seeding the youth

"Creating New From Old"

i have a new signature attached to all my e-mails and i think i have settled into it as a fixture that will remain.

The lead up to the Iraq Invasion(notice i still refuse to call it a war) was the beginning of my political activity. i constantly changed the sig line on the bottom of my e-mails depending upon which new outrage of the day compelled me to express myself. i wanted people to see these notices on everything. i wanted them to think about things outside their insulated lives. i wanted them to get angry and many did during all these years. i only lost one family to political ideology which all in all was pretty good considering.

My e-mails made them too uncomfortable and unfortunately their ideology trumped our friendship. They thought i was writing the stuff myself, heard my voice and hated me for it even though most of the time i was only passing on what i had read. They put me in the spam box....lovely way to end a friendship....the spam box. It must have been too difficult to just delete the political ones and read the personal ones. They couldn't do that though because they might accidentally read something they didn't want to know about so into the spam box went i and all my hopes for change. i almost felt proud knowing they had to go to those depths not to know something.

i finally figured out i had been put in the spam box a few years ago when they stopped answering even the personal notes, i forgive them for they know not what they have done and i hope someday they come back.

i liked them a lot but keep uppermost a conversation i had with another friend who is also very conservative. i'm actually amazed at how many conservative friends i have. i love them all.

But anyway she said to me.

"Friend, i will never let politics come between friendship."

And so moving on with my hope for humanity and forgiveness here is my new signature and something else to think about.

If Peace is to prevail we all have to become foes of violence.

How about if we start with young children and train them how to become peacemakers instead of warriors?

Here are a few ideas which most of you teachers already know and i found on a website that talks to non-violence and forgiveness:

Give a gift of your heart. Smile and talk with the children you see everyday. Befriend a child "in need" - get to know them, believe in them, and encourage their dreams. Show them you care.
Give a gift of your time. Volunteer with the many wonderful non-profit organizations that work with children. Serve as a coach, a tutor or a Big Brother or Big Sister "mentor."
Give your voice. Advocate & speak for the children who don't have a voice and often lack caring adults in their life to love and protect them.

i copied the above off the TKM website. At TKM they advocate non-violence and forgiveness.

TKM was formed after the killing of Tariq Khamisa who was a 20 year old college student delivering pizza in San Diego. He was killed by a 14 year old boy who had been given the order to shoot by his 18 year old gang leader.

Tariq's father was devastated by his death and through his journey with grief realized that he had to make some sense out of this horrific killing. He turned away from hostility and instead found forgiveness. He reached out to the killers grandfather and through that initial contact the two forged a relationship that endures to this day.

They formed a group that does outreach in schools in San Diego and around the country. They teach children the alternatives to violence.

To learn more about this group, visit their website at http://www.tkf.org/index.htm

Love, Care & Advocate for the Beloved Children In Your Community. There are countless ways to make a difference in the life of a child and spread peace not violence.

Also if you have a minute (its literally a minute) watch this You Tube which was an entry in a contest conducted by AARP. Pretty powerful stuff.