Recipe For Peace Now
Reach Out, Encourage, Connect, Inspire, Progress, Eat
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Welcome.
Gather together your friends, acquaintances, and most importantly, the people you perceive as the most “different” from you, gather “the other”, and embark on this interactive journey of learning through conversation and food.
The recipes in this guide, all copied from hand-written index cards in the family recipe box, are examples to be prepared and enjoyed together during communal discussion of the quotes and paradigms. Encourage everyone to bring their favorite recipes and ingredients for preparation and sharing. Interaction around the communal table creates a renewed appreciation for the rich diversity of humanity, as well as its fundamental oneness.
Good people will always respectfully disagree. The goal is not to decide who is “right”, but to learn with an open mind, to consider new solutions to old problems, and to become engaged in helping our world confront its challenges more prudently.
Welcome to Recipe For Peace Now.
Every section, every quote in this guide, is a recipe for discussion, for interaction, for communication, and for reaching common ground.
Every food recipe is an opportunity to share.
R.E.C.I.P.E. = Reach-out, Encourage, Connect, Inspire, Progress, Eat.
There is power in what an individual, a group, a community can do regardless of the scale of the issues. Thoughts create Beliefs, which create Expectations, which create Attitudes, which create Behavior, which affects Performance and Outcome.
The Human voice is under-utilized. It matters to reach-out. Use your voice not just at the table, but to bring others to the table. Never under-estimate the power of a shared story, a shared meal, a shared goal. All problems are solvable. Mother Teresa summed it up: “I can do what you can’t do, you can do what I can’t do; together we can do great things.”
Why create this guide? For a very personal reason: During more than 25 years of problem solving with all types of people, I’ve come to realize that the world is very wonderful, diverse, and extraordinary. The world is also very tense, very small, and Heinrich von Treitschke’s disciples still flourish, even if they don’t know his name.
Who was Heinrich von Treitschke? He was an outspoken, highly regarded professor, writer, public lecturer and vitriolic proponent of discrimination, hatred, and war. His lectures were immensely popular during his lifetime, and published in book form after his death.
In his Introduction to the American Edition of Treitschke’s works, A. Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, wrote:
“So much has been said about the influence of Professor Heinrich von Treitschke on German contemporary political thought that this translation of his “Politics” will be welcome to English and American readers …
[I]t is in the opening and closing chapters that the reader will see Treitschke’s peculiar views that have influenced German political thought, or in which that thought has found its expression. The disciples of a political thinker habitually carry his doctrines farther than the master himself; and this is the case with von Treitschke. His theories have limitations imposed by common sense. His State must to some extent observe a moral code independent of itself. Nevertheless, in these chapters he expounds very forcibly his fundamental doctrine that the end of the State is power. From this he draws many startling conclusions; and his disciples have drawn even more.”
Treitschke’s most infamous “disciple” is, of course, Hitler and his malignant Nazi credo of death, fear, hatred, and mistrust. In a contemporaneous letter, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the legendary “Lord of the Rings”, wrote: “I have spent most of my life … studying Germanic matters. … There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the “Germanic” ideal. … You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. … I know better than most what is the truth about this “Nordic” nonsense. Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge … against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler. … Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to
Through history, and culture, and stories of lessons learned, we can build the future of our community, our country, our world, the way it should be. Treitschke’s way is obsolete.
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About the Book
With extraordinary clarity, blending world history, paradigms, insights, and food recipes for the communal table, the guided exercises of "Recipe For Peace Now" provide tools and advice for transforming relationships, focusing group energy, and demonstrating how each person has the capacity to transform individual and cultural hatreds, develop compassion, and help create more peace in the world.
"Recipe For Peace Now" shows readers how communal consumption and communal discussion encourage healing words and actions that help us acknowledge and dissolve barriers, illuminating the way toward tolerance and peace. Illuminating the way toward insight into a wide range of contemporary topics and concerns, from war and the threat of terrorism, to individual anxiety, and the degradation of community understanding. Illuminating the way for the human spirit to prevail. Illuminating the way for you, and for me.
About the Author
Susan Beller is an attorney, scholar, and humanitarian. In more than 25 years of practice, she has successfully mediated countless disputes between hostile adverse parties using the basic principles of "Recipe For Peace Now".She has also presided over countless communal tables, and has first-hand experience proving that good food, open discussion, and tolerant listening dissolves intransigence into accord.