The 14th Annual 2012 Kateri Tekakwitha Peace Conference will take place on August 17 and 18 at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda. The theme is Crossing the Line: A Call to Revolutionary Love. Speakers include Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Kathy Kelly, John Horgan, Clare Grady, David Swanson, Matt Southworth and others.

Plain and simple, this year's conference is about love, revolutionary love. The kind of love that invites us to move beyond fear and isolation, to cross the line, to occupy squares, to change the world.  

We are also very pleased to announce that Bishop Thomas Gumbleton will be conducting a day of reflection starting at 9:30 AM, Friday, August 17th. The day of reflection, "Active Love and non Violence: The Only Moral Response to War" is a special and additional event.  

Within the last 100 years the world has seen some exceptional models of revolutionary love. Gandhi and King come immediately to mind. Profound and dramatic life affirming change, both in the way things work and the way people think, are the substance and effect of revolutionary love.  

For example, both Gandhi and King were instrumental in using the radical notion of nonviolent resistance to lead both the oppressor and the oppressed to a new level of understanding, a more equitable and harmonious state of living, which provided for equal rights and equal protection born of a new vision of "the other". Their leadership led to a transformation of heart and mind which in turn led to a transformation of politics and policy.  

Their work and the work of so many of the world's true revolutionaries, certainly hasn’t been completed nor perfected. Peace and justice still weigh in the balance, yet each moved us forward in a great turning towards an expanded thinking and imagination, premised on love as the guiding and foundational principle of real revolution.  

This conference invites us to ask:  

How do we continue to move forward to embrace the transformative power of this revolutionary love? How to continuously work to ground our thinking and actions in the reaffirmation of the most profound and challenging truth, the root of why we care, why we act: we are sisters and brothers all and everywhere, in truth, a beloved community.  

This conference also will issue challenges, for on this revolutionary journey, we contend there are lines to be crossed, squares to be occupied. Plagued with doubts, excuses, and often a very real fear of the oppressor's threats and violence along with the deadening fear that the status quo is inevitable and unchangeable, we find ourselves paralyzed, failing to speak out, afraid of conflict, trapped in isolation.  

Yet often it is equally true our fear is written within our own psyche and with our own hand. We must find the courage to cross this line - whether the source of the fear is external or internal - to take the needed risks necessary to express our deep love for each other and for peace and justice.  

While we often think of both King and Gandhi as fearless because of the tremendous courage they both demonstrated, it is well to remember that each moved us forward towards peace and justice because they embraced community and faced their fears with dignity, courage and grace as they crossed the line both - literally in directly challenging unjust laws and institutions - as well as spiritually by arriving at a new experiential understanding of our essential human inter-connectedness which is dramatic, life changing, vulnerable and creative, comprising the essence of and compassionate energy which we call revolutionary love.  

Please join us and cross the line to "Revolutionary Love".  

While we are a Interfaith Conference, certainly we would be remiss not to mention the extraordinary life affirming influence and understanding Jesus created with his call to Revolutionary Love!

You can learn more here.