Peace activist and lecturer John Dear heading off on national book tour
John Dear, photo from Facebook.
–Join with Yes We Can Peacebuilders as we send peace activist and lecturer John Dear off on his national book tour for his new book Praise Be Peace: The Psalms of Peace and Nonviolence in a Time of War and Climate Change on Sunday, March 1, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Coalesce Bookstore Garden Chapel, 845 Main Street, Morro Bay, CA.
John will give a talk on four categories in the Psalms elaborating peace, anti-war, refuge and the creation as he introduces his latest book. A book signing will follow the talk.
John Dear is a long-time peace activist, lecturer, teacher, and author of 36 books on peace and nonviolence. He has been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace prize including by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In this book, Dear relates many personal stories of locations, events, and people that influenced him to come to dealing with our current problems such as climate change, nuclear weapons build-up, the economic inequity between the wealthy and the poor, and our concentration on war. He talks about living close to nature as he does, living on the Central Coast of California. He speaks about the mystics of our time like Thomas Merton, Gandhi, and Thich Nhat Hanh, and poets like Daniel Berrigan and Bob Dylan.
In 2019 Dear worked for peace and nonviolence helping an orphanage in Haiti, was a spiritual leader for a peace pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy, participated in the Vatican Conference for Nonviolence, led the yearly silent protest against nuclear buildup at Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico, and joined and was arrested with Jane Fonda at the Fire Drill Friday climate demonstrations in Washington D.C. In August 2020 he is a prominent speaker at the National Nonviolence Conference commemorating the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Dear works with Campaign Nonviolence.org, PaceeBene.org, and the Vatican Nonviolence Initiative. He lives in a rural area near Cayucos, California and is a priest in the Diocese of Monterey, California.
Refreshments will be served. For more information go to www.yeswecanpeacebuilders.org or www.paceebene.org.
