Note--The September 2024 Global Integration Update
will be on the Summit of the Future and Pact for the Future
Image courtesy and © 2020 KOD"Truth and peace are two core parts of healthy relationships. They are both sources and signs of relational health. Said another way, healthy relationships thrive on consistently speaking the truth peacefully and living in peace truthfully...Loving truth and peace is a daily discipline and practical pathway for loving people." Loving Truth and Peace--1 ------------------Overview
In this Update (#98), we feature the special series Kelly did on Loving Truth and Peace (15 brief blog entries from CORE Member Care). This new set of reflections brings together the previous Updates on living in truth (June 2024) and living in peace (July 2024): loving truth and peace (LTP). LTP leads to living in truth and peace (honesty and harmony).
LTP is not an abstract ideal but rather a daily practice of seeking holistic wellbeing in all areas of our lives and our spheres of influence and ultimately for all people, all peoples, and our planet. It is a key part of engaging in the challenging issues in our world. "LTP is a daily discipline and practical pathway for loving people." (Loving Truth and Peace--1)
These blog pieces are part of a larger collection of brief entries on "Loving Truth, Peace, and People" (CORE Member Care). Collectively they represent core perspectives--emphasizing values and virtues--from a diverse group of the people, several Christian Scriptures, and Kelly. We hope you can take the time to further engrain LTP into your life by reflecting on these entries and doing so with others.
Tune-in and Track with These Influential Events
The International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) with the theme “Confronting Global Threats: Standing Up for Integrity.” Watch the plenaries HERE and click on the headers HERE for various summaries of the conference events (June 2024, Transparency International et al). “IACC is the world’s premier global forum for bringing together heads of state, civil society, the private sector and more to tackle the increasingly sophisticated challenges posed by corruption.” We encourage you to read some of the summaries and to watch some of the plenaries and discuss them with colleagues!
United Nations General Assembly (GA) High Level Meetings (July and August 2024—schedule HERE). Note the “HL Forum on a Culture of Peace” on 2 August and that these important meetings are route to the annual 78th Session of the GA (September 2024 in New York) with a major emphasis on The Summit of the Future (and its three documents-pacts including the Pact for the Future). Several of the meetings are live on UN WebTV. We encourage you to read the Pact for the Future and to watch some of the events and discuss them with colleagues!
We conclude the Update with some personal perspectives on being "people of faith-hope-love" in the Christian tradition who embrace "common ground for the common good." This inclusive approach encourages active learning and collaboration with a diversity of colleagues on behalf of wellbeing for all people and the planet.
See these Global Integration Updates:
Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michèle
MCAresources@gmail.com
Featured Resources
Being People the World Needs
Reflections on Loving Truth and Peace
"Do not fear! These are the things which you should do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace in your gates. Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury; for I hate all these things, declares the Lord. . . . So love truth and peace." Zechariah 8:15–19 NASB
---------------
Loving Truth and Peace--1
LTP Overview (excerpt)
"LTP is emphasized throughout the Judeo-Christian scriptures. My favorite example is from the 6th century BC prophet Zechariah, cited [above]. His instructive words, indeed, admonition, reflect the core of LTP. They are also the guiding principle for this new set of entries."
Loving Truth and Peace--2
The Final Word, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Loving Truth and Peace--3
LTP Heroes--Then and Now, D-Day 6 June 1944
Loving Truth and Peace--4
Counting the Cost, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (excerpt)
"I could have enjoyed myself so much, breathing the fresh air, resting, stretching my cramped limbs, but my duty to the dead permitted no such self-indulgence. They are dead. You are alive: do your duty. The world must know all about it.”
Loving Truth and Peace--5
I'd Love to Change the World, Ten Tears After (song and lyrics)
Loving Truth and Peace--6
Why Can't Grace Go to School?, Exposed Campaign
Loving Truth and Peace--7
Core Values and Messages, Kelly's four examples
Loving Truth and Peace--8
For Better and for Worse, Paul McCartney (song in Red Square) and BBC (video)
Loving Truth and Peace--9
LTP and SDGs, Jeffrey Sachs (video) and Kelly (excerpt)
"We as humanity must love (highly esteem and sacrificially commit to): truth (honestly reviewing and acknowledging the world situation with its problems, injustices, in equities, etc. along with monitoring our progress in and responsibilities for improving the world) and peace (holistic wellbeing and harmony for all people and all nations—security, prosperity, development). Loving truth and peace for me is thus the foundational value and commitment as I seek to do my part in the SDGs."
Loving Truth and Peace--10
What Would Judas Do? Kelly (excerpt)
"Perhaps asking ourselves this question is even more effective than asking ourselves the other one made somewhat famous by the WWJD wristbands: What Would Jesus Do?"
Loving Truth and Peace--11
LTP 24/7, Kelly (story excerpt)
"After about a minute driving in the car though, I became aware of a growing sense of discomfort, suggesting that something was not exactly right. The thought occurred to me that maybe it really was not so 'ok-ish' to have withheld from the attendant the fuller story about how many emblems I actually had."
Loving Truth and Peace—12
Revisiting Recreancy, Kite Runner (scene frm movie)
Loving Truth and Peace--13
Either Way, Guster (song and lyrics)
Loving Truth and Peace--14
Courage for LTP Janine Di Giovani (TED Talk excerpt)
"And it usually comes down to ordinary people, when confronted with great evil, taking and making choices that would, for me, give the real explanation of courage. I mean, to me, I always thought the most courageous people I knew were people that faced insurmountable challenges in their lives. And that could be someone with cancer who battles it out and gets through the day, or children who walk to school in Africa because they really want to be educated, or someone who survives a genocide by hiding or hiding other people."
Loving Truth and Peace--15
LTP Conclusion--Caritas-Veritas-Pax
"Pursue LTP whole-heartedly.
Practice LTP always.
Live LTP.
Be LTP."
Suggested Applications
Making It Personal
If day by day humanity is getting better and better
then night by night it must be getting worse and worse.
Loving Truth and Peace--8
One way to use the 15 brief entries above is to review them over the course of a few days. For example read one-three per day, reflect on them, and make at least one personal application. Use the entries as a springboard to list some quotes-writings that have been important guides for your life and work. You can do this on your own, with a friend, or as a small group. These entries are meant to shine light on our thinking and lives (honest self-appraisals) as well as bolster our resolve to seek peace in our relationships and in our world. "So love truth and peace." (Zechariah 8:19)
"LTP is a daily discipline and practical pathway for loving people."
Loving Truth and Peace--1
More Personal Reflections
Being People of Faith-Hope-Love
California Coastline USA--Image courtesy and © ENOD 2016
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1964
As people of faith who practice Christian spirituality, we are committed to responsibly engage with others in the challenges facing our world, locally through globally, while holding firmly to our belief that we are in God's hands. We pray that God's purposes "will be done on earth as they are in heaven;" acknowledge that prayer, repentance, and relationship with God are key to human-planetary wellbeing; and live in hope for the time when God through Jesus Christ will decisively intervene in human history with equity--righteousness and justice--to restore all things. And in the meantime, we seek to embrace lifestyles of integrity that prioritize a deep, practical love for truth, peace, and people--and this includes being willing to acknowledge, resist, and confront evil in its many forms (starting with ourselves, etc.)
We do not want to further problematize our world's plight by focusing primarily on the negative. Rather we want to also promote the many examples of the good going forward, as people of integrity find common ground for the common good.
Finally, we want to highlight that the despair and disillusion that result from seemingly intractable problems like climate, conflicts, poverty, and corruption can also be quite positive. They can embody a crucial existential message about reality that can be "revisited"--explored and heeded--rather than simply "resisted." They can point us to Someone who is bigger than ourselves, the SDGs, humanity, and our world--the knowable, Eternal One who is both in and beyond space-time and who loves us all dearly.
The above thoughts build upon the Personal Reflections in Perils, Paralysis, Hope: Sustainable Development-Sustainable Destruction? (Global Integration Update, October 2022).
Member Care Associates
MCAresources@gmail.com
Member Care Associates Inc. (MCA) is a non-profit, Christian organization working internationally from Geneva and the USA. MCA's involvement in Global Integration focuses on the wellbeing and effectiveness of personnel and their organizations across sectors (e.g., mission, humanitarian, peace, health, and development sectors) as well as global mental health and integrity/anti-corruption, all with a view towards collaboratively supporting sustainable development for all people and the planet. Our services include consultation, training, research, resource development, and publications.
