CEC Journal Issue 10 (2023)

Overview

The Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict (CEC) at the United World College-USA trains young scholars to be peacebuilders by developing personal character, academic knowledge, ethical leadership, and constructive approaches to conflict. A recent Bartos program explored new dimensions of peacebuilding bringing together the external world of bringing peace to the world with the internal work of being peace in the world. Seeking Peace Within and Without explores combining strategies for engaging conflict and building peace with practices of cultivating self awareness and a peaceful inner life. In this way, students are exploring becoming conscious peacebuilders who enable the creation of sustainable movements for peace and justice in the world.

During the fall semester of 2021-2022, UWC-USA students explored the connection between inner peace and outer peace through a program which we taught as Bartos Fellows called “Seeking Peace Within and Without: The Practice of Becoming a Conscious Peacebuilder.” In this class students learned practices including self-reflection, journaling, poetry, yoga, breathwork, meditation and movement as the foundational practices of becoming peacebuilders and building sustainable movements, as they also explored conflict analysis and conflict transformation strategies for engaging conflict among people of diverse cultures and beliefs through the practices of appreciative inquiry, active listening, difficult dialogue and conflict analysis. The course included the following themes:

• Become Aware… to worlds within and without and of inner and outer tensions and conflict

• Examine Assumptions… that you have developed and impact the way you perceive the world and yourself

• Gain Perspective… by identifying the lenses you wear and developing new lenses

• Enhance Communication… among diverse peoples by overcoming separateness, dispelling stereotypes and deepening connections

• Experience Connection… among all people and communities, to all living things and to the web of life

• Develop Consciousness… by integrating the flow of intuitive knowing within you with a critical analysis with the world around you

• Seek Wholeness… by bringing your mind, body and spirit into alignment as you engage the worlds within and without

The Rev. Victor Kazanjian and Michelle Lepore, Co-Editors

This issue of the Bartos Journal is dedicated to the themes of this class, Seeking Peace Within and Without: Becoming Conscious Peacebuilders and Building Sustainable Movements. It gathers reflections from conscious peacebuilders around the world who have discovered the power and possibility of nurturing their inner lives as they engage the world around them.

Too often peacebuilders and peace and justice movements focus solely on external factors using the instrumental tools of critical analysis to attempt to attempt to solve the conflicts before them. Not only does this ignore access to inner ways of experiencing, knowing and feeling which are critical tools in understanding conflict and possible solutions, but a focus only on the external, instrumental aspects of conflict leads to fragility and unsustainability of both peacemaker and peace movement. As the science of knowing and research on multiple ways of knowing (epistemologies) has developed in the past three decades, our understanding of the mind has broadened to include a range of processes including feeling, intuition, experience and awareness in addition to critical thinking. This has challenged traditional forms of education to move beyond limited notions of education as the amassing and organizing of information to a more holistic, integrative educational experience in preparing students to engage the world, and themselves, using all the tools at their disposal.

We have been so fortunate to be involved in education at a time when this change has been taking place. Theories and practices of mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn), socio-emotional intelligence (Howard Gardiner), multiple epistemologies (Robert Kegan), education as the practice of freedom (bell hooks), developing awareness (Dan Seigel), diversity as the essential context of learning (Beverly Daniel Tatum), and holistic learning (Parker Palmer ), all have contributed to challenging the narrow understanding of education as received knowing and opened the door to an educational pedagogy where ( to quote Yeats) “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

During our time as administrators and teachers in higher education and as peacebuilders through international organizations, we have seen the deforming impact of processes limited to narrow intellectual analysis and instrumental practices on individuals, institutions and movements seeking to address the world’s problems. To realize the goals of peace and justice in our selves, our communities and in our world, we believe that it is essential to approach this work holistically, balancing and connecting both inner and outer processes.

The Bartos Program at UWC-USA gave us the opportunity to develop a curriculum that weaves together the world within with the world without, to create a more holistic approach to becoming conscious peacebuilders and creating sustainable movements. We are deeply grateful to the UWC-USA community and in particular the leadership of the Bartos Program, Naomi Swinton and Max Murphy, and to the students who participated in our classes for supporting this work and co-creating this new approach to peacebuilding in the world.

In peace…. Victor Kazanjian and Michelle Lepore ²

Victor Kazanjian is a coach and consultant helping individuals and organizations actualize their aspirations through a holistic approach to leadership, life and learning. Victor teaches that integrated and effective leaders serve as midwives, enabling others to birth their creative potential. Victor is also currently serving together with his wife Michelle Lepore as a Fellow in the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict at the United World College. Victor recently retired as the Executive Director of URI (the United Religions Initiative), a global grassroots intercultural and interfaith peacebuilding network of more than 1,000 groups working in over 100 countries to build bridges of cooperation between people of all beliefs and cultures. Prior to joining URI, Victor served as Dean of Intercultural Education, Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life and Co-Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Wellesley College. He is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church and holds degrees from the Episcopal Divinity School and Harvard University.

Knowing there was more to be expressed in the flow of her life, Michelle Lepore took a leap of faith leaving a wonderful 34 year career in higher education to explore training programs in energy healing, yoga, meditation, kirtan and shamanism. She has studied Reiki, Healing Touch, and has an End of Life Doula certificate, in addition to a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. She is a certified yoga instructor, coach, healer and ceremonialist. The theme that connects Michelle’s interests is helping women tap into their well of wisdom to engage life meaningfully. She has traveled extensively to the inner and outer worlds (50 countries). One of her favorite practices is pranayama (breath exercises) – which calms the mind, clears energy, and connects us to our hearts and the realms of consciousness.

Reflections

Dwan Light Sanctuary: “Prism / Solar Spectrum Artwork” by Charles Ross © 2022 Charles Ross / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“There is a sense of wholeness at the core of humanity that must abound in all we do; that marks with reverence our every step, that has its sway when all else fails; that wearies out all evil things; that warms the depths of frozen fears making friend of foe; and lasts beyond the living and the dead, beyond the goals of peace, the ends of war! This we seek through all our years; to be complete and of one piece, within and without.”1

— Howard Thurman

Seeking Peace: Within and Without

The Rev. Victor Kazanjian

Go beyond the goals of peace. Go beyond the ends of war. Be complete and of one piece - within and without. That is what I believe the world needs: to go beyond our familiar conversations about ending violence and war and establishing peace and justice through merely instrumental means, and envision a new paradigm, an approach to peace and justice that is about completeness, about wholeness within and without. In this way peace and justice is realized through strategies based on the values of love, compassion and empathy as much as critical analysis, and are rooted in an appreciation of the inner world as much as the outer world.

What has struck me as particularly important about the work of peacebuilding is that the power behind peacebuilding is less about politics and strategy than it is about relationships and human connection both without, with other people and other living beings and the earth herself, and connection with the life within oneself.

After three decades of work as a community organizer, a priest, a teacher of peace studies and a grassroots activist, I have become convinced that without the power provided by love, compassion and empathy connecting the world within with the world without the

most sophisticated strategies are but hollow branches bracing against the winds of injustice and violence.

Violence and injustice require the dehumanizing of the other and oneself. We know this – in both interpersonal and geopolitical contexts. I would submit then that an essential component of all peacebuilding and justiceseeking is the “re-humanizing” power of love, compassion and empathy for self and other.

There is a picture on the wall of my office that was given to me by a friend who is an astronaut. It is a picture that she took from the space shuttle, which she was piloting, a picture of the earth from deep in space. Perhaps you have seen something similar. The blue, green earth, a perfectly round ball floating in a sea of black…earth and ocean the only visible distinguishing features. It is a magnificent image: so beautiful, so peaceful, so serene.

Gazing upon that image, it seems unfathomable that upon that beautiful sphere moving through the universe, its inhabitants are locked in life and death struggles with each other. From thousands of miles up in space one is free from the sounds and stench of war and violence, of poverty and oppression, of misogyny and prejudice that plague the peoples of this planet. Reading the daily papers or watching the news rife with stories of this violence, one perhaps yearns for such distance from the suffering below.

But if this was our only view of humanity, as an observer from so far away out in space, we would be unaware that on this same planet, amidst the violence, miracles are occurring every second. At this very moment, new life is being born in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, in Iraq, Iran and the United States, in Uganda and Nigeria, Argentina and Chile, in the Philippines and Malaysia and to Palestinian and Israeli families. And in each of these places and so many more, people are engaging in acts of compassion and kindness. In each of these places, people are falling in love and forming friendships. And in many of these places, people of different religious and cultural traditions are gathering in circles in their communities to forge bonds of friendship and create cultures of peace.

When we look at the earth from the distance of thousands of miles up in space or the closeness of sitting in a circle of friends and colleagues, we need to see not just the potential for peace, but the reality of peace. We know that peace is not just that which we seek, but that which we know in the embrace of a loved one, through the warmth of friendship, in extending oneself in compassion and empathy towards a stranger, in standing together against violence, injustice and oppression, and, so often overlooked, through cultivating a loving relationship with oneself.

Creating cultures of peace requires participating in the practice of peace, within and without. We who do this work usually focus on the external part of that equation – peace without, believing that it is the systems and structures of society that are both the cause of violence and injustice and its remedy. And this is not wrong. For the earth is in fact a connected whole, a system, a “global commons,” a shared space in which limits on resources and the environment are planetary, economies as well as human systems are inextricably interconnected, and human diversity is ever more apparent among the occupants of this planetary home.

Gazing upon that blue-green ball, we can see how, like the commons of a village which was shared by its inhabitants for water, wood and grazing, the commons which is our planet includes the air we breathe, the water we drink, the seas, forests, and mountains, the diversity of life itself and also that which humankind has created – language; scientific, cultural, and technical knowledge; and health, education, political, justice and economic systems. The “commons” is synonymous with that which we must engage together to sustain life and also implies a shared commitment to community, cooperation, the respect for the rights of others and

the corresponding responsibilities that we each share for life on this planet.

There is no question that “to be of one piece without,” as Thurman says, requires our attention to all of those systems which shape our lives as human beings. This is the work that so many of us have been engaged in for so long. It is crucial work. And in the face of so many urgent external threats in areas of health, the environment, economies, human rights, political instability, and regional and global aggression, it is understandable that our focus would be drawn to the world without, and that our work would involve conceiving instruments of peacebuilding that engage these issues and create the conditions for peace and human security.

But when we focus only on the external instrumental mechanisms of peacebuilding, we fail to harness what may be the greatest power at our disposal to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings. This power, as Dr. Thurman teaches us, emanates from the world within. It is a power flowing from the wholeness that is at the heart of humanity and indeed at the heart of life itself. It is the power of the human spirit. The power of life. It is the feeling that we know when we hold a child in our arms, or are held by a beloved, or walk among the magnificence of nature and feel at home in the universe. It is love…and love’s expressions: compassion, empathy, kindness, and generosity. It is life emanating from the natural world around us. It is the unbreakable bonds of human connection forged through the building a healthy loving relationship with one’s self and then loving and sustainable relationships with others.

I have seen this in the bonds of friendship between Muslim, Christian and Hindu women in Gujarat, India; each of whom lost loved ones to the insanity of violence, and who now work daily side by side for peace in their communities. I have seen it in Israeli and Palestinian youth who defy their peers and politicians and reach across emotional and physical boundaries to declare together, “we refuse to be enemies” - no matter what the future brings. The examples are endless. Each of us has seen the power of love, compassion and empathy in action. But these are not the stories that we tell about conflict and peace. The world is addicted to the gruesome tales of death and destruction, violence and injustice, and when we allow the power of love and relationship to be sentimentalized and marginalized, our peacebuilding efforts are stripped of heart and soul, creating a vacuum into which those who teach fear and hatred happily take control. The rise of extremist movements around the world can be attributed to many factors, but one needs to be understood as a failure to love, self and other.

The failure to embody the full potential of love and life is evidenced by religious and ideological communities who claim exclusive ownership of the truth and diminish the beliefs of others. It is evidenced by cultural and ethnic communities who claim superiority over others, and fuel intergroup violence around the world. The rise of violence against women and children needs to be understood in part as the absence of basic human values of love, compassion and empathy. A human society deprived of love and its related social needs, is a society moving towards

social insanity, the affects of which no amount of instrumental peacebuilding can reverse. And it is belief systems that separate human beings from the natural world and claim superiority and dominion over nature, resulting in the eco-destruction that is killing our planet.

In such a situation, we end up at worst in genocidal struggles pitting one group against another, and at best our best efforts often lead to people merely tolerating each other. Without love, tolerance may be the best we can hope for. But such tolerance is merely conflict arrested. It is neither peace nor justice. It is a great harness applied to the destructive forces of ignorance, fear and prejudice. It provides a wall between warring parties.

At best tolerance is a glass wall where protected people can see one another going about parallel lives. But nonetheless it is still a wall dividing us from each other. As such, tolerance is not a basis for healthy loving human relationship nor will it ever lead to peace, for tolerance does not allow for learning, or growth, or transformation, or human connection, but rather ultimately keeps people in a state of suspended ignorance and conflict.

True peace and justice that transforms conflict and creates sustainable community requires the embracing of interdependence and the interconnectedness of all living beings… Nothing less. And how does this happen? How do we move beyond fear and violence, and even beyond tolerance? How do we create cultures of peace and justice rooted in love, compassion and empathy?

I believe that it starts by cultivating meaningful and connected human relationships in which people of different backgrounds, whether this be cultural, religious, political, gender or any identity, forge strong bonds of connection and become living witnesses of the power of love to create cultures and communities of peace and justice. It is also about dispelling the illusion of seperateness between humanity and nature and reclaiming the kinship of all living beings and the Earth herself.

Albert Einstein spoke of such a process.

“A human being,” he said, “is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. That person experiences them self, their thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of their consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our own desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free (one another and ourselves) from this prison (of isolation) by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 2

Such a task, like any worthy effort, involves practicedaily practice – cultivating a spirit of love, compassion and empathy within ourselves, with our circle of familiars,

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and with others whose backgrounds and beliefs are different from our own. If we weave together such a practice with the plethora of extraordinary peacebuilding strategies available to us, if we combine our efforts working together as partners in one movement sharing connection to common values – then this movement of which we are a part will be fully energized to transform a struggling world into a truer reflection of the wholeness that lies at its core.

In our class, Seeking Peace Within and Without: Becoming Conscious Peacebuilders taught as part of the Bartos Institute at the United World College - USA, students participated in a program which wove together contemporary analysis of conflict and peacebuilding strategies with inner peace development through breathwork, meditation and self-reflection. This class emerged out of our experience in educational and community settings in which we witnessed the deforming and unsustainable educational and peacebuilding practices that focused solely on external analysis, while ignoring the internal realms of understanding and the impact of the emotional and intuitive realms.

As educational theory and practice has evolved to broaden our understanding of epistemology and learning and teaching pedagogy (see mindfulness and education, Jon Cabot Zinn; Howard Gardiner’s work on socio-emotional intelligence; Robert Kegan’s book In Over Our Heads which explores multiple epistemologies/ways of knowing; bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress which urges decolonization of the mind; Dan Seigel’s work on the mind, Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria which opened the conversation about racial identity, communication and education; and Parker Palmer’s exploration of teaching from within in The Courage to Teach, to name but a few), so too must the field of peace studies and peacebuilding evolve to broaden its understanding of conflict, peace and justice and the tools available.

A holistic approach to peacebuilding that integrates the worlds within and without will nurture conscious peacebuilders who draw on all aspects of their ways of thinking and feeling to inform their knowing and create sustainable movements better aligned with the renewing life energy that flows within us, between us and throughout our world.

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Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey: The Writings of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984) p11

Albert Einstein, from a letter of consolation to a grieving father named Robert S. Marcus, political director of the World Jewish Congress, whose young son had just died of polio

The Personal Is Political, but the Personal Is Also Personal

Max Murphy

Editor’s note: One of the great joys for Michelle and me during our time at the United World College-USA has been to get to know Max. Max combines an extraordinary philosopher’s mind with enormous big hearted compassion as he guides students along the path of their learning journey.

I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a mountain town and liberal bastion. Like other, similar places in the American West, Subarus (or ancient trucks) plastered in bumper stickers are a staple of any drive. There are some local specialties: “La Llarona is my homegirl” is my personal favorite. “My other car is in the arroyo ‘’ is a classic. These are New Mexico specific but many are not. “CoExIsT”, and “Endless this war” are easy to find. More wordy, but still all over the place, are stickers proclaiming that “well-behaved women seldom make history.” This term was coined by historian Laurel Ulrich in a 1976 article in American Quarterly. The phrase gained traction, and she followed it up with a book of the same title in 2008. I do not have a strong opinion about Ulrich’s argument or article, or even about the bumper stickers it spawned. What is fascinating to me is that a phrase, initially written decades ago for a specific academic project, can capture hearts and minds enough to leave the realm of academia and enter the realm of Subaru bumper stickers in my local Co-op parking lot. This article is not about well-behaved women, but rather about another idea that I believe has left its original context and entered the collective consciousness: the idea that the personal is political.

My ethnographic context, as such, is UWC-USA, a school with students who are from all over the world, yet who often have an overlapping background in terms of political bent and cultural exposure. Among this population, it is clear that the idea of the personal as political has disseminated out of the academy and entered, not quite the realm of bumper stickers, but at least the realm of idiom. However, after working with this population for several years, I have come to the conclusion that the personal as political is not always liberatory: unless paired with tools of self-reflection, understanding the personal as political can be disempowering and depressing. Due to this, I argue that part of the responsibility of educators who work with politically inclined youth is to give them the

tools and ethics they need to understand that their personal experience is just that, personal, and that political self-description is a starting point from which to detail out their own lives, not an end unto itself.

The phrase “the personal is political” was popularized by feminist Carol Hanisch in an essay published in 1970. I am not a feminist historian, but here is my blunt-axe interpretation: The history of women’s experience in the United States is fully intertwined with shifting cultural interpretations of the difference between the public and the private. Historically in the United States, the “public” is the realm of (white) men: ostensibly, of politics and business, and of labor that is financially understood and rewarded. The private, conversely, is the realm of women, and of “personal “ issues: child and elder care, contraception, unpaid household labor, domestic violence, and many others. This interpretation hamstrung policy solutions for issues that affect women via the depressingly simple strategy of removing the issues from political consideration entirely. You can’t win the fight if you’re not allowed into the ring in the first place – and if the fight you posit is determined by the authorities to be more about personal failings than structural blind spots, then blame is most easily assigned to those who name the challenges. The image comes to my mind of some portly politician with a top hat and a cigar telling a group of women advocates to “take it up with your husbands, not my problem, not the country’s problem.”

Given this context, arguing that the personal is political was quite brilliant. It picked away at a foundational logic of what today we might call a system of oppression, after identifying a very particular tool of that system. There was, seemingly, an ontological reason by which Hanisch’s needs (and, I assume, the needs of her coalition) could not be addressed via political means. In response, Hanisch went right for the ontology and pried it open to make room for political discussion of women’s issues.

Moving forward over fifty years to 2022, and my guess is that a political historian would say that we have taken

some steps forward and some back since Hanisch published her article. What is obvious to me though, is that in this time the idea that the personal is political has become ingrained in the minds of my students at UWCUSA. These students come from all over the world, from as many molds as you can imagine, and there are no complete consistencies across our student body. More often than not, however, they are interested in social issues, have grown up with the internet, and lean to the political left. From the time I have spent with them, it is clear that, though the idea that the personal is political has not yet made its way into the realm of stickers, it is cemented in their consciousness as a truism. I do not believe this is always a conscious connection: it is simply a logic of cause and effect that they view their lives by.

There are many, many examples of this. Our students are in a constant back and forth with our administration, requesting and demanding that our school do more for their mental health: mental health being an issue that falls squarely in the realm of the personal, and that decades ago was more or less off the table as a mainstream political issue. Every day, students in the cafeteria discuss the political rationales and ramifications of their diets (or their practices of consumption in general). For a militant vegan, damn right your diet is a political issue (that’s right, YOUR diet). More amusingly, one of my students (of Asian descent) had a phase of saying “stop Asian hate” whenever anything unpleasant happened to him, eliciting general laughs from the crowd. His delivery was excellent. During my first semester living on our campus, students who were frustrated at our security cameras posted a photo of a panopticon around campus. I bet some of them even understood Foucault’s metaphor. Our students interpret their entire lives through political narratives, and in some ways that is why they are here: they are both intelligent and politically inclined.

As an anthropologist by training, I am comfortable saying that they are not wrong. I am accustomed to drawing lines of meaning between human behavior and cultural phenomena; and yes the food they eat, the tests they take, and the way they feel all have political implications and causes. Of course they do. Maybe this is why Hanisch’s phrase still carries so much weight: it seems, to many, to be essentially accurate.

However, this realization does not imply direction. When our students lean too far into understanding the personal as political, no matter how true, they divest themselves of their ability to see their own way forward, and to craft personal answers and context-specific responses to their needs. There is a sort of classic trajectory for students at

UWC-USA that demonstrates this: the shift from an initial promise of a community based around social analysis, to the realization there is something missing. From there, I argue, the path forward for our students depends on if they, and if we as educators, have tools to individuate from political analysis and both locate and generate possibilities for our personal futures.

I watch brilliant young people show up at our school, and accurately assess the politics and power dynamics that influence their life. They have much of the language and knowledge they need to do this: they stand on the shoulders of giants that were brilliant in their assessment, and whose assessments have made their way in digestible form onto the internet (or onto bumper stickers). Even more importantly, they have found each other, and are living in a community where they can interact and bounce ideas off of people who have the same interests. I often hear students describe that UWC-USA has a bit of a golden glow before they arrive: they expect to get off their bus from the airport and be among a wealth of differing human experiences, but at the same time be among people with similar ethics and interests. The feeling is that they will Arrive (capital intended), and somehow be emancipated from their cultural context, and plumb the mysteries of their experience with their new friends.

However, once all this is said and done, and they have lived at our school for a period of time, there is a slight moment of shock at a particular realization: despite all the understanding they are able to demonstrate, they don’t actually feel any better. Rather than feeling emancipated by having understood how their personal lives are influenced by politics, they feel overwhelmed. This is a pretty reasonable reaction to seeing that the minutiae of your daily life are beholden to entities way beyond your scope. Students express this most often in the context of academic achievement. The surface expression is classic jaded adolescent talk. “I hate studying for this test. It’s the system man, what can you do? Whatever, it’s fine.” Underneath that however is a more intimate and painful experience of overwhelm.

How can you feel comfortable in your own skin when you are a student studying at 1 am, and you have the

itching feeling that an immense system of cultural values and capital cares about the grade you get on your econ test tomorrow? When our students understand intellectually the forces that influence their lives, but are not given direction on what to do next, or what tools can help them, they feel overwhelmed by the scope of the issues they perceive.

The issue of tools, or a lack thereof, is significant. I have stated that when our students put themselves through this sort of power analysis, their realizations do not provide direction. Accurate assessment tells you what is true, but not what to do about it, or where to look next in order to go a layer deeper with your understanding. bell hooks explains this very concisely when she argues that “the ability to see and describe one’s own reality is a significant step in the long process of self-recovery, but it is only a beginning.” Self-description is like seeing the landscape around you, and the possibilities of a path ahead. You are aware of your context, but haven’t gone anywhere with it yet. To use another metaphor, maybe you have seen the shadows on the wall but haven’t taken a step to leave the cave, or aren’t actually sure how to use your real legs.

The sense of overwhelm, and lack of clarity on where to go after they have seen and described their own reality, contribute to a vague (but often severe) malaise that can hang out around our students. They feel stuck, because they can feel something is wrong, and they know what it is, to some degree. However it feels too large for them to even begin to be able to do anything about it. This generates a sense of hopelessness, or at its worst, a narcissistic validation of their own experience without any sense of capacity to change. My most painful moments as an educator have been watching students implode into a space of desperate and enraged helplessness. I am not an expert in youth development, but I am very familiar with my students. From this position, I am always asking myself what I can do, what I can model, and what my students need in order to take care of themselves, without constant overwhelm or hopelessness.

The phrase “the personal is political” implies a causal direction: the personal is influenced by the political land-

scape in which it takes place. This is certainly true. However I have come to the conclusion that part of my job as an educator, and part of the job of anyone who considers themselves a peacemaker, is to understand that the personal is political, but the personal is also personal. Most crucially, I believe that we must do our best to offer students a complementary set of self-reflective tools that are able to detach temporarily from systemic analysis. Tools that help students say: “I can find agency in my own growth with whatever I’m facing.” This, as far as I can tell, is the next step after political self-description. The tools of power analysis are capable of doing what they were designed to do: there is just always further learning. The difference that we can do our best to outline and influence is between an unreflective projection of one’s personal experience, and an assessment that is self-examined and contextualized. Hilariously, I think my argument is somewhat in line with another classic Subaru bumper sticker: think globally, act locally. Although I would change it to; think globally, act intimately and personally. There is a more holistic approach to the personal than intellectual analysis. So, I would argue, if you are the student mentioned earlier, overwhelmed by the political significance of your upcoming econ test, your best move may be to take a walk, or journal, or talk to your friends, or take a nap, or find whatever your own personal tools are to balance your political analysis with personal agency.

Critically, I think going inward and developing personal tools of reflection does not mean isolation or narcissism. Our students can often feel that detaching from political awareness means self-absorption, and is contraindicated with doing powerful good in the world. There is too much suffering, no time to take a walk! Even if the only reason to promote tools of self-reflection was to counterbalance the overwhelm of political analysis, that would be enough. However, this balance is also in service of our precarious world. It is difficult to foster peace while overwhelmed by a feeling of disempowerment in your own life. For those of us that work with young people, we can do both them and the world a service by providing skills and spaces for students to stretch out of the constancy of political analysis, and to develop the muscles of their own agency.

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Max Murphy works for the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict at UWC-USA. His primary role is training students in the skills of communication, mediation, and restorative justice, and designing programs where they can put these skills to use both on and off campus. Max spent several years studying medical anthropology and has a particular interest in the way that the body expresses cultural and historical experiences, and can be used as a tool for decolonizing the mind. Before working in conflict resolution, Max worked as an outdoor educator, providing students with skills of leadership and problem solving in expeditionary settings. A lover of deserts and mountains, Max was born and still lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his partner Sam and his cat Oona.

The Growing Edges of Community: Crossing the Color Line

Ji Hyang Padma, Ph.D. and Gina Harris, M.A.T., M.B.A.

Editors note: In this reflection Ji Hyang draws on her three decades of experience as a Buddhist practitioner and educator partnering with Gina whose extensive work in areas of racial justice to reflect on the intersection of injustice and practices that cultivate peace within and without.

The Present Situation

At this time, when the social compact that unites our communities is fraying due to pervasive patterns of domination and oppression expressed through racism and multiple forms of “othering,” the need to shift from a competitive, hierarchical social system to regenerative social systems that mimic nature is more essential than ever. This paradigm shift through development of intercultural literacy and other socialemotional skills is more urgently needed than ever.

As I undertook this action research project over the summer, the news stories flooded in: stories of marginalization and disconnection perpetuated through racism, xenophobia and other forms of bias, as well as instances of micro-aggressions experienced within the course of the work. It is evident that the current socio-political system reflects white supremacy culture and is not sustainable. While, in the past, such incidents were often invisible, the ubiquity of social media has guaranteed that incidents of racism and of other bias will now be publicly displayed. We are collectively experiencing a critical wake-up call through our increasing knowledge of racial bias and racial harm. We need to change both the invisible ideologies and belief systems that underlie these patterns of domination and oppression, and the outward expression of these systems.

The vision

We envision a world of equity, in which hierarchical relationships are not the dominant force. Relationships are formed and operate with a flow of reciprocity. Out of this comes social sustainability, which forms the conditions for true peace. Shifting from an identification with the self as “I,” --an individual which is by definition isolated, anxious, alone and lonely, and oriented toward perception of threat-- to identification with the collective “We,” which is a source of continuous renewal, the social system takes on a regenerative ecosystem awareness. Through this work, we are investing in social capital-helping rebuild living systems by helping people connect to themselves and others in nourishing ways. (Walsh, 2009).

The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible involves community operating at levels of depth, understanding, connectivity and compassion not seen in recent times. This world brings people together without the rigidity of hierarchical mandates, and therefore allows for freedom of not only movement but shared resources. It is a world where each person shares their gifts, skills and talents and in doing so, supports the unfolding of others’ gifts and resources. These mutually enhancing relationships create sustainable commons: spaces where the collective benefits from shared cultural and natural resources, and individuals’ basic needs are met. Equity and inclusion are at the forefront of the goals and aims of the more beautiful world, including inclusion of the needs of our earth, its resources and all the people, plants and animals that inhabit it. It is a world which centers its value coordinates upon the greatest benefit for the whole.

In this way, we can see that our envisioned world is always-emergent, as its cultural-relational system is naturally responsive to the changing needs of its members (Jordan, 2002). Institutions and communities, like forests and all living systems create themselves. They do not exist in some abstract state of perfection. They are continually growing and changing. A part is a manifestation

of the whole rather than just a component of it—a fact known within many indigenous traditions. So—our institutions are a reflection of us, and they are reflected within us (Senge, 2008). We are all in this together, evolving together. The way that our institutions evolve is up to us. The work that each of us does on a personal level to shift the story of separation to a story of interbeing has global implications.

Just as the cells of the body support each other through their diversity, and the diversity of the forest makes the forest culture more resilient, in this same way, our human institutions need diversity in order to be resilient. Leading philosopher Vandana Shiva (2016) described the forest principle as a continuous influence upon societal evolution. Shiva noted that the “diversity, harmony and self-sustaining nature of the forest formed the organizational principles guiding Indian civilization” (Shiva, 2016 p.55-56).

In that same vein, Tagore (as cited in Shiva, 2016) writes

The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilization. (p.56).

In this vein, we have found here, in the lush, richly diverse forest ecosystems of the Northeast, ongoing inspiration for sociopolitical sustainability which arises out of personal commitments to an “ecology of mind.”

As with the discipline of ecology, through which it is now understood that you can’t really throw anything “away,” there is now a greater awareness within many communities of the need for “shadow work.” There is a need to cultivate radical self-acceptance, through which we include and accept those parts of ourselves that are undesirable, and difficult to be with. When we are not able to countenance this honest self-appraisal and encounter with the personal shadow, these parts that we cannot tolerate are projected onto others. On the other hand, when our inner life is accepted as a whole ecosystem, with everything that arises seen as workable, it becomes possible to see this wholeness in the faces of the people around us, in our communities and in this sacred Earth. We sense this as inner peace. This clear vision then brings us to the place of equity and honoring each other—relationships and systems in which individual differences are truly respected and loved—which we experience as justice, and a more peaceful world. Too

often we aim for mere tolerance: we need to move beyond tolerance.

As Victor Kazanjian, former Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative, notes,

Tolerance asks people to simply not cross lines of difference and avoid violating one another; it leaves people in a state of suspended ignorance where there is no commitment to get to know each other or explore that we live interdependent lives. This view of tolerance limits our understanding of diversity and negatively impacts higher education as well as our larger society. People who stop at tolerance, rather than embracing pluralism, cannot fully appreciate the value of diversity within the human community. (Kazanjian, 2007 p.1).

This personal shadow work gives us the capacity to move beyond tolerance into active engagement with cultural difference, and to work creatively with the conflicts and tensions that are a natural aspect of human interaction and community life. Within this project we have found circle dialogue process to be a particularly valuable method. Circle is an indigenous technology that mirrors the self-regenerating and synergistic living systems of nature. Circle process gives us a safe, equitable space to do this work in community thereby shifting the collective through continual growth and communication. Shadow becomes our collective friend in this space.

Entering the Work

As we enter this work it is with the understanding that everyone benefits from the eradication of patterns of privilege and domination. In addition to the immeasurable pain and suffering these patterns have caused people of color, there is the mark racism leaves upon the soul of the privileged. Bias and discrimination are pervasive miasmas within the collective field of “mainstream” society. Like smog, they prevent white people from seeing clearly, breathing deeply, and making healthy person-to-person connections.

The deeply embedded thought disorders of privilege and racism give rise to an impoverished view of humanity-- ours and others. As Eisenstein notes in his “More Beautiful World,” when we are cut off from community, alienated from our own bodies, and trapped within our tiny separate self, we can do no other than perpetuate patterns of alienation.

On the other hand, (as Ji Hyang notes) when, as white people, we work to recognize and free ourselves from these disordered thought forms, we depart the impoverished Story of Separation and enter into the Story of Interbeing. This, in turn (as Gina notes) creates space for People of Color to begin to break down ideas of separation being held within us of white supremacy culture.

We will now detail some of the practices that, in addition to personal work, are essential to the creation of sociopolitical sustainability. We rooted this action research within the model of restorative justice. A widely- adopted definition of restorative justice describes it as “a process whereby all the parties with a stake in a particular offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future.” (Braithwaite, 2002 p.11). Restorative justice commonly utilizes various practices such as circle and peer mediation. For our research, we chose to focus on circle as a means for developing community and restoring justice i.e. repairing harm, experienced by all members of the community where racial ideas of separation are in play.

Restorative justice practices emphasize the importance of participatory process, through which the community develops the remedy that will restore justice to the situation. Within our work, we witnessed the vulnerability required for a group to undertake a task as large as eradicating racism within themselves. Also evident was the sheer desire of each participant to “get it right” in creating a better world and owning his or her individual role in the process. Restorative communication facilitates this and bridges the often- difficult and ongoing process of community healing.

Dialogue structures offer safe containers for the negotiation of the inevitable conflicts and tensions that are mediated by restorative justice. Communication that is rooted in honesty and shared agreements is key. Indigenous technologies, such as circle process, create a crucible through which challenging conversations can create the foundations for true understanding. It has been particularly important to have open- ended conversations-- dialogue that is not intended to debate, but simply to deepen understanding. One of the circle agreements we include is to “accept and expect nonclosure”. Knowing that we will not solve all the world’s problems today, we are better able to have patience for the process, and to bring our full attention to the place where we stand today.

Walker (2004), in describing the causes of cultural- relational disconnection, cited the stratified culture which “constrains our capacity for authenticity and undermines our desire for connection” (p.98). The community built around this programming was, per participants’ reports, less stratified and more actively engaging of difference than many other institutional ecosystems they had experienced.

There needs to be a unity of the internal process and external goals: “Who we are and how we relate affect what we create...salvation must come from recovering a direct relationship to what’s alive in front of us” (Eisenstein, 2016 p. 44, 48). Within our circle, participants had the experience of making eye contact, sharing physical presence, listening and speaking from the heart with people who are culturally different. By carrying out Circle as an egalitarian, respectful, relational and embodied dialogue process, we created a touchstone experience for participants that reminded us all of the beloved community we were actively working to bring about.

As Eisenstein notes, “People gravitate towards a set of beliefs resonant with their life experiences. To change the foundation of the “situation” one must give people experience that doesn’t fit the existing story or that resonates with a new one” (226). As we listened to each other’s stories, we had the opportunity to release that single story we may have been holding onto about our life experience, or the person we see as “other”, and to incorporate these new stories into our meaning-making.

Ground rules supported the creation of a hospitable learning environment in which participants felt safe enough to share their stories, to ask genuine questions, and to take genuine risks. We created these ground rules together by consensus.

Our circle agreements included the following points:

(1) Maintain confidentiality. The personal stories that unfolded in Circle stayed in the room; the learning received from those stories could be shared freely in the community. Through this we were creating “safe space” within which participants could experience vulnerability, and “brave space” within which participants could take genuine risks.

(2) Stay engaged. Listen resiliently. In discussions of race and equity we frequently come up against our low tolerance for discomfort. The invitation is to lean into that discomfort, to stay engaged.

(3) Step up/ step back. For those who are extroverted, especially those who carry some level of privilege in the situation, and find they have a great deal to say, the invitation is to share the airtime, to step back so that everyone’s voice is heard. For those who are less privileged and/or introverted, the invitation is for these people to step up, so that their voice may be heard.

(4) Silence is okay. While the circle welcomes all voices, each participant was free to “pass” within a particular round of sharing, or to “pass for now.” At the end of that cycle, facilitators would again provide the opportunity for these participants to speak.

(5) Speak your personal truth. We agreed that each person would speak from their personal experience, rather than speaking for others. In addition, each person would speak from the heart, speaking with genuineness.

(6) Listen exquisitely from the heart. Listen with a fullness of attention, without an agenda, engaging all of the senses. Rather than listening to prepare our response to another person, we practice simply listening.

(7) Be ready to experience discomfort. We expect there to be moments of discomfort, recognize this is a natural part of the process, and trust our capacity to take care of ourselves Within the work of healing racism, there is actually a predictable range of emotions that surface. The common emotions experienced by people of color with race talk as chronicled by Derald Wing Sue (2015) include anger, resentment, pessimism, hopelessness, frustration and embarrassment.

The common emotions experienced by white people with race talk include defensiveness, fearfulness, anger, inadequacy, confusion, helplessness, guilt and blame (p.11-12). We discuss these with participants, to normalize that discomfort and bring these reactions to the surface, where they can be clearly perceived and then released.

(8) Breathe. When energy is running high, we are invited to pause, wherever we are in the conversation, and just breathe.

(9) Accept and expect non-closure. By acknowledging and accepting that we would not solve all the inequities in the world within the limited time of our gathering we created greater collective patience and tolerance for the imperfect, messy work of making the invisible patterns of bias and inequity visible.

The process and vision certainly did illuminate the old wounds and doubts that are so deeply embedded within our culture. As we educated ourselves about the wounds racism has embedded in our culture and psyches, there were moments when participants experi-

enced overwhelm. We recognized that it is not possible to be “in the work” continuously. There are cycles of engagement, within which we dove deep, followed by cycles of disengagement, in which we surfaced for rest and renewal. Within these cycles, our relational commitments helped keep us focused.

The use of ritual and ceremony created a deeper, more resilient foundation for our work together, in ways that included and transcended circle process. Medical anthropologist Cheryl Mattingly (2004) described six key characteristics of healing rituals:

• There is a heightened attention to the moment, an ‘existential immediacy’ which gives an authority and legitimacy to the activity.

• A multiplicity of sensory channels carry the meaning, sight, touch, sound, smell, creating a “fusion of experience.”

• Aesthetic, sensuous and extralinguistic qualities of the interaction are accentuated.

• The intensification of experience is socially shared, and it emerges through mutual bodily engagement with others.

• Healing actions are symbolically dense, creating images that refer both backward and forward in time—the patient is located symbolically in history.

• Efficacy is linked to potential transformations of the patient and sometimes a larger social community. (p. 76).

Within the Circle process, the first touchstone of its healing ritual is the physical circle of participants who, through their intention and attention, have created a sense of “existential immediacy” within the sacred space of the circle. The second is the talking piece, which is intentionally passed from person to person, traveling the full length of the circle whenever it was called for, warm hand to warm hand, conveying a sense of intimacy. This bodily engagement was key to the creation of the intimate and intensified space we shared with each other.

These ritual foundations were supplemented with an altar. We placed a round cloth in the center of the circle. Participants were invited to place personal objects that held meaning for them upon this altar, as a way of bringing themselves fully into the process. At the center of that altar, we placed a candle, representing the presence of the sacred. Surrounding this, we placed stones and twigs, representing the Ancestors. All of these objects deepened our aesthetic and sensory experience.

We were aware, from the beginning, that this work would require us, as facilitators, to deepen our inner resources. The foundations of bias and racism are largely unconscious, and can be traced over many generations. The resolution of a problem of this depth and magnitude is certainly beyond the capacity of any single person. Therefore, we called upon our collective ancestors (who are already present within the circle, through our DNA) for assistance. This action reinforces another point of connection among the participants: we all have ancestors. All of us, from the beginning of our life, have depended upon the kindness of others-- especially those generations who have gone before us, whose lives made our lives possible. At the same time, the root of these current conflicts lies in the past that is inhabited by these ancestors. Our connection with them may therefore illuminate both the problem and its potential resolution.

On one occasion, when we had reached a plateau in our process, we took an evening to do a fire ceremony for the ancestors. Around the fire, we gave offerings to the ancestors of this land, and to the ancestors of the Middle Passage, acknowledging the harm they had experienced. Those of us who were in positions of privilege in relation to that group of ancestors apologized and asked for forgiveness. We then expressed gratitude for the gift of their presence, through offerings of sage and cornmeal to the fire. Those who were related to that group of ancestors simply expressed gratitude by giving offerings to the fire. This action created a “fusion” of sensory experience, which helped us move past the plateau into new growth.

At the close of the circle series, we had another fire ceremony, using a simple candle. It was time to release the loose ends of our process; to release whatever was done or undone to a higher power. To facilitate this, we offered myrrh incense, which has a millennia- long association with the alchemical process of purification, to the fire. This strengthened the “sensuous and extra-linguistic properties” (Mattingly, p.76) of our shared experience. By utilizing sensory experience, these ritual experiences access the resonance circuitry of the brain, in particular the insula cortex and anterior insula, limbic system, brainstem and the body. This activates the basic mechanisms of emotional resonance within our own body, through which

we form healthy relational attachment. Thus, intercultural relationships are being rewritten at the neuronal level. Circle participants also wrote down an intention for how they would carry the work into their individual worlds on a small piece of paper that would be placed into fire ceremony back home to allow the movement of our intention into all the realms of our lives.

We spoke often of the far -reaching nature of this work, which has the potential to reach seven generations back, and to heal seven generations forward. By doing so, we located participants in history, as well as within a “time outside of time”, the sacred time of ritual process- and also interpreted our actions within the context of both personal and societal transformation.

In addition to circle process, we utilized educational content that catalyzed self- reflection in order to deepen the conversation. This gave each participant the opportunity to make contact with a different layer of self, self-in-relation and self-in-culture. This took participants out of a purely intellectual framework, so that reflections on race and equity could be located within their own experience. For white participants, making this often- invisible connection between aspects of race and culture, and their lived experience visible was especially valuable, since white people are not often in conscious contact with this aspect of their social identity. Educational materials included descriptions of implicit bias; candid reflections by people of color; definitions of terms such as microaggression, privilege and intersectionality; delineation of the four dimensions of racism; and material drawn from current events, which provided many salient examples of bias.

Although members engaged in a cycle of sharing, learning and growing together it has been the year- on- year development and expansion of the work within the organization that is beginning to have a wider impact on the community as whole. Having implemented circle process for three years, our recent year culminated in an organization- wide cultural competency training, within which every staff member began the process of uncovering their own bias.

As we know, the shift into the more beautiful world may begin with the individual but it is the collective community and systems of separation that must be broken down for us to see actualization. Person by person, step by step, and system by system we have begun this process in a community that demonstrates a willingness to become that more beautiful world we seek.

Implications for Future Work

As we look ahead to the continued development of this more equitable, socially sustainable and beautiful world we intend to expand this work into more secular spaces where deeper levels of communication on topics of race and equity are needed and possible.

As we have seen in our research, all change begins within an individual and emanates outward. What is also elegantly possible is that these individual awakenings bring forth a new way of engaging in conversations of difference, so that we together see through the core beliefs of separation that block the achievement of mutuality, discarding patterns of deficit thinking. Among those engaged in this work, there is also much need for self- care as we peel back antiquated ideas and expose the raw areas that must be healed.

Our intention is that these restorative justice circles serve not only as crucibles but also safe haven for activists, where those engaged in this work may feel held, nurtured and supported in the process.

As the work expands into various sectors of society, we see this work as having the potential to transform a culture of domination and separation to a culture of peace and equity. ²

REFERENCES

Braithwaite, J. (2002). Restorative justice and responsive regulation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Eisenstein C (2013). The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley.

Jordan, J. V. (2002). Learning at the margin: New models of strength. Stone Center, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College.

Kazanjian, V. (2007, August). Beyond Tolerance… An Interview on Religious Pluralism. Spirituality and Education: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose, 3, 4, 1.

Mattingly, C. (2004). Performance narratives in the clinical world. In B. Hurwitz, T. Greenhalgh, & V. Skultans (Eds.). (2004). Narrative research in health and illness. (pp. 73-94). Malden, MA: BMJ Books.

Senge, P. M. (2008). Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future. New York: Crown Business.

Shiva, V. (2016). Staying alive: Women, ecology, and development. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Siegel, D. (2010). Mindsight. New York, NY: Bantam. Sue, D. W. (2015). Race talk and the conspiracy of silence: Understanding and facilitating difficult dialogues on race. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Walker, M. (2004). Race, self and society. In Jordan, J. V., Hartling, L. M., & Walker, M. The complexity of connection: Writings from the Stone Centers Jean Baker Miller Training Institute. New York: Guilford Press.

Walsh, D.C. (2009). Keynote. Presented at The Contemplative Heart of Higher Education conference, Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, Amherst College, Amherst MA. 24-26 April.

Gina Harris serves as the State Director for the National Education Association. Her expertise developing education professionals on racial justice in education and restorative practices has allowed her to work to empower educators and organizations around the country. As a Restorative Justice practitioner and trainer, Gina utilizes circle processes and communication tools to create environments that break down barriers to communication and encourages open, honest dialogue inside and outside of the classroom.

Ji Hyang Padma has combined an academic career with her vocation as a spiritual teacher. Ji Hyang served as Director of Spirituality & Education as well as Buddhist chaplain at Wellesley College, and as Director of the Comparative Religion and Philosophy Program at the California Institute for Human Science. She is currently the Buddhist chaplain at Tufts University and Buddhist advisor at Northeastern University. Her work as an interfaith leader has given her a passion for interfaith and intercultural dialogue. Ji Hyang holds a doctorate in psychology from Sofia University. Her recent writing has been published in Our Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interfaith Encounters and Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work. Her first book, Zen Practices for Transformative Times, was published by Quest Books in 2013. Her second book, Field of Blessing: Ritual and consciousness in the work of Buddhist healers, was published in 2021.

Reflections from a Peacebuilder’s Journal

Sohini Jana

Editor’s Note: Sohini is an extraordinary peacebuilder who offers a glimpse into her personal reflections and internal processes from the frontline of peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Kashmir.

Author’s Note: This article is derived from my journal that I maintained while working in Kashmir. I hope this account adds value to your understanding of the journey into conscious peacebuilding as I continue to live it to this day.

February 2020

“I don’t have a lot to offer you at this moment. It is barely what you deserve. But you already know that. Don’t you?” He paused.

“All I can offer though is a great opportunity to work with us in Kashmir. Do you think you would like that?”

He looked me straight in the eye with at once a piercing and openly probing look as if he was willing himself to believe that he already knew the answer that was framing itself inside my head.

“I just want you to know that I trust you to lead the team and build this with us. Together, we will work it out.” He added.

“Say yes. Please?” he pressed on.

I was quiet. “Is this how peacebuilding works?” I recall wondering.

“But Touseef, I am not Kashmiri you know. What makes you think I can help? What if they don’t trust me?” I hesitated, voicing my fears exasperatedly.

It was one of those moments when I was feeling ecstatic about the opportunity and its prospects but also felt paralyzed by fear, indecision and self-doubt like never before. I suppose this is what we understand as the “cold-feet” moment. You may experience a few of these moments before taking up exciting field opportunities.

“I trust you. I am Kashmiri. Javaid trusts you. He is also Kashmiri. You will build trust gradually with the others too. Give yourself a chance. I am sure you will do just fine!” Touseef affirmed. His face was beaming with excitement, hope and determined sincerity.

“Hmm. I can give it a try but you have to give me some time to prepare before I move to Kashmir. I don’t know enough about the conflict.” I mumbled. I was already making mental notes about all the books and papers I needed to read for the preparation.

Touseef smiled knowingly. “Do I have permission to offer my two cents on your preparation madam?”

I looked at him curiously. “Sure!” I responded.

“Books won’t help in Kashmir. Well, for facts you can rely on them to some extent. But Kashmir is an experience. Allow the conflict to teach you what it has to.

I will call Javaid now, and prepare for your visit. Don’t forget to pack some warm clothes. For everything else, be open to surprises.” He scuttled off to speak with the other co-founder Javaid. Touseef was meticulous about preparations and could hardly contain his excitement.

October 2020

I travelled to Kashmir in the middle of the pandemic, sometime in October 2020 when domestic travel opened up. I had asked Touseef, my colleague and the co-founder of Jammu and Kashmir Policy Institute for some time to prepare myself to work on the conflict before my visit. I sincerely believed that preparation was important before I took the plunge and committed to building an organization in Kashmir. Despite utilizing the lockdown period well to read up on everything to do with the conflict that I could lay my hands on, I remember feeling utterly unprepared when my plane touched down for the first time at Srinagar airport. I had gotten to know the team I would be working with over the past few months since February 2020. However, my prejudices kicked in faster than expected despite all my preparations.

“I am Indian and Hindu. I hail from a certain privileged section of society. And, I have zero experience in a conflict zone, leave alone a university degree in conflict transformation. Was I being too ambitious venturing straight into Kashmir, having simply read up a few books and listened to Kashmiris from different walks of life, speak about life in the valley? What was I really hoping to accomplish? What proof did I have that the Kashmiris I would meet would trust me? Will they believe that I

want the best for them and that I am here to help? Will the identity labels work against me even before I can build relationships in the valley?” These were a few of the thoughts that my journal captured as I waited at the airport lounge for my colleagues to pick me up. Dragging one large suitcase with everything to keep me warm and wearing my laptop bag like a shield of armor on my back, I remember finally stepping out of the airport after about half an hour, looking around hesitatingly for Touseef.

The sight that met my eyes was not common. Touseef was standing outside the arrival area with four of his uniformed personal security officers. Each officer held a weapon, alert and flanking the young man in the pheran. Somehow, I hadn’t expected Touseef to turn up with security officials. “Was he really at threat?” It was an uneasy feeling that did not quite help me feel welcome. Soon I was in the car with the men, heading towards the office and attached quarters where I would be staying. Despite being conscious of four uniformed men sitting in the car with heavy rifles, the mood was kept deliberately light. Touseef was cracking jokes like any other friend of mine, pointing out to specific details along the road as he drove on.

I realized over the short journey to the office that my colleague had lived with a certain “threat to his life” that I would probably not be able to empathize with, completely. It was probably normal for him as his role of a youth leader and activist in Kashmir caused him security concerns. I made a mental note to become more alert and conscious of the needs of my hosts from the community. My first lesson even before I had entered the office was to “intuitively sense” and seek clarity and guidance from my hosts about what was needed from me in terms of a code of conduct. I knew, I didn’t know enough. The books indeed had not prepared me for Kashmir.

October 2020-November 2020

Over the weeks, I found myself travelling to different locations, different homes, visiting friends and relatives of my team mates living in distant villages, small towns in different districts. From enjoying the local cuisine to spending evenings listening to local musicians sing locally popular songs, I was growing to appreciate the culture that the locals held so close to their hearts despite the disruptive realities that marked their experience of the conflict. My colleagues and peers were always excited to show me around and emphasized how “safe” Kashmir was and how they could never imagine having to choose to find home anywhere else in the world. I understood what a sense of rootedness to one’s own culture and home felt like but for Kashmiris, “belonging to Kashmir” spelt a different kind of safety that they probably held on to with quiet determination more than any other experience of living other identities. I learnt my second lesson at this point. I had to be conscious of “not being Kashmiri”, “not belonging to Kashmir” but finding a safe space amongst the community nonetheless, by building trust beyond the identity that they associated with safety.

I was conscious of the curious eyes that followed me around everywhere. The warmth of the tourism culture and world-renowned hospitality was underpinned by a stoic sense of skepticism that I could hardly shake off. I remember asking myself every day, “Did I manage to come across as trust worthy today? Or did I say anything that could have possibly hurt anyone because I don’t share the sensibilities of growing up in this land?” My intention to be cautious and mindful of my speech, code

of conduct, cultural expectations led me to take to listening more. It was an interesting transition for me. Touseef’s advice came back to me every day. “Kashmir is an experience. Allow the conflict to teach you what it has to.” And so, it did. I listened.

November 2020

I had come to Kashmir to help Touseef and his local team to build and run a youth led local think tank in Jammu and Kashmir. When my colleague and friend handed me the Directorship of the organization, the organization was merely a name and a logo. A few calls with Javaid and Touseef, the co-founders, provided me with some context and insights on why such an organization was needed and what their vision for the local youth was that they hoped to cater to through the organization. But the “how” part was still unclear. There was no precedent that I could rely on. I had my task cut out for me. I needed a nudge, a sense of direction. I needed something that would tell me that I was looking to move in the right direction.

The more I thought about direction, the more I felt I had more to learn. I spent hours listening to my colleagues, common men and women who I met along the way, stakeholders and people who had a lot of ideas to offer. The more I listened the more I found myself floating on a sea of narratives and different motives. I decided to use my intuition to discern which ideas or suggestions to heed while designing the organization and which ones to ignore. My journal helped me to keep my intentions aligned to the way I engaged with possibilities and guided the team to make the most of the same.

Over the months, we found ourselves creating a platform to integrate peacebuilding and public policy to support social inclusion and sustainable development in Jammu and Kashmir. The excitement of my colleagues, their stories and hopes, the persistent efforts of the co-founders to engage and share with stakeholders supplied to me the much-needed fuel of hope amidst the global crisis of the pandemic. Even when I felt that we were hitting a dead end, someone or the other from the team would show up to remind me how they trusted me to trust my intuition about things. As Executive authority and a mentor for the team, I grew to trust myself and my intuitive judgement about the dream we were all co-creating. I didn’t know I was conscious as a peacebuilder before my intuition grew into my strongest reflex, an inexplicable source of guidance, an internal moral compass that kept me grounded in my purpose. We all have it. We simply need a community that can remind us of the compass when we lose sight of it or doubt it. Sometimes this trust in our sense of inner guidance brings forth the courageous space to birth creativity together. This was one of the most important lessons I took away from my time in Kashmir.

October 2021

I came back to my home town in Kolkata just as the second wave of the pandemic was hitting its peak. Since my departure in April 2021, I have not had the chance to go back. As much as it pained me to settle into a long-distance relationship with Kashmir, I knew that disruptions and obstacles would come in my way no matter how hard I tried to be there for the team and the people I met in Kashmir. Planning a sustainable approach to further the larger cause that the organization was built to serve became the highlight for my efforts even as I started managing operations from afar. It was time for me to trust the team to be guided by the shared vision and moral compass that we had evolved over the one year of our work together.

I stepped down and handed over the reigns to the leadership that had evolved over the year in October 2021. My intuition guided me to take the step. It is important to know when to let go if our intention is towards sustaining a vision that has true potential. I did my part when the time came for me. To be conscious is to know when you have served your purpose and to relinquish control such that the creative flow of possibilities can flow on uninterrupted.

As a facilitator of relationships, community and creative engagements for the purpose of inclusion and diversity, I left Kashmir with a heart full of gratitude, a journal full of memories and a place within families where I was practically adopted as a daughter. To my understanding, conscious peacebuilding helps us to integrate our own individual growth with the possibilities we create and that we step into for moving closer to our purpose of bringing people together to live more sustainably with each other and for the planet. By being the midwife for the facilitation process of a youth led initiative in Jammu and Kashmir, I believe that I moved one step closer to being who I am meant to be. As Touseef rightly said, “Trust the conflict to teach you what it has to.” And so, it did.

²

Sohini Jana is an experienced and trained dialogue facilitator, communication specialist and leadership/career coach. She has worked widely with multiple stakeholders including activists, journalists, academicians, students and peacebuilders. Her core competencies include facilitating and designing dialogue-based trauma care and conflict transformation projects, organization development( not for profit sector), project development for community development goals and policy research with a focus on mainstreaming inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue, faith based reconciliation and trauma care tools into social policy. Sohini is the acting Chapter President for the India chapter of a nonprofit organization based in the United States called the Euphrates Institute. Recently, she had also delivered a live session training to students of the Institute of Management Sciences in Peshawar, Pakistan on Interfaith Harmony. She has won the Euphrates Institute scholarship for her service in the field of interfaith harmony targeted towards “turning the other into a brother”. Her motto remains to bring the world one step closer to witnessing the unity of all existence.

Being Peace

Jiezzhen Wu

Editor’s note: Jie offers reflections on the relationship of inner and outer peace through her lenses as founder and director of a peacebuilding organization, leadership consultant and new mother. Watching her journey from student to wise leader has been an extraordinary joy for Michelle and me.

“P EACE IN O NESELF, P EACE IN THE W ORLD.”

— Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

“In order to build a more sustainable world, we must be sustainable ourselves.” I remember Matthias Scheffelmeier, one of the Co-Founders of ChangemakerXchange, saying those words in the middle of a summit I was running for social innovators and changemakers in Guizhou, China, back in 2018.

Those words hit home. I had just taken a sabbatical from my role as the Executive Director of The Hidden Good, a social impact media platform and social enterprise, after 4 years of being at the helm of the organization. I loved my job, I loved my team and the community we had built, and I loved being able to build a more inclusive and empathetic world - so I didn’t understand why I felt so depleted. I had thought that if you had a job you loved, and you were making a positive difference in the world - that burnout would not be a thing. But I was wrong.

In becoming more conscious peacebuilders, part of building a more sustainable world is making sure that we are sustainable ourselves - and that includes taking the time to make sure that we look after our inner selves,

so that we might be able to be better equipped to do the work we set out to do out in the world.

Over the years in my work engaging with peacebuilders, changemakers and leaders around the world, I’ve found that burnout is actually more common than many expect. In this line of work, many peacebuilders and changemakers often give and give without replenishing their own tanks. And I have seen too many good people burn out and lose the ability to continue doing the work they care so much about. We cannot pour from an empty cup.

In a study that ChangemakerXchange conducted along with an alliance of 16 of the world’s leading youth social innovation networks to better understand the lives and realities of young changemakers, it was found that young changemakers are sacrificing their personal finances and well-being to make a change in the world.

This study, known as The Possibilists, found that “66% of young changemakers cannot cover their financial needs solely through the work on their initiative, meaning they have to look elsewhere for financial compensation and security.” This ends up becoming another source of stress which adds to the burden and respon-

sibilities that so many young peacebuilders and changemakers take on, that sometimes prevents them from being able to sustain this work they care about and themselves. It was also found that “59% of young social innovators in The Possibilists study reported having experienced different degrees of burnout since they started working on their initiative.” This should not and cannot be the norm if we want more young people and peacebuilders to be able to grow in this space and to be able to consciously and sustainably build a better world - without damaging their mental, emotional, physical, financial and spiritual health.

In order to be most effective as peacebuilders, we must be able to take care of ourselves to sustainably take care of others. As peacebuilders, we sometimes spend most of our days looking out at the world, trying to make it more just, more equitable - but we also need to ask ourselves, “At what cost?” I know so many peacebuilders who become jaded, disillusioned, or burnt out

and leave the field. This ends up being a huge cost to the sector, when we lose such passionate individuals who set out to contribute to the world around them.

I now work with Linden Leadership, to build more intentional, inclusive and impactful organizations. There are four fields that we look at: the Field of Self, the Interpersonal Field, the Field of Teams and the Enterprise Field. In our work, we believe that everything starts in the Field of Self. Before being able to engage interpersonally, or with teams, or at an enterprise level, we first must be aware and able to look within.

As a new mother of a beautiful 8 month old baby girl, I too am continuing to learn to make space to fill my cup and nourish myself. It is my hope as peacebuilders, changemakers and leaders, that we learn to nourish and sustain ourselves so that we may be better for our families, our communities and the work we hope to do in the world. ²

Jiezhen Wu is a senior consultant and coach at Linden Leadership, where she works with leaders and organizations to build a more intentional, inclusive and impactful world. Most recently, she was also an Equity and Inclusion Fellow and part of the Mindful Leaders Collective at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, where she completed her master’s degree focusing on leadership, inclusion and impact. Before Harvard, Jiezhen was the Executive Director of a social enterprise and media platform, The Hidden Good, for several years - and she continues to serve on its board, as well as a number of nonprofit boards that work with youth, education and social impact. Through her work, she has also become an advocate for mindfulness and wellbeing in the changemaking space - and actively supports social innovators and changemakers through her work at Ashoka, the Bosch Foundation and ChangemakerXchange. Jiezhen also double-majored in Political Science and Peace & Justice Studies at Wellesley College, and completed a Graduate Diploma in Applied Positive Psychology. When she’s not working with leaders and organizations, you can find her enjoying a bowl of soup (her favorite food!), reading and going exploring with her daughter Juniper, and taking hikes in nature and walks along the beach with her husband Jared in Southern California where she currently lives.

The Lamp of Hope Amidst Identity and Eco Destruction

Subhi Dhupar

Editor’s note: As a conscious peacebuilder supporting grassroots interfaith leaders through her work in two international peacebuilding organizations, Subhi offers reflections on how the ongoing destruction of Indigenous identity and our ecosystems have called her to environmental activism and challenges us to do the same.

“Tulasi Gowda, a 72-year-old tribal woman from Karnataka, was conferred the Padma Shri award, India’s fourth-highest civilian award from President Ram Nath Kovind, in New Delhi, on Monday (November 8th 2021). This award was a recognition for her contribution to the protection of the environment.” In the days to come, the paparazzi celebrated the recognition of a tribal woman by swamping the social media in awe with pictures of an old barefoot woman adorned with several beaded necklaces around her neck and a half-sari loosely draped around her body. India celebrated a lady now known as the Encyclopaedia of Forest .

However, little did the celebration focus on the lesserknown truths and deep-rooted identity conflicts of the disappearing Halakki Vokkaliga community of Tulasi Gowda. Halakki Vokkaliga is the indigenous tribe of Karnataka that is struggling to protect its culture from environmental degradation caused by industrialisation and globalisation. This orchestrated community largely known for its primitiveness ,embodies the shoots and roots of their identity conflict in the perils of modernisation and the climatic crisis respectively. Like many around the world , the community is a living example of bereavement, deprivation and displacement emerging from the triple planetary crisis.

The shoots of this identity conflict are an invisible yet pertinent reflection of the ideology of our colonial masters before 1947. Our postcolonial ideological inheritance of ‘saving the other’ and ‘civilising the backward’ continues to inflict the Halakki Vokkaliga tribe with a ‘painstakingly long battle to be included in the Scheduled Tribe list in India’. Little does the rich matrilineal culture, knowledge of natural medicines, strong folk culture and traditional art form acknowledge the indigenous community as the custodians of forests within the ‘mainstream’ culture. The shoots of the conflict are hence enmeshed and stratified in the

politics of majoritarianism, modernisation, advertisements and postcolonialism.

The roots of this identity conflict are far less visible. The roots that highlight the real story of climatic distress , and the changes in the land-use patterns, that are making them a victim of deforestation, modernisation of agricultural land, land grab, industrialisation and controversial forest laws in India. When the British government banned their traditional style of Kumbri agriculture, the tribe migrated to work for landlords, and around two decades later, the corporate greed drove them out of their forested homes , to settle near the sea. The ban on game hunting has caused the tribe to change their dietary choices and patterns of survival. The roots of the conflict, hence, remain deeply embedded and stratified in the politics of industrialisation, greed, power, climate change and environmental protection.

The limited availability of data and knowledge on the plight of such ‘community voices’ affected by climate change, unfortunately, contribute to building a selective narrative. A narrative that paparazzis capitalize on in the name of recognition, making selective lone ‘protectors’ or ‘survivors’ like Tulasi, as the heroes of the modern world. The slow yet known death of several such cultural and indigenous identities by the sword of ultra-globalisation, especially during the pandemic, is a gentle reminder of the continuum and stratified feature of the present-day conflicts we co-exist with and the solutions that urge us to rethink our part.

The mainstream top-down approach adopted round the world by governments, forest officials and even not for profits-inspired by the western model- suggest using a protected area model for conserving nature from the ‘intruders’ or ‘uncivilised tribals.’ The protected area model sets aside land ‘for nature,’ however, by giving mother nature its own land back, it uproots the natural custodians of nature, changes their consumption patterns, deprives them of their livelihood, divides cultures in the name of belief systems and creates new jobs for people

that only mean business in the name of ‘protecting an area.’ The solution becomes an endemic cycle of problems that require constant business driven solutions.

Unfortunately, little does the ‘solution’ address the roots and shoots of the problem-identity crisis & environmental crisis- by offering a justice and human rights-based approach. Addressing the problem ‘as it is in their context.’ An approach that embraces togetherness without dividing people, that respects the natural way of living without creating structures for ‘its protection’ and that respects the natural order that mother nature has defined for humans.

An approach that reduces harm and strengthens the rights-based approach by building back nature to address deep-rooted issues of identity and survival as it is. COVID19 is an exemplary self-regenerating strategy of the environment, that has reflected the reaction and action of our wrong doings to mother nature. It is time we choose our ways pragmatically and hear to the yearnings of dying cultures that weren’t the recipients of recognition like Tulasi but continue to burn the lamp of hope. ²

Subhi Dhupar is a peace educator and trainer with over four years of experience promoting interfaith consensus and social inclusion among people of diverse cultures at local and international levels. She currently works at the United Nations Environmental Program in India. She worked as the Regional Coordinator for URI, supporting and mentoring grassroots groups in North India and Kabul, Afghanistan. Subhi models bridge-building and an intergenerational approach as critical to effectiveness and sustenance for grassroots groups. Subhi’s work has taken her to many conflict and post-conflict countries, where she engaged with youth organizations, universities, and public policy makers from around the world. Subhi has studied at Lady Shri Ram College and at South Asian University. She holds a Master’s degree in international relations.

They Can Imprison Your Body Not Your Spirit and Capacity to Love: The Making of a Peacebuilder

Maria Crespo

Editors note: Maria shares her personal story of how family and faith, inspired her to a lifetime of peacebuilding. She has been an inspiration to generations of peacebuilders, including me, in living a life that connects peace within to peace without.

I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am a Roman Catholic in a country where 79.6% of the population is Christian, 62.9% belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Religion has been my connection with inner peace. I have always enjoyed celebrations, retreats and growing up sharing my faith with others. Born a teacher, I focused my career on education and soon I found myself coordinating teams of teachers that supported parents in the religious education of their children. If I think of highlights of my personal spiritual growth text readings and prayers in circles with children, adolescents and parents come to mind. When I meet former students or parents, we recall the depth of these conversations or gatherings and how have these marked our lives. They were moments of inner peace I treasure. They helped me so much specially at times where the outside was not as peaceful.

The 70s and 80s in Argentina were times of political unrest and of course in a big family, reactions to this context were diverse. To make the story short, my father was involved in the government run by the military and my elder sisters and brothers engaged in the opposition to the regime. I can remember difficult conversations Bible in hand with the sister whom I shared bedroom with. I talked of love and peace, she said Jesus was radical and felt that her call was to change oppression structures even if it was by force. Dictatorship became stronger and my sister´s ideas and actions too so in 1976 she was imprisoned under a law that allowed the gov-

ernment have people in jail with no trial or specific reason. She was there for 7 years. My life was torn, and I started to live two lives at the same time. The world of pain and torture, of visits to jail that took a lot of my time and energy every Tuesday. A time when my empathy grew accompanying my parents and parents of other women unfairly imprisoned during these visits. Empathy that broke my heart when seeing children going through the same long queues and ill treatment to see their parents. The noise of the doors brutally closed behind me still petrify me in the remembrance, tears still fall when I remember that little boy asking his mother “Do you have legs?” because he had always seen his mother behind the window which only allowed him to see her face and arms. The rest of the week I tried to live life as my friends: I studied, went to social meetings with pairs, started teaching.

In perspective this was a terrible experience and the most teaching one. The spiritual grounding that I grew up with was crucial to navigate the difficult times and to bridge the two worlds I lived in. I came out of the experience more compassionate, understanding, open to diversity with a deep value of spiritual freedom (I used to tell my sister at the end of each visit: They can imprison your body not your spirit and capacity to love. Don’t lose those because they keep you free).

At the right time I was granted the possibility to use these learnings and achievements serving at United Religions Initiative and building my own family. Some say they were born peacebuilders; I was made one. A lot to be thankful for!

Maria Crespo is a longtime interfaith leader based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been a crucial leader in interfaith efforts throughout Central and South America. She is also a founding member of URI - The United Religions Initiative where she has led efforts to ensure grassroots leadership of the interfaith movement. Maria played an important role in bringing interfaith issues to the GH20 Forum. Maria is a key ally of Indigenous peoples in Central and South America and has played an important role in international efforts to promote interfaith understanding among world leaders. She currently serves as Director of Cooperation Circle Support for the URI - United Religions Initiative.

Your Body as Teacher - Practice Inner Peace

Sally Mahé

Editor’s Note: One of the pioneers of the interfaith peacebuilding movement, and an advisor and spiritual teacher to so many including myself, Sally leads us through a reflection and practice that teaches us to allow our bodies to be our guide as we cultivate inner peace.

No manuals, no devices needed, just bring your full attention to your body as you invite inner peace into your being.

Stand up, posture erect but not stiff, arms comfortably at your sides, feet grounded about shoulder width apart, head comfortable, feel your body centered and balanced.

Follow your breath as it naturally flows in and out.

Imagine warm, misty rain gently relaxing your face, head and shoulders. Take a deeper breath and feel its freshness reach all the way to your belly.

Feel your brain relax, soften your knees, smile a little, bring a gentle gaze to your eyes.

With your eyes almost closed become aware of where you are, what is the air like? Take in your surroundings with soft eyes. Pause.

Notice your thoughts and feelings, recognize urges to speak or take action. Let the urges go. Breathe gently.

Balance and center again, gently place a hand on your belly. Imagine your head energy dropping to your belly. Connect your feet solidly with the ground.

Place your other hand on your heart. Breathe gently several times. Now, balance and center, take a step forward, walk a little ways. Ask - am I ready to consider my next move?

This simple exercise that connects your mind, body and heart is a practice you can do over and over again.

Whether it’s a recurring unsettled feeling, facing a conflict with a friend, family member, colleague, or living in the midst of entrenched communal violence; the spirit and skill of peacebuilding begins by looking inside oneself. Listen to your body because it is your best teacher. In tough situations it signals feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, confusion, frustration, doubt; and, it gives you a way to transform those feelings to help yourself and others.

The key is pausing long enough to recognize what you are feeling, to go deeper inside yourself and make adjustments.

Remembering to call on your body to help you balance and center when you are anxious or thrown off track takes commitment and practice. Reading self-help books and talking about the “how to’s” and the importance of personal inner peace won’t help much without your body getting into the action.

Finding inner peace is unique to each person and calls for daily attention that demands rigor. The good news is that finding peace and equilibrium within oneself is always accessible. It is a gift you give yourself as well as others. It’s not about always acting like the peacemaker you want to be, but learning how to get back on the path when you fall off. Feel free to adapt this exercise to fit you. Ask a friend to read the exercise to guide you until you can do it anywhere, anytime on your own.

If you should be knocked off center in one way or another, there is always the possibility - if you can stay aware - of returning to the balanced and centered condition at an even deeper level.

Quotation by George Leonard and Michael Murphy, Co-founders of Integral Transformative Practice and pioneers of the Human Potential Movement.

Article by Sally Mahé, Senior Consultant with United Religions Initiative (URI), Master Teacher with Integral Transformative Practice International (ITPI). I would like to acknowledge URI for introducing me to hundreds of amazing peacemakers around the world; and, to ITPI for teaching me in-depth, integral peace practices that connect body, mind, heart and soul. ²

Sally Mahé, a founding staff person of URI the United Religions Initaitive, has held senior staff positions for over 20 years. Sally formerly served as URI Director of Organizational Development and Director of Global Programs, working primarily with regional staff across the world. As Senior Consultant, Sally is on-call for consultation and makes core URI values, practices and in-depth organizational wisdom available to the URI global community. Sally co-authored The Birth of a Global Community in 2003 and A Greater Democracy Day by Day. Sally holds Master’s degrees from Harvard and the General Episcopal Seminary, New York. She lives in the Bay Area with her children and grandchildren nearby. Sally maintains the blog Every Voice, where she writes about the varied ways URI Cooperation Circle members all over the world give voice to URI and contribute to its success. Sally maintains several recurring blog series on the URI website. You can access them at URI.org/sally.

Living the Golden Rule

Ambassador Mussie Hailu

Editor’s Note: No one with whom I have ever worked embodies the principles of seeking peace within and without more than Ambassador Mussie Hailu. Mussie has not only lived the Golden Rule in his own life but inspired countless numbers of others to connect their inner desire to be treated with respect and dignity to their treatment of others. In addition to his work in global peacebuilding organizations and at the United Nations, Mussie has been a part of the United World College program in Ethiopia since its founding.

For a culture of peace, inter-religious & inter-cultural harmony, respect among nations, human dignity and social justice to prevail on Earth, it is high time to promote the teaching of the Golden Rule, which says “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” throughout the world and introduce it in the school curriculum as part of education for peace.

In this interconnected world, the peoples of all nations are our close neighbors and our wellbeing increasingly depends on how well we interact and live together based on the teaching of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is the roadmap to build peaceful co-existence, social cohesion, harmony, human dignity and secure a better future for this generation and generation yet to come. Among the many reasons why we need to celebrate the Golden Rule Day and pay due attention for the teaching of the Golden Rule more than ever is because:

• It calls us to extend our concern beyond ourselves and to embrace a greater understanding and respect for others

• It is the pathway for peaceful co-existence, harmony and promoting human right, mutual respect, dignity, equality and compassion

• It is affirmed in many religions, traditions, indigenous cultures and secular philosophies as a fundamental principle of life and the foundation on which a global ethic is founded

• It is a universal message which is accepted and embraced throughout the world

• Its message is simple, universal and powerful

• It is the most prevalent and universal moral principle in human history

• It summarizes the basic teaching of compassion, non-violence, respect, and honoring the dignity of all living beings.

• It is the best guide we have to help peoples of the world to live together in mutual respect and harmony

• It is a way to disarm fear, to open the world for better change and to lay the foundations for lasting peace.

• It is a preventive mechanism and antidote to discrimination, disrespect, greedy, violence, crime, hate speech and incitement which leads to war and the violation of human right.

• It is the roadmap for inter-religious and intercultural harmony

• It can help to reverse the insane trends prevailing today in our world

• It is the best way to counter violent extremism and radicalization

• It transcends our differences and encourages us to consider the well-being of all humanity It helps to recognize pluralism and respect diversity.

It is with all this in mind that, in 2007, The United Religions Initiative-Africa and Interfaith Peace-building Initiative (IPI) based in Ethiopia declared April 5 as a “Golden Rule Day” and called upon all citizens of the world, religious leaders of the world, Mayors of the world, heads of state of the world, the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the League of Arab States, interfaith organizations, schools, higher learning institutions, the business community, civil society and all other stake holders to join URI-Africa and IPI in proclaiming April 5 as Golden Rule Day and to live accordingly to make this world a better and peaceful for all. I am so happy to inform you that since then about 700 organizations in 140 countries joined us in proclaiming the Golden Rule Day.

In addition to this, in 2007 we also started the Golden Rule Goodwill Ambassador program to highlight and promote the Golden Rule. Every year we honor an individual or organization who set a good example for the teaching of the Golden Rule with Golden Rule Medal, Plague and appoint them as a Goodwill Ambassador of Golden Rule.

We need to acknowledge that peace is only possible in the world when each and every one of us start to make peace within ourselves, families and in our respective communities.

Each of us needs to commit ourselves as best as we can to become nonviolent and to make personal pledges to peace and to live according to the teaching of the Golden Rule. Let us be instruments of peace and a living example of the teaching of the Golden Rule. Let us walk the talk by taking practical action and live according to the principle of Golden Rule. May Peace, Golden Rule and Compassion Prevail in our Heart, Mind, Family, Community, Country and the World.

²

Ambassador Mussie Hailu is a peacebuilder who is working at national, regional, and international levels for peace, reconciliation, interfaith harmony, disarmament, the Golden Rule, world citizenship, right human relationships, and international cooperation for the preservation of the environment. He considers himself a Citizen of the World, believing strongly in the inter-dependence of human beings. He celebrates cultural diversity, seeing the differences in race, ethnicities, religions, politics, and nationalities as important elements of the one and indivisible humanity. He has served many national and international organizations, including the United Nations. Mussie also served as Diplomat in the rank of Ambassador and Special Envoy of the President of Burundi. Currently, he serves as Director of Global Partnerships at the United Religions Initiative, and representative at the United Nations and the African Union, and URI-Africa Regional Director.

Lifetime Practice

Valarie Kaur

From

See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

pp 299-300

Editor’s Note: I have been blessed to walk for a while along life’s pathways with Valarie Kaur, to be inspired by her wisdom born from a life lived deeply, and to be called to action in the spirit of a revolutionary love that she so powerfully embodies. Now through her remarkable book See No Stanger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love from which this quote is drawn, others can share in her journey and be inspired by her teachings. Valarie is a midwife to the movement for more peaceful and just societies. By sharing her story with us in See No Stranger, she invites us to see in our own lives and in our relationships with one another that “laboring in love is how we birth the world to come.”

“This of today as an entire lifetime,” wise Woman says to me before I fall asleep.

“What was the hardest part of this lifetime?” Notice where you sense hardship in your body. Now how did you get through it? We somehow managed to make it to the end of this day, the end of this lifetime.

“What was the most joyful part of this lifetime?” Every day and every lifetime, now matter how hard, contains moments of joy. “Notice what made it joyful. Sense what joy feels like in your body.”

“What are you not grateful for in this lifetime?” Every day and every lifetime offers a new reason for gratitude. “Sense that gratitude in your body.”

“Now you are ready to let go of this lifetime? Are you ready to think of the work you have done today and know that it is enough?

After Papa Ji died, I thought that he left me without teaching me the secret to his bravery. Then I realized that his final lesson was the way that he died. If I wanted to live and die as bravely as he did, I had to practice. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Are you ready to behold everyone and everything you have ever known and loved, kiss them, and let them go? Are you ready to die that kind of death?”

Each night, I die a kind of death. Each morning, I wake to the gift of a new lifetime. In between, I labor in love. It is enough.” ²

Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, and best-selling author of SEE NO STRANGER. She leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice. In the wake of the 2016 election, her question “Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?” reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice. Valarie has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie’s debut book, SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir & Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was released in 2020 and expands on her “blockbuster” TED Talk.

Trust Yourself and the Results Will Follow

Salvador Guerrero

Editor’s Note: Through his gentle and powerful voice, Salvador opens us to his inner dialogue and the struggle to discover the trust in self so essential to conscious peacebuiding practices.

This last semester I’ve learned plenty of things; one that I’m very proud of is how to deal with conflict. Conflict can take many forms, and it can come from a variety of sources. Most often, conflict comes from a lack of understanding as we’re all very different—shaped by the countless experience we’ve had throughout our lives. Something you find normal might be offensive to me, just as my actions may be misinterpreted by you. Conflict can also be internal.

Last semester, my internal conflicts were centered around self-doubt. Coming into a much more rigorous academic and social environment, I’ve learned to value the power of trust. I found it much harder to do the same things I used to do back home. For example, writing this entry might’ve taken me twice as long, because I would dedicate too much time to correcting myself or setting the task for later. I was extremely reluctant to start my assignments, think about a class I found hard, or continue some of my projects. I could not understand what was happening to me; I thought something must have changed in me.

Through internal dialogue (during my break) I finally found out what this change was. I had started to doubt myself. I didn’t want to think about my chemistry class because I doubted my capacity to succeed in it. The projects that brought so much joy to me back home had become stressful because I no longer trusted that I would succeed in making them a reality.

Back home, I often participated in various chess and spelling bee competitions; coming here, I asked myself

how I dealt with such a “stressful” environment of uncertainty and challenge. I found that I had never doubted myself—I knew I was more than capable of succeeding at everything I set myself to do. The effort it may take me to do so—I thought—may vary, but I will definitely get what I want. This provided me with a peace of mind that just couldn’t be broken. When I failed, I was certain I would get it next time.

As peacebuilders, it is essential that we maintain trust in ourselves. When dealing with conflict, it is very easy to become stressed or anguished about the situation: our actions can significantly impact the future of a relationship. However, if we trust our capacity to deal with difficult situations, there is no longer a reason to be stressed—we know that the situation will turn out positively and, therefore, we should not worry about it. In theory, it sounds perfect; bringing this mindset to practice, however, requires some effort.

I’ve found that mindfulness works for maintaining an internal dialogue that puts things into perspective and makes me calmer. I hope it can help you as well. Hearing that word may bring an image of monks to your mind, but meditation doesn’t necessarily have to be your source of mindfulness.

Staying grounded can come from a variety of sources—going for a walk, working out or listening to your favorite type of music are just a few examples. As someone once told me: “One mindful breath is enough; everything else is luxury.” Trust yourself and the results will follow.

²

Throughout his childhood, Salvador Guerrero developed multiple interests. Often finding himself in academic competitions, he also explored the beauty of mental and physical sports. He attributes this to three things: growth mentality, sufficient economic resources, and practicing good sleep. A combination of unlikely events led him to apply to UWC: an opportunity that he deems humbling and life- changing. Salvador now dedicates his efforts to ensuring others have the same educational opportunities he enjoyed. Believing education is key to overcoming sociopolitical challenges in Latin America, he co-founded a Honduran student-led non-profit organization that unites students from all parts of Honduras.

Speak to Me!

Rutendo Musharu

Editors Note: Rutendo’s powerful voice cries out for peace and justice inviting those who are seen as enemy to listen heartfully and speak truthfully and build new relationships that will give break down walls of hate and birth hope for peace and justice.

I grew up next to you but I never saw you.

I only saw your hatred, when you burned me alive, And your disgust, when you spit on me. They told me that you are not a friend, And they told you that I am not to be trusted.

It planted a seed of fear in my heart, And its vine spread across my conscience.

It rooted itself in the violence I saw and heard, And made me believe that you are my enemy.

I grew up next to you but I never heard you.

I only heard your insults to my people, And your chant against my pride.

You gave me pain too intense to disregard, And planted fear too deep to uproot, But you never once told me why.

Speak to me!

I want to see you and I want to hear you I want you to see me and hear me. Let us uncover the secrets of our past. Let us listen to the sacred stories that we had buried, And uncover the truth of our divide. Speak to me and I will listen, Listen to me and I will speak. Together we can break down the wall and plant a new seed of hope and revival.

Rutendo Musharu is a current student at UWC USA who was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She is mainly acknowledged for her work in mental health awareness for youth in Zimbabwe. In early 2021 she co-founded Youth For Mental Health Zimbabwe, a student-led organiz ation that acts as a support group for Zimbabwean youth. Rutendo is also very passionate about community building as evidenced by her frequent leadership and participation in women empowerment activities in her community, particularly campaigns for equal access to education for girls in lower income areas.

Making Meaning in Questions

Lwandile Dlamini

Editor’s Note: This piece is a transcription of a speech given by Lwandile Dlamini, UWC-USA 22’, at the annual Welcome Ceremony. During this ceremony, students carry their national flags. Two students were chosen to write a short speech outlining the significance of their national flags: Lwandi’s powerful speech provides insights into the history and significance of the flag of South Africa.

fight in favor of Black people’s rights, and in 1963, two years after the proclamation of independence, 17 members of the ANC (including Nelson Mandela), were arrested and judged for treason. A year later, Mandela and other seven colleagues were sentenced to life imprisonment.

From then onwards, the years of the greatest repression of the Black population began.

The South African flag is bright, bold and certainly stands out. One of the most colorful flags in the world, the South African flag uses large shapes and vivid hues to share the story of the country: a story of freedom, unity, and a tradition of ubuntu (meaning compassion and humanity). The end of the Apartheid era marked a new beginning for South Africa.

The significance of a flag resides in the value that humans give to it. When talking about the South African flag, the emotional meaning is very important. Choosing a new national flag was part of the negotiation process set in motion when freedom fighter Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. The proclamation of the new flag would reflect the dawn of a new democratic era in South Africa. In order to understand how important the South African flag is for its citizens, we first need to know in which context it was approved. The flag was raised for the first time on the 26th of April 1994, the day on which the democratic elections were celebrated without racial discrimination. But let’s go back a few years.

South Africa proclaimed its independence from the United Kingdom in May 1961, but that did not mean the end of Apartheid. Apartheid is the name given to the segregation policy established in South Africa in 1948 by the National Party (NP), and which the National African Congress (ANC) and the Pan-African Congress (PAC) demonstrated against.

When the South African Republic was proclaimed, the country left the Commonwealth, but this did not mean the end of White domination nor the abolishment of the Apartheid regime. ANC and PAC leaders started their

However, in the 80s internal changes occurred in the country, ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. This, coupled with international pressure, changed the mood of the people. In 1986, president Botha of the NP announced that the South African parliament would “leave Apartheid behind them”. Three years later, in 1989, Botha was succeeded by F.W de Klerk, who in his inaugural speech announced that he would revoke all discriminatory laws, and would legalize the ANC, PAC, and the Communist Party.

In the same year, on the 11th of February 1990, after having been in prison for 27 years, Nelson Mandela was released. A contest was held to choose the South African flag for this occasion. Nevertheless, none of the 7,000 models presented convinced the National Commission of Symbols; and this is why a design proposed by Frederick G. Brownwell was finally chosen. His version of the flag was so well received that the interim version was made the final, national flag in the South African Constitution. Given the troubled historical context, it is remarkable that a consensual replacement for the former national flags was found. The new flag was seen as an enduring symbol of the modern South African state. While officially there is no symbolism to the colors, some thoughts are that the red, white, and blue come from the British and Dutch colonial flags, and the black, gold, and green are from the colors found in the flags of liberation groups, including Nelson Mandela’s ANC party.

But what does the flag mean to me and to my people? What does it represent?

The black isosceles triangle represents for me the determination of Black people to thrive and triumph in troubling times, blue, represents truth and loyalty; red, the bloodshed during wars, bravery, and strength; green, represents the fertility of the land, love, hope, and joy for the land; yellow, appreciating the mineral wealth that is below the soil in which we reside and finally white, representing peace and honesty. The only concrete symbolism in the flag is the V or Y shape, which can be interpreted as “the convergence of diverse elements within South African society, taking the road ahead in unity.”

But are we really in unity? Although the flag represents important and powerful parts of my heritage and country, and although it represents a new era, post-apartheid, and is seen as a symbol of democracy and equity, it does not acknowledge the tremendous amount of work needing to be done. Because of the country’s economic, political, and social decline, the flag sometimes reminds me of and represents the apartheid ideologies.

With the end of apartheid in 1994, the people of South Africa anticipated profound social and economic change. Yet twenty-six years later, much of the population lacks access to proper medical care and education. Despite improved access to clean water, housing,

and roads many South Africans feel that too little has changed since the apartheid era. The “Rainbow Nation”, in most cases, represented by this very flag, is still racially divided in its electoral behavior, and the income gap between Black people and White people is greater than it was in 1994. Leading political figures in the current ruling party, the ANC, are often accused of corruption. New political groups are calling for the nationalization and expropriation of land and resources from the White minority.

And so my question is, are the laws and institutions in place since 1994 strong enough to preserve democracy and the rule of law when the pace of social and economic change remains slow? Am I to be proud of the flag that I carry today?

UWC is a great place to start asking these questions. Welcome Ceremony is an opportunity for us not only to praise, celebrate and acknowledge our cultures and nationalities together but to also initiate these conversations that help us bring ourselves closer to who we truly are. These are the moments that are available for us to recognize the truth of where we come from, the good and the bad, and create a foundation for reconciliation amongst our different countries, within our own countries, and amongst ourselves. Thank you. ²

Lwandile Dlamini (she/her pronouns) is currently in her second year at the United World College- USA. She was born in South Africa and has lived there her entire life. She is known for academic excellence in her schooling career and is known in her community for volunteerism work with the South African National Blood Services and the Aryan Benevolent Home. She is also recognized for protesting against racism and sexism and standing in solidarity with minority groups in her past schools. She is dedicated to continuing her passion for social work at UWC-USA and participates in groups like CTT and IDEA that focus on social justice within a school environment. She plans to continue with tackling social issues in university and anything that comes after and she plans to use the knowledge and skills she has learned so far.

Welcome Ceremony Speech

Jiana Kambo

Namaste. I am Jiana, she/her/hers from India, and yes I have an amazing spice tolerance. I assure you, I specifically drink hot sauce for the priceless expression on my friend’s faces. As you can see I am a terrible comedian, but hey what’s the harm in trying. Ok, so I covered the spicy joke, how about beef. Religiously in Hinduism, Hindus worship the cow and don’t eat beef, India despite being a secular nation has gone as far as to ban beef. If you come to India you will see 1000 people stop in the traffic and wait for a cow to pass by. But interestingly India is actually the third-largest exporter of beef in the world. My source is, “United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation” because IB is important.

The Indian flag consists of three main colors. Saffron, which is basically orange but my 2nd-grade teacher scared me enough to say it’s saffron, it stands for courage and sacrifice. If you flip through the pages of history in India, what stands out is the admiration of courage and the sacrifice of those who helped my nation stand on its feet. From Rani Lakhsmi Bai, Queen of Jhansi who aided in the uprising of independence and sacrificed herself in 1857 to Captain Vikram Batra, who was shot as he tried to save his comrade, in the Kargil war.

The white in the Indian flag represents peace and Justice. Rather interesting as the concept of Justice in the eyes of my government does conflict with the fact that it is easier to put a comedian behind bars for making religious jokes, or jokes against the government than it is to get a rapist behind bars. It is easy to be able to influence the law if you come from a higher cast, it is easy for you to get out of jail if you are a higher cast. It is easy to use a twisted concept of using one last name to put others in a hierarchy, which technically is illegal, but culturally is still ingrained in some parts of society and thus in the law of those societies.

But in 2012 the ground shook as millions and millions of people, young or old took to the streets. Every single street from Delhi to Mumbai was filled with humans, as people came out to protest against the government and their handling of sexual violence in India. That day is still seen as the day that the police and the politicians were afraid, of how millions of people were united for justice. There is justice in the hearts of people, people call out for justice, we fight for justice in our country, but our government makes it hard.

We are the largest democracy in the world and India ranks highest among internet shutdowns. It is the easiest way for the government to swoop in and force protestors/activists to keep quiet and not let anyone in the media or outside know what is happening. Currently, if I speak these words in India, I could be facing two years in jail. But does that stop Indians or me, no?

The white and the green in a way relate to the flag. When the subcontinent was split into India and Pakistan, right near the border with Pakistan in India, there is a shrine where Muslims would conduct their burial practices on the graves, however, after partition the Muslim community had to leave to Pakistan. The Sikhs coming into India from Pakistan came to this place. These Sikhs who live here now have taken it upon themselves to continue to maintain the graves, the practices, and the symbols, and to care for the shrine.

The green in the Indian flag stands for faith. India is a nation of diversity, we have 15 major languages and 844 different dialects. India holds a vast number of people from 8 different religions. With the new government in power, since 2016, their advocation of Hindutva, the belief that India is a Hindu nation and should adhere to the Hindu religion and its teaching. It has fueled a lot of the underlying organizations in India such as the RSS to come out again and spread their message of hate, to accelerate a shift in India from a secular nation to a nation being a Hindu Hegemony with religious hate.

New laws discriminating against religions, privileging Hinduism, have been on the rise and religious hate is currently fueling in India with frequent rather violent clashes in communities. After the government passed a religiously biased bill, for 3 months people were again united in protest. The government handled the protestors with violence, there were 65 deaths in these protests but to date, people from all religions, whether hampered by this law or privileged by this law, protest against it. It is courage and unity that brings by country together for justice for each other, despite the government actively bringing in their message of hatred, Indians try to hold on to our founding values of secularity

in our flag, for love and respect for each other as Indians, not as Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian or Jew.

I guess this is where I mention Kashmir, a disputed territory where politicians in the region have used religion as a way to spark hatred in the Hindu and Islam communities, to gain their own popularity at the expense of the people’s welfare. Those politicians bathe in joy as certain few, very loud, and very violent groups come together with this message of hatred and irrationally spar, and news of deaths and violence flow out of the valley.

Yet living in Kashmir the first three things you notice is the starking beauty of the place, the kindness of the people, and despite the violence the smiles people are trying to uphold. The people of Kashmir are the kindest people I have met, they have a rather funny sense of humor as well, and they are the most hopeful people I know. While Kashmir may be divided cause of the politics and the separatist groups in the region, the citizens of Kashmir, the core of Kashmir smile, they hope for their land and try to bring some laughter in their lives.

Ironically again the Ashoka Chakra, the circle in the midst of the flag, with 24 spokes to represent the wheel of time. It signifies that there is life in the movement forward and death in stagnation. Interestingly my government seems to be trying to push that wheel backward, and Indians trying to push it forward, away from the hands of the government and the groups that the government has influenced. I guess in a nutshell I could say that even as the government may not upload our flag and its values, Indians try their very best to do so. We hold hope for a better day, with courage, sacrifice, peace, justice, and unity.

I don’t share this story today to be able to say how bad my government is, or how India is struggling right now. I share this small glimpse into India to show the values of my flag and the fight to hold those values, and to hold the identity of India. To share a part of a conflict story about my nation, to observe how the world around us is and maybe find patterns, so maybe we can together find ways in ways to combat these issues, in a UWC way. ²

Jiana Kambo is a current student at UWC-USA. Being the daughter of an army officer, she was born and raised moving all around India. She has created a documentary aimed to alleviate the gender stereotypes in STEM fields, co-founding an Ex-Ed for the same at UWC called Lista! She is passionate about helping her community by being part of organizations such as IDEA (inclusivity, diversity, equity, access) at UWC-USA, as well as through her passion of engineeringinvolving herself in projects such as designing and creating a robotic composting bin to mitigate methane gas emissions during compost. She is still waiting for her letter from Hogwarts and deeply enjoys basketball, swimming and spending time with her friends and family.

Photos were taken by Victor Kazanjian except Valarie Kaur – artwork by Shepherd Fairey and Amplifier Art and Maria Crespo – photo and artwork by URI – United Religions Initiative