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Greetings!
2009 has been an outstanding year for the Peace Flag Project. In gratitude, we want to send out a special holiday message for peace, compassion and joy to all of our advisors, volunteers, friends, participating organizations and subscribers. Thank you all for your help, your encouragement and your inspiration. This continues to be the work of my heart, and you have made my heart overflow.
Our theme for this year has been "Peace is in our hands." There is so much that each of us can do to enhance peace in the world, peace in our everyday lives. We have included in this message excerpts from a moving commencement address given last June by Paul Hawken, noted environmentalist. I'm sure you will find his thoughtful insights informative and uplifting. We hear so much news that focuses on the bad things that are happening in the world; much good that happens goes unreported. But Hawken reports on a huge, worldwide movement that should hearten us all. Indeed, many of us are part of it! May his words brighten and enliven your spirit.
In thinking about what we can do to help the world now and in the new year, I turn to the six key points of the United Nations Peace Manifesto - six ways we can all help to build a culture of peace and nonviolence.
* Respect the life and dignity of each human
being
* Practice active nonviolence, rejecting
violence in all its forms * Share your time and material resources with
others
* Listen to understand
* Preserve the planet
* Participate in your community
The Peace Manifesto was created by five Nobel Peace Laureates to suggest ways each of us can work to improve life for all people living on our planet by how we behave toward one another. When we feel frustrated and wonder what one person can do to help  remedy the ills of the world, it's good to focus on simple acts of decency and kindness and responsibility that these suggestions represent.
Wishing you joy for the holidays and more peace for the coming year. Ginny Fox |
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Paul Hawken |
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When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.
It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving  Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
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Peace Quote |
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Peace Quote |
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We are the peacemakers. Peace is in our hands.
 -- Ginny Fox |
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Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
