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Peaceable Kingdom a short address given at a benefit for the Parents Circle (an organization of Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the violence, Bereaved Families, and the Geneva Initiative
My name is Kathryn Blume. I’m the Co-Founder of the Lysistrata Project, and I’m filling in for the mighty and magnificent Kathleen Chalfant with a poem and a celebration. (What I Will - Suheir Hammad) It’s an honor to be here at this celebration of the Parents Circle, Bereaved Families, and the Geneva Initiative: this blending of grassroots action and international activism at the highest levels; this collective of brave people who have made a conscious decision to work for peace and reconciliation through facilitating dialogue, sharing stories, and revealing their common humanity and pain. We’re celebrating the ability to speak a deep truth – that we are all the same. And that there are people, just like you and me, behind all the words and labels and statistics we hear every day. We’re celebrating the tenacity and imagination and will to overcome the pervasive cynicism which says peace will never come and reconciliation is impossible We’re celebrating the wisdom, the knowledge, the common sense that peace and reconciliation are possible. Now. We can make peace now. Today. And we celebrate the actions – large and small, seen and unseen – which will get us there, which will bring us all home. And we’re celebrating our capacity as Americans to support that process; celebrating our immense – boundless – capacity to help release everyone from the pain, injustice, and inevitable moral decay which come from occupation and violence.
We’re celebrating all of us, and our ability to overcome fear, despair,
exhaustion, disappointment, and grief, and reach out to each other one more
time – reach out again and again and again – never stop reaching out, and
offer each other enough hope, faith, and love to repair the world. |
