Religion and Violence

I attended the Trinity Institute Conference on Religion and Violence last week. The speakers were all informative and interesting.(James Cone, Susannah Heschel, James Carroll and Tariq Ramadan) I left the conference aware that each one of us can contribute to the peace process-- or we can add to the rigid walls that divide us from our neighbors and feed the hungry powers that destroy us. It does not require an academic degree, ordination or religious affiliation to make a difference for the sake of goodness. We each come from the womb--perfectly alive and willing to embrace and be embraced by the love that got us all together in the first place. It takes training for us to truly believe we are better or worse, more deserving of good things or less deserving of good things, than the person next door or across the ocean. Adequate religious training and a transcendant faith return us to the place where we know that all people are created in the image of God and all people deserve to live in peace and prosperity.