Note: This message will have been E-mailed as a URL to over a thousand addresses. One person may act on it. None may (see quote below.) I invite you to read it and pass it on as well. Who knows?
–Daniel
"Almost anything you do will be insignificant,
but it's very important that you do it."
–Mohandas K. Gandhi
[Photo courtesy of www.corbis.com; used with permission.]
Namaste (the divine within me greets the divine within you.).
I am a pacifist. I say that, finally, with pride and confidence and the awareness of what it implies in the world. In the real world. And though I sometimes have trouble with individuals ("I love humanity–it's people I can't stand" –Charlie Brown) in general I do like people and wish that everyone would "just get along" (famously, –Rodney King.)
So here's my two-cents'-worth:
I suggest that the "twilight" year of 2000 (the old millennium
popularly conceived as ending on December 31st of 1999 and the new millennium
actually beginning January 1st, 2001) be considered a "Mulligan" or "do-over".
Biblical tradition has it that every 50 years was considered a Jubilee year
when all debts were to be forgiven. How about we forgive sins, transgressions
and other debts not only on a personal level, but interpersonal, as in
Irish-English, Israeli-Palestinian, etc. Every national conflict can be traced
back to some egregious perpetration or other. If peoples were to forgive each
other – Voila! No more war. Simple, huh?
So here is –
IN ANCIENT TIMES every fifty years, on the 10th day of the 10th month of the Hebrew calendar, the ram's horn would sound the advent of Jubilee, when all debts were to be forgiven.
The year in the Western calendar from January 1 to December of 2000 is a twilight year: the old millennium is over but the new has yet to begin.
Let us take that twilight year and make it a year of Jubilee when all past injustices are forgiven and we see the new millennium as fresh and clean and new.
Differences in nationality, race, religion, philosophy or orientation are to be celebrated: the diversity which is the strength of humankind. Hatred is no more; war is no more. We are loving and respectful guardians of the earth.
Let peace break out throughout the land and proclaim the Western year 2001 the Year of the New Creation.
Make copies of this and send it far and wide, to your neighbor and to the ends of the earth.
Then write or call you leaders, both in your country and at the United Nations and request that this celebration be observed in good faith by all the governments and all the children of the world.
Blessed be.[This is my hope for the new millennium. As you receive this, take this thought into your heart and replace it with your own, and pass it on in order that you may share with your friends your personal vision for a New Millennium.]
Our government cannot claim to be an agent for liberty and democracy while holding onto its colony, Puerto Rico, in violation of the sovereignty of the Puerto Rican people. My hope for the New Millennium is that the U.S. government finally recognize the right of Puerto Rico to autonomy and self-determination and grant its independence. May their Grito de Lares be replaced at last by a day of true celebration. ¡Paz y Libertad!
Yours in shalom/salaam,
Daniel Beck Zwickel-Wicks
September 16, 1999
