Jim's Peacemaking

Hello friends, Is the war working? This is the question I asked the fellow behind the Veterans booth at our County Fair. A little to my surprise he said, "Well, that's obvious. It is not." Later I asked the same question of the fellow at the Republican Party booth. He was a lot more unclear in his answer, but ended by saying: "I do think we need to do a lot more talking and negotiating than we have been doing." I hope this can trickle up to the higher ups in the party. Both of these are evidence of the growing clarity amongst our population that the ways of violence and war are not practical, that in the end they do not work. That is one thing about war, the more you have it, the plainer the truth about its failures become to more and more people. The ways of the world do not work. I find great hope in this for the future. I see this also in the growing positive responses and the diminishing of nega...

Hello friend, Cultivating our life spiritually is an important part of peacemaking. This is the first of two letters which will include meditation exercises and some recent reflections that I've found helpful in my journey. Doing these meditation exercises seems to even give me insights for the whole day. For example, when I was tired and considering cutting short my quiet time, these words came to me: "Just show up." In other words, just pray. It's ok to pray even if I don't feel like it, which for me is probably fairly often. It is good just to go through the motions. This is a reminder that the effectiveness of my prayers depends on God and not on me and how I am feeling. Oftentimes it feels like hard work to force myself to pray, but I am becoming more and more convinced that it is worth it. Discipline and disciple go together. The other day I was trying to lift the fighting in Lebanon to the Light. The word I got for both Hezbollah and Israel ...