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Hear ”A Peaceful Solution” by Sharon Abreu

Sharon Abreu is the first musician to submit an a cappella studio version of “A Peaceful Solution”. For Sharon to rely solely on her vocals to carry the whole song is a courageous act. Her technique proves to be highly successful.

Give yourself a treat and listen now.

We never miss the musical instruments because she builds soaring harmonizes by fully utilizing the incredible range of her voice. Sharon’s a cappella rendition is rich in harmonies that simulate an entire choir ushering in a new era of peace and goodwill.

Sharon’s song creates a dream world, a fantasyland of delight and joy where angels welcome you into the temple of light and love offering you a chance to create peace. Go ahead and enter the dreamscape.

Please listen to Sharon’s a cappella version of “A Peaceful Solution”.

Sharon is the second woman to create her own beautifully unique version of Willie Nelson’s and Amy Nelson’s “A Peaceful Solution”. We hope this will encourage more women to explore their creativity and send us their personal version.

Of course we’d love to feature as many variations as there are musicians willing to participate in Willie Nelson’s peace project.

Sharon Abreu has a long career in the arts both in music and theatre. We have previously featured Sharon’s music video in a post here on the Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute web site.

Sharon and her partner Mike are keeping busy with their Irthlingz arts-based environmental education organization and their Penguins on Thin Ice project.

Thank you Sharon for sharing your heart and soul with all of us. We are so lucky you have the courage, generosity and vision to communicate deep understandings and directions we can take in our lives to live and share peace.

To know more about this talented devoted artist for peace we invite you to read her own words.

* * * * * Artist’s Statement * * * * *

I’m doing spiritual work every day, taking time to try to see everyone as part of myself, as innocent on a deep spiritual level, and connected with something much greater than myself. As I practice that, I am still grappling with this ‘reality’ and I still feel I need to do something in the name of love and of peace and healing. I feel that we need to get ourselves to a place, peacefully, where we can start to heal and look at the behaviors that keep us attacking each other and opening new and old wounds. Many thanks for considering what I’ve said.

I so appreciate the value of keeping our energy at a high vibrational level and envisioning the world we want to see. This was a very important discussion we had at the Network of Spiritual Progressives leadership training last October. If we demonize others, we’re simply creating more of what we don’t want.

I do believe that what we see starts in our own minds and maybe that’s simply where it exists. It’s easy to get bogged down in the Bill Moyers-type stuff and although I so appreciate his tenacity and courage, and that we need to address and deal with these challenges, we also need to feed our spirits, keep our minds and hearts open, and our positive energy flowing.

I’m so tired of the “us and them”. I see a need for real spiritual evolution, and I believe that starts here in my own mind. I know how I want to be treated, and so I need to make sure that I don’t treat other people any other way because I’ve gotten caught up in my own pain.

I’ve been studying “A Course in Miracles” since 2000. The woman who scribed the book, Helen Schucman, was a cousin of mine by marriage. I knew her when I was a child and a young teen but I didn’t know her well. I had a vague awareness that she had written this spiritual book and I knew the title.

I got curious about it many years after she passed away, while having dinner with two couples that had studied the Course. My partner Mike and I became our own study group - we read the text together and did the lessons over about 5 years. I’m doing the lessons again now.

I find the Course very helpful for several reasons, mainly because it challenges what I assume is reality. Growing up in a conservative Jewish household, as a kid, I had this sort-of believe in God, without really knowing what God was supposed to be like.

I would get angry with a God I wasn’t sure I believed in for all the injustices I saw in the world and in my own life. I was confused by the cruelty and inconsistency in human behavior.

So when I read the Course, it was very refreshing and comforting to read that (a) the world is insane and (b) God didn’t create the world - we did, with our collective consciousness.

The Course challenges Christianity, attempting to correct ideas that have been horribly misinterpreted, and it talks a lot about peace and what needs to be done to achieve it. It helps me keep going and challenge my own thoughts.

I have some stories about how I became an activist, but in thinking back on it today, I never identified exactly when and why I became a peace activist. I’m not sure. I was a shy kid. I identified with those who were meek or underrepresented because I felt that way in my life. I was afraid of confrontation and just wanted to be left in peace but wasn’t afforded that luxury very often.

I remember when I was a young kid in the early 70s seeing some kids in school wearing POW bracelets and even though I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, and was sheltered from all the news about the Vietnam war, I understood that these bracelets had people’s names on them who were missing and might be dead.

I resonated with the folk and pop music of the 60s, so much of which was about peace and love. I wrote a peace song called “The Voice” when I was 16. I don’t remember what inspired that song. I’m not even sure I understood what “the voice” was.

It’s interesting that many years later, reading “A Course in Miracles” it is clear to me what “the Voice” is in that context. I always wanted people to get along. I would befriend the new kid in school. I wasn’t a perfect child by any means - I had a temper and still do - but I am sensitive to other people’s situations and often can put myself in their places.

When I was in college at NYU, I went to a huge anti-nuclear rally in Central Park and that had an impact on me. I bought a fabulous poster with a painting of gorgeous apple tree, and it said something like “What is the sound of ten thousand nuclear bombs not exploding?” I had it up in my dorm room in college and I still have it around here somewhere.

I’m Jewish and I have family in Israel, and I don’t see the sense in all the violence there. I see war and violence as a vicious cycle, and at some point we have to stop and forgive - in a deep spiritual sense - and go forward because otherwise we will keep ourselves in a hell of our own making.

I also believe we create our own reality and are the makers of meaning. That’s what the Course is trying to get people to understand. I’m getting that more and more. Perspective plays a huge role in this ‘reality’ and art reflects that but it can also push us to see ‘reality’ differently, and surprise us as feelings bubble up through our mental shields.

I’ve gotten frustrated with people voting their fears instead of what they really want, because they don’t believe they can have what they really want. But while I’m busy trying to convince them they *can* have what they really want, I need to be reminding myself of that as well.

Hear ”A Peaceful Solution” by Sharon Abreu

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Tags: Arts, Peace

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