What would you like to know about St. Joan of Arc? Do you have a story about our parish or of general interest that you think others would like to hear? For story ideas, contact Jeff Rholl, jeff@stjoan.com.

SJA Peace Committee Reaches Out!

The SJA Peace Committee, an outgrowth of the "Conversations on Peace" group, has appealed to area faith organizations to join them in demonstrating the power of peace during the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The following letter was sent as a followup to earlier phone conversations.

Dear Friend in Peace,

Thanks for listening to our telephone inquiry about PEACE events on the weekend of January 18 and 19th.

Talk of war is all over the media these days. We ask, where is the talk of and focus for Peace? Where is the talk of how to create a just and lasting peace? Where even is the talk of how to avoid war? Where are the prayers for Peace? The leaders of war with their anticipated strategies and technologies are given the forefront of our national conversation. Peace, and how that might look, how that might be achieved, is given short shrift.

Joan of Arc’s “Conversations On Peace Committee” find this is a situation that deserves reversing. We believe that your house of worship, by your response to our phone call, also shares our concern.

There is a nationwide event planned, a Peace March and Congress in Washington DC. on Saturday, January 18. This is the weekend of the Martin Luther King Holiday. Here in the Twin Cities, we are inviting houses of worship to join us in developing their own Peace oriented events.

Among the ideas we feel might help your community express a hope for peace are:

• A prayer time as we embrace our collective desire to avoid war
• A multicultural, multi-faith recitation of peace prayers. (see:www.stjoan.com under Feature Stories - in the list of feature stories you will find "Those Sunday Peace Prayers"(11/02) by JoAnn Potts - by pressing this category you will find Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Shinto, Native American , Sikh and other peace prayers.)
• A musical event, singing songs of peace.
• A Candlelight ceremony for the victims of war.
• Ringing of bells as a sign of peace unity at 10:00 A.M. January 18, 2003.This time coincides with the National event in Washington DC.
• A study of Martin Luther King’s understanding of active non-violent resistance to war and injustice. The timing of this event is especially fitting because it was King who inspired so many Americans to embrace active non-violent resistance to injustice.
• A study and discussion of Peace Heroes. (Your group could look at the lives and Peace philosophy and theology of such figures as: Martin Luther King,Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin, Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Dag Hammarskjold, The Dali Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh). A helpful website with short Peace Hero biographies is: www.wagingpeace.org/new/programs/awardscontests/yeararoundcontest/index.htm.
• A Peace Founders study and discussion group: Study the Peace theology of a founder of one of the world’s largest religions: (Jesus, Buddha, Ba Hau La, Mohammed)
• Conversations on Peace meetings. We found that while we had different understandings of Peace among our group, it has been helpful to us all to bring our members together in conversation on peace topics such as :
  • What is peace?
  • What is war?
  • What are the root causes of war?
  • How could we change the root causes of war in the future?
  • Is there justified war?
  • What would be the criteria for a justified war?
  • What can individuals do to promote peace?
  • How does the media promote war?
  • How can peace be made newsworthy?
  • Being a peace patriot.
  • Other topics you may have of your own
• A discussion on nonviolence, methods and examples of nonviolent resistance.
• A teach-in about who will profit from this war.
• Join our members for the nationwide Peace March and Congress in Washington DC on Saturday Jan. 18th. We have reserved busses. The cost per individual is $140. If interested please contact Marlys at (612) 825-1474 or Sue at (952)938-6992.
• A workshop to focus on, and then take action about one of the expressions of violence common within our society:
  • The death penalty
  • Gun violence
  • Spouse and child abuse
  • Bullying
  • Poverty,
  • Homophobia.
• Create a large visual that contrasts the money that would be spent on war versus the money not spent on important social needs.

Please contact us at:

Peace Committee

St. Joan of Arc Church

4537 Third Ave. S.

Mpls, MN 55409

612-823-8205

or at www.stjoan.com under the “Contact Us” link. Please start with “Peace Committee” in your message to us

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Peace be with you,
The St Joan of Arc “Conversations of Peace” committee.

War: A Call to Inner Life... Words of Hope for Uncertain Times

The editors at Plough, with help from the rest of the Bruderhof community, have put together a free E-book to counter the propaganda of the war- and fear- mongers. Go to www.plough.com to download the book, or offer it on your own Web sites.

The website, plough.com, is closing but for a limited time you can still download the e-book at the website. Once at plough.com, scroll down to the Free E-Books link and click War: A Call to Inner Life. Click the download button and the book, all 65 pages will download to your computer. The file is an Acrobat Reader file and is about 400 KB. If you don't have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, you can download the reader program for free at this link. Call 800-521-8011 if you have questions.