Adding Links to the Peace Chain

• Community Mediation Center The Community Mediation Center offers an alternative way to handle conflict through mediation. This service is offered to St. Mary's, Charles and Calvert Counties free of charge.
• Compassionate Listening Project teaches powerful skills for peacemaking in our families, communities, on the job, and in social change work locally and globally - speaking and listening from the heart, even in the heat of conflict.
• CODEPINK is a women initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement that seeks positive social change through proactive, creative protest and non-violent direct action.
• Joy Lane Healing Center  Carol Marcy, PhD leads students on a journey of discovering the connection between mind, body and spirit. Her center is located in Hollywood, Maryland.
• The Center for the Chesapeake Story or "CHESTORY" is a group of people who care deeply about the waters that surround us. They are Chesapeake artists, scientists, and citizen activists, educators, poets, writers and waterfolk who think that art, song, and story can help us connect with the deep spiritual experience of the Chesapeake chapter in the on-going story of the Universe.
• The Center for Nonviolent Communicationsm (CNVC) is a global organization whose vision is a world where all people are getting their needs met and resolving their conflicts peacefully. In this vision, people are using Nonviolent Communicationsm (NVC) to create and participate in networks of worldwide life-serving systems in economics, education, justice, healthcare, and peace-keeping. There are local NVC web pages also: Washington, DC Nonviolent Communication Website and Capitol NVC: Serving Washington DC, Suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia.
• Gulu Walk started in July of 2005 as an attempt by two average Canadians to
   better understand the ordeal of the 'night commuters' of northern Uganda. It has now grown into an urgent, impassioned worldwide movement for peace.
• Holland Peacemakers A group of citizens in Holland, Michigan, who are working to bring peace to their community and world.
• Housing For All Calvert is a coalition of organizations, agencies, church congregations and concerned citizens who are working together to assure more affordable housing for all Calvert citizens.
• Lakeshore Women for Peace Lakeshore Women for Peace are a group of Holland MI area women coming together to develop a consciousness of peacefulness that can help shape our lives, our families, our work, community and world.
• Meditation Study Group of S. Maryland is a caring group located in Southern Maryland, dedicated to learning about meditation, mindfulness and compassion. They meet twice a month on Sunday evening. For more information, contact Fred Burggraf at fburggraf@aol.com
• Patch Adam's Gesundheit! Institute is dedicated to bring fun, friendship, and the joy of service back into health care. The Gesundheit! Institute is dedicated to upholding a radical socio-political vision replacing greed and competition with generosity, compassion and interdependence.
• The Peace Alliance Participate in an historic citizen lobbying effort to create a U.S. Department of Peace, sponsored in the House of Representatives. (The bill will be re-introduced in September of 2005.
• Peace x Peace connecting women, globally, who are working towards peace.
• Peace Quotes from The Peace Center website. "Breaking the Cycle of Violence Through Circles of Peace".
• Women For Women is an organization dedicated to helping women recover from the ravages of war.
• The Peace Company

A quote from Joan Derry at The Peace Company:

I have said many times to my children and others that everything you do radiates from you like a pebble that you drop in a pond.  “Do you see those ever-widening circles going out from the center point?  That is how your energy—your deeds every day—travel.” I’ve seen it work so many times—the pleasant (or grouchy) sales person, waiter, family member, etc. affects how I feel as I go on with my day, which  in turn often affects the next person I come in contact with. I believe that our own personal, quiet peace path helps create the change we are hoping for.

Many people think that making the shift from the dominant pattern of accepting violence as ‘the way things are,’ to a culture where more peaceful and compassionate energy prevails, requires blatant action such as political or social activism. This often arises from the fear that anything ‘less’ will not create the desired change. I believe that the power of our spirit is perhaps the most powerful tool to catalyze the shift towards peace that we are looking for.

You can purchase The Peace Book by Louise Diamond on-line from The Peace Company. Click on the book.