Mondial Poem (Winter 2023)
Imagine
Source: Creator22 on English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Imagine that the Pope, the Dalai Lama, or the Archbishop of Canterbury decided to become an instrument of peace by going to Gaza and offering up himself for the release of all of the hostages.
Imagine that this inspires many other religious leaders from around the world to go to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in order to comfort the victims of violence and provide humanitarian aid.
Imagine that these religious leaders were committed to staying until all parties were willing to submit this conflict to binding arbitration through a neutral international court of justice.
Imagine that the spiral of attack-occupation-oppression-terrorism-retaliation would finally be ended and a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine would be guaranteed.
Imagine that at the same time some other religious leaders went to Ukraine and were committed to staying there until both sides agreed to submit their conflict to binding arbitration through a neutral international court of justice.
It might be impossible for many people to imagine that these things could ever happen. But maybe the lack of world peace is in part a lack of imagination.
David C. Oughton
A Board member of both the St. Louis Chapter of CGS and the national organization for many years. He has taught hundreds of courses in philosophy, the world’s religions, peace studies, and Holocaust studies at Saint Louis University and other schools in the St. Louis area. He is passionate about promoting the need for a democratic world federation of nations in order to outlaw war, eliminate genocide, and solve our global problems. He argues that the religions of the world have the responsibility of building a firm foundation for a future world federation by promoting the teaching of a world community, world citizenship, humatriotism, the Declaration of a Global Ethic, and the Charter for Compassion.
Mondial is published by the Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) and World Federalist Movement — Canada (WFM-Canada), non-profit, non-partisan, and non-governmental Member Organizations of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Government Policy (WFM-IGP). Mondial seeks to provide a forum for diverse voices and opinions on topics related to democratic world federation. The views expressed by contributing authors herein do not necessarily reflect the organizational positions of CGS or WFM-Canada, or those of the Masthead membership.