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Dear Friends,

Last week was the United Nations Day of Peace, held annually on the 3rd Tuesday in September. World peace is more than just an end to war.  It’s a humanity united, peaceful, helping each other, working together to make the world a better place for everyone. Some think it’s impossible to achieve. Many more think with God’s help, and if we strive earnestly, we can have world peace.

But what qualities and attitudes must we, humanity, have, if we are to have world peace?  Here are a few from my religion, the Baha’i Faith, and other faith traditions:

– peace within ourselves,
– truly believing that peace is possible and it’s what God wants,
– families that love God and love and support their children, 
– a common belief that we are all one people,
– women and men are equal in societies,
– each person feeling valued,
– govts working together for world peace, 
– some kind of income distribution so we don’t have billionaires and the homeless 
– same with nations, we can’t have the very richest of countries and the very poorest, 
– and every child is given the opportunity for an education.

I think people can’t even imagine what real peace would look like, the world is so chaotic and filled with conflict.  But as Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah, the Prophet/Founder of the Baha’i Faith said over 100 years ago, “So let us try, as an experiment, peace, and if the results of peace are bad, then we can choose if it would be better to go back to the old state of war! Let us in any case make the experiment. If we see that unity brings Light we shall continue it. For six thousand years we have been walking on the left-hand path; let us walk on the right-hand path now. We have passed many centuries in darkness, let us advance towards the light.”

Serene Erby
President