To the editor:

This coming Monday, Sept. 21, communities throughout the world will join in prayer and other observances in a collective call for peace as we celebrate the International Day of Peace during the ninth year of the UN Decade to Overcome Violence, 2001-2010.

On Nov. 10, 1998, the United Nations responded to an appeal from every living Nobel Peace Prize Laureate by proclaiming the year 2000 to be “the Year for the Culture of Peace,” and the years 2001-2010 to be the “International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World.”

This is important because we live in a world seemingly besieged by a culture of violence: wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; lawlessness and civil wars in Africa and around the world; torture across the globe, including, until recently, our own nation. And there is the structural violence such as the fact, for example, that one out of every five children lives in poverty in the U.S.

In spite of the violence surrounding our lives and our world, however, most of us are actually practicing nonviolence every single day.

We nurture our children and help our neighbors; we organize to meet community needs and crises; we respect our laws; and most of us peaceably settle dozens of conflicts in our personal lives each week.

A culture of nonviolence values love, compassion and justice.

It rejects violence as a means of solving problems. Instead, it embraces communication, cooperative decision-making and nonviolent conflict resolution. It ensures freedom, security and equitable relationships. At some level we all know this to be true.

The reason most of us love Whidbey Island is because we do have a strong sense of community, and we do have an overall ethic of nonviolence and cooperative, mutual support for each other.

This coming week you are especially encouraged to pray for peace in the world and to intentionally find ways to cultivate a culture of nonviolence in your own family and community life.

To honor the International Day of Peace, the Whidbey Island Quakers have organized, with co-sponsorship from the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation and Unity of Whidbey, a special program on efforts to promote nonviolence in the Middle East for this Sunday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Freeland.

Please join us.

Tom Ewell

Clinton