Are you familiar with the Fetzer Institute?

I've been aware of the Fetzer Institute for quite a number of years . . . but realized that perhaps some persons I know might not be aware of their work.

I'd encourage you to click through their links and become aware of who they are - as they seek: 

To foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community.

In collaboration with our Fetzer Advisory Councils, we seek to understand the motivations and preconditions of exemplary cases of love and forgiveness in the world. From these examples, we develop projects to grow an even greater awareness of love and forgiveness in action in individual and community life.

Toward eupan ~

~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

From a Photojournalist in Syia

“It’s not a war. It’s a massacre, an indiscriminate massacre.” Chilling words from a photojournalist on the ground in Syria.

From thepoliticalnotebook:

“As I’m talking to you now, they’re dying.” Injured Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy gives Sky News an interview from his hospital bed. This is a really important interview. His descriptions of what’s happening in Homs are painful and terrible. He spoke of the scheduled regularity of the shelling, beginning with horrible predictability at 6:00 every morning.

I’ve worked in many war zones. I’ve never seen, or been, in shelling like this. It is a systematic … I’m an ex-artillery gunner so I can kind of follow the patterns… they’re systematically moving through neighborhoods with munitions that are used for battlefields. This is used in a couple of square kilometers. 

He described the state of fear in Homs, calling it “beyond shell shock,” and the actions of Assad’s forces “absolutely indiscriminate,” with the intensity of the bombardments increasing daily. Conroy’s detailing of the inhumane conditions and the position of the Syrian citizens and the Free Syrian Army is important, because we don’t have as many journalists who have been able to tell us what it was like to be there as we have had elsewhere. He tells us that “The time for talking is actually over. Now, the massacre and the killing is at full tilt.” 

I actually want to quote his entire interview about the people who are living without hope, food, or power and his conviction that we will look back on this massacre with incredible shame if we stand by and do nothing. In lieu of that, you must must must watch every bit of this interview.

Shared from "On Being" Public Radio Broadcast Blog Site.

Toward eupan.

~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

Made for goodness

“You and I, and all of us, are incredible . . . . We are, as a matter of fact, made for goodness.”

~ Desmond Tutu

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

January and February 2012 - Syria and Iran

I have resisted posting several issues in the past few weeks, specifically related to the continuing, enlarging "rhetoric" and emerging violence involving situations in Syria (violence) and Iran/Israel (rhetoric).

Thankfully, thus far the rhetoric for Iran/Israel has remained mostly just rhetoric.  Unwelcome is the violence in Syria.

Wishing for these places - as reflections of our world - more peace, more stability, more shared conversation and less violence.

Toward eupan.

~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

Einstein on the need to Do Good

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

MLK on the Washington D.C. Mall

I was in Washington D.C. last year and passed by the location of the MLK Memorial under construction, though I did not see it finished. I was - and am - excited to see that they were giving MLK a "place" on The Mall next to other significant memorials!

It is a historic issue that MLK stands permanently on The Mall when one considers that MLK (with others!!) challenged the powers of D.C. And now he is "enshrined" or "memorialized" there.

I think it is fantastic that next to memorials built for Presidents - this Pastor has a place - no doubt because of his pervasive and powerful prophetic voice for Peace!

That is fantastic.

And yet - I am convinced Martin Luther King, Jr. would rather we extend his social, political, and economic advocacy - birthed from his religious discernment of justice and righteousness - than that we memorialize his "image."

I am convinced that if we set MLK Jr. "in stone" - as he now stands, hands crossed, on The Mall - and we let that become MLK's "concrete" image - we will have missed so much. (And we will place "his image" as the image of the March for Jobs and Freedom - instead of the many persons and young people who were also part of the movement - for it was the people's movement!)

Every time I have been to D.C. (five times in my lifetime) - I have stood where MLK stood to deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech. Personally, I genuinely believe MLK Jr. would prefer the simple stone carving on the stairs of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial - compared to the new monument some 30 feet tall.

I genuinely beleve MLK would rather each one of us can step into the space of the place where he delivered "I Have a Dream" - so that we can, standing there, in the same place, become partners with MLK in the movement he was part of.

While MLK was hugely important in various social advocacy movements - he was but a Drum Major - not the whole Marching Band. As important as his role was (and is) - I genuinely believe MLK would prefer we stand with him in the space of his words and vision - than at the foot of a monolith of stone. As we stand with him in that space, we take on with him - the vision of a dream for a better future and a better world.

I am excited that sometime in the future I believe I will go see the new monument in D.C. I look forward to that. But for me, standing in the place of the space where the Dream was proclaimed will always be more important.

That place, is for me, a place of Encounter with the best hopes for our extended future in our world.

With MLK - and many others gathered that day - I still gather in the belief that "we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!""

Toward eupan ~

~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative

MLK Jr. - more than "civil" rights

MLK Jr. was a person who inspired others, as much as he was inspired by others. 

Though he was a charismatic, gifted, and intelligent speaker - his total ability came not from "him" - but from "them" - all of the many persons in many cities for whom MLK served as a mouth-piece for their common voice and their common struggle.

In many ways, MLK's ability to lead emerged not so from who he was - but how he connected others.  The ability to connect and partner persons in a common cause - and one of non-violent integrity - is the mark of leadership strength.

“King constantly pointed out to those in the freedom movement that their refusal to respond in kind to the violence and terrorism of their opponents was increasing their own strength and unity. He reminded them and the world that their goal was not only the right to sit at the front of the bus or to vote, but to give birth to a new society based on more human values. In so doing, he not only empowered those on the front lines, but in the process developed a strategy for transforming a struggle for rights into a struggle that advances the humanity of everyone in the society and thereby brings the beloved community closer to realization. This is what true revolutions are about.”

—Grace Lee Boggs, from her article “The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King” commemorating the 75th anniversary of his birth.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Paris in March 1966. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Cited from the On Being Blog - at this link.

Posted via email from Eupan Global Initiative