Joyful
Greetings to You!!!
Because of your interest,
Rooms For Peace is moving forward. The web
site www.roomsforpeace.org and
the IRS 501(c3) letter of determination are
scheduled for receipt right around Valentines
Day!! Stay tuned.
This
week your help is very significant. We have
entered an interesting project called Ideablob
giving us great global exposure and the
opportunity to win $10,000.
All you
do is log on to this link, vote for us, and
forward this to your friends and co-hearts who
enjoy knowing what inspires you.
Rooms-For-Peace
You
might even look at other non-profit ideas
entered, vote for them if you like, and suggest
they look at Rooms For Peace as a way to move
their idea forward.
Each doing a little bit changes the
world. Choose the good little bits and do them.
Thanks, John
2/1/09
As
an HRF minister, I am inspired to learn, live, and teach the twelve
HRF principles. As a parent, and as a man of conscience, I am
committed to live by the principles of Peace, Justice, and Nonviolence.
Recently,
I sat in the midst of Dennis Kucinich, Marianne Williamson, Michael
Negler, Van Jones, Lynn McMullen, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and Marshall
Rosenberg. Collectively, they galvanized a passion in me to focus
my ministry to support this Department of Peace process they were
proposing, and ultimately, change the world. My work, as a minister,
is to take a leadership role to create the common ground within
our minds, hearts, and communities, throughout the world, to build
a force of consciousness founded on the principles of Peace,
Justice, and Nonviolence.
Out
of our thinking we create beliefs. From those beliefs,
we build expectations which then lead to attitudes. Our
attitudes dictate our behaviors. As we build a pattern of behaviors,
we create a record of performance. My goal is to learn, live,
and teach the principles of Peace, Justice, and Nonviolence and
support each person who joins with me to step up to changing
the violence in our world with our thinking, beliefs, expectations,
attitudes, behaviors and performance, by first recognizing and
engaging an Inner Department of Peace.
I
am offering a half day workshop which you and your organization
can use to discover and build Departments of Peace in your minds
and hearts, and at your dining tables and board rooms. As
you and your organizations engage with me in this process, the
organizations begin to develop organizational Departments of Peace.
Out of this process, we will be introducing the DOP to the city,
county, and state governments.
As
cities across the country develop and integrate this program into
their policies and priorities, the United States Congress will
ultimately, naturally, choose to create the nation's Department
of Peace. The polarizing adventure of our previous eight year
election cycle psychologically tore me from limb to limb. Out
of that experience, I attended a conference promoting legislation
to establish a Cabinet level US Department of Peace (DOP). The
experience rekindled my hope, and now I want to pass that hope
along to others. The Department of Peace will address global and
home-based community issues.
The
international focus is on nonmilitary peaceful conflict resolution,
the prevention of violence and the promotion of justice and democratic
principles that expand human rights. At home, in our communities,
DOP is to address gang and domestic violence, education, media-violence,
child abuse, mistreatment of elderly, and other issues of environmental
and cultural violence.
Funding
for DOP is projected to be 2% of the U.S. Defense Budget, providing
$8 billion. Much of this would be directed into local communities.
Internationally, the funds are to be used to gather research,
analyze foreign policy, and by law, make recommendations to the
President and Secretaries of State and Defense. The focus
will be how to address the root causes of war and propose methods
of intervention before violence begins.
The
Department of Peace vision embraces living and creating in a community
and country whose organizing principles are Peace, Justice and
Nonviolence. We are not alone on this planet here. There was an
international gathering in the United Kingdom following the September
Department of Peace Conference. Canada is also in the peace network.
You
now have the opportunity to take a stand for, as well as witness
a Personal/Cabinet Level Department of Peace Resolution. People
are already signing this resolution here in the U.S. and in France
and it is being carried to who knows how many other places. As
people experience the significance of taking this witnessed stand,
some will want to share those experiences and others will want
to hear about them.
Email
me with your interests for more information or to receive
updates.
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