Call to Peace, with Rev. Kim Andrews

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Hello and welcome to thisepisode of Decide on Joy, a
podcast coming to you fromHarmony Spiritual Center in Fort
Worth, Texas.
My name is Jim Kovold.
Yeah, and my name is ReverendDr.
PJ Stanley and we have awonderful guest here today
talking about her peaceinitiative.
Kim Andrews from Sachse, Texas.

(00:23):
Yay, from Sachse, Texas.
Sachse, Sachse.
Sachse, Sachse.
That's what everybody ends upsaying, because you can't say
Sachse.
You can't say Sachse withoutsaying Sachse.
You just can't, right?
That's actually spelled S A C HS E, not S E X Y, but, but hey,
who's quibbling?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I am the founder of The Callto Peace.

(00:44):
The Call to Peace.
And I'm also spiritual leader atunity of saxes.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Beautiful to have you here.
Thank you for asking me Yeah, sotell us about call to peace so
it is a peace initiative bornout of my own life I Started

(01:04):
working on cultivating a lifeoverflowing with Peace decades
ago, basically.
Cause my upbringing was a littlecrazy, right?
Yeah.
But then whose wasn't.
Yeah.
I remember you telling me thisstory about you and your husband
asking you how, how you doing?
Yeah, and I would just getagitated because he merely

(01:27):
asked, How you doing today?
And how's your day going?
You know, very nice question fora husband to ask.
And I knew that he was askingbecause he really cared how my
day was going.
And if it wasn't going well, ifhe could do something about it,
he would.
He actually would.
But because of watching myparents, you know, bump heads
all the time, and the passiveaggressive way that we, dealt

(01:51):
with each other and you knowthat there's another love
language called sarcasm That welived by And that meant that I
always thought that most lovingstatements had an ulterior
motive And that I couldn't trustit.
It wasn't just what it was.
Well, he said and so I'd getthat.
Why are you asking me?
How i'm doing?
I don't look like i'm doing.
Okay, like what's what's wrongwith you?

(02:13):
And so So that went on for awhile until one day You I caught
it, yes.
And I thought, why am Iagitated?
Because I know this man is notmy father.
And we don't have the kind ofmarriage that my parents had.
We don't.
And so I had to check in onthat.
And then I realized it came frommy programming.
From how I grew up and watchingmy parents together.

(02:36):
And I thought there's no reasonfor me to be suspicious.
Right.
Of this man asking me how I'mdoing.
Right.
And so I took a deep breath andI turned around and smiled, so
of course now he's, he's like,okay, is she okay?
Oh.
Oh.
What happened?
Where's my wife and what haveyou done with her?
Cause he wasn't always used togetting the right, he was used

(02:58):
to agitation most of the timewhen he would ask that question.
And so I turned around and Ismiled and I said, I'm fine,
thank you.
Thanks for asking me how I'mdoing.
So now he knows what to do withit, and he's used to that kind
of an answer, but in thebeginning it threw him.
I remember you telling me thatyou came to the conclusion that
Peace wasn't the absence ofsomething.

(03:18):
It wasn't just being quiet.
Yeah, it's not about quiet,because my upbringing was quiet.
My parents fought like onceevery six months, but then they
fought very loudly for like anhour.
And everything they didn't talkabout for the last six months
got brought up in that one hour.
And they would do it after wewent to bed, but of course we
lived in a three bedroom, onebath house.

(03:39):
And we heard everything and wewere sitting at the top of the
stairs listening, of course, askids do.
Yeah, as kids do.
But yeah, I thought because myhouse was quiet.
And that they didn't fight on aregular basis.
So that meant we had a peacefullife, but there was always
tension always.
And my mother taught us to walkon eggshells around my father

(03:59):
because you just don't want toupset him and I don't want to
fight.
And so we avoided conflict.
I didn't know how to deal withconflict avoidance growing up.
So as an adult, I had to teachmyself that.
So I think most people thinkpeace is quiet and it can be,
but it's not.
But it doesn't necessarily meanthat you are in a quiet
environment, in a peacefulenvironment.
In a peaceful environment.

(04:20):
Yeah, and certainly I thought,coming up in an alcoholic family
we never talked about elephantin the room.
There was no elephant, there wasno elephant.
So if you didn't talk about it,it wasn't there.
That's right.
It wasn't real.
And so for me, that's what peacelooked like, but there was inner
turmoil all the time.
Me too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just throw something overthe elephant and you walk around

(04:40):
and you bump into him.
Right.
He's, you know, he steps on youand stuff like that.
Yeah.
And then, you know, at somepoint somebody gets tired of
bumping into the elephant andthen maybe there's a fight, but
you don't, you don't talk aboutit until then, God forbid you
have an adult conversation.
Right.
Nothing is resolved.
Nothing is ever resolved.
You just fight until you're donefighting.
So when you mention somethingcalled a peace initiative I

(05:03):
immediately go to like a worldpeace or whatever but we're
talking about a personal levelpeace.
We're talking about bothactually.
first was that I had to bepeaceful myself.
And so I started, I realizedthat I actually had created a
modality for peace and thatthere were five keys that led me

(05:25):
to peace.
Five things that I do in my lifeall the time that have led me to
this deep level of peace that Ididn't know about.
And I didn't know was possiblein my early years, like my first
through my early, My late 20s, Iwould say.
So it's an acronym, URISE.
So, the first one is U forunderpinning, to have a

(05:46):
foundation for life.
Something you believe in thatthat grounds you.
Because life happens, the rugcan get pulled out from under
you at any time.
That life can change on a dimein an instant, and we need
something outside of thephysical world, outside of
everything that is you know,things that we see, hear, and

(06:06):
touch, that grounds us, and itdoesn't have to be religion, it
doesn't have to be God, it canbe a set of principles, it can
be how you feel about nature, itcan be your higher self, But
something that allows you to becentered and grounded outside of
the world.
The, the second one so it's U RI S E.
I is intuition or introspection.

(06:29):
To listen to your, cause we, Ibelieve we have this inner GPS
or intuition.
And I do trust my intuition.
I learned that it's alwaysguiding me to my highest and
best.
Yeah.
And so in the beginning I wouldhear it, but not do it.
Not, not, not pay attention toit.
Doesn't matter.
And then I would say, oh, wait aminute, something told me not to
do that craziness.

(06:49):
And yet I went and did itanyway.
So how about if I listen to itnext time?
And every single time I followedit.
Nice.
It was great.
Estes for solitude, quiet time,because you know the world's
noisy.
We're on our phones all thetime.
We've got devices.
You're out, you can be in arestaurant, five TVs.
Just in front of you or you'rewatching TV and stuff's running
down on the bottom on all thenoise no all the time I just

(07:09):
noticed even on social mediathere are ads now coming up on
social media, so it doesn'tmatter It's everything's noisy,
so we need to get away from theworld and be with ourselves
Yeah, and with that higher selfwhatever that underpinning is
that's where you commune Withthat underpinning is to educate
yourself educate yourself aboutyourself so that you know, and

(07:32):
you're self aware about who youare, what triggers you, what
bothers you.
So ever since, like with myhusband, him asking me, how are
you?
At some point I thought, well,why does that bother me?
Right.
Yeah.
That's a good question to askyourself.
Why am I agitated right now?
And I don't want to be agitated.
All I want is peace.
Right.
And so why am I agitated?

(07:53):
So I had to go back and reallytake stock about that.
I mean, know thyself is such agreat principle to me.
You know, cause this iseverything.
I mean, cause everything, youknow, we just do, we're going
with the with the fouragreements and that's just, you
know, don't take thingspersonal.
You got to know yourself, allthis sort of thing.
So, yeah.
So the question is, why am Itaking it personally?
And I don't have to, cause wehave a choice as to how we feel
about things.

(08:13):
So it doesn't, we can't stopthings from happening in our
lives.
Well, we can choose how werespond or react.
Oh, I love that.
We talked about this.
So just.
It's the difference betweenresponding and being responsive
and being reactive.
Big difference.
You, did you say the R?
I heard you, you, yeah, and Ijust, like, why the heck did I
just skip over that?
So the, the R is release to, tovent your emotion because
usually we think through ouremotions and they don't always

(08:36):
guide us to our highest andbest.
So release your emotion andtrust it.
It's just energy.
Just let it go.
You know, most people, I didn'ttrust my emotion either,
especially when I, Started toreally feel, had a lot of loss
in my life, started to feel alot of grief.
Yeah.
And I was afraid of theintensity of the emotion.
Right.
So I wouldn't want to go there,but it doesn't mean you're not
feeling, it just means youtucked it somewhere.
Right.

(08:56):
And it's going to find you.
Always.
Sooner or later, it's going tocreep back up at the most
inopportune, well grief isalways there.
At an inopportune moment.
It's never a good time.
But it happens.
But at least when it comes up,if you can vent it in a place
with a trusted person, or learnto do it by yourself, and a
friend taught me how to do thatfor myself, and then you can

(09:17):
clear your, all the stuff that'sboiling up inside you, and then
you can think.
And then you can go, With youcan hear your intuition, you can
get quiet, you can hear whateveris talking to you, your highest
self, your intuition, whateverit is.
And then you can have greatguidance as to how to move
forward with something.

(09:38):
But if you don't release thatemotion, it stays in And it, it
can turn into other things.
A lot of read, a lot ofscientific studies have been
done now, that if you don'trelease emotion, it can turn
into disease, it can turn intosome other kind of problem.
We start self medicating in waysthat aren't healthy, whether

(09:58):
it's porn, sex, alcohol, socialmedia, whatever it is, we do
something other than feel whatwe're feeling.
So release is important so thatwe can get clear.
And then I started reading abouthow the peace studies of the 70s
and 80s and people who weremeditating were able to lower

(10:20):
the amount of crime and Aconflict in war torn countries
when they meditated on a certainarea of the world that, that
they did in Washington DC andthey meditated on an area in the
Middle East.
And those nice and crime and theconflict went down as they were
meditating.

(10:40):
And I thought, well, the problemwas when they stopped
meditating, right?
They went back up, the numberswent back up.
Sure.
Let, let, so I thought if wecould all be more peaceful 24 7.
Maybe that would stem the tideand all the masters in the
world, the Dalai Lama, DesmondTutu gosh, I'm going, can't

(11:01):
think of the other names rightnow.
Thich Nhat Hanh occurs to me.
Yes, thank you.
That's the name I was thinkingof.
All said that we will not haveworld peace until we have
peaceful individuals in thisworld.
It makes sense.
How could you?
How could you?
And that is very much againstthe current Climate change.
Pop culture, whatever.
Which for ages now it seems likethe message has been that you

(11:24):
should be angry.
That's right.
If you're not angry, not justannoyed, but like enraged about
something, then there'ssomething wrong with you.
Absolutely.
and so to have a way to sidestepthat to, to get through that and

(11:45):
go in a different direction.
It is an excellent thing.
We know, you know, if you, ifyou bring the piece, I mean, if
you bring the piece, you canactually bring it into the, into
the space just by you.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I've had people get angry withme because I was not angry with
them.
And we're in, we're talking,people are talking about

(12:06):
something and I'm most often nowwill sit and just, I'm just
listening to people because Idon't, I don't have a dog in the
fight.
Right.
And there's no fight.
You know, I'm, yeah, I'm too oldfor that now.
Too peaceful.
I don't want to fight and Idon't want a dog.
So so I, I've had people say,what's wrong with you that
you're not upset.
Well, I'm aware of the issuesand I know what I feel and I

(12:27):
know what I think, but there'sno reason to be upset.
This doesn't change anything.
Right.
It doesn't, it changes nothing.
And so, yeah, yeah, I'm fine.
Well, thank you for asking.
In such a peaceful way.
But I'm able, I'm able to sit inthe midst of chaos and be
peaceful and just watch people.
Just watch them do their thingand decide I don't want to do it

(12:47):
with them.
Doesn't mean I don't care.
No.
It just means.
I don't care to get amped upabout this.
Correct.
I think people do, you know,watch and see, well, she seems
calm and I'm all riled up.
How did this happen?
You know, just kind of lookingat you and looking, just, I
mean, people look for examplesof things.
We don't necessarily know howsomething works.
We certainly know it's workingwhen we see it.

(13:10):
And so, just for you to bringthat presence, it's beautiful.
And I've had a lot of people,that's when I started to pay
attention to how I'm living.
Mm hmm.
And is this meaningful for otherpeople?
Because people kept saying youwere always the calmest person
in the room.
You just, you just carry that.
And I, and I think, oh, okay.
And then I thought, well, why isthat?

(13:31):
What did happen?
What changed?
Because that was not the Kimthat we knew 40 years ago.
Which is encouraging.
That means it can be learned.
You can make a decision for it.
Yeah, it's a decision.
It's a way of life.
So you have a number that youuse when you talk about your
peace initiative.
Tell me what the numbers about8, 945.
So in the peace studies, theyactually came up with a a

(13:54):
formula for deciding how manypeople you need to affect a
certain number of people in thepopulation.
So it's actually the square rootof 1 percent of whatever
population you want to affect.
So there are 8 billion people onthe planet about right now.
And square root of 1 percent of8 billion is 8, 945.

(14:14):
Less than 9, 000 people who arepeaceful to their core are
needed to bring peace to thisplanet.
Amazing.
That is nothing.
9, 000 people to affect 8billion.
Yeah.
Eight billion.
Yeah, eight billion.
And so when I heard that, I likesomething turned on in me and I

(14:37):
thought, surely I can find 9000people out of eight billion.
Yeah, I mean, here in the DallasFort Worth area.
I don't know how many people gothere, but we got a whole lot
more than 9000.
Yes, we probably have 9000people moving here a day.
So you don't have to goanywhere, you can do it from
where you are.
I can do it from where I am.
And it doesn't mean you don'thave to go out and protest, you

(14:59):
don't have to go out, you don'thave to sign petitions, you
don't have to do any of that.
You just need to make your lifepeaceful.
And then you get the benefit,and then a natural consequence
is that the Consciousness of theworld becomes more peaceful.
So there's no, it's not like youhad to, to spend an hour a day

(15:22):
focusing on peace in Gaza, forinstance, or no, I just, I just
go around being as peaceful as Ican in every moment.
Yeah.
And so I'm very aware of how myday is going, how I wake up.
What is my mood?
How am I responding, you know,to my husband?
Because, you know, our, oursignificant relationships are

(15:43):
great barometers of how peacefulwe are.
Yes.
And if you're going to lose it,you're going to lose it there.
Do you have something, right, onyour website where people can
join?
That you share with them, thatyou guys, you get talking about
how to do this individually.
Like how would someone know todo what you're doing?
So yeah, so my website is calledthe call to peace.
com there's, I actually have apeace lifestyle program that I

(16:06):
created where I explain thesefive keys, the U RISE, U R I S E
and how to live those and how Istarted to live them and how
they came up and some of the,the hurdles I had to jump to
learn how to be peaceful andcause it, it is, it's a thing.
And as soon as you.
I did have a peaceful life, butwhen I got conscious of living

(16:27):
peaceful.
All the ways I'm not peacefulstarted to crop up And it was in
my face because I thought I'msupposed to be the peace lady.
What the heck?
How's this working?
How's that working out for you?
Dr.
Phil would have been on me.
How's it working for you rightnow, Kim?
Well, not real well because mymy my husband just asked me how
I'm doing Stuff like that wascoming up, you know, I realize

(16:52):
that when I'm tired When I'mreally tired, I am I am hard to
live with and I am not nice andso I try not to get to the point
where I am tired and exhaustedbecause I do not relate to the
world right.
And so that's one of my things Ihave to work out because that
helps me clear my head.
It helps me relieve stress.

(17:13):
I'm so, I'm so much more of anangel and a peaceful being when
I have worked out in themorning.
It just fizzles out all of mytype A stuff that gets me going.
Right.
So now I know how to live and Iknow how to catch myself if I'm
not meditating.
That's, that's how I'm insolitude.
That's how I commune with my,with God, because that's my

(17:35):
underpinning is God is spirit.
And so if I'm not meditating ona regular basis and spending
that time with what grounds me,then I'm a crazy woman and I'm
not peaceful.
So I, you know, it's, it's, it'sa, A deep self commitment.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
And yet the payoff for me isimmeasurable And there's not a

(17:58):
price tag I can put on it rightjust not because life is just
wonderful.
Yeah, so in case people haven'tbeen taking notes And things
here and they want to rememberthis the the website is called
Thecalltopeace.
com.
Yes.
Is that correct?
It is.
Yes.
Yeah.
Spelled just like you wouldthink.

(18:19):
Thecalltopeace.
com.
Yeah.
And there's some resources onthere.
I have some videos on thereabout things like, you know, if
you get to chaos and all of asudden you're not sure what to
do, how to calm down, how tovent your anger in a healthy
way.
You know, things that I'velearned for myself.
There's affirmations on therebecause sometimes I have to talk
to myself out loud.
Yeah.
And say that.

(18:40):
That everything is good in thatthat God is in charge or
whatever works for me in themoment.
So there are resources there forpeople to do and I've, I'm
always making updates to it andstarting it starting in a couple
of weeks.
I'm going to have a a 15 minutepeace meditation on Sunday
mornings at 8 AM central.
And so I'll have information onmy website soon so that people

(19:00):
can start their week that wayand then get in the habit of
having this peaceful visionbecause if we can.
We can only, I believe, manifestin the world what we're willing
to envision.
And you have to envision it nomatter how crazy the world
seems.
Exactly, exactly.
Because it's really, you know,so everything else, whatever,
you just talked about it too,Jim Just about how this, there's

(19:23):
just a lot of talking going on.
There's a lot of talking goingon, a lot of information with
no, no real substance in termsof what does, what does it mean
to you?
And so your whole point aboutknowing thyself.
And so I get to ask myself andyou get to ask all of us, what's
this to me?
With all this stuff that's goingon, what's my role in this?
What is this to me?

(19:44):
And you know, and so it justsounds like it's a commitment to
decide.
That this is what you want.
You want to be more peaceful inyour life.
And the benefits of that are,you know, beyond physical and
the health benefits and all ofthat.
Just to be able to be a calmenough person that you get to
live the life you want to live.
You're not being, you're notreactive.
You're, you're, you know, you'reresponsive and saying what you

(20:04):
want and who you want to be.
For me, that is, that's livingthe best life that you're
choosing.
You're choosing the life you'reliving.
And I love your, you know, theyou know, the name of your
podcast, because for me, Ididn't have joy in my life till
I got peaceful.
I just did not.
Yeah.
I did not.
And, I mean, I had moments ofhappiness and things were well
and I'm having a good time, butto have an undercurrent of joy

(20:27):
all the time?
Yes.
Didn't happen until I gotpeaceful.
And I, I know now, even if Ican't get to happy, or if I'm
not feeling particularly joyful,I'm at least at peace.
At least at peace.
At least at peace.
And there's a lot to be said forthat.
My God.
A lot to be said for that.
And, for me anyway, the ideathat you can actually Affect the

(20:48):
course of world event gives youa reason beyond just so I will
feel better.
It's a bigger thing.
It's a bigger thing.
Yeah.
Yes.
And, and you can just Googleseventies, eighties peace
studies and the information willcome up and it's quite a
fascinating thing that we, thatour consciousness matters.

(21:12):
It does.
It does.
And that there's a globalconsciousness that we all
contribute to and right now Ithink that it's a fear.
It's pretty up in the air.
It really is.
And anger, like you were saying.
And and of distrust.
Yes.
Oh yeah.
Yes.
A lot of distrust in the world.
And that is so far from peace.
But look what's happeningglobally now.

(21:34):
You know, we're, yeah, you know,they're talking about, you know,
with North Korea and Russia andUkraine and, you know.
I mean, things have beenhappening for centuries in other
countries, and we haven't gottento peace yet.
And what, it's not because it'snot possible, it's not because,
you know, we keep thinkingthere's a dog in a fight.
Right.
When really all it's about is usliving together as peacefully as

(22:00):
possible, and to be able to havelives filled with joy, and to be
able to come here to do what I,I believe we're all here to do
something.
Yeah.
Special in the world.
I do.
I do too.
I really do.
I, we all have a purpose and areason and you're just, you're
not going to get there if you'reall caught up in what somebody
else is doing.
That's right.
It doesn't matter what somebodyelse is doing.
What are you doing?
Do you?
Yeah.
Boo boo.
Boo.

(22:20):
Do you?
Please.
Yeah.
Okay.
We can stop there for thisepisode and thank you for
joining us, Kim.
Thank you, Kim.
Beautiful.
Thank you for asking me.
Yeah.
Thank you all for listening andwe will see you the next time.