. Hundreds of thousands died in the Indonesian invasion in the 1970's and thousands more in the post referendum violence of 1999.

Timor Lorosa'e is now trying to find the path to a better way of life - if you have any influence at all ask our Government not to provoke another generation of young men to feel cheated, impotent and angry. Nothing but violence will come of it.

Best Wishes,
Colette Livermore

Send submissions to "Peace and Justice" Webpage Editor: Claudia Morgan

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