Living Peaceably begins by Thinking Peacefully
by Dr. Barbara Condron

"When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness."

The words of H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet resonate through the world's Peace Dome each month. He is one of eight Nobel Peace Prize Laureates brought to life in The Invitation, a theatrical experience where reality and vision meet. It is unfair to say you watch The Invitation, or that it entertains. Rather it is an experience, a living prayer, that invites you into samadhi, demanding the highest you can conceive.

The images of these respected and well known men and women – scientists and religious leaders, professionals and laypeople – naturally blend with the timeless truths captured in the Universal Peace Covenant a document penned in 1997 by over two dozen people like you. The laureates' words come from their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. The Universal Peace Covenant comes from nine months of consciousness labor by spiritual teachers at the School of Metaphysics in the United States. The blending of these thoughts makes peace real.

When Betty Williams, the clerical worker who helped mobilize thousands in a peace march in 1976 says "the whole world is divided ideologically, and theologically, right and left, and men are prepared to fight over their ideological differences. Yet the whole human family can be united by compassion" you know her ideas are borne from the senseless death and heartbreak that has endured for a 1000 years in Northern Ireland. From her we learn that compassion is a more powerful searchlight than cold reason.

When spiritual activitist and Gandhi protege Martin Luther King, Jr. says, "There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance....We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers" our sense of man as creator is challenged and a new sense of responsibility surfaces.

When Mother Teresa observes that the reason why young people "take to the streets" and get "involved in drugs" is because "there is no one to receive them", a light shines in our conscience that brings the cause of peace, its root, home.

Bringing the thoughts of these people together in one space and time creates a brilliant light that challenges the darkness in our thinking. This is why we present The Invitation in the Peace Dome, a building largely constructed by volunteers and dedicated as a universal site for peace. Listening to the words of an exiled Tibetan, a Swedish teacher, a French-German doctor from Africa, an American scientist, an Iranian lawyer, an African American preacher, a Macedonian nun from Calcutta, and an Irish secretary alters your world view. You realize the commonality that flows through our spiritual veins and you are in awe, rather than fear, of the diverse ways we express our universal roots.

The Invitation asks, "Can you realize yourself as a citizen of the world? If so, why and how do you think and live that reality?"

At one point in the play, Dr. King references a story idea left behind by a famous novelist. In the writer's papers was found this note: a widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together. Allegorically, King sees this as the great new problem of mankind. "We have inherited a big house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other."

He does more than preach, he tells us the way to practice being a planetary citizen. "This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. We must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies."

When King quotes the peace covenant, "Living Peaceably begins by thinking peacefully," you believe him.

When he invites us to "stand together as citizens of the Earth knowing that every question has an answer, every issue a resolution," your heart soars with the hope of all people as you take your rightful place as a planetary citizen.

Dr. Barbara Condron, the creator of The Invitation and author of a dozen books including Peacemaking: 9 Steps for Changing Yourself, Your Relationships, and Your World, is a visionary Renaissance woman for the 21st century. A professor at the College of Metaphysics (Missouri), a filmmaker, a composer, a metaphysician, a wife and mother, she dedicates her life to teaching and inspiring others to manifest their potential as homo spiritus.

An audio recording and film version on dvd of The Invitation are available by contacting SOM Productions at www.som.org as is a script form of the play for local performance.