Global Reconciliation and the UN Milleunneum Goals

SERMON: October 22, 2006

By Joyce Milliken

GLOBAL RECONCILIATION

AND THE UN MILLEUNNEUM GOALS

(Joyce Milliken is Founder and Coordinator of Round World Leadership, and has focused her skills on facilitating growth and change that accommodates the interdependent needs of organizations and people, particularly as they impact community, be it family, a workplace, a civic governing entity, or the global ecosystem. She began her career teaching in the American high school, then as a professor of communication at the Universities of Hartford, Kentucky and Purdue. She has developed and directed programs that link the resources of education institutions with businesses. Her background includes leadership training for individuals, governmental and non-governmental agencies. Having been greatly influenced by Robert Greenleaf’s servant leadership concepts and practices, she has now evolved a blend of citizenship/leadership and global reconciliation principles in working with groups in our rapidly changing world.)

PRAYER FOR HUMANITY

* * *

Doris Kearns Goodwin titled her biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt NO ORDINARY TIME. Two events that made it so were the birthing ofthe UNITED NATIONS and of THE AMERICAN DREAM

We could label the present era NO ORDINARY TIME. But today, sixty years later, both the UN and the American Dream are in peril.

I will address that peril with a very specific focus on the UN-Millennium Goals and a broad brush for GLOBAL RECONCILIATION.

In 2000, all member-nations of the UN signed the declaration to eradicate by 2015 extreme poverty, hunger, death by curable disease, starvation and humans’ inhumanity to humans. ALL “rich” nations committed 0.7% of their gross national product to that end.

Most of those wealthy nations have made some reasonable progress toward their commitment.

At the moment, the United States has no intentions of fulfilling our promise. I want to address three behaviors that I believe manifest that:

We are increasingly telling ourselves and the rest of the world that the UN and the US are adversaries and the power balance is in our favor.

We are not dealing with our commitment as a national responsibility and debt; rather we pass the buck to US based NGO’s, allowing much of the charity money to stay in our pockets; and especially with faith-based organizations, allowing, indeed encouraging evangelizing in the process which sometime even interferes with the solution!

We see ourselves as no part of the problem, but rather act as the savior, which rapidly can dissolve into ugly American behavior.

To illustrate the damage that our behavior can reap, I have turned three axioms on their heads.

We cannot live by violence alone
There, but for the greed of me, go I.
If I do not see myself as part of the problem, I cannot be trusted to be part of the solution.

* * *

We went into Afghanistan and Iraq, preempting UN diplomacy to punish our “enemy with shock and awe”. Five years later the cost in human lives is at 700,000 and counting.

Just before our Congress went home to ask for our trust by sending them back to create the laws by which we live, they passed a law that violates both the Geneva Conventions and our Constitution. That law allows us to continue to torture and maim prisoners isolated in fear.

We did this, scoffing at the UN and denying our contribution to the problem. Has history taught us nothing?

* * *

This past week I have had the good fortune to be part of two dialogues with three Mozambique citizens: A bishop, a priest, and an administrator/teacher of a Mozambique NGO which teaches prevention and care of victims of killer diseases (malaria and HIV/AIDS.) The broad topic of the ongoing discussion was TRASNFORMING A VIOLENT SOCIETY

Among the things that I learned was of the effective gun-for-food program that is working. They are exchanging guns for handfuls of SEEDS to plant in their allotted family farming plots that are about the size of a car parking space.

And the guns? They are smashed at the hands of the owners, not hydraulic crushers, and turned into useful tools and art forms

* * *

Yesterday, in Q and A, I heard questions from our “savior” mindset, first world/third world references, hand wringing “What can we do to help you?” We are slow to get it. But I also heard some concerns for our need to change.

* * *

What can we do to transform OUR violent culture? Seeds will not do it in Hartford. Our problem is waste, not scarcity! How do we change so that we all can survive? When that question was posed to the Bishop, he threw his head back and laughed jovially, “Oh, the food you put on my plate!” And then, seriously and with great energy, he added, “Not survive, live abundantly! There is enough for us ALL to live abundantly.”

That was an AH-HA moment for me! I recalled a statistic I had recently read. Which doll is winning the best seller award at TOYS R US? The message in Time Magazine business section was, “Not even close: Supermom Barbie crushes Baby Einstein, 3 BILLION to 200 MILLION DOLLARS!” That is beyond greed, that is BEYOND GLUT! Three and a quarter billion spent for dolls that will be wasted before the next buying season.

How do we change? I will offer you Peter Block’s theme (his book by this title was a best seller.) The answer to how is YES. If we dare to say yes, the HOW begins.

* * *

I promised you only a broad swipe of Global Reconciliation and that is what you get:

Whether a family of three or a global community of billions, a Reconciling Community is a group of transforming individuals who learn to accept our pasts through our shared stories; who heal ourselves through deepening dialogue; and who choose to change our individual behavior as the community learns to behave toward solutions to problems, many caused by us.

If we dare to say Yes to that, we are defining the work of our lifetimes and beyond. The HOW begins.

Let’s look toward a GLOBAL dream and let the American dream die. It has become a monster. And let us use the UN as a strong vessel that we in the global community can restore, maintain and navigate!

Will we see fruits of our labor in our lifetimes? Probably little, BUT IT CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT YOU AND ME.

I have a quote on my wall by Reinhold Niebuhr that I read often when I feel overwhelmed. I want to share it with you now.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing true or beautiful or good makes sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can b e accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

(end)

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 10/22/06)