By Joseph Plummer
United Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel de Allende (UUFSMA) Board Secretary
Each year, the United Nation’s “International Day of Peace” is observed on September 21. At this week’s UUFSMA Sunday Service, guest speaker Lee Knox will examine what “world peace” might require.
In his iconic song, John Lennon asks listeners to “Imagine” a world with “no need for greed or hunger” where there is a “brotherhood of man” … “sharing all the world.” What would it take for such a world to exist? Is it even possible? Or was the 19th-century Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz correct when he said, “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means and must thus be accepted as an eternal fact of life.”
The United Nations tells us that true peace entails much more than laying down arms. It requires building societies where all members feel they can flourish. It involves creating a world where people are treated equally.
President John F. Kennedy said of the Peace Corps, “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process; gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.” Sargent Shriver, the first Peace Corps Director, added, “Our mission is not to go out into the world in search of monsters to destroy. But rather, to show that Americans are down to earth, believable, card-carrying idealists who can show how peace begins with a teacher in a classroom and clean water coming from a new pump in the village square.” It must begin somewhere!
The Unitarian Universalist’s Sixth Principle calls for working toward a goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. “Unitarian Universalists have always affirmed peace as among our most basic values,” Knox says. “We have always worked to create the kinds of just communities out of which peace emerges.”
Knox is a UUFSMA member, retired writer, and former Peace Corps volunteer. She moved to San Miguel de Allende from Kansas City in 2016.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal faith inviting its community to gather around a set of harmonizing values and principles for living. Our UU Fellowship welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Belief in a divinity is not the central issue around which we gather for worship and generous action. Rather, we come together with a belief in community, love, compassion, social justice, and reverence for nature, all within the interconnected web of existence.
Enjoy previous services at https://www.youtube.com/. Enter UUFSMA in the search box. UUFSMA donates generously to support nonprofit organizations that provide health, educational, and environmental services for underserved communities in the San Miguel region. Please support this work by clicking on the website home page Donate button.
To participate in our online Sunday Service, visit www.uufsma.org and click on the Zoom Service button on the home page. If requested, enter password: 294513. Sign-in from anywhere Sunday mornings between 10:15-10:25am.
In addition to continuing live Zoom services, UUFSMA has returned to in-person Sunday services. Reservations are no longer necessary.
*NGO paid article
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Sunday Service
“Imagine Peace”
Speaker: Lee Knox
Sun, Sep 25, 2022
10:30am
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/414604040
Password: 294513
