John Woolman College of Active Peace
[Teaching the Triad of Active Peace: Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding]
Gila Svirsky's Page
Profile Information
- Relationship Status:
- In a Relationship
- What town or city, state, and country do you live in?
- Jerusalem, Israel
- Date of Birth:
- September 26, 1946
- About Me (please use blog for resumes, CVs, or longer sketches):
- An Israeli, Jewish, female peace and human rights activist.
- I was invited to this John Woolman College site by:
- John Wilmerding
- Other Reason (Status) for Joining the Site:
- Etc.
- Relevant Affiliation(s): Center, Institute, School, Religious, Etc. (longer answer is OK):
- Activist: Women in Black, Coalition of Women for Peace, B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
- Is this (see above) your place of paid employment?
- I'm an Unpaid Volunteer
- Affiliate Organization Web Site:
- http://www.GilaSvirsky.com
- Additional Affiliate Organization or other Web Site of interest:
- http://www.btselem.org
- I believe Active Peace and its component parts -- peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding -- constitute a discrete discipline (Y/N):
- Yes
- I believe Active Peace, and its three component fields, can be taught (Y/N):
- Yes
- It is my own personal calling or vocation to teach Active Peace -- peacemaking, peacekeeping, and/or peacebuilding:
- Yes
- I am resolved to teach Active Peace at every possible opportunity in my life:
- Yes
- I endorse John Woolman College, and intend to contribute to its mission in any way(s) I can (money donations NOT required):
- Not Sure
- Email Address (optional, but recommended):
- gila@gilasvirsky.com
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Rene Wadlow*
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE) face military defeat on the last few square miles of territory they still hold. There are still civilians trapped between the LTTE and the advancing Sri Lankan army. Large numbers of displaced persons from the fighting are living in harsh conditions in temporary camps.
Thus the major issue today is no longer calling for negotiations between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE but rather to encourage all parties to look toward the future in a spirit of reconciliation.
The armed conflict, which began in 1983, has taken an estimated 70,000 lives with many wounded and lives broken. The psychological wounds are deep, and the healing of individual traumas with psycho-spiritual techniques is a real priority.
There is a need to develop governmental structures in which all citizens will feel that they belong and that their interests are safeguarded. Citizens of the World have often proposed federal structures as a way of respecting differences in a pluralistic society while providing the possibilities of joint action.
Such federal forms of government were agreed to in 1987 with the India-Sri Lanka accord leading to the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lanka Constitution. The Amendment provides for the establishment of provincial councils. Unfortunately, these councils have never become functional.
The suffering of the war may sow the seeds of future unrest and a desire for revenge unless steps are taken quickly to develop flexible structures which provide real regional autonomy.
We hope that you will join with other Citizens of the World in this call for creative responses in Sri Lanka
* Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
Rene Wadlow *
Be ever watchful, wanderer, for the eyes that gaze into yours at the bend of the road may be those of the goddess herself. Oracle at Delphi
March 8 is the International Day of Women and is placed under the sign of the goddess of the month of March — Minerva. Minerva derives her name from the Latin mens (mind), and so she has a special relation to teachers and artists, especially players of a flute. Tradition has it that Minerva is a transformation of an earlier Etruscan and Sabine goddess taken over when Rome was established. She has also taken symbols and meanings from the Greek Athene, especially the owl as a sign of seeing in the dark, what is usually hidden or instinctive. Minerva is she who brings from the darkness into the light.
Minerva symbolized Rome as Athene, Athens. Minerva’s face was put on Roman coins and as such she travelled to the Roman provinces, becoming Britannia in England. She has come down through the centuries as the goddess of learning. In the US Library of Congress Great Hall, she holds a scroll on which are inscribed “Agriculture, Education, Commerce, Government, Economic” — all these are gifts from Wisdom’s store.
Minerva’s essential gift is understanding the relation between mind and matter. Minerva’s owl, creature of the night and symbol of the goddess’s dark and underworld power which see can see at night is also related to the reasonableness of day.
It is this ability to bridge the dark and the light that is so frightening to men. They have in the Middle East and the Westernized world banished the goddesses to be replaced by a less multi-form male god. This is the thesis of Johann Jakob Bachofen, a 19th century Swiss scholar from Basle, working largely alone and drawing on Greek and Roman mythology. He held that the myths showed clearly that there had been an earlier period of social organization that was a matriarchy, a time when society was founded on family, equality and peace whose defining characteristic was love of the mother, and the most heinous crime was matricide.
Then came patriarchy which found the earlier system so intolerable that the memory was repressed to the subconscious where, Bachofen thought, the memories live on in myth and dreams. See: J.J. Bachofen Myth, Religion and Mother Right (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).
C.J. Jung knew of the work of Bachofen and used some of Bachofen’s reproductions of symbols in his own writing on the feminine — the anima. For Jung, the life energy takes on a myriad of feminine forms: now young, now old, now mother, now maiden, now a good fairy, now a witch, now a saint, now a whore. She draws man into life with her Maya (power of illusion in Hinduism), and as Sophia, she “leads the way to God and assures immortality. She is the archetype of life itself.”
It is this ‘saving role’ of the feminine which makes uneasy the religions whose prophets are all men. In the current, fundamentalist form of Islam, the woman must be covered, isolated, accompanied by a male relative. Women are not the symbol of learning. In fact, they should not go to school at all. These reactions which can take the extreme forms of ‘honor killings’ and the closing of schools for women are a rising tide among the Taliban and others who share the same fears.
These fears have deep causes and are not limited to the Islamic world. To transform fears into rational knowledge is not an easy task, but Minerva in some early representations, had thunderbolts in her hand (a symbol usually associated with Jove.) Thus transformation will not come without conflict. The aims of the International Day of Women were well set out by Bella Abzug, a member of the US Congress and political feminist, in her talk to the UN World Conference on Women (1995)
“Change is not about simply mainstreaming women. It’s not about women joining the polluted stream. It’s about cleaning the stream, changing stagnant pools into fresh, flowing waters.
Our struggle is about resisting the slide into a morass of anarchy, violence, intolerance, inequality and injustice.
Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic and ecological crisis. For women in the struggle for equality, there are many paths to the mountain top. Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams. Our violence is about creating violence-free families. And then, violence-free streets. Then, violence-free borders.
For us to realize our dreams, we must keep our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground.”
* Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens