The book: KEEP HOPE ALIVE
"The Peace of the world begins in Jerusalem"-Rev. Theodore Hessburg, June 2005, Notre Dame Cathedral, Jerusalem.
I was in the audience when Rev. Hessburg made that proclamation in June 2005, during the Interfaith Peace Conference with satellite link to the world that was moderated by Dan Rather in DC.
The Coordinator of World Bank emergency services to the PA, Rania Kharma commented, “We all need to be the bridges to our leaders that justice, equality, and human rights will bring peace. Give people justice and they will reward you with peace.�
Sheik Imad Falouiji warned, “Religions must go back to their origins. God commands us to love each other and live together. This Holy Land was given to all people. This land is on fire. There is an occupation that musty be removed. The language of peace cannot succeed without justice for all.�
The Bishop of Jerusalem, Rt. Rev. Riah Abu Assal stated, “Peace is an act. Blessed are the peacemakers not the peace talkers. Peace is possible in the Holy Land. The root cause for the lack of peace since 1967 is the occupation. For peace to make progress in the Middle East we need to deal with the root cause…Religion was not meant to bring death. All those involved in searching for peace should commit themselves to work for justice and truth.�
Pursuing Justice by writing the Truth is what "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" is about.
"KEEP HOPE ALIVE" also contains the memoirs of a 1948 refugee, and is a 100% fundraiser to provide olive trees for peace through a 501 3-c that he founded after THAT DAY we call 9/11, by bringing together Jews, Christians and Muslims.
"KEEP HOPE ALIVE" is also is a work of creative spiritual literature: it is an easy read on the surface, but DEEP if you want to go there.
Everyone who has read "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" so far,
has NOT picked up on the fact -until I point it out-
that the six fictional characters that interact with the actual people all represent six different ways to intuit and worship God.
I realize now that I perhaps should have explained the fictional characters more fully in the books introduction, but better late than never:
Riad, which is Arabic for Heaven, represents the mystical path to God: God being the Ultimate Mystery.
Jack found God through weakness, addiction and then service to others.
Dr. Jake Hunter worships God in the silence of nature and his wife Terese through creativity.
Their daughter Kat worships God through dance and honesty.
Brother Harold is a theologian lush.
Everyone else in "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" is who they really are: actual people I know as friends or have met and interviewed.
If you drop me an email at:
with your mailing address
I will mail you a signed copy and trust you to put a $25.00 check in the mail made out to the
501 3-c Olive Trees Foundation for Peace/OTFFP.
Checks can be simply made out to:
OTFFP
Mail to:
We Are Wide Awake
Post Office Box 120321
Clermont, Florida 34712
I have 350 copies left [out of 1,000] that I have donated to the 501 3-c Olive Trees Foundation for Peace, so 100% of what you send to OTFFP is TAX DEDUCTIBLE.
So far 30,000 olive trees for peace have been rooted in the Holy Land through the OTFFP.
This year, OTFFP is working with the Joint Advocacy Initiative's YWCA in Bethlehem and YMCA in Jerusalem's Keep Hope Alive Olive Tree Campaign
http://www.ej-ymca.org/site
to provide the funds for olive trees in area's most devastated by years of conflict in Israel Palestine.
All Good 2U,
e
UPDATE on "KEEP HOPE ALIVE"
"KEEP HOPE ALIVE" via the 501 3-C, Olive Trees Foundation for Peace
www.olivetreesfoundation.org
Have provided the YWCA/YMCA in Bethlehem/Jerusalem's Joint Advocacy Intitiative's KEEP HOPE ALIVE Olive Tree Campaign
http://www.ej-ymca.org/site/
the funds for 700 olive trees [$20.00 per 3-year old sapling] have been provided for the impovrished war torn Gaza where 2,000 Christians live amongst 1.3 million Muslims.
70% of the residents in Gaza have no employment and thus no way to feed their children.
Twenty-five olive trees will sustain the average Palestinian family.
Olive trees live and produce for millenia and nothing is wasted.
Olive trees provide olives-[a basic food staple in Palestine],
also oil, soap, wood crafts and employment!
Taybeh, the last remaining self-sufficient Christian village in all of the West Bank produces, packages and exports olive oil.
Olive tree planting season continues through March and resumes in November.
100% of all royalties for "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" are being donated to the non-profit Olive Trees Foundation for Peace.
"KKEP HOPE ALIVE" is available through your local bookstore, Amazon or
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~40033.aspx
Eileen Fleming,
Reporter and Editor of http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" to be released Feb. 2007
I am out of FREE copies of Keep Hope Alive
I have given away all that i donated to the Olive Trees Foundation for Peace.
Keep Hope Alive is available on amazon, etc,
KEEP HOPE ALIVE is published by AuthorHouse, the premier publishing house for emerging authors and new voices in literature. For more information, please visit http://www.authorhouse.com.
EDITORS: For review copies or interview requests, contact:
Promotional Services Department
Tel: 888-728-8467
Fax: 812-961-3133
Email: pressreleases@authorhouse.com
When requesting a review copy, please provide a street address
Eileen Fleming,
Celtic Christian of The Beatitudes, agitator church, state, and limp MSM,
Activist, poet, author creative spiritual literature, historical fiction and my memoirs from OPT
Reporter and Editor of http://www.wearewideawake.org/
LOL, + thanks for that!
THANKS for reading and commenting: and I hope you catch a good nap-and sweet dreams!
BEFORE THAT DAY we call 9/11, I had a dream.
It was during the third week of June 2001 and just after I had completed my first year as a student in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida's Formation Program for Spiritual Directors. That was when I began to write creative spiritual literature.
BUT, my dream was like no dream I had ever had before.
But, NOT until THAT DAY we call 9/11, did it make any sense at all.
I used that dream in the chapter THAT DAY,
I changed it to fit one of my six fictional characters in KEEP HOPE ALIVE.
I offer you all an Excerpt from
Chapter 10 THAT DAY
Jack had been restless for three days. Julianne was in New York City at her sisters and wasn’t due back for three more. His knees began throbbing more the moment she drove out of sight the morning of September 8, 2001.
After returning home on Monday night from The BLAC: Brother Lawrence Addictions Center, Jack mindlessly ate two Lean Cuisines, then spent the rest of the evening trying to read. He fell asleep just before dawn and dreamt he was on the blacktop running track at the middle school where Julianne taught 7th grade English; and where they both rollerbladed in the early mornings before the kids came to campus.
Jack spent a ten hour day at The BLAC, as its Founder and Administrator, and the mornings on the track were when the couple had their best conversations. He inhaled the aroma of tar as he wondered what was keeping Julianne from him. He bladed for what seemed like hours when a silver spandex clad apparition with a golden helmet flew by, sharply turned and with a backward stroke, called out, "Hi Jack, don't look down, don't look back, look out straight Jack, look out straight!"
"Yeah, I can, I can do that." Jack bellowed back, but the apparition had already vaporized into the distance. Then Jack rolled onto an exquisite grace; knees freed from bone on bone grinding and not an ache within his fifty-three year old body that had been abused by two motor vehicle accidents and hours of over use syndrome. Jack glided upon the blacktop effortlessly for what seemed like hours, when suddenly, a roar of thunder assaulted his senses and his eyes were magnetized upward, to view two fireballs thrown down from on high, miles from where he stood. He saw them hit the ground, one traveled east, the other west, and then they circled back around, burning a path straight towards him.
Just before they collide, Jack woke up not believing he had only been dreaming.
Not until after he had downed a pot of coffee did the phone ring. "Jack? Are you watching TV?" Maureen, the Day Supervisor at The BLAC asked as she fingered the framed mission statement that sat upon every desk and on the north wall of every room that Jack wrote in 1984;
"Peace, peace, peace. God's peace be upon you. But living today in a time of war, crying out peace, peace, peace, where there is no peace. Fearing age and death, pain and darkness, destitution and loneliness, people need to get back to the simplicity of Brother Lawrence." [Dorothy Day]
Brother L was a monk in the 17th Century who lived in a monastery and was consigned to the kitchen. He spent his life baking bread and chopping onions, scrubbing pots and floors. He ran all the errands, did all the shopping and always brought back the finest of wine. He loved his brothers deeply but they merely tolerated his many eccentricities or he was totally ignored.
Truly, I tell to you, if ever a saint was born to bring hope to the addicted and those afflicted with obsessive compulsive tendencies: he is the one. For Brother L learned that by continually re-remembering the Lord, no matter what the activity, or where one might be, the Lord was ever present and a holy habit was born, just re-remembering that."
Jack thrived on curiosity and spoke as he reached for the remote, "Mo, you know I never watch TV in the daytime, what's up?"
"Well, isn't Julianne visiting her sister in the City?"
"Yeah, in fact today's plan was to meet her sister's co-workers on Floor 101 of the North Twin Tower."
"Jack, turn the TV on."
"Oh Mo, I just did, my God, is it the end of the world?" He spoke as he hung up the phone and never heard Mo say, "I don't know."
Jack knew in his bones that Julianne had been vaporized and then he recalled a song he had first heard in 1981:
"See the massacre of the innocent...City's on fire... phones out of order... I see the turning of the page. Curtain's rising on a new age. See THE GROOM* still waiting at the altar." [Bob Dylan, Shot of Love, Columbia Records, Inc. 1981]
And then, II Chronicles 6:1 welled up within: "The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness."
-end of excerpt-
PS dear reader,
When I turned the TV on THAT DAY:
[after I had been out rollerblading on my circular drive from 8AM until NOON-
I usually only blade an hour, but THAT DAY, I just couldn't stop]
After getting out of the shower, the phone rang-it was my daughter who told me to turn on the TV.
After a few seconds of shock, I recalled my dream and did in deed hear that Dylan song and then the verse from 11 Chronicles welled up within.
PSS-
I also had a laugh when Bob Dylan entitled his book:
1 Chronicles
PSSS
*"THE GROOM" in Christain lingo is Jesus Christ
Eileen Fleming,
Celtic Christian of The Beatitudes, agitator church, state, and limp MSM,
Activist, poet, author creative spiritual literature, historical fiction and my memoirs from OPT
Reporter and Editor of http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Thank You Very Much for Keeping Me Up All Night
My daughter graced me with your book the other day.
I had no intention of reading more than the first chapter last night, but I could not put it down-and I am writing this before the dawn of today.
You have done an admirable job of extending the olive branch between the cousins in the family of Father Abraham, but I was most taken with your poetry and theological spin-in fact my head is still spinning; but not from lack of sleep!
I too, have long been an admirer of Dorothy Day and I imagine she too would be most delighted with your chapters:
"Cats and Compassion"
and "THAT DAY"
I too will be ordering copies of your work for Christmas gifts-hope this reaches you soon.