3 minute read
Publisher’s Corner
Voices for Peace
Tami Biggs, therapeutic harpist, reports that for several days, one image haunted her: the face of Rojelio Fernandez Torres, one of the children murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, who wore a Difference Maker t-shirt.
“This photograph has come in and out of my consciousness over the past several days … a haunting of what the meaning of making a difference really meant to Rojelio? What did he see as his purpose, his mission as a 10year-old boy? "I was facilitating a peace meditation focused on gun violence sponsored by Rotary International’s EClub of World Peace. Intermittently, I would play the harp to deepen the meditation and about halfway through the meditation, Rojelio came in front of my harp. He whispered, 'Please don’t let my life be for naught.'” "As I was playing, I realized he died as a major catalyst for us to finally change our gun laws. When I finished the song, he and I embraced in a loving hug, and I assured him that I am, along with millions and millions of other people around the world, doing everything possible now to make sure his beautiful legacy comes true … that Rojelio Fernandez Torres truly was a Difference Maker."
– John F. Kennedy
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Mother’s Peace Day Proclamation:
Arise, all women who have hearts
1870 … the United States is still reeling from the loss of more than half-million of its husbands, sons, brothers and fathers, the equivalent of 6-7 million of today’s US population. For the four years of battle and many years after as men returned home, broken, injured, and sick, women assumed the burdens of maintaining their homes, businesses, and farms, raising their children, supporting their churches and communities. Abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, also the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, wrote a proclamation for women to stand up against war. What originally was a call to peace, eventually became the holiday we celebrate as “mother’s day."
Proclamation:
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God. In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. I sit in silence and shame
as we watch images on nightly news.
What right does a person have for breaking the law? violating our human rights? ending lives, destroying homes, leaving behind broken spirits, and broken bones, with no place to now call home?
Years lost, cultures destroyed, landmarks gone, when do we say this is all wrong? “Imagine” the lyrics from the song, dream our dream, keep the peace. When do we say we’ve had enough?
WAR NO MORE!
WAR NO MORE!
– Barbara Gaughen-Muller
