Peace Action Group – quotes for deepening thoughts
8/12/23
Quote from: Peace Pilgrim Her Life and Work In Her Own Words, Merry Brennan
This is the way of peace; overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love. It is hard for people to understand that all war is bad and self-defeating. People in their immaturity attempt to overcome evil with more evil. Only good can overcome evil. My simple peace message is adequate — really just the message that the way of peace is the way of love. Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things. One in harmony with God’s law of love has more strength than an army, for one need not subdue an adversary; an adversary can be transformed…..The nuclear bomb says to us, “Make peace or perish!” We recognize that we can no longer think in terms of military victory, that a nuclear war would mean mutual annihilation. Many face this critical situation with apathy, some with frustration, but only a very few face it constructively. There is such a great need for constructive peace action.–Peace Pilgrim
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5/15/23
Quote from: Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal and change comes upon us like a change of weather.
All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.
To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.
I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should show you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.
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4-9-23
Joanna Macy, from her book, “A Wild Love for the World“
“The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world”