{"id":19143,"date":"2020-07-31T09:11:29","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T13:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19143"},"modified":"2020-07-31T09:59:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T13:59:13","slug":"love-at-the-center-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19143","title":{"rendered":"Love at the Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Being Peaceful Change<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Love\nat the Center<\/strong><br>\nFriday, \u202fJuly 31, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qu_LZcZP9zk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Blessed\nare the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 5:9<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Today many think\nwe can achieve peace through violence. The myth that violence solves problems\nis part of the way we think and is in direct opposition to all great religious\nteachings. Our need for immediate control leads us to disconnect the\nconsistency, connection, and unity between means and ends. We even named a\nmissile created for the destruction of humanity a \u201cpeacekeeper.\u201d But such peace\nis a false peace, the Pax Romana of mutually assured destruction (MAD). We must\nwait and work for the Pax Christi of mutually assured forgiveness.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The above verse\nfrom Matthew is the only time the word \u201cpeacemakers\u201d is used in the whole\nBible. A peacemaker literally is the \u201cone who reconciles quarrels.\u201d Jesus is\nclearly not on the side of the violent but on the side of the nonviolent. Jesus\nis saying there is no way to peace other than peacemaking itself.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Coretta Scott\nKing reflects on her husband Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s commitment to\nnonviolence with love at its center:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Noncooperation\nand nonviolent resistance were means of stirring and awakening moral truths in\none\u2019s opponents, of evoking the humanity which, Martin believed, existed in\neach of us. The means, therefore, had to be consistent with the ends. And the\nend, as Martin conceived it, was greater than any of its parts, greater than\nany single issue. \u201cThe end is redemption and reconciliation,\u201d he believed. . .\n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even\nthe most intractable evils of our world\u2014the triple evils of poverty, racism,\nand war which Martin so eloquently challenged in his Nobel lecture\u2014can only be\neliminated by nonviolent means. And the wellspring for the eradication of even\nthese most economically, politically, and socially entrenched evils is the\nmoral imperative of love. In his 1967 address to the anti-war group Clergy and\nLaity Concerned, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I speak of\nlove I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of\nthat force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying\nprinciple of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to\nultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about\nultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:\n\u201cLet us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of\nGod and knoweth God\u201d [1 John 4:7].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If\nlove is the eternal religious principle, Martin Luther King, Jr. believed, then\nnonviolence is its external worldly counterpart. He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2020-07-31-at-9.58.32-AM-500x350.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19147\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2020-07-31-at-9.58.32-AM-500x350.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2020-07-31-at-9.58.32-AM-300x210.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2020-07-31-at-9.58.32-AM-768x537.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Screen-Shot-2020-07-31-at-9.58.32-AM.png 1808w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being Peaceful Change Love at the Center Friday, \u202fJuly 31, 2020 Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 5:9 Today many think we can achieve peace through violence. The myth that violence solves problems is part of the way we think and is in direct opposition to all great religious [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19148,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19143\/revisions\/19148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}