Betsy Toll is director of Living Earth: Gatherings for Deep Change. Living Earth is committed to empowering nonviolent activism, nurturing awareness of interdependence, and cultivating deep cultural change. She hopes to stimulate a much-needed dialogue among progressives and “cultural creatives” aimed at formulating dynamic visions of meaningful, sustainable peace.
Code Blue, by Betsy Toll
On call as a hospital chaplain last weekend, I step in to say hello to a tender, grieving, middle-aged father in a darkened room, sitting at the bedside of his gravely ill 24-year old son, lying in a sedated sleep. It’s been six weeks like this, the father says...
A new year begins each day, by Betsy Toll
Every day here on planet Earth is a full year past its own date a year ago. A whole new year begins every single day, yet there is nothing sacrosanct about that fact on any day. Every day holy, if we make it so. Every single day completes a year-long round and begins...
The Challenge of Peace in Time of War, by Betsy Toll
Though Betsy wrote this piece more than a decade ago, prompted first by the events that unfolded in this country on September 11, second by our indefensible invasion of Iraq, and generally by cultures of violence, a world continually at war, I find this short essay to...