Ono: Affirm unity on Global Oneness Day

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. activist artist-musician Yoko Ono appealed to the world Thursday to "recognize that we are one" and show this recognition on the first Global Oneness Day.

"They say if all the people in China were to jump up and down at the same time, the axis of the globe would shift," Ono said.

Similarly, "billions of us" are "determined to shift the axis of the world to health, peace and joy by loving and caring for all lives on Earth," she said in a video supporting Global Oneness Day, to be celebrated in more than 25 countries Sunday, organizers said.

"It's time for action," Ono said. "On Global Oneness Day, let's recognize that we are one."

The day, which seeks United Nations recognition, is to be commemorated with practical acts demonstrating unity, diversity, harmony and compassion, comparable to what happens on Earth Day, organizers said.

Scores of churches will also hold oneness-themed services that day, said the Association for Global New Thought, one of the day's nearly 50 supporting organizations.

"Lasting peace requires that we awaken humanity to our underlying oneness, educate people to the beauty of our diversity and alert the world to the imperative that we must embody these values so that life as we know it may not only be preserved, but renewed and transformed," said AGNT President the Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, spiritual director of Agape International Spiritual Center, a 9,000-member church in Culver City, Calif.

Added South African Nobel Peace laureate retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of more than a dozen spiritual, scientific, academic and political leaders supporting the day: "I dream of a new world and a new humanity" that expresses "the ancient spirituality of humanity's oneness with our creator, the other and nature."

"We are all one," he said.