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GRACE
or the movement
for a free earth
Sabine Lichtenfels
The movement for a free
earth - I call it GRACE - has been created to make it possible for
ever more people to participate in creating new visions for the
future and to develop new professions with which they can place
themselves in the service of the earth.
In the name of GRACE, the movement for a free earth will lift its
voice world-wide for overcoming violence and will participate in the
establishment of peace villages wherever credible initiatives arise
for it. Such a peace villages was established in Tamera/Portugal 12
years ago. The model villages that are being created will be oases
of power for all peace workers, who are working in the areas of
crisis on earth. The movement will help to quickly spread peace
news. It will participate in peace marches and aid initiatives and
bring the news of successful peace projects into the world. It will
develop new professional perspectives for young people, such as
becoming peace workers. It will encourage more and more people to
step out of apathy and become active for a new earth. This is its
central task. The students will learn how to defend themselves
against a system of power that serves the destruction of countless
plants, animal species and humans, for they will have regained the
faith, the vision and the path toward the healing of the earth. The
GRACE movement will of course network and cooperate with existing
peace initiatives. We are thereby thinking of conscientious
objectors, animal rights activists, indigenous peoples, liberation
movements and communities in many countries on earth. We are also
thinking of committed doctors and people from other similar
professions. The GRACE movement will take up the global idea of
models of peace and the establishment of communities. It recognises
the necessity of creating a planetary community movement and will
support it with all its power.
Tamera is a cooperative
of people who work for a future without war. The intention is to
build a model for a non-violent culture. Tamera is a research
settlement in southern Portugal where since 1995 the most important
themes of a new, sustainable culture concept are developed. In May
2006 the future experiment ‘Monte Cerro’ has begun.
The Summer University
this years in Tamera had its focus on the ‘Theory of Global
Healing’. During ten days approximately 300 participants experienced
a vision of a new kind of university at which one is able to study
the healing of the planet and how to participate in it. It was a
think tank for a global peace plan. Serious and visionary peace
workers and experts in various fields and from countries from all
over the world participated. All community workers agreed that it
was the best Summer University ever to have taken place at Tamera.
The entire programme was carried by a team of graduates of the
initial peace study course held at Tamera. They call themselves ‘the
Gang’, are between 20 and 35 years old and have the entire community
stand behind them. Many friendships and co-operations developed
during these ten days, amongst them concrete co-operations for the
development of peace villages with solar technology and clay
architecture and for the international peace trainings to be held in
Palestine, in India and in Colombia.
Sentence of Empowerment: I act in the name of Grace.
Sabine Lichtenfels |
