What is Father's Day all about? And what is this Department of Peace thing really all about?

Think back to when your first child was born. Your reality was significantly changed at that moment. Your child entered the world, opening his or her eyes to the light for the very first time. Those big eyes seemed to hold a nonjudgmental purity.

And then the baby cried, and pooped, and you and baby's mother became completely consumed in meeting this new human being's needs. You willingly made many sacrifices in the name of fatherhood. You grew up in a way that only seems possible through the experience of fatherhood, becoming less self-centered, more nurturant, and determined to build structures in your life and family, and in the world, that would promote the success of your child.

That is why I am working for a Department of Peace. The world is an increasingly interdependent place, and our government needs new structures that reflect this reality.

In this interdependent world, the success of my children cannot come at the expense of someone else's children. If we think of success not in terms of winning and taking away from another, but rather in terms of having needs recognized and met, then it follows that everyone's needs are important to our own success and to that of our children. Indeed, one of the central principles behind the work of the Department of Peace is that everyone's needs matter.

Think about that. Everyone's needs matter. This is not saying that everyone's needs are going to be met. It is saying that everyone's needs are recognized and receive the sincere attention of the community. This is the greatest gift the members of a community can give each other, for it neither panders nor neglects. It promotes communication. It promotes understanding. It promotes relationships. It promotes self-discovery. This is the gift of empathy.

But what use have we men of needs? We are an independent lot. Our masculinity drives us to display our strength and to find some way to stand out from the crowd. While we don't often think of ourselves as needful, these displays speak directly to our need to be recognized for our uniqueness, for our strength, and for our excellence. If we are to have peace in our families, in our communities and among nations, then those masculine needs must take on a special significance. To pander to them or to neglect them would perpetuate the same domination and subordintation patterns that have driven our culture for millenia. When the peace movement empathizes with those masculine needs, then our creativity and ingenuity will naturally produce pathways to meet those needs.

The aversion so many men have to even the simple word "peace" is, I believe, due to the fact that the peace movement of yesterday had not fully legitimized or empathized with masculine needs. Since the peace movement invested little in having our need to feel excellent, unique and strong either recognized or met, then peace itself was seen as weakness.

The Department of Peace campaign is but one manifestation of the peace movement's maturation into a full blown culture of peace. And I am happy to report that the emerging culture of peace is also awakening to your needs, men. In the culture of peace, strength and courage and even heroism are celebrated. We celebrate the tremendous strength it takes to meet conflict with an unshakable faith in a win-win outcome! We celebrate the seemingly impossible courage it takes to recognize fear and refuse to buy-in to it! In the culture of peace we honor the heroes who speak up, WHO SPEAK UP! for a world that works for everyone! And in the culture of peace, we experience most wonderful feeling of power, not the lusty feeling of power over others or the victimized feeling of power under others, but the generative feeling of power with others.

Fathers, you know that feeling. Recall the feeling of those first few days of fatherhood. Remember the generative feeling of the power, which you shared with your child's mother, of bringing new life into the world. That power is alive in this room, in these musicians, in these families, among these friends. That is the power we have available to us, every one of us, every day in the culture of peace.

Happy Father's Day!