Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.
The Dalai Lama by Christopher Michel CC 2.0
On Sunday, April 21, 2019, the world reacted with shock and dismay at the news of more than 200 Christians killed and some 500 people injured by eight coordinated bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, most as victims celebrated Easter services. Islamic State claimed responsibility, and while conjecture focused on the Easter bombings as possible retaliation for the Christchurch murders of some 50 Muslim worshipers, evidence was still being gathered at press time.
The messages flowing from those horrific events were laden with anger, grief, and despair at the seeming inability to rein in mankind’s outbreaks of violence and cruelty. And while media focuses on “news” of inhumanity, death and destruction, others – known as the peacemakers – gather up the threads of mankind’s goodness and weave a tapestry of peace.
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called Children of God,” says the Bible. And humanity has been blessed with a number of peacemakers, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and others who provide inspired examples of how we may pursue justice without resorting to violence and cruelty.
One of those peacemakers, Tenzin Gyatso Tibet’s 14th Dalai Lama, was featured the same Sunday on Scientology.tv’s Documentary Showcase. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, was proclaimed leader of Tibet in 1950, as China rejected Tibet’s sovereignty and incorporated it into the People’s Republic of China. The Dalai Lama and 80,000 Tibetans were forced out of their country in 1959 by Chinese authorities and His Holiness has never returned, living as an exile in India, but traveling throughout the world bringing a message of peace and non-violence.
The documentary, “Road to Peace,” by Leon Stuparich, shows portions of many lectures and presentations illustrating the Dalai Lama’s sense of humor and joy of life, and the profound effects he creates on people of many faiths, dissolving the barriers which separate mankind, with love, “warm heartedness” and compassion. “Destruction of your enemy is destruction of yourself,” he said, carrying a message of “universal responsibility” for one’s fellow man.
Coming up on Documentary Showcase – “a platform for independent filmmakers who embrace a vision of building a better world” – a is a special presentation on April 26th of “Children of the Light,” about Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu who helped end South African apartheid and led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
