View from the Bridge
Jean (the Moderator) has been electronically incapacitated by both Hurricane Isabel (in the US) and by her electricity company who dug up her power lines while trying to fix Isabel's damage, so she can't do this review. So I offered to do it, thinking it'd be easy: not much has happened on the Bridge this month, I thought. WRONG. The World Dreams Peace Bridge has been spinning at a great pace.
We started the month with a DaFuMu (Dream of Great Fortune). Our aim was to hold hands around the world for peace. Here is Ralf's dream:
I'm outside at a lake. I walk on a bridge, leading into the water (gangplank?). It is a beautiful day with blue skies, some white clouds. I somehow know, that my task is to stop the clouds, at least to see it that way. I look up and focus my intention. I get into a calm state. The clouds do stop! In that moment I loose the feeling of having a body and feel lifted. It feels like being everything, like dissolving into space. I'm filled with tranquility, peace, strength. A delicious state, lasting the twinkling of an eye. Like so often, I think, I fear losing myself. And I know, that there are higher clouds, I am to bring to halt. Alarm goes off. I awake in WPR. Still filled with the sweet memory of a peaceful state.
Nick started a collection of sayings from "The Voice": that voice that speaks with such authority in dreams. So far The Voice has said in its tender ironic manner:
Valley
Not all butterflies make it to Mexico
Valley
There is a new star on the horizon that has never been seen before
Nick
Elvis Dreams of Peace
Jean
Teachers are not piranhas; they are dreamers.
Jean
May the life of the sweeper change the width of the broom.
Victoria alerted us to the International Day of Peace on 21st September and many of us lit candles as a reminder of peace. As Chayim so beautifully put it: I just had a vision of at least 1 person in every country in the world and at the same time lighting a candle in the name of peace.
Jeremy, while in the US delivered a letter by hand, asking the US to move with care and with peace in relation to Korea. Look at what one man on a mission can achieve:
Upon arriving at Dulles Airport I called Colman McCarthy, an elderly journalist who runs the Institute for Teaching Peace in D.C., and made his acquaintance. He told me how to reach the US Senate, and so I went directly there, passing the Capitol Building, with a stop for color Xerox copies of posters, and with backpack and all went through security at the Russell office building and up to room 450 to the office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman Senator Richard Lugar was out for a while, but his lovely secretary stood up and greeted me warmly and graciously received several posters of the Korean Children's Peace Train, including one of a child screaming in front of a nuclear holocaust, and two sets of letters, one about the Peace Train world activities and one about the Korean children's dire situation. All the staff came out to see these, and also because I graduated from Indiana University law school and Chairman Lugar represents Indiana I'm fairly sure the information and extra copies for other committee members will get to him.
The next day I called Colman and he invited me to a peace education lecture he was giving at Wilson High School in D.C. near my hotel. He showed a film on the military industrial complex and how our tax dollars go to finance wars around the world, to the detriment of the average citizen especially the poor, not only in the US but all over the world where people must pay their tax dollars to buy US weapons. He gave me some informative materials, and then sent me down to the US Institute of Peace, an independent but government financed think-lab, and influential. I met the Public Affairs Officer and immediately made friends with her. I gave her copies of about 14 posters and she said she would display them during a presentation they will be giving young people about child soldiers next week at that Institute which is in downtown DC.
Here is the beginning of Jeremy's letter:
Dear President Bush,
A great many children, including Americans would surely die if North Korea ignited its "Sea of Fire," biological, chemical and conventional weapons, currently aimed at Seoul.
I don't agree with the kind of regime the Northerners have, but I do know that we can draw out the worst in people, or we can draw out the best, depending on our words and actions, our behavior towards them. We can encourage an affirmative moment by moment change in others, or else we can alienate them, wandering down the road to conflict.
We had another DaFuMu later in the month, trying to encourage Hurricane Isabel to go gently on the lives of all in her path.
Here is Liz's dream:
I was in our house near the ocean, my two boys and I there. We were preparing for the storm, we knew it was on its way. Sun out. Large windows looking over the shore, waves large. I see people on horses out in the waves. I wonder what they are doing out there. Some people had children on the horses. The were jumping the waves. One little boy I see clearly with his mother. He was not straddled on the horse but hanging on to the horse's neck with one arm, looking frightened and telling his mother to take him to shore. He was wearing cowboy boots (so I felt I was in Texas near the shore somewhere). I can see the people on horses way out into the ocean 'playing' in the waves too. I see the horses almost being pushed over and the riders trying to steady them. I wondered how I can see them standing on ground but the waves not over their heads (as one would think large waves like in Hawaii). But still enough to push them around a bit.
And in the midst of all this we have been battling hurricanes, preparing for Peace Conferences in Turkey (Ilkin and Jeremy); traveling in Australia (Victoria); attending the Psiber Dreaming Conference and very importantly welcoming home a son from Iraq. That's September.
Part 2: Welcome Home, Dave: Picture Essays on Iraq
The World Dream Peace Bridge continues to dream the dream onward in community based action and alliance. This month, a member's son, returning from Iraq is bringing back a picture show that you won't see on TV.
Dear Dream Friends,
I want to share this news with all of you and invite you to join us in spirit at our welcome home party for my son David. It is a long and difficult journey home psychologically and spiritually. War is hell and it is corrosive to all human beings who are involved in it, even those who are there to heal. David feels some "survivor guilt" since he was able to come home but so many other fellow soldiers and medical personnel are still there with renewed orders stretching into March 2004.
Though I know most of you will not be surprised to hear this testimony David has been speaking almost none stop since returning home of how wrong this war is, how the American people have been robbed by this administration, and that our worst fears about the venal nature of the enterprise, namely, that it is all about making certain interests very wealthy, is true. He feels a great deal of rage about that and is trying to channel it into effective political action.
You may all be interested to know that while he was serving as an Emergency Room doctor in Kuwait many injured soldiers who came for treatment at the hospital brought pictures from "up country" in Iraq. He was entrusted with many, many photos which he has brought home. They are horrific, tender, beautiful, desolate, playful, stark, heartrending. They are what the soldiers who took them saw and experienced. These photos were pooled and brought by various carriers to the hospital and Dave and others put them on their computers. Since he came home with these photos he has shown them to our family and a few others. It takes several hours to see them as there are about 1400 photos so far. They are what CNN does not show.
I would like you all to know that David has decided that he is responsible to bring these photos forward and show them to the public. He and his brother have an artist's studio in a very large building that houses many artist studios. On October 3 and 4 there will be an open gallery tour. He is setting this as a target date to mount a very special exhibit of a select number of these photos of the war. It is really true: a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't know whether there will be a way to share this experience more broadly, but we'll let you know whether the show may travel or have an online venue. He feels strongly that the American public needs to really see and feel what is happening and work to end this war. This is his action to help.
Subject: Welcome Home Dr. Dave
Dear Family and Friends,
The welcome home banner speaks for itself:
http://www.improverse.com/welcome_home.htm
We welcome Dave home from the war in Iraq!
He arrived home in Cincinnati yesterday. We are grateful. Join us in giving thanks for his safe return home and keep all those still caught in the war, both our American soldiers and the Iraqi people in prayers.
Please join us in spirit at the welcome home party . If you would like to send an email David_Grundy@yahoo.com we will share them at the party.
Love from Jody & Terry
Lea & Chris & Aidan & Simon
Paul & Heidi
Dave & Joanne
The World Dreams Peace Bridge is a group that uses personal dreams for public world peace. You can find out more about the WDPB at:
http://www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org
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