Kosovo: Passionate Peace Movement Is Birthed Maybe you forget the significance of Kosovo but remember Slobadan Milosovic. A modern day Serbian Hitler wannabe, his paramilitary and military proxies killed over a quarter of a million Muslim non-combatants in Bosnia and then Kosovo. NATO, under guidance from Madeline Albright and President Clinton finally stopped Milosovic in Kosovo in June, 1999. In late June, 1999, Cooper #1, Casey arrives as a volunteer for Balkan Sunflowers, a group that had as its primary aim, the extrication from Hell, of Kosovo's children. In Sept., 1999 Coopers #2&3, Katie and Sophie join Casey in Balkan Sunflowers. With volunteers from around the world, this group was a guerrilla 'ARMY OF LOVE' In November, 1999, Coopers #4-10 arrive in Kosovo. We start shooting a documentary film to portray the miraculous openness in a population that had experienced a horrific ethnic cleansing only months before. We have never left Kosovo, and now have a half Albanian Kosovar grandchild on the way.  At a Passionate Peace Partners Conference in Kosovo, Sept. 2003, Ma and Pa Cooper sit between two of our favorite young Peace Partners. To our right sits Arlind, an Albanian youth who has had five close family members massacred in the ethnic cleansing. To our left sits a Serbian youth, Oogleshia, who has spent August starring in a multi-ethnic play, Wake of the Horse, performed around Kosovo by our partners, Tribes Project of Seattle. During our weekend Conference a Passionate Peace Play will be created, performed and filmed, with musical accompaniment and artistic scenery. The movie will then be shown separately on Albanian and Serbian Television to convey the enthusiasm of the Multi-Ethnic Youth of Kosova to forge a vision of Peace that can hope to overshadow the INEVITABILITY OF THE NEXT WAR..
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But, at the moment of this photo, the entire Conference is about to implode into ethnic hatred. The Albanian, Serbian, Roma, Macedonian, and Greek youth have been divided into four groups to create the play, the music, the art, and the film. Everything has come together beautifully and we are moments from putting on the production. Two of the Serbian art participants had offered to create a multi-ethnic flag for a backdrop to the play. Sounded good!!!! But, oh holy God, when they unfurled the flag, the HEAVY CLAWS OF DEATH, snickered at the Cooper's Pollyanna vision of Passionate Peace Partners. Representing the Serbian Nation on the flag, was an inscription that Serbian paramilitary murderers had spray-painted on charred walls of Albanian houses they had burned down during the ethnic cleansing. The flag was quickly crumpled up but several Albanians, like Arlind had seen it. Passionate Peace Would Be Forced To Survive It's First Real Test Putting our priorities where our mouth is, The Show did NOT go on. I don't know exactly what the majority of our Passionate Peace Partners did with the rest of that evening, but we spent several hours, instead with four of the Serbian Youth, four of the Albanian Youth, and three or four of us Coopers. The Albanians accused the two Serbian artists of putting their Symbol (akin to a swastika) on the flag as a subliminal Warning to the Albanians that Serbs still believed in the ethnic cleansing. The Serb boys, terrified and defensive, were adamant that the Symbol was just an ancient non-hateful sign of the Serbian State. All four of the Albanians had lost close family members. The four included our closest Kosovar friends, the Kastrati sisters whose mother and another sister had been massacred. One of the Serb youth, had fought during the War in the Serbian Regular army against the Albanian guerrilla army, U.C.K, and it was he, Nemanja, in fact, who dismantled the first block of the Tower of Babel threatening to kill our vision of Peace. "I want to be part of the new Kosova", he pleaded with us all. "I don't want to part of Serbia, I want to be a Kosovar I wish the two Serb artists hadn't put the Symbol on the flag, because even though it was just an historical symbol, I understand how the paramilitary lunatics had used it. I'm so sorry for your Pain!" The Albanians were finally moved to understand that although the symbol had forced them to relive their agonies, that did not mean that it had been the Serbian boys' INTENT. With the Iron-like armor of their anger dropped, the two Albanian boys burst out crying and ran from the room. We begged them to return but understood the weight of their vulnerability. Moments later, Arlind did return. As he cried, Oogleshia held and comforted him. A Serb was loving an Albanian soul that had been torn apart by other Serbs. The next day, the miracle would multiply. Just weeks before our Conference, three Serb Youths had been murdered while swimming in a river very near to our rented home in a village near Qyshk. Like whites in post-apartheid South Africa, Kosovar Serbs now have much to fear. This unsolved triple murder, most likely at the hands of an Albanian, was a huge blow to all the Hopes swirling around Kosovo. Many Serbian youth, would not be able to come to our Conference, and those that did would have to be safely transported to and fro. Oogleshia lives in the Serbian half of the divided city of Mitrovica. The Albanian bus driver would have to drop him a ways from the Albanian side of the bridge. I planned to walk Oogy to the middle of the bridge where he would be safe. When I jumped off the bus, Arlind insisted that he instead of me would walk Oogy to safety. Of course, I was thrilled and accepted. The love Oogy had given him the night before, had not been in vain. THE MASSACRE OF QYSHK May 14,1999, all the grown men of the village Qyshk, Kosova, were rounded up by Serb paramilitaries, and massacred. Their bodies were burned beyond recognition, and only fragments of clothing gave hope to family members that they were burying the right husband and father.  Like a modern day "Saving Private Ryan", but without the happy Hollywood ending, Mihane Lushi lost all five of her grown sons that day. To call her an angel, is an understatement. Mihane is HUMANITY. She has dignity and grace and congratulated Sally and I when she heard we were working with a mixed group of Albanian and Serbian youth. "We used to love our Serbian neighbors", she boasted proudly.
No human stands above Mihane Lushi, but one of her widowed daughters-in-law, comes close. |
 Ryve Lushi, widow of Mihane's second oldest son, Uke, is Kosova's Joan of Arc in the... WAR AGAINST HATRED. She has starred, as herself, in the Play and Movie, PASSION OF BIRTHFIRE, and has broken every paralyzing taboo regarding the behavior of widows in Kosova. Sunday at our Passionate Peace Conference, the day after our harrowing Flag Incident, we performed our Play. While celebrating afterwards, the primarily Albanian musicians were playing their traditional music while everyone danced and celebrated. In Albanian (Ryve speaks no English) she whispered in my ear that I should ask the musicians to play some Serb traditional music, so the Serb kids would feel more INCLUDED.
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I did, and the band was happy to comply. Ryve suffered hundreds of superficial stab wounds the day her husband was massacred by Serbs. But nobody wounded the mountainous heart that beats in her chest for all humanity. FROM MASSACRES TO MIRACLES ........SACRED CIRCLE MEDICINAL HERB COMPANY Dr. Sally Cooper N.D., like a Mythological Midwife, has reached into the womb of horror that languishes deep in the souls of the WIDOWS OF QYSHK. She has harvested a lush EXUBERANCE FOR LIFE from the soil of their suffering. The Widows, led by the unflappable Ryve Lushi, have responded to Sally's staunch Belief in them with a Passion for Life that I would only diminish by pasting an adjective on it. Dr.Sally and her new Sacred Friends, are a Sacred Circle not only for themselves, but for all the War Widows of the World, and all of us who long to heal them. The Sacred Medicinal Products harvested by the Sacred Circle Widows from the mountains near Qyshk and turned into Manna from Heaven for the masses, are the Magical Extension of the Sacred Circle. Write to us for details about the Products. The Cooper Family In Kosova Who could ask for more than to have a huge prayer answered by God. We asked for God to show us where we should be so we could be of maximum benefit to Him. (But I meant where in America, not halfway across the globe.) Who knew that HERE, in the middle of the AGONY OF ETHNIC MISTRUST, we would find our deepest Hope for HUMANITY. Thank you God, thank you Kosova, thank you United Nations. And, especially, thank you President Bill Clinton that you not only had the unique wisdom to appoint a woman Secretary of State, but then had the security in your MALENESS to LISTEN TO HER, when others ridiculed her. What Shakespearian twist of fate has lead us to this world of Mother Theresa, of Albanian Kosovar origin, the Illyrian Queen Teuta, and Madeline Albright. Even when in their conscious minds, many Albanian Kosovar men act out the NORMAL MALE SUPERIORITY towards women, there is another hidden source from which they behave. Like President Clinton, they have an OPENING to a world where MOTHER (Theresa) energy can co-exist with FATHER energy. For four years, we, the Cooper Family, have been taking every chance to tell Albanian Kosovars that God has chosen them for a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to help change the world. I swear to you I was sure God had wanted me to keep saying this, but my weakness tempted me to think that it was a crazy thing to think and say. Logically, considering that the Albanians have suffered so much, how could one believe that they could forge a great PEACE WITH THEIR Serbian Kosovar neighbors. Then, in September of 2003, a miraculous thing occurred. President Bill Clinton, speaking to Albanians in Prishtina, Kosova, echoed our far-fetched cry into the rocky ravine of Kosova's past. Like us, he insisted that You, The Albanian Kosovars, Are Humanity's Hope. You have every right to hate and be bitter, but you have created in your souls something better than hate and bitterness............ It will be YOUR WORK TO BRING OUT THIS BETTER QUALITY. Don't take President Clinton's word for it or our word for it, ASK GOD YOURSELF. Ask Mother Theresa what God's plan for Kosova is. |
