Even Cookie Monster is showing
some self-restraint on
Sesame Street

“The one condition for fighting for peace and liberty is to acquire self-restraint.” M.K. Gandhi

This is a quote that came across my computer today. Self-restraint is a good thing to work toward during Lent, season of getting ready for Holy Week, death and resurrection of Jesus. Self-Restraint is one of my weaknesses. Sometimes I get so passionate about something I cannot hold myself back. Sometimes it is good not to hold back and sometimes self-restraint is needed for right time and place to act.

Lent is a time of fasting and prayer which might hold the secret to self-restraint. Fasting requires abstinence from food and drink at times which should give us more control over our body and desires. Prayer brings us to silence and peace where it is easier to find self-restraint. As Jesus says in the Gospel, “Some demons can only be exorcised by fasting and prayer.”

I was thinking today how the “powers that be”, government and big businesses, are consolidating more power into fewer governments and businesses. You hear almost daily about mergers of industrial giants. While the 1% consolidates, we the 99% become more scattered and diverse. When peace and justice causes comes up everyone is scattering to get an organization involved. Just look at all the non-profits for every cause and issue. They multiply rather than consolidate. Coalitions often are just names for another group to be formed on same issue. Just think how powerful we could be if we consolidated and work together, one cause at a time. If most of the groups fighting hunger came together, for example, we might have money and power to do something significant about it. But we do not work together on issues, something which the ‘powers to be’ like. The ‘powers to be’ throw at us more and more justice issues, more wars, more inhumane treatment, more revoking of rights, like the present effort to quickly pass Right to Work Law in Republican legislature. We become more diversified and scattered, “you have your issue and I have mine”, while more power and money is centralized in less and less people.

Along with ignoring people and causes this is the new wave of big industry, military and governments. In the 60’s it was simple. We had two major issues we all worked together on: Civil rights and Anti-War. Now we are divided and often fight and compete with each other rather than “powers to be.”

How do we get the self-restraint to work together for peace and liberty?

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