Cross-posting episode #88 from Fr. John Dear’s The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast (source):
I speak with my friend Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. A few years earlier, I had baptized Colleen’s daughter at a very happy family event…
On September 11th, Colleen’s brother Bill was at a one day conference at Windows on the World, on the top of the World Trade Center. In the awful days afterwards, she met with other family members to seek nonviolent alternatives to the cycles of violence, and to enhance civilian protection.
They formed “September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows,” which has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Its name comes from the Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, “Wars make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
These days, she continues to work with Peaceful Tomorrows in a variety of ways, including the pursuit of justice and accountability for the death of Bill and nearly 3000 others, by numerous visits to observe the military commissions at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.
Colleen talks about her brother, the founding of “Peaceful Tomorrows,” her trips to Guantanamo, and their work marching for and promoting peace, even in Afghanistan.
We also talk about her amazing mother, who told me as we left Ground Zero how she felt about the bombing of Afghanistan, words that have stayed with me to this very day.
For the 25th anniversary, Colleen is organizing a peace walk on Sept. 10th from Union Square to Ground Zero where they will hold an evening vigil. www.peacefultomorrows.org
“Nonviolence is what Jesus taught and it is hard to believe but until we all truly believe it and make that leap, we are stuck in this inhuman world,” she says.
Listen in and be inspired!
God bless you,
🌻 Fr. John
MORE ON THE NONVIOLENT WAY OF JESUS
Memories Dedicated to the Victims and their Families of 9/11
We pause to honor the memory of those we lost. May their legacies inspire us to reach across divides, comfort those who mourn, and work tirelessly toward a future defined by compassion, reconciliation, and enduring peace.
25 years after 9/11, peace still eludes us
In this cross-post from the National Catholic Reporter, John Stowe and Charlene Howard reflect on the last 25 years and renew their commitment to promoting nonviolence and human dignity.
Peace through Weakness
Peace through strength is a foreign policy doctrine that calls for military superiority to deter aggression, which the Trump Administration now brazenly proclaims using hostile, threatening rhetoric by leaders loudly self-defining as Christian. Let us instead lift up Jesus and his words and actions in the face of threats of violence and acts of war.
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