Originally Posted by
Daisy09 
A disclaimer: I tend to ramble, and I'm not always good at getting my point across in a way that other people understand...
I'm glad I'm not the only one!!
Originally Posted by
Daisy09 I recently read a really good book. It's called Nonviolence: Twenty-five lessons from the history of a dangerous idea by Mark Kurlansky. It's pretty much what is says it is: a brief history of the non-violence movement. The author is definitely not a big fan of organized religion, and spends a lot of time discussing its role in much of the violence throughout history, but manages condemn actions as oppposed to people. He discusses the importance of nonviolence as a way of life: nonviolent thinking, speech, and action. It helped me to come to terms with some of the anger I felt towards organized religion, and to realize that fighting hatred with hatred just isn't going to work.
Nonviolent reaction has always been interesting to me, mostly because I have so much trouble actually practicing it. I usually keep my cool but in my head I grumble a lot, call people names, and generally want to strangle them when they p!ss me off. That said, I was raised Quaker. It's supposed to be a peace church and somehow even though I dutifully went nearly every Sunday and listened to my First Day school teacher, the lesson never really took I guess. A Quaker once told me that sometimes it's not possible to get past that negative or violent thought pattern but the next best thing was
wanting to get past it. *Shrug*