Imagine Peace

I almost share a birthday with the late, great John Lennon of Beatles fame. On October 9th this year, the 67th anniversary of his birth, a Peace Tower will be dedicated in his honour in his hometown of Liverpool. His wife, Yoko Ono will do the honours which is nice even though we still haven't got over our suspicion that she broke up the Beatles.

There is a Canadian connection for Lennon's passion for peace. John and Yoko staged a "bed in" in Montreal in 1968 -- hey, the sixties were a little different -- and while in bed they recorded the song Give Peace a Chance with a few dozen of their friends. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers was one of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMN8_i3e4Lk

Lennon also wrote and recorded Imagine an ethereal tune that I was uncomfortable with as an earnest youth because of the line "imagine there's no religion." John was addressing all the powerful forces that contribute to violence and war in the world, but I didn't catch on to that until later. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEOkxRLzBf0&mode=related&search=

We need to give peace a chance in Burma and the Sudan and Iraq and so many other places. Imagine a world where violence is eliminated. Isn't that an important part of Christ's message?

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...