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Personal page:http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51
Memorial Service and Memorial Meal for Steve, October 21. 2017 Dear Family, Dear Friends: I would like to thank you all for having participated in the memorial service and memorial meal in remembrance of our beloved Steve, whom today we have put to rest besides his Mother on the Mountain Home Cemetery in Kalamazoo, who died on October 20, 1978, 39 years ago. I want to thank particularly Father Bob, who celebrated the memorial mass for Steve with us. He prepared awonderful theological homily full of eschatological wisdom. I would like to thank Reverend Michael Ott for his eulogy, which dealt with our new theodicy problem, and which was deeply rooted not only in the Evangelium, but also in four decades full of knowledge of the life of Steve and of our family. I would like to thank Agnes and Karen and other family members and friends for organizing our memorial service and memorial meal at the Martell Restaurant. I am very grateful to John, Karl, Jeanne, Christopher, Grace, Ryan, Matthew, and Rosi, for their wonderful contribution to the memorial mass, in which we celebrated Steve’s life in the past, and in the future. I thank the musicians, who lifted us up during the mass on eagle’s wings. I am grateful to Christopher, Laurie, Rosi, and Karen, and other family members and friends for the many wonderful stories they told us about Steve during our memorial meal at Martell Restaurant. I thank the musicians who played so beautifully and peacefully for us during our memorial meal. I am grateful to Karl and Lauren and all the family members, who contributed to the most wonderful book Celebrating you!.Steve Siebert.We love you! for Steve’s last birthday, and for all the pictures of him it contains, and those which were shown during our memorial meal, and for the beautiful texts attached to the book. A true work of art and love! The burial service, conducted by our dear friend Mike under the “Rose of Reason in the Cross of the Present” ( Dante, Luther, Hegel and others), in the Mountain Home Cemetery, was done like the memorial mass and the memorial meal precisely as Steve wanted and planned it. The wonderful solidarity of his brothers snd sisters replaced and compensated for the family, which Steve never had. There was not one moment in his long, most painfull illness and suffering, in which Steve was not surrounded and carried by the love of his brothers and sisters, and their husbands and wives. Steve stayed alive long enough to receive all the loving visits and care of his family and friends, and to make his own great trip to California, his earthly paradise, all by himself, in order to celebrate his last birthday with his friends and to say goodbye. I would like to thank all the friends from around the world for their heartfelt, most moving, most ecumenical condolences: as far as from Pakistan and Iran, from Russia and India, from Switzerland and Germany; from Muslims, Jews, Christians and Buddhists. Most of you have received my first letter to family and friends, in which I remembered mydiscussions with Steve every night for the last months of his life. For many months we trusted in medical science and technology.While they mitigated the pain, they also prolonged the suffering. But they also gave us the opportunity to visit with Steve, and for him to visit with us and his friends and say goodbye. For many months we trusted in prayer.But we found out, that prayers are notmagic, as the enlighteners thought, and that the will of God can not be forced by man. Deus vult! Here started Steve’s and my own theodicy problem: the justice of God in the face of the injustices in his world. Religion is precisely this longing for absolute justice: that the murderer shall not triumph over the innocent victim, at least not ultimately. When I visited Steve a last time in Karl’s home, he became very sad and wept, and his whole beautiful being was shaken, and he regretted that he had not been open enpigh for spiritual things earlier. I assured Steve, that there was something in us, which had once been called spirit, and which was not finite, and which could survive into God’s eternity the negation of death, and which unfortunately had been forgotten in a secular, materialistic civilization: we would not die like the animals, as the materialists asserted ( Bertholt Brecht).That is how far we came finally in our discourse: this eternal spiritual element in us was not easily to be comprehended in the present Western civilization, which had lost transcendence tocompulsive, absolute immanence. But before Steve became ill, and before I began to call him every night, he had called me every Sunday around 7.00 p.m, for many years, since he left home for law school. Sometimes he called from his home, sometimes from a museum or an art gallery which he had visited, sometimes from a park he had walked through in good weather, sometimes from a restaurant, where he had met with his friends. Every Sunday evening, punctually, Steve and Ihadoften verylong discourses, first during law school, and later on during his jobs with the Federal Government in Los Angeles and New York, andwith private organizations. We talked much about his work, the different struggles he had to go through, and problems of discrimination he had to resolve in and out of court.He indeed was very good at that: a very good lawyer. Often we also talked about his lifestyle decision, which had an enormous effect on the direction of his life: he had no family of his own. It was the big elephant in the room. In recent years again and again Steve reported to me a particular experience, which fascinated him. There was a pair of pigeons,which flew in every spring and build their nest right under Steve’s kitchen window in an old, reconstructed tenement house, which had seen much suffering, in the middle of New York, a city so alienated from nature,being especially hostile particularly to pigeons. Steve observed every day, how the pigeons established and nourished their family, and how they finally helped the young to leave the nest into the real world of the small yard behind the tenement house. When once a little pigeon landed in the wrong place,and could not be helped and rescued,Steve stated his usual expression of emphasy, which I had tried to teach him early on: How unfortunate! Steve was full of admiration and astonishment about this species process, and could again and again not talk about it enough. But his talk never went beyond the description of the immediate, particular biological event to the universal law present in it, and its practical application not only to the natural world of necessity, but also to the human world of freedom. While Steve was a great lawyer, he was not really a philosopher. or a theologian. But why should he be, since there was much theology and philosophy hidden even in positive American law, which had been revealed to him in his class on jurisprudence in law school. In any case. the most fascinating pigeon experience did not, at least not consciously, make any difference for Steve’s life style decision. Steve and I were aware, that his life style decision had been costly. It did not only distanced him from nature, but also from the Abrahamic Religions, from Judaism, the Religion of Sublimity, and from Islam, the Religion of Law, and from Christianity, the Religion of Freedom, to which he belonged, and made him a secularand enlightened person in the modern sense. Steve and I were aware, that all three Abrahamic Religions had a revelation, a remaining faith substance, which as not negotiable. As such they were categorically opposed to Steve’s life style. They all shared the revelation, that God created man and woman and made them one, and that, so Rabbi Jesus added against Moses, what God had united, man had no right to separate, except in the case of adultery. So it was in the beginning, i.e. essentially and substantially, not to be overthrown by subjective considerations, as e.g. when Moses allowed divorce, because the Israelites were not teachable. In the beginning there was no divorce, and also no polygamy, and also no homosexuality, and also no celibacy. The beginning was normative. For Steve compromises of believers, open to modernity and enlightenment, were not convincing: e.g. Augustine’s principle, to love the sinner, but hate the sin; or the scholastic separation of disposition and action. Steve never joined for long Christian groups,arranged specificallyfor gay people in New York, or elsewhere. He was opposed to gay marriage as well as to bisexual relationships, like the marriage of Socrateswith Xantippe, and his friendship with Alcibiades, who for him was the way from finite, contingent, particular beauty to universal, eternal Beauty. Steve was deeply involved in the modern antagonism between the sacred and the profane, and the culture wars which it continually produced. More and more Steve prefered on Feastdays tolovingly cook our family meals rather than to go to church. We often talked about Abraham, the father of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims, when he asked and bargainedwith Jahweh for mercy for the city state of Sodom, and maybe also for the other five cities at the Dead Sea: if at least some just people could be found in them. While Steve applied the law strictly, he also was always open for mercy, which is beyond the law. Steve and I talked about Isaiah, who thought that Sodom fell, because the rich women in the city did not share their wealth with the poor classes. Steve practiced thelabor law with a deep sense for social justice among the classes. We talked about Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, who thought that Sodom was destroyed, because the people there did not practice hospitality. Steve practiced the virtue of hospitalitymost intensely throughout his life in many forms inside and outside of our family. We talkedabout Rabbi Jesus, who taught, that the men of Sodom would be better offon Judgement Day than the men of Sidon, who did not repent. Unlike the men of Sidon, Steve was willing to see and to regret imperfections in his life, in the mosthonest and human way. Steve and I did not discuss book Leviticus about death penalty for homosexuality. We did not discuss Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which he derives homosexuality and Lesbianism from atheism. We did not discuss the Natural Law position against homosexuality. We rather trusted with Paul and Luther in the God, who alone can justify sinful man, caught up in the panorama of sin and suffering: faith alone, scripture alone, grace alone, Christ alone. As Steve became more secular, he nevertheless followed Thomas Aquinas’s principle of personal freedom, and conscience. Thomas had taught, that on Judgement Day people would be judged according to their conscience, even if that conscience was an erroneous one, according to religious teaching. Steve followed his conscience, when toward the end of his life he received the sacraments of reconciliation and healing, and the Eucharist, and when at the same time he remained solidary with the gay community. We thank Father Anthony for his final guidance. We hope very much, that Steve met the Christ, theSon of Man and the Son of God, who came into the world and said: I am the Resurrection , If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, andwhoever lives and believes in me, will never die.….. ( John 11: 25 ). At this moment, I am surrounded in my library by innumerable, most friendly condolence cards and letters for Steve, as well asby many wonderful pictures of Steve from the first to the last year of his life.I have the feeling, that Steve lived a wonderful life inspite of tragedies, like the early death of his beloved Mother, and his own illness Tomorrow morning the workers will come and open the new door from the library into the new gallery full of sunlight toward the new part of the House of Peace, which Steve helped us to plan up to the end of his life. I hope that for all of us sooner or later the door of finitude will be opened,and we shall see and know the solution to the riddles, which obviouslyremain. Dear Steve: Auf Wiedersehen! I am with all my love and gratitude to all of you, your Dad, Granddad, Greatgranddad and friend from the House of Peace, Irenae, Pax, Paix, Mir,Salam, which in its new form awaits all of you.
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Dear Family, Dear Friends: On September 19, 2017, our beloved Steve has been redeemed from his long suffering of body and soul. The God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, the God of Love of Rabbi Akiba, the heavenly Father of Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, the Allmerciful and Allforgiving one of Mohammed, the God of the living and the dead, the God of the resurrection, may receive our Steve into his Realm, and may give him the fullness of life, he always searched for. We may try to find consolation in our sadness in the remembrance of Steve's good life and in the hope, that in God he is well taken care of . Through the past months, I called Steve every night. We had a deal: he would answer, when he felt well enough, otherwise we would postpone our discourse to the next evening. Every night, Steve asked me first of all, how I was doing. He was always more interested in how I, and others, were doing, than in himself, and in his often most painful suffering. Often in the evening, we discussed the new addition to our House of Peace. He was most interested in the project, He made many suggestions for the new living room, kitchen and the gallery, and we followed them as much as possible. On some evenings, we remembered together our many trips to the German Federal Republic,Yugoslavia, Monte Negroe, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Italty, the German Democratic Republic, and Denmark. We remembered our travels to Frankfurt, and our visits to my brother Karl and his family, Steve loved Aunt Liselotte, who died only a few days before him. Steve was very sad about her death, and wished, that she would now be in "a better place". I hope, both of them have met in a better place One evening we remembered that when once we travelled to Yugoslavia, we came from Frankfurt to Zagreb in a Luft Hansa plane. All was alright so far. But when then we had to change into a Yugoslav Jat plane, Steve refused to go into it, because it was a "communist" plane, inspite of the fact, that it was a Boeing - type plane, like the one, in which we had just arrived. It would crash! Steve was indeed a genuine American. But a short de-ideologization discourse convinced Steve, that there was no other way to Dubrovnik than with the"'communist" plane, and we went, and had a very good flight, and arrived punctually and savely. One evening, Steve and I remembered that once we travelled to Rome, Italy, together. I showed Steve the Bishop of Rome, the Patriarch of the West, the Pope, standing in the entrance of St. Peters Cathedral. I had a hard time to convince Steve, that the Pope was really the Pope. Steve could be very skeptical, He needed empirical evidence, and even when he had it, he sometimes still doubted. He simply was more into particulars than universals. Also that made him a very good American! One evening we remembered, that once In Dubrovnik Steve pushed me in a wheelchair on a very difficult road all the way to the Franciscan Monastery for Mass, and to its Drugstore, founded in 900, where during the five year Jugoslav War, which costed the lives of 200 000 people, I delivered masses of medicine from Upjohn and Kalamazoo doctors for the wounded people of all nationalities, being refugees in Dubrovnik,. and much money to the Bishop of the City, to be distributed to the war victims. Steve was very much in agreement with all our charity work. Steve was indeed a most helpful, most wonderful travel companion. During our evening-conversations, Steve and I remembered and talked mostly about the happenings of recent days, and plans for the future. We were always hopeful. We hoped for the healing power of faith, as well as of science and technology. We felt we should always opt for this life, finite as it may be. Particularly its finitude makes it so precious. Thus, we opted for chemo- and other therapies. We also hoped for a miracle. However, we were also always open for the possibility that finite life could end soon. One evening, Steve came to the deep insight, which is very foreign to the happy New York life and consciousness, namely, that he was not dying alone, but that death was universal, and that it was present in every living organism from its very start, coming from inside, orfrom outside, being violently or non-violently, and that also all other family members and friends would die, and that therefore one should treat everybody, even the enemy, and even the animal and the plant, as one, who or whichhad to die. Four million people were dying every day. It was only the principium individuationis, which gave us the illusion, that we alone were dying. The enlighteners had taught us, that already Adam and Eve would certainly have died, due to their organization, even if they had not committed their great sin. We remembered our visit in the Collosseum in Rome, where once the fighters represented themselves before each battle in front of their Emperor as the morituri, as those, ready to die in the arena! The individual death may appear to be contingent: if he had just not smoked so much, etc. But in the contingency of the individual death, there was present its necessity and universality. Death was predictable with absolute certainty, only the location and time were contingent, and thusin question There was for Steve something consoling in this insight. During some evenings, Steve wanted to speak about spiritual things: the negation of the negativity of death, and the affirmation of eternal life. There was something in us, which could survive the death of our finite body, which once was called "spirit." Steve happily told me about the visits of Father Anthony, a wonderful Jesuit priest. Steve and I reminded Father Anthony, that he should not only pray for eternity, but also for the continuation of Steve's finite life with us. Steve very much wanted to live. He wanted to remain with us at least a little while longer. 54 years of life was not enough. Death came too early. At least Steve wanted to live his finite life to the fullest up to the very end. There was always still time to do good things, and to correct others. Father Antony promised to pray for health and a miracle, and he did. We thank Father Anthony for all his conversations with Steve, and particularly for hearing his confession, and for bringing him communion, and for giving him the sacrament of healing. We very much thank Christopher and Jeanne for making contact with Father Anthony and bringing him into the picture. In our evening meetings, we remembered Steve's wonderful Mother, who had died in 1978, almost 40 years earlier from cancer, when he was only 14 years old. Steve and his brothers and sisters had to grow up without their most loving Mother. In our evening discussions, Steve and I remembered, how much he had helped me, when his Mother was dying in 1977-1978.Together we went to the Airport of Toronto several times, in order to find the Kalamazoo pilot, who was supposed to bring stronger pain medicine for Margie from Kalamazoo. Together Steve and I found housing in London, where I was supposed to teach at Western ontario University. When the Canadian police wanted to send me back home in 1978, because I had taught a summer semester in Kitchener (former Berlin) without state permission, Steve powerfully defended his Father: it was all the fault of the Canadian Government. Steve was right, and we were allowed to continue teaching in London, and I was not send home, while Margie was dying in Canada, and the children were alone. Steve fought the irrationality of the state. Good man! Steve was a lawyer by his very nature. In our evening sessions, Steve and I remembered, that shortly before her death, Margie had a dream, in which her Father Karl, whom she had never seen, and her Mother Margaret, and her Grandmother Elisabeth, met her at the gate of heaven. She wanted to stay with us, But if she would go with her Parents and her Grandparents to heaven, she would wait for all of us there. Now Steve has followed his good Mother, and we hope he is with her. Steve and I remembered the great word, which his dear Mother said to a chaplain from Victoria Hospital in London, shortly before her death: "I have no regrets!" That is indeed the greatest any good person can say at the conclusion of life. Maybe besides wishing, that he would have thought of spiritual things earlier in life, Steve had no regrets. Steve and I also remembered and talked about his more distant relatives, e.g. his Grandfather Bruno, who had died after a cancer operation in 1938, almost 80 years ago. In our evening meetings, Steve and I remembered and talked about our huge family tree: between 1500 and 1900 we had only one cancer death in each generation, mostly breast cancer. But from 1900 on, science and technology produced more cancer cases than they could possibly arrest, in spite of all innovations, like chemo - and other therapies. Like his Grandfather Bruno and his Mother, Steve became a victim of this cancer crisis, which we always hoped could be conquered through adequate investments, rather than war preparations. In our evenings together, we remembered and talked about Steve's birth and baptism and early life in Baltimore and Kalamazoo. Steve was the first true American in the family, besides his Mother, of course. Steve was born one year after we immigrated from Meschede, Germany, to Baltimore, Maryland. His birth was assisted in St.Agnes Hospital in Baltimore by a doctor, who gave me his "Oath of Hippocrates", because he felt no longer worthy of it, and treated Steve and our whole family without pay for three years, while I was teaching at Loyola College and St. Agnes College. One evening I reminded Steve where he got his name Georg from. It was originally the name of the little son of our Uncle Albin Kehl, the doctor of physics, who invented during the War the backward-bent wings, which today almost all airplanes have , in the Max Plank Institute. Steve received the name George in remembrance of Albin's little son, who died accidentally in the house of his Grandparents Kehl, the Family of my Grandmother Ida. On several evenings, Steve and I remembered and. discussed his growing up in Kalamazoo, his time in elementary and high school, and at Western Michigan University. Steve was infinitely grateful to the WMU professor, who guided him into law, and made the necessary connections to the Law School in Toledo, where he educated himself, to become a good labor lawyer in the Federal Government and in the private sector of civil society. In Law School, Steve learned how to deal most adequately with the airlines. He defended me brilliantly, when injustices happened to me in my wheelchair in an airport, e.g. in Detroit. Here in Law School Steve may also have learned, how to get free rides. He was a master in this art. It started in New York, when Steve accompanied me to my courses at Maryknoll. one day Steve needed a new jacket, in order to go to a formal dinner with a Canadian family and their daughter. After wearing the jacket for one evening, he brought it back to the store, claiming that it did not fit completely, and thus made a little profit. He did not hesitate to profit a little bit from stores or airlines. He continually sacrificed flights, in order to get nother, free ones. He, so tis peak, impoverished the airlines. Steve and I had great fun to remember those little stories. Also those stories showed him to be a most genuine American. Our evening sessions revealed, that beyond those stories, Steve had from the start a very sharp sense of justice, which was even sharpened further through the Toledo Law School. Thus, I could tell Steve, what I had told his Mother 40 years earlier, that a great injustice had happened to him, being threatened by an early death. Like his Mother earlier, he agreed in silence. Often in the evenings, we discussed the most painful theodicy problem, which today throws all world religions into a deep crisis: the defense of the justice of God in the face of the horrible injustices happening continually in his world. They have no theoretical answer, only maybe a practical one. Steve and I looked at the retaliation - theodicy of Moses, the test - theodicy of Job, and the Messianic theodicy of Jesus of Nazareth, in order to understand Steve's own terrible theodicy experience. In our evenings, Steve and I remembered and discussed all the work he had done for our Family through the years, after his Mother had died in London, Ontario, where I had taught at Western ontario University. in 1978-1979 . Steve became the head of our household. He cooked, and washed, and went. Shopping with me, or without me, and established law and order in the house, and precisely thereby made it the House of Peace. Steve could not even remember fully the enormous work he had done for the family unto the time, when he had completed his undergraduate studies at WMU, and moved to the Toledo Law School, and Karen took over, and became his successor, with the same wonderful sense for order, and discipline, and communicate and instrumental rationality, and mental and physical health. Steve was very humble. He made very little of the enormous work he did for all of us even after Law School. He did not want to be praised. He merely did what had to be done. Steve was a great man! Steve and I remembered, when I visited him in Lost Angeles at the occasion of his first job with the Federal Government. The law study had not been easy for him. But now he had a job as labor lawyer in the Federal Government. The inauguration was a great and proud moment in his life, which I was most happy to celebrate with him. Steve pursued social justice not only in the Federal Government, but also in the three private law firms, in which he worked. He perused with great seriousness racial, gender and class prejudices, and their horrible consequences. I told Steve, how proud we all were of his social justice work as labor lawyer in our best, antifascist family -tradition: an Uncle of Steve, Oscar Persecke, had been a judge in the Auschwitz - Trial in Frankfurt. In our evening meetings, Steve and I discussed what ever had happened in the past week in his encounters with his psychologist, with his oncologist, with his group therapy friends, with Father Anthony, with his doctors responsible for his pain control. Steve was very satisfied with all these encounters, no matter how shocking they were sometimes, and he was very grateful for them. In our evening discussions, Steve and I planned my trip to New York to visit him. We both were grateful for Agnes and Karen to accompany me to New York, and to Jeanne and Christopher for hosting our visit there. Jeanne and Christopher were the main pillar of strength and help for Steve in New York. Steve and we all were immensely grateful for their most admirable work. In our evening discussions, Steve and I also planned my trip to Allentown, to visit him in Karl's home. once more, we both were grateful to Karen and Agnes for accompanying me to Allentown, and to Karl and Laurie, who brought him to their home every weekend , and finally for good, and took most loving care of him in the most difficult times up to his final transfer to the hospital-hospice. Karl and Laurie were the main pillar of strength and help for Steve outside of New York. Again and again Laurie and Karl hosted our whole family and friends, so that we could see him, and talk with him a last time. Steve and I, and we all were and are immensely grateful to Laurie and Karl for their most admirable work. In our evening talks, Steve and I were tremendously proud of the love and solidarity our whole family practiced in a moment of great tragedy. Rosi and her family, and Thomas, and Maria crossed again and again almost the whole continent, in order to be with Steve, and support him in his great suffering. In our evening discussions, Steve expressed not only his gratefulness for the great love of his family surrounding him continually, inspite of all the great geographical distances, but also for the solidarity of. all his many friends, who continually flew in from all over the country, in order to help him. Every evening, I asked Steve, if somebody was with him. He always told me, that a family members or a friend was with him, or that one had just left and another one would come soon. Steve was wonderfully cared for from day to day through several months. For this Steve and we all are infinitely grateful. Steve was part of an unlimited communication community, which may embrace the living and the dead. One evening, I reminded Steve, that I had dedicated one of my books to him four years earlier: "The World Religions in the Global Public Sphere.Towards Concrete Freedom and Material Democracy.". The dedication reads:
Dedicated to my Son
Stephan Georg in gratitude for many years of loving support to our family. Dear Steve, this gratitude is for time and Eternity, until we all follow you, as you followed so bravely and with such dignity your great Mother, and until we meet again In you, eternal one, alone we trust! Best wishes to all of you, dear Family and Friends, your Rudi, from the House of Peace. September 29, 2017 Dear Rudi, On behalf of the GHA, I express to you and your wonderful family our sincere condolences in connection with the untimely decease from cancer of your son, who was your like-minded person. We share your grief. Your great message about this grief was published on your personal page here:
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51 With love, Leo Semashko Russia
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253 29-09-17 ----------------------------------------- Dear Rudi, Just now read the entire message posted by you, regarding Stephan's heaven journey. I am disturbed. As you appropriately draw his character as one who believed in empirical evidences, and more on particulars, I too find his small introduction by you as a true depiction of his ardent traits and qualities. I can very well understand the grief. Please do accept my honest grief on this hour. Perhaps, he is free from the pains, and now there with the Almighty, where all of us will have to go some or the other day. Have courage. Rest in Peace Dr. Sanjay Tewari BSc, LLB, MA(Sociology), MBA-HR, UGC NET Sociology, PhD GHA Ambassador of Peace and Disarmament from Harmony in India, Personal page: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=758 GHA – Board Member GHA – Executive Secretary Director, UP Athletics Association State Coordinator of IAAF Kids Athletics Program, Uttar Pradesh, India --------------------------------------------- Dear Rudolf Siebert, Condolence for this unexpected incidence! Regards Dr. Pravat Kumar Dhal Prof. & Head Magadh University, Bodhgaya http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=329 India -------------------------------------------- Dear Rudi I read the sad news of your son sudden Steve's death. on behalf of the GHA India, we express our condolences to you and your family. May God give your courage & Peace to you all, Dr. Subhash Chandra President GHA India http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=583 --------------------------------------- We from Pakistan express grief over the departure of a noble soul from this world. May Almighty Allah bless him with peace talks in the next world and patience to his grieved family. With regards. Dr. Noor M. Larik, GHA member from Pakistan http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=722 ------------------------------------------------------ Cher Rudi, A mon tour, depuis la France, j’exprime l’expression de mes condoléances attristées, et je prends part à votre peine, celle de votre famille et amis. La disparition prématurée d’un enfant est l’un des épisodes les plus douloureux pour des parents. Je prie pour qu’il trouve le repos là ou sa religion ou philosophie le destine. Respectueusement. Guy CREQUIE France http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=106 Dear Rudi, In my turn, from France, I express the expression of my saddened condolences, and I take part in your sorrow, that of your family and friends. The premature disappearance of a child is one of the most painful episodes for parents. I request so that it finds the rest there or its religion or philosophy intends it. Respectfully. Guy CREQUIE France http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=106 -------------------------------- Dear Rudi, Please accept my condolences for the loss of your beloved son. With love and respect Takis D Ioannides Vice president of GHA Greece http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=138 ------------------------------------------ Rudi, Meu abraço fraterno e amigo neste momento de dor. Delasnieve Daspet Brasil http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=664 ------------------------------------------ Dear Prof. Rudolf Siebert, Our deepest condolences are sent to you in this note on the loss of your beloved son. May God grant you and your family the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss. With Thoughts of Peace and Courage, Dr. Ayo Ayoola-Amale, Ghana Educator |Lawyer| ADR Practitioner| Poet |Peace Builder| Founder/President, Splendors of Dawn President GHA - Africa Vice President, GHA Vice President, Poets of the World Blog: Grow Into Peace https://web.facebook.com/ayo.ayoolaamale http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=524 ------------------------------------------------- So so worry about this news. My condolences . I hug you strong. In the light of our God! Susana Roberts Argentina http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=275 ----------------------------------------------------- Dear Rudi. My Heartfelt condolence to you for the sudden demise of Steve. I Pray to God so that his soul rest in peace. This is an incident in which we do not have ourhands its God`s decision. Thank you. Maitreyee Bardhan Roy India http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=317 ----------------------------------------------------- My sincere condolences for Steve´s father Lic. María Cristina Azcona Argentina http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=36 ----------------------------------------------------- Dear Prof. Rudi We from INDIA express grief over the departure of a noble soul from this world. May Almighty Allah bless him with peace talks in the next world and patience to his grieved family. RIP Withwarm regards and love Latif Kirmani, New Delhi, India http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=481 October 3, 2017 ----------------------------------------------------
Open House at Piccadilly Road, Christmas 2017 Dear Family! Dear Friends! Thank you all for coming to our Open House celebration at the reconstructed \House of Peace at 630 Piccadilly Road, inspite of the dangerous winter weather. You are heroes! My friends in New Delhi, Hindus and Buddhists, told me recently, that we would probably not celebrate Christmas this year, because of Steve, and others,Liselotte, Ingetraut, John Fenneman, having left us this year. I told them, that on Christmas we remembered the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, who gave us the hope in the resurrection and in the eternal life of the individual person, and in the new heaven and in the new earth without tears, and suffering, and pain, and death. We also know, that Steve would want us to celebrate and to remember him. He contributed many good ideas for this new North Wing and the Gallery, and he still wanted so much to see it himself. Before we have the Blessing of the House by Father Dan, I would like to share shortly with you a few memories about the evolution of our House of Peace This is the fourth House of Peace, which the Siebert Family has owned, always emphasizing use value over exchange value, biographical and historical experience over sales. Much history has indeed taken place in all four Houses of Peace. Such very different people as John Hardon, Hans Küng, the great Swiss theologian, and Johann Baptist Metz, the father of the new political and liberation theology visited this House of Peace. Here we drank brotherhood with very famous people. After Margie and I got married in July 1956, and when I was teaching in Dieburg near Frankfurt, the State of Hessen built us a new house, at Friedrich Ebert Strasse, named after a great Social Democratic statesman, into which we could move right after our long honeymoon in Rottach Egern in the Bavarian Alps. We lived in this first House of Peace for three years. Here , Rosi , Karl and Maria were born not only into a new House of Peace, but also into a social state with family allowances and family wages, and a well funded educational system, only shortly after a terrible war. Then, in 1959, we moved to Meschede, where the State of Westphalia had built a new, bigger House of Peace for us. I taught in Meschede for three years. Here Thomas was born . In 1962 we moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where I taught at Loyola College and at St.Agnes College. Margie and her brother Karl bought a nice old house for us near St.Agnes College, where we stayed for another three years. Here Steve and Agnes were born . Then the period, which we promised the American Government we would stay in Germany, in order to transform a fascist state into a liberal or social one, was over, and a new task awaited us in the USA: to prevent the transformation of a liberal state into a corporate or fascist one.The Frankfurt School, to which we belonged, foresaw the arrival of Trump and Trumpism since the end of World War II. Thus, in August 1965, we moved to Kalamazoo. Here Father Hardon, an anti-modernist Jesuit, who later on moved close to the Pious XI group, schism and ecommunication, found us an old house at the raylroad tracks downtown.The train almost went through the backyard several times a day, always signalling loudly its arrival. It still does. When we entered the house, a stream of water came down to us on the steep staircase from the upstairs bathroom. It was a sign! The negative is also the positive! A good Samaritan from the neighbourhood, whose wife had just died after a long illness, took us all into his house for six weeks, while I was starting to teach at Western Michigan University,Department of Comparative Religion . During this time, I found a newer house at Piccadilly Road,which became the present House of Peace, or as my Russian friends say in St. Petersburg, House of Harmony, or House of Mir. Here Jeanne was born. It was the product of a good Dutchman, a carpenter, a recent immigrant as well, the later Major of Portage: Mr.Corstance . In 2005 we added the South Wing of the House of Peace,which opened up a most beautiful working space, without which my last ten books and many articles could not have been written. Now in 2017 we added this North Wing to the House of Peace, and a Gallery for the always growing library. A truly trinitarian structure! It had indeed been a real dialectical process to build the new House of Peace. We continually determinately negated the old and built the new, in which however the old was preserved, elevated,fulfilled and completed. That is how real life and history work and move. For this creative movement I would like to thank two most wonderful people: our friend and architect Bill Kozak, and our friend and soul mate, Karen Pillarsky, and of course her husband Ken . Bill and Karen together had already produced the South Wing twelf years ago, according to their great vision, and now they have added this great work of art, the beautiful North Wing. and the Gallery for books and works of art. If the South Wing is the Thesis and the Norh Wing is the Antithesis, then the Gallerie is the Synthesis .Very logical! Very scientific! Very harmonious! Very peaceful! Thus, the North and South Wing should indeed carry the names of Karen and Bill for ever, and the Gallery should be devoted to Margie, who started it all, who loved her children and her family, and who looked very much foreward to her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. In any case, I would like to express my great gratitude for both Bill and Karen for this wonderful dialectical and trinitarian masterpiece of architecture for our family, our friends, our students and colleagues. Karl, Thomas and Mark will concretely supersede our old peace pole in front of our house with a new one, ex[ressing our great wish for universal peace in three languages, Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian: Shalom, Salam and Mir. May many new peace and harmony events take place in this old-new House of Peace and Harmony. Now we are ready for the Blessing of our new House of Peace by Father Dan. Merry Christmas, and a Healthy,Happy and Creative New Year 2018, your Dad,Granddad, Greatgranddad, and Friend -----Original Message-----
From: Leo Semashko <lmsspb41@yahoo.com>
To: Rudolf Siebert <RSieb3@aol.com>
Sent: Fri, Dec 22, 2017 5:11 am
Subject: Re: Letter to Putin (2000 characters) and Harmony of China+++"Peace through harmony" instead of "peace through violence" Dear Rudi,
Thank you very much for your strong support of the GHA Open foreign policy letter to President of Russia Mr. Vladimir Putin and for your deep hope to peace and harmony between Slaviс and American worlds. I published your reply together with Putin's letter: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=746
We both know well that it is possible only on the deep level of harmonious fundamental societal structure of Spherons about that we wrote many times in our common articles and GHA projects including "UN Harmony": http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=769
Unfortunately, on the surface, by ignorance and by historical tradition, since the genocide of 10 million American Indians, the American government acts on the principle of "peace through force and violence", which was repeated again by Trump in his recent "National Security Strategy." Unfortunately, the American government does not want to learn and listen to genius people, like Einstein: "Peace cannot be achieved by violence; it can only be achieved through understanding (science)." Or King "we need to shift the arms race into a peace race" in order to put an end to the "main purveyor of violence in the world" - militarism/government of the USA.
This is the tragedy of the American world: the deep harmony of the people, its spherons, and the ignorant brutal violence of the government. The tragedy of America is in the complete identity of its militarism/Pentagon and its government.
How can we turn it towards harmonious enlightenment? How can the USA strongest militarism, its Pentagon, which feeds ignorance and violence of the American government be overcome that sooner or later will turn into its collapse? What do you and your intellectual colleagues think about this American tragedy? How can we change the American ignorant and wild axiom "peace through force/violence" to the scientific, Einstein’s formula "peace through deep harmony" to prevent the tragedy of the American people? Thanks for the response.
For us, intellectuals, this will be our Christmas and New Year's discussion with the hope for peace from harmony through the spherons science.
Merry and happy holidays to you and your wonderful family.
With love, Leo
Dr Leo Semashko: -State Councillor of St. Petersburg, Russia; RANH
Professor; -Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony;
-Global Harmony Association (GHA) Founder (2005) and Honorary
President (2016); -Director, GHA Website "Peace from Harmony":
www.peacefromharmony.org; -Global Peace Science (GPS) from Harmony
(616 pages): www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=585;
----- Original Message -----
From: rsieb3@aol.com, rsieb3@aol.com
To: leo.semashko@gmail.com
Sent: 22 декабря 2017 г., 1:53:21
Subject: Letter to Putin (2000 characters) and Harmony of China
Dear Leo:
Thank you for sending the GHA Open Letter to President Putin.
I was recently reminded of the Russian Tear of Grief Monument of 2005 in Harbor View Park in New York to the Struggle Against World Terrorism, particularly for the victims of September 11 , 2001.
I also recently heard, that President Trump warned the Russian authorities of a possible terrorist attack against the Kazansky Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
These are real as well as symbolical actions, which allow us to hope that the Slavic World and the American World will work together for peace and harmony in 2018.
Thank you for your great peace work!
I wish you and your dear family, and your great nation, a Merry Christmas and a healthy, creative New Year 2018.
Love
your Rudi and the whole Siebert Family,
from the House of Mir.
Rudolf Siebert,
Ph.D., Professor of Religion and Society at
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
GHA Ambassador of Peace and Disarmament from Golden Rule of Harmony for the US
Web: http://www.rudolfjsiebert.org
Personal page: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51
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