Upcoming Activities
January 19 - 21 and January 26 - 28, 2008
Hiroshima - Nagasaki atomic bomb exhibition
First Congregational Church 1000 S. Cooper Memphis
hours 10 am - 6 pm daily for info: 278-6786
Hear the personal testimony of an A-bomb survivor
Sunday, January 20 First Congregational Church 4 pm reception follows presentation
Monday, January 21 Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception 7 pm reception following
The exhibition and presentations are free and open to the public.
a message from the Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba:
The information presented in this exhibition derives from an event that took place 62 years ago. We believe that event remains relevant to you today for two main reasons.
First, the atomic bombings led to a dramatic change in consciousness. Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced what felt like the end of the world. Whole families, neighborhoods, and communities vanished in seconds. The sheer magnitude of the destruction, horror, pain, and despair led to an understanding among the survivors that human beings can no longer resolve conflicts thought contests of destructive power. Such contests can have no winners. They threaten our entire species. War is obsolete. Nuclear war is out of the question.
This understanding remains ahead of its time. Most human beings still seem unable to grasp the concept of a totally inclusive world peace. We hope that this exhibition will help a few more members of the human family rise to that new level of consciousness and commit to our collective survival
Second, this exhibition is relevant because the horrific images it presents are more likely than ever to leap from history into our future. The nuclear threat did not end with the Cold War. Unfortunately, certain powerful people still harbor the delusion that nuclear weapons can guarantee security or further their fantasies of world domination. The US and Russia, with thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch on warning, still hold us all hostage to political competition. some experts say we are at greater risk than ever of an accidental holocaust and nuclear winter. ...
The hibakusha - A-bomb survivors - have been telling us for decades that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist indefinitely. As long as they exist, nuclear weapons remain an obscenely expensive, criminally dangerous threat. Our greatest hope for this exhibition is that it will inspire you to spread the desire to be liberated from this threat.
In the next three to five years the human family will make a crucial decision. Will we eliminate nuclear weapons? Or will we use them? The overwhelming majority of nations and people on this planet want the former. If the US were to take the lead in a sincere global effort to find and eliminate all nuclear weapons and weapons-grade fissile material, we could be rid of them by 2020, when the Nuclear Age turns 75.
We have lived too long in fear and hatred. We cannot solve the real problems we face by continuing to threaten each other with annihilation. We hope you will make it clear to your leaders that you expect them, above all, to lead you toward a peaceful, just, and sustainable world free of nuclear weapons.
April 10, 2008
Vanderhaar Symposium - Christian Brothers University, Memphis
Featured speaker: Rev. Bryan Massingale, S.T.D
"Martin Luther King and the Practice of a Peace Making Faith"
Rev. Bryan Massingale is a Catholic Moral Theologian with a focus on liberation theologies, African - American
religious ethics and racial justice. His recent work applies Catholic social thought to the issues of affirmative
action, racial reconciliation, terrorism, and the challenge of peacemaking.
September 1, 2008
Sixth Annual Faith & Labor Picnic
Labor Day Sept. 1, 2008
Trinity United Methodist Church Galloway at Evergreen, 2 blocks west of Memphis Zoo
11:00 am - 2 pm
to benefit Workers Interfaith Network (formerly the Mid-South Interfaith Network for Economic Justice)
www.workersinterfaithnetwork.org
October 17 & 18, 2008
Fifth Annual Gandhi King Conference on Peacemaking
Continuing the Dream: Constructing the World House
nonviolence social justice community building
Christian Brothers University Memphis
For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law.
--
The Dhammapada