“The strength to defy and the strength to forgive are part of a single emotional package which makes a person capable of nonviolence.”
In our Sunday video edition of Daily Metta Michael Nagler thinks about the moment when Nelson Mandela shook hands with his former opponent, De Klerk, in front of the world, saying that he was proud to do so. This moment, Michael suggests, can reveal a lot to us about the kind of strength that nonviolence requires.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Share them in the comments below.
About Daily Metta
Stephanie Van Hook, the Metta Center’s executive director, launched Daily Metta in 2015 as a way to share Gandhi’s spiritual wisdom and experiments with nonviolence.
Our 2016 Daily Metta continues with Gandhi on weekdays. On weekends, we share videos that complement Michael Nagler’s award-winning book, The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World. To help readers engage with the book more deeply, the Metta Center offers a free PDF study guide.
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By: Metta Center
We provide educational resources on the safe and effective use of nonviolence, with the recognition that it’s not about putting the right person in power but awakening the right kind of power in people. We advance a higher image of humankind while empowering people to explore the question: How does nonviolence work, and how can I actively contribute to a happier, more peaceful society?
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Nonviolence Radio April 9, 2021
Dear Michael, Listening to you today, I’m reminded of the spiritual principle of Prior Unity – that we can defy what is fragmenting and ‘wrong’, and can forgive the tendency in ourselves and others to fragment / disunify if we know that reality always has been, is, and always will be a unity, unity is a first principle of all reality. I love how nonviolence takes this vast and mysterious truth and brings it into vibrant, soul-singing presence through embodied words or action. It’s as though nonviolence is Prior Unity’s way of speaking its glory ‘in the moment’ x