The Post & Telecom service in my old home, Congo-Brazzaville, site of my Peace Corps service, has issued a 120 F(CFA) stamp in honor of World Religion Day. This holiday was first celebrated in the United States in 1950 when it was established by the national governing body of the Baha’is of the United states to call attention to the essential oneness of the world’s religions. “God is the Source of All Religions,” says the stamp along the top edge. The rest of the stamp reads, “World Religion Day Observed the 3rd Sunday of January Republic of Congo.” The design shows symbols of 11 religions surrounding a globe with the words, “So powerful is the light of unity that it can illumine the whole Earth.”

I’m pretty tickled by this. At the moment, I’m wondering who I can get in touch with over there to get me one. I’m not sure I really have much hope of it. If I were to get one, I’d have to frame it since I don’t have any sort of stamp collection otherwise. It would be nice to have a reminder of Congo around.

In Charlottesville, Va
Jeff Lavezzo

They are the most remarkable photos I’ve seen of it. Mostly, I think, because the photos I’ve see are

1. In Black and White
2. Taken by Ugandans and made with developing-nation-quality photo supplies
3. Or “Art” photos where the photographer was going for colorful sunsets or dramatically contrasted close-ups.

In this case, though, the photographer just wanted a picture. She got excellent clear light, and one has sky that looks like it might rain. Rain is often an exciting prospect in many parts of Africa.

This same lady has had the amazing privilege of not only visiting the House of Worship in Kampala, but also the one in New Delhi and spending a lot of time at Baha’i Holy sites in Haifa and Akka, Israel.

    

* if I ever get to name a road, as happens sometimes in the US when you live on a private drive that needs to be named so the Emergency Services can find you, I’m naming it Kikaaya Hill.

The correspondent asks, “What is peace and why is it so important to us?” He goes on to explore why a goal of world peace is not a Utopian dream, but the responsibility of each one of us. He believes that to achieve world peace will take a restructuring of human society where human diversity is the cause of pride, not conflict. He says that those claiming humans are incapable of removing prejudice from their outlook and will always have war are representing a distortion of the human spirit.

I agree. The declaration that peace is not possible ranks with other great statements that deny the strength of humanity. How many times in the past has someone said that man would never circumnavigate the earth, fly like a bird, walk on the moon, split the atom or cure any number of diseases. Women have been heads of state in several countries. African-americans serve in the US Senate. Thousands of things that were impossible in the past are reality today. World peace is tomorrow’s reality.

Great achievements require a lot of work. How do we work for peace? On the larger scale, I can only rely on representatives to the United Nations to do the work they do. I live in a representative democracy, so my abilities to influence the workings of my government are fairly limited to voting for the most responsible candidates and keeping them informed of my opinions on issues that are in their jurisdiction. But on the smaller scale, the scale that each one of us exists at each day, I can have more influence. I can teach my children to, “have loving and tender hearts.”* I can teach them to stand up for justice.* We can practice being “a friend to the whole human race.”*

But I’m only one person in one family. How much help is it if I consider the “Earth as one country”* if I’m surrounded by people too distraught by the frantic modern world to think about their own attitudes or how they relate to the rest of the world? I don’t know yet, but I’m trying to work on service to my community. There are a lot of communities I’m part of. I work in an office with a few dozen people. I attend some of the meetings of the Charlottesville Java User’s Group (Java the computer programming language, not coffee). And I’m a member of the Baha’i Faith in Charlottesville. But I spend most of my time in my neighborhood. I’ll take more time soon to talk about our neighborhood. Now, I’ll just say that it’s becoming more of a community all the time. That’s the kind of world peace I’d like to see. Not just countries avoiding war on each other, but a town, a country, and a world full of neighborhoods where friends care about each other, and care for each other.

The Great Peace towards which people of good will throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet–in the words of one great thinker, “the planetization of mankind”.

The Promise of World Peace

Mostly it seems they provide their unique service to other agencies. For example: An organization called PEARL set up a cooperative among coffee growers in the devastated Rwandan coffee growing region. National University of Rwanda begins collecting information about the global coffee market. Freeplay steps in and supplys the coops with 70 radios and helps the University broadcast their information. There are also programs where school children listen to lectures via radio.

So, to my friends out there working in development: think about how a project you’re working with could benefit from some old-school one-way communication. And if you’re going into the bush for a while and want a reliable radio, C. Crane and Simply Radios will donate a Freeplay Lifeline radio for each one you buy.

In Charlottesville, Virginia (US):
Jeff Lavezzo

The most surprising part is the folded up dimensions are the same as my current wallet. It’s just designed to hold a lot more.

In Charlottesville, Virginia (US):
Jeff Lavezzo