Singing for Peace and Believing

My Shalom

My Shalom, My Shalom,
Reigning over the waters,
Conquering the watery depths,
Making clear,
Revealing by discernment
Benefactor or maleficence.

Quieted soul,
Ever vigilant heart,
Desirous of My Holy Body,
Gazing through the fiery flame
Serene against the tumult,
Drinking from the Chalice of My Blood,
Covenanted through my Sacred Cross,
Lifted high above the world
As I, Myself, pass as flaming brazier,
Between the broken pieces of your life.

My Shalom, My Shalom,
I call you
By My All Holy Name,
To dwell secure in Love.
Cost counted, chosen,
And placed in the balance.
Infinity pays the price
And tips the scale of Life to
Favor a son of God.

Copyright 2012. Joann Nelander

The Biden Incident – Charles Krauthammer

RealClearPolitics – The Biden Incident.

Noting Israel history of peace overtures in the Middle-east Charles Krauthammer asks:

Why did President Barack Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations?

And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in the Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a touchy subject, and you don’t bring up touchy subjects that might embarrass an honored guest.

But it was no more than a gaffe. It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem……………………..


Clinton’s spokesman then publicly announced that Israel was now required to show in word and in deed its seriousness about peace.

Israel? Israelis have been looking for peace — literally dying for peace — since 1947, when they accepted the U.N. partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. (The Arabs refused and declared war. They lost.)……………………

So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies — therefore Israel shouldn’t take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)?

Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world — and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that brazenly insists on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its own ancient, historical and now present capital?

Who knows? Perhaps we should ask those Obama acolytes who assured the 63 percent of Americans who support Israel – at least 97 percent of those supporters, mind you, are non-Jews — about candidate Obama’s abiding commitment to Israel.



“The Truth that Teaches Within”

From My Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis:


I WILL hear what the Lord God will speak in me. “Blessed is the soul who hears the Lord speaking within her, who receives the word of consolation from His lips. Blessed are the ears that catch the accents of divine whispering, and pay no heed to the murmurings of this world. Blessed indeed are the ears that listen, not to the voice which sounds without, but to the truth which teaches within. Blessed are the eyes which are closed to exterior things and are fixed upon those which are interior. Blessed are they who penetrate inwardly, who try daily to prepare themselves more and more to understand mysteries. Blessed are they who long to give their time to God, and who cut themselves off from the hindrances of the world. Consider these things, my soul, and close the door of your senses, so that you can hear what the Lord your God speaks within you. “I am your salvation,” says your Beloved. “I am your peace and your life. Remain with Me and you will find peace. Dismiss all passing things and seek the eternal. What are all temporal things but snares? And what help will all creatures be able to give you if you are deserted by the Creator?” Leave all these things, therefore, and make yourself pleasing and faithful to your Creator so that you may attain to true happiness.”

Goodness and Peace in Man

From My Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis:

Goodness and Peace in Man

First keep peace with yourself; then you will be able to bring peace to others. A peaceful man does more good than a learned man. Whereas a passionate man turns even good to evil and is quick to believe evil, the peaceful man, being good himself, turns all things to good. The man who is at perfect ease is never suspicious, but the disturbed and discontented spirit is upset by many a suspicion. He neither rests himself nor permits others to do so. He often says what ought not to be said and leaves undone what ought to be done. He is concerned with the duties of others but neglects his own. Direct your zeal, therefore, first upon yourself; then you may with justice exercise it upon those about you. You are well versed in coloring your own actions with excuses which you will not accept from others, though it would be more just to accuse yourself and excuse your brother. If you wish men to bear with you, you must bear with them. Behold, how far you are from true charity and humility which does not know how to be angry with anyone, or to be indignant save only against self! It is no great thing to associate with the good and gentle, for such association is naturally pleasing. Everyone enjoys a peaceful life and prefers persons of congenial habits. But to be able to live at peace with harsh and perverse men, or with the undisciplined and those who irritate us, is a great grace, a praiseworthy and manly thing. Some people live at peace with themselves and with their fellow men, but others are never at peace with themselves nor do they bring it to anyone else. These latter are a burden to everyone, but they are more of a burden to themselves. A few, finally, live at peace with themselves and try to restore it to others. Now, all our peace in this miserable life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.

Update – The Age of “Just Hope It”

“Amen” to what he said.  Charles Krauthammer commenting on the Nobel Prize Surprise supposedly heralding the shining future of Obama the Peacenik and Flower Child ushering in the Age of “Just Hope It!”

“What’s come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What’s come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama’s shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told). China hasn’t moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed it’s pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

What’s come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? “The settlement push backfired,” reports The Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have “arguably regressed.”

And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.”

Krauthammer hopes too, in the form of a question:

Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends?

Ahh, you guessed it, did you?!

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, talk it up President Obama. “Peace,peace” and prizes for peace! So there is no peace to speak of, only talk and the shifting sands of duplicity beneath our feet.

Update: Personally, for me, a bumper sticker speaks more to truth and peace than Obama.  It says: “No Jesus. No Peace. Know Jesus. Know Peace.” I know Charles Krauthammer wouldn’t put it that way, being Jewish; however, the way Christ preached, of truth and sacrificial love, rings throughout Krauthammer’s body of work.  Krauthammer doesn’t hand you ‘pie in the sky’, he preaches the need to slug it out in the trenches with our ethics, morals and integrity in tact.