Dying Art Welcomes New Life

In a movie I watched tonight the villain, a bad federal agent, told someone “You do not appreciate life until you face death.” Although it was not a very good movie there is some truth to this statement.

For many years of my life I avoided the fact of death and at times still do. One day in a community-organizing workshop a friend who had lived a very tough life told me that I do not face death. I was taken off guard by the remark but came to understand what he meant. By talking, keeping busy, always doing, I was avoiding the suffering and death that life embraces. “Unless the seed dies it will not rise.”

Tonight I called my brother who had recently lost his wife in a car accident. He is facing death in one of its worse forms: the lost of a loved one. He sounded so sad but was facing the death of his wife so he can continue to live.

Today after some work the last few weeks I established the Pilgrimage of Peace web page. I was feeling a little bit alone in this effort to share this experience when I received a beautiful letter from one of the other pilgrims describing her experience. I immediately wrote back, lifting her spirits and she, by allowing me to publish the letter on the Pilgrimage of Peace page lifted mine.

My brother in a large way, my friend in a small way, is living life facing suffering and death. But if we nourish each other, like a gardener nourishes his seeds, we will thrive with new life.

Also today I took steps to call the nonviolent worm web page the nonviolent cow. Linking to www.nonviolentworm.org will still work but also you will get the page at www.nonviolentcow.org or www.nonviolentcow.com. I still have not figured out how to change the name on the page. However, since the cow’s most valuable gift to a sustainable, nonviolent lifestyle is cow manure or dung, I think I am keeping true to the spirit of the worm, lowly rejected creature being raised to a level of respect.

Now I will need to investigate the connection of cow and cow dung with nonviolence and urban growing, but that challenge should bring new life to this movement for a sustainable peace by nonviolence and organic growing of food.

Today I also purchased some more seeds for the garden. “The seeds must die to bring new life.”

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