We are doing a makeover of the main homepage of the LPF website and want to include pictures of people involved in a variety of peacemaking activities and other images and artwork to illustrate the work of LPF.
Please send us action shots of you and other peacemakers in action and images or artwork of what peacemaking means to you. The best entries will be featured on the LPF website.
Ideas include:
Take action photos of peace related events/activities in your congregation or community.
Sunday school art projects: draw a picture of what peace means to you.
Pick out your favorite peace related bible verse to illustrate.
Download LPF´s Peace Deck and create original artwork based on your favorite quote.
Illustrate the concepts of active nonviolence and conflict resolution in photos or drawings.
Take pictures at your local foodbank or feeding program of people helping people in need.
Please submit entries by email to lutheranpeace@gmail.com (5 mb max per email) along with the author´s name so we can give them credit.
World Food Day
Saturday, October 16th
The theme of this year’s observance is United against hunger, chosen to recognize the efforts made in the fight against world hunger at national, regional and international levels.
The International Day of Peace 2010 and The International Day of Prayer for Peace, are observed widely on Sept. 21 in congregations and at the ELCA Center in Chicago. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has announced that this year’s Peace Day Theme is “Peace, Youth and Development” under the slogan “Peace = Future”. LPF and the ELCA offer a variety of peace prayers and other resources that can be used throughout the year. We have suggestions, a bulletin insert, and other resources and activities below to make this a meaningful and useful experience for all. LPF’s director was one of six Lutheran peace leaders whose reflections on peace day were featured on the home page of the ELCA web site in 2009.
On this day we remember the anniversary of the atomic the bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Remarkably, this is the first time in 65 years that the US has sent an official representative to the city for an event that organizers hope will bolster global efforts toward nuclear disarmament. We invite Christians to pray for peace.
“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” -- Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity Day on July 12th celebrates the birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) who encouraged us to simplify our lives.
Check out the following videos and resources about this remarkable movement:
AFFLUENZA- Soundtrack to VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture.
This video clip is a collage of scenes from the documentary posted next below
Watch the entire documentary:
VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture documentary explores the philosophy behind Voluntary Simplicity, what potential or significance it has as a quietly emerging social movement and what its limitations might be.
Global Pandemy in its entirety - a 15-year-old documentary about what began as a trend in the US but now has spread all over the world. We are not considered to be citizens any more, we've been turned into simple consumers, with no other rights than the ones that corporations let us have, if so. There's no space for humanitarian behavior or for critical thinking. The greeding controlling minorities have deceived most of us to believe that we're free to choose a better life, and that the so called better life is measured in terms of properties, of things that we own. No matter if we don't have enough money, that's what Credit's been made for. If other people are suffering, we've been trained to ignore it because «That's not our business». Everything is business, and so, that way, we want to reach happiness. But the fact is that there's no happiness in material belongings. That's why we always are looking for more. And it's never enough. When we have reached to that point, then we are doomed, for we have been infected and controlled by this selfish way of surviving. We are not living anymore, we're just surviving, because we're sick. We suffer AFFLUENZA. And man... we DO SUFFER...
Adventures in Simplicity - A video montage created specifically to accompany an audio Plunderphonics track, created in 2008 on the topic of voluntary simplicity.
(Part II: forthcoming)
Simplicity - When we are connected with the Universe, we realize that the small feelings in life are the ones that have the ability to make us happy.
War Supplemental Expected in the House This Week Supplemental spending for the war in Afghanistan will be voted on later this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday. The Majority Whip sent out a whip question Friday asking Democrats whether they would vote in favor of a) the Afghanistan war money, and b) all the other supplemental funding, a sign that a vote is imminent.
Please contact your Representative, and ask him or her to 1) vote "NO" on the war money 2) co-sponsor the McGovern bill and vote for a corresponding amendment, requiring the President to establish a timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Call: The Capitol Switchboard is 202-225-3121. Ask to be connected to your Representative's office. Try to get the Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant on the phone; tell whomever you get to speak with that you urge the Representative to vote no on war funding and to co-sponsor McGovern's bill and vote for McGovern's amendment; try to get them to say how the Representative will vote. Please report back to us any result of your query at the following two places: for LPF, please email ggersmehl@hotmail.com and if you can, also send your email to: www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
Now when they had departed, behold,( an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. (Matthew 2:13-15)
World Refugee Day, observed June 20 each year, is dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world.
National and Washington State Religious Campaign Against Torture.
The suggested June action is as follows:
(1) Please try to have a table for action set up for every Sunday in June, publicizing it with something like "Torture Is A Moral Issue"
(2) On the table, have an adequate supply of postcards (provided by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture--how many do you need ?) The message on the card is a request for the International Committee of the Red Cross to be given permission to have access to all prisoners held by USA forces in any country.
(3) Also on the table have a petition to be signed, urging Attorney General Eric Holder to move ahead in appointing a Commission of Inquiry about who ordered/authorized USA forces to use torture and include the option of a prosecutor if crimes have been committed.
(4) Try to arrange the showing of a 20 minute DVD "Ending US-Sponsored Torture Forever." (The DVD is free from NRCAT)
A conscientious objector (CO) is an “individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion.
