While any of us yet live...

[Douglas D. Germann, Sr.]

To our good friends--

We need to figure out some way to promote conversations. The conversations
ought to be about the importance of conversation and dialogue, about
consciously getting together. It is not just that this is what interests
me; it is because this notion of making evolution conscious is critical to
the growth of the human species.


As we grow, there will be those who do not like it. We cannot expect
everyone to like the notions of peace and justice and love and
freedom--much as we would like to see it, and much as we would expect them
to like these things. It will take work and sweat and blood to get there.
It is a difficult road, this answering violence with love, and it is not
always easy to figure out. But we have those who have tried and succeeded:
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Buber thought it would not have worked
with Hitler. Perhaps not--but nobody tried. The Jews just went to their
deaths with as much dignity--hidden and silent--as they could. I suspect
Gandhi would have been more public about it, would have endeavored to get
the attention and active dissent of others who could influence the people
in power. But nobody, absent that kind of call out of our cultural trance,
wanted to name the evil.


Today, it is our job to name the evil, to get people to work consciously
for love. That is the job of conversation. If we do not converse, how can
we love? We must know (and I do mean to include the intimate sense) each
other, and the way we have so far discovered to do that is to converse. It
is critical to the life and growth of the human species. If we do not, we
flame out in violence and death: this is our hell. If we do, heaven awaits:
a heaven of work and sweat and toil and blood punctuated by joy and served
by love. It is our task in this generation to redeem the evil, to bring
those of us back from the brink whom we can. While any of us yet live. It
is our task to unfold our whole species toward love.

                              :-Doug. Germann
                              Seeking people making community change.

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