Peace as Empowerment

I am especially fascinated by intractable conflicts, those seemingly stuck conflicts that recycle the same arguments endlessly over and over again. Such conflicts cause horrific suffering, loss of life, destruction of property, terrible grief, and yet, the parties cannot get past the conflict, cannot just get over it and it keeps on going from generation to generation. The conflict I am most familiar with that fits this description is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though the wider War on Terror of the Islamic War against the United States and parts of the Western world is showing signs of becoming such a long-term intractable conflict. It is fascinating to me that incredibly intelligent, well-educated military leaders, polititians, and diplomats, trying their very best to find their way out of these conflicts, inevitably fall back on avoiding looking weak by using force to retaliate against violence, threats, bluster, shows of force, and manipulation of all kinds. Creativity and inspiration in finding novel, new and innovative solutions to these conflicts is so rare as to be almost non-existent. We are caught up in a kind of verbal rhetoric that can see only two options: violence/force or the soft option of pacifism and non-violence. That's it, them's your two options. When you are dealing with human beings who want to be safe, whose lives are on the line and who want to survive, it isn't any wonder that when push comes to shove, most humans choose the option of force thy neighbor. (When you are being threatened with death, non-violence looks like certain death. It doesn't look like a real option to most people.) Why is this so? Why can't we get creative about these things?

To come up with new and effective approaches to peace-making in the arena of intractable conflict, one needs a good understanding of how such conflicts arise and what keeps them in place. Having grappled with these issues for many years, the explanation that makes the most sense to me starts with the fact that human beings are language making creatures and that we create whole worlds out of words, that is, our worlds arise out of the meanings that we make out of what goes on around us and between us. All humans have inherited language systems, that are based on finding something wrong in the world, either in what other people have done to us or by making ourselves wrong. Hence our tendency to blame other people. And if they are wrong, then I (and my group, my people) am right and good. When we have a traumatic event happen to us, something we didn't expect and which was painful, we try to come to terms with it by explaining it to ourselves and other people in language. We make up a story about it, or an explanation or interpretation, if you will, about what it means, and tell it to ourselves and to other people over and over again until that becomes the truth about what actually happened. This is the stuff of conflict. I have my view. You have your view. When a group buys into a story of what happened to its group caused by another group (its enemy) you have the start of an intractable conflict. The heart of an enduring conflict is the human propensity of tit for tat. I don't like what you did to me. It hurt. I will make you feel pain just like you inflicted on me. Maybe when you feel what it feels like you'll stop it. So you seek revenge and you hurt that person or someone in his group. He doesn't like it one bit. So he turns around and inflicts pain on you or your group. You don't like it and so you turn around and inflict it right back. Meanwhile everyone is telling stories about how horrible the other side is and embellishing it with all kinds of details about what kind of people they are, how they won't negotiate, how they hate our people and want to exterminate us, or what have you. Our leaders want to appear strong and powerful so they won't do anything to risk getting thrown out of office; no soft and mushy approaches to peacemaking for us! Wouldn't want that now would we! And the killing goes on . . . . .

Now, one of the things that makes solving these conflicts so difficult is that humans on this planet really are at very different levels of growth and development. Some cultures are more evolved technologically, economically, educationally and in their level of health care than others, making for the disparities between the haves and the have nots that so plague the world today. It's not fair, it doesn't seem right but there you have it. We're just all at different stages. It's not right or wrong; it just is. Some kids are learning to crawl. Some kids are teenagers. Some people are in their thirties. Some people are in their sixties. It's not right or wrong. It's just how life is. People develop at different rates and cultures apparently develop at different rates as well. (For a great explanation about why this is so see Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel.)

There appear to be three major developmental stages alive and well among peoples of the world right now. The oldest stage is often called the tribal stage and goes back about 3000 or so years to the times when humans lived in hunter-gatherer or early agricultural groups. Your tribe was all you knew and you depended completely for survival on your tribe. Outsiders were dangerous and suspect. It was truly us against them. This is a fear-based developmental stage and despite the fact that its origins are go so far back in human history, it is alive and well on the planet. Witness what happened during the war in Bosnia or the genocide in Rwanda.

The next stage to come along in human development was the egoic- stage and this began sometime around 500 BC with the appearance of key spiritual figures like Lao Tsu, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, among others on the world stage. These figures pointed toward a relationship with God that was internal and based upon self-reflection, something altogether new in human evolution. People began to think for themselves for the first time and this set the stage for the beginnings of real science and the development of technology, artistic achievements, books, the law and so much of the learning and accomplishment that we have come to think of as the crowning glories of western civilization. So this is a stage about thinking, reason, doing, and most of all about the coming into being of the self, the me, the ego.

There is a new stage of human development that is emerging on the planet, a stage which is called by some the wholistic stage or the world-centric stage. By most accounts it has barely begun. The idea here is that there is a shift in consciousness going on away from the tribe and away from the self (the narcisstic focus on me and my needs) and toward the needs of "us", the whole planet, the entire human race and indeed, in some iterations of this, to the entire cosmos. This is indeed a radically different way to think about and to be in the world. Most of us can't even wrap our minds around it, so used are we to being comfortable and to putting our own needs and that of our families first.

There are many theorists thinking and writing in this realm but my favorities are Ken Wilber and Don Beck. Wilber has divided these stages into many more sub-stages and Don Beck has divided cultural development into what he calls memes, which he codes by color. This is fascinating work for two reasons: it explains why we have such intractable conflicts between different cultures on the planet, especially between so-called advanced cultures and less advanced ones and secondly, because it doesn't criticize any culture for being where they are developmentally. You cannot blame a culture for where it is developmentally because that would be like blaming a teenager for being moody. That's just what teenagers do! Duh! The thing is to provide space and structure and support so that teenagers can grow into magnificent adults.

Now what do you do when you have two nations or ethnic groups caught up in an apparently intractable conflict in which one side is coming from strongly tribal place and the other side is coming from a strongly rational, egoic place? They claim that they can't talk to each other, that there is no one to negotiate with! We can't talk to the other side because there is no one (of good faith) to talk to! They are all killers on the other side! The rhetoric goes on and on. The killing goes on and on. The shouting and the condemnation of the other side goes on and on. Revenge, killing, more revenge, more weeping, more funerals. Meanwhile, of the generations that manage to grow up under such conditions, for example, in Israel-Palestine, some young people grow up in despair and turn to violence, some turn to authoritarianism or fundamentalist religion, and some just grow up numb with no sense of a future. They become joyless robots. What kind of a life is this? It isn't really living at all. That's the point.

The key to all of this however, is language and the meaning that comes from language. Stories about the meaning of the conflict are passed down in each group, and that story becomes the narrative of their group and most people accept it unquestionningly as the truth about how things are. It is possible though, for human beings to complete their stories of the past, to finally and absolutely let go of and be done with the stories and interpretations that they have made up about the past, stories and interpretations that have previously crippled them and robbed them of true aliveness and joy in life. When individual human beings complete the stories they made up about the meanings of their past, they are then free to invent new possibilities to live into, to create a brand new future for themselves and their loved ones. This is known as transformation. When someone gives up a very constraining story from their past, particularly one that had them going through life either as a chronic victim or chronic perpetrator, they are then free to act with true effectiveness and true power in life. Extraordinary freedom is the result. We know this from the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who have been involved in individual transformation work around the world in the past thirty years or so. It certainly has been true in my own life.

Here's the question then. If such transformation, and the miracles that it brings, is possible for individuals, is it possible that whole groups of people, especially social groups that are stuck in recurring conversations (interpretations of their history) that give rise to intractable conflict, could choose to deliberately change those conversations and hence end the conflicts that they have been engaged in? Is it possible that social groups that are at earlier developmental levels might choose to empower themselves so that they and their kith and kin might be able to design and create lives that were full of inspiration and excitement, lives worth living? What if the young people who today strap on vests of explosives and explode themselves and others out of, despair and hopelessness about a future here on earth (trading it for an imagined one in paradise) instead were inspired to create a new future for themselves and their people right here, right now? They could have it, they could do it!

What if a torrent of economic activity that would knock your socks off could be unleashed in the Middle East that would put Hong Kong to shame? What if a new architecture, a new kind of road system and city planning were designed and created that took one's breath away because it so matched the natural environs of the Holy Land? What if Jerusalem, that precious bit of land that two religions now fight over, instead became the world's first truly Open City, open to all three Abrahamic religions and the holy sites were administered by the Buddhists? (I owe this idea to Don Beck.) What if a new way of being and living together, a path of healing and reconciliation among previously warring people arose in Israel/Palestine that had never been seen before in the world? It is possible. Anything is possible--anything! All it takes is people declaring that they are ready, that they are sick to death of the killing, the dying, the maiming, and crippling, the burning of flesh, and picking up bits of bodies. It takes people declaring that they are willing to try what has never been tried before because they want their children and grandchildren to live a life worth living, to laugh and dance on the face of this planet with the sun in their face, while the gentle wind ruffles their hair. That is a future worth living for and it is within our grasp. We have only to decide.

Questions of Inquiry:
1. How can a whole culture or society be engaged such that they make a choice to radically change their future?
2. What kind of world do you want your children, grandchildren and great great grandchildren to inherit?
3. What can we do to change our conversations about peace and violence and enemy-making? Would it be worth changing those conversations to make a better world for our grand kids?

Activism vs. Peace-Making

The other night I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in a long time and was surprised to discover that she has become a passionate, and incredibly busy peace activist. This woman, who has always been a fierce, proud and strong woman, is now more fiery than ever. Her sons are teenagers and she is doing everything she can to keep them out of the clutches of military recruiters. I understood, as she spoke about this, how deep her love for her sons is, and that she is absolutely committed that her sons not be killed in a senseless war that she completely disagrees with. She has also become convinced that 9-11 was an inside job, and is totally certain that a conspiracy took down the Twin Towers--a conspiracy of the US government. What is it that spurs her on in her quest to enlighten others about this conspiracy theory? Is it grief at the loss of life on 9-11? Is it powerlessness at being unable to affect this government's actions? Is it rage? I thought about her for a long time after I left her that evening.

One has to wonder about the huge expenditure of energy she, and others like her, are pouring into this cause and other peace and justice causes, and whether or not their expenditure of energy is effective. The question of effectiveness, when it comes to making peace and stopping violence, is one that is a central concern for me. I don't want to just try to solve problems of injustice and violence. I want to make a difference, a huge difference in how people behave with one another. I want the killing and violent death to stop, or at least decrease in our world. I want to turn my attention today to the difference between activism and true peace-making. For I think these are very different things that come from different places and lead to different results.

The peace activists that I have known, and I've known many, are passionate people, who almost always take very strong stands on behalf of a cause or some victimized people. The activist perceives that a wrong or an injustice has been done by an oppressor or a perpetrator to this weaker party and the oppressor/perpetrator, usually someone with greater power, will get away with their wrongdoing unless attention is called to their actions by the activist and his/her community. Usually, but not always, activists use the techniques of non-violence and hold demonstrations, carry signs and protest, chant and sing, pass petitions, hold marches and do anything they can to call public attention to their cause. If they are arrested, most are trained not to resist the arrest. Underneath all this is the hope that if enough attention can be drawn to the specific issue or problem, more and more people will join the ranks of the protesters and eventually, those causing the problem will see the foolishness of continuing in their current course and give in or give up. The problem with all this is that it doesn't often succeed. For example, huge peace demonstations were held all over the world in opposition to the War in Iraq in the days leading up to the start of that war in April 2003, an utterly amazing simultaneous outpouring of passionate feeling all over the planet. I was part of it and it was an extraordinary thing. But it did not set back the war by one hour or stop the killing of one person. Did it accomplish anything? Well yes, it made those of us who participated feel a sense of wonder and awe at how many of us there were who were opposed to the war and how many of us would take to the streets to voice our opposition. Did it accomplish anything else? Hm. . . You tell me.

In my own life I have abandoned activism almost completely in favor of another way of being and doing in the world: peace-making, and it is altogether a different ball of wax. To tell the truth I even had reservations about participating in the demonstrations against the War in Iraq but it was as clear as day to me that the whole thing was going to be a total fiasco from the get-go that I felt like I had to scream out to somebody, "Don't do it! It's going to turn out very, very badly! It's going to be a big, big mess. Stop while you still can." Maybe I've learned a few things since then. But here's the real question: why doesn't activism accomplish anything most of the time? I think the answer is that it is based on a simple psychological human truth--it is based on making people wrong. The activist picks up his or her sign or bull-horn and he or she is saying loudly to the world, "There is something wrong here! So and so did this terrible wrong to these poor people. There is an injustice being perpetrated and it's not okay. It must stop." The implication is, you all, you awful perpetrators of this injustice are bad people, shame on you!! Stop it, stop it, stop it!!! The other part of the equation is that I, your accuser, am a good guy and I am right. I have never done anything wrong and so I am superior to you. Now, I don't know about you, but every time in my life when anyone, I mean anyone has ever told me I was a perpetrator, that I was bad or had wronged someone or said shame on you, I had one of two responses: I got defensive and made all kinds of excuses or I got angry and wanted to fight. There may have been times (like in the principal's office) when I hung my head and looked at the floor, but you can bet your bottom dollar I left out of there cursing up a storm inside my head and ran home furious and crying with shame and embarassment. I may even have done what that more powerful person made me do in punishment but I didn't like it! I don't think I'm any different from the rest of humanity.

I think this is just how human beings are. We don't like being made wrong and we can't stand it when people act like they're right and therefore morally superior to us. And it doesn't matter whether your name is Bill Clinton and the people making you wrong are Republicans fussing at you about Monica Lewinsky or whether you are George Bush and the people fuming at you are Democrats pissed off at you for lying and taking us to war in Iraq. Neither one of them likes or liked being criticized, attacked or told they did it wrong. So, if this is true, and you have a bunch of people in an administration in Washington who are notoriously un-introspective, secretive and paranoid and running a government based on how wonderful we are because we are protecting the American people from terrorism, how do you get their attention that their might be a better way to do things? You might have to come at them a whole different way.

The standard I'm right/you're wrong approach is completely human and completely understandable. It is the way of the world since humans invented speech and this either/or way of thinking may even be based in the brain. We all do it and we do it automatically; it's a habit of thinking with us, but thank goodness, one that can be broken. The problem with it is that, when it comes to conflict and intractable problems, especially ones of violence and war, this kind of public discourse in response to it is not workable or helpful. In fact, the either/or, good/bad stuff can make the situation much, much worse. Not only do you have people in dire distress in the war zone itself, but then when you add defenisve, reactive political and military leaders into the mix you have an even worse human mess to deal with. So how about transcending the either/or dynamic entirely into a both/and dynamic? A what? What the hell is she talking about? This is where the peace-making comes in.

This other way has been described as the Third Way and it has to do with engaging with the enemy, approaching them and finding out, what are they so upset about. The either/or voice says immediately: "Horrors! I couldn't do that! They might kill me! How do I know they wouldn't beat me up?" Well you don't. On the other hand, they don't know that you won't kill them! But our fears about engaging with the enemy, be the enemy a family member we haven't talked to in twenty years, the murderer that killed our daughter, or the ethnic group that killed off members of our tribe, are usually far worse than the actual experience of sitting down face to face and listening to our enemy speak. There are people who know how to set up such meetings. They are skilled in teaching you how to put all your judgments, opinions and defenses aside so you can just be there, fully present to the person you are meeting. You go there with one goal only, to be open to them and to learn what it is like to be them. If you are very, very lucky you will receive an extraordinary gift; your enemy will tell you what it is like to be him or her. You will walk a mile in his shoes and, most amazing of all, you will see yourself as your enemy sees you. This may be uncomfortable but your enemy has given you a great gift. They have held up a mirror to you.

Now is this the truth about you? Is this something to fight about? Certainly not! Why not? Because it is simply a view of who you are.There are 6.5 billion views on the planet and this is one of them and perhaps his kin and countrymen share a similar one of you and your countrymen. But it is only a view! When you understand that, you understand that all your opinions and judgments about what your enemy has been doing and who he has been being are also a view and your view has as much validity as his, and no more. Then, as the scales fall from your eyes, you begin to see a human being in front of you, who is trying to feed and clothe his family, who may be simply trying to do a good job, who is trying to make some sense out of living and dying here on this spinning globe. He or she has had losses too and has struggled with some of the very same concerns that have troubled you. We are not so very different, my enemy and me. We are connected at the heart. It doesn't matter whether your enemy is called George Bush/Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld or whether he is an Islamic terrorist or someone else who appears to be denying your kith and kin some joy and happiness. This person can be seen, heard, understood, embraced, from a far wider place, than we have ever understood before.

This kind of approach is not an easy one and is not palatable to those who are committed to pointing out injustice and calling for just solutions to the inequities and violence so endemic in our world. I totally support accountability, calling people who are hurting other people to account for the pain they are causing other people. But somehow this needs to be done in a human context, in a way that invites the other, the perpetrator, the oppressor, the enemy, into a conversation where we join in our humanity, making room for finding solutions where previously none were possible. One might even say that this is a risky or dangerous path, for to some in our families and communities it may look as if we have betrayed them, gone over to the enemy. Not so. In the spaciousness created by listening to each other from a both/and perspective in which we are simply human together, something mysterious sometimes arises: an atmosphere that allows people to grow and expand, to learn and to be more than they ever were before (when they were so busy fighting). Shifts begin to happen, miracles occur, the inexplicable begins to happen with considerable regularity. Life becomes a lot more interesting and a lot more fun.


Questions of Inquiry:
1. How do people get addicted to being right and making other people wrong? What is the rush that comes with angrily denouncing other people's behavior? Has being denounced and made wrong ever made you truly willing to stand up and take responsibility for your wrongs? How often? How willingly?
2. Could the Red vs. Blue state divide in this country be, in the final analysis, about people being right and making other people wrong, about what they believe and how they choose to live? What if we truly listened to each other and made space for each other? What if deep listening were a normal practice in all our political discourse? in all our community organizations?
3. Do you have other ideas for really effective peace-making?

If We Really Wanted to Make a More Peaceful World

If we really wanted to make a more peaceful world, what would we do? What if it was up to you and me? What would you do? If you think President Bush is doing it wrong, what would you do differently? If you don't like those terrorists exploding themselves in car bombs in Iraq or in the subways in London or God forbid, slamming more airplanes into buildings in our own country, how would YOU get them to stop? We tend to think creating peace is something that the experts are supposed to do, the politicians, the diplomats, the top elected officials, and then the rest of us go to war when they tell us to or we complain loudly when we think it was a mistake, but aside from that, most of us have delegated the job of peace-making to someone else, to those people whose job it is or to those saintly creatures who choose to work in war-torn lands trying to get people to love each other. And they end up getting themselves kidnapped and their fool heads cut off. Yeah, right! Fat chance I'm gonna do anything like that! Naw, leave me to my beer and to my SUV and my mortgage. I've got plenty enough to think about thank you.

Yet, when I look around at my fellow American citizens I see a lot of people who are either overtly or covertly in anguish about conflict in their lives. When people you know get honest with you they will tell you that the real suffering in their lives comes from conflicts that they can't solve: with their husbands, their children (especially with teenagers), with siblings, with friends and co-workers and neighbors. Most people are just trying to get by and be happy. They're trying to make it. They're trying to live the American dream. They're trying to have some good stuff: a house, a car, a vacation once in a while, send the kids to college and help the kids out when they get married, nothing big or grandiose. But gosh, it's so darn hard! People suffer about money and they suffer about health problems it's true, but when you get right down to it, the worst suffering of all for human beings is the suffering we have about relationships, when we feel dis-connected from, blamed, made wrong or isolated from those we love and care about. I have a hunch that if our relationships were generous, supportive and loving, then whatever money or health problems we had, we could handle them. But far too many of us feel powerless and helpless when it comes to dealing with the people in our lives and we end up screaming at people we care about, saying things we wish we hadn't said and feeling like we're making things worse instead of better. We don't live in peace with those closest to us and we don't live in peace with ourselves. How could we possibly make a difference with the friggin' planet for christ's sake???

And yet, I am convinced, from long study of how human beings have developed and evolved, how human beings behave and how the human brain works, but most of all, from long practice in making myself into a more peaceful person, that humans have the capacity to be far, far happier, serene, joyous, playful, fulfilled, self-expressed, and yes, peaceful than we have ever dreamed. What holds us back? What don't we choose to build a more loving world? Why do we keep suffering when we could be so much happier? Interesting question!!! Closely linked to that question is another one: if humans decided that they were sick of violence, war, suffering and the loss that comes with armed conflict, what actions could we take to begin to create a more peaceful world? To me those are the most interesting questions in the whole world.

To begin with, if we had decided that we wanted a more peaceful world, the most obvious place to begin would be to begin with ourselves. We would have to confront, if we were serious about it, the possibility of creating peace in our own relationships. And for most of us, that would open up a whole can of worms that we might not want to face. Because most of us have it that conflict is tough, nasty, difficult. We want someone else to solve it. Or we want easy recipes. Give me three simple rules to follow, do A, B and C, good, I'll do that, hm . . . why didn't the person respond? Why are they still angry at me? Give me a formula: I know, I'll talk in I statements, I want this, will you please do that? Johnny, don't throw the toy! Use your words. No, you may not hit your sister! So, in general, most of these band-aid approaches to conflict resolution will remain simply that: first aid, pulled out in the heat of conflict when, in desperation because you don't know what else to do, you'll try anything, even something you read in an article or heard about in a workshop.

However, if you truly want to make peace in your relationships, nothing short of a revolution is required, at least that is my experience. And such a revolution (one might call it a velvet revolution) might be the single most powerful, single most important journey or transformational experience anyone might experience in their lifetime, simply because the payoffs and the rewards in one's relationships with other people are so great. Is there some great secret in all this work? Because if there is, why not get it right now, right at the beginning and save oneself a lot of grief? Ah, if it were only that easy! If only human beings just threw themselves at their trainers and teachers and said, "I'm here to learn, teach me everything you know about how communicate, love and end conflict with others? How can I create peace?" And the wise sage would say something like: "walk a mile in their shoes!"

"But, but, I don't wanna, I don't feel like it! It's too hard." "Then walk three miles!" The creation of peace, I have discovered, is something like building a bridge to another person, especially to someone you hate or dislike and crossing over that bridge until you can be inside the other person's skin. I was watching Dr. Phil yesterday and a young woman was on who was suffering greatly because her mother is a drug addict who is still using crack cocaine and refuses to give it up (mom looked to be in her 50's). Dr. Phil's counsel was that she could love her mother but she did not have to choose to be around her and most especially she did not have to expose her children to their grandmother. I would expand and amplify Dr. Phil's counsel, wise as it was, so that this young woman could find more and more peace over time with who her mother is and who she is not. She may need to give up her judgments of her mother as bad and wrong for not being there for her when she was a child (boy is that a tough one to do!). She may need to envision or imagine the conditions or traumas that led her mother to seek the solace of drugs which led her to get addicted and so disempowered her that she cannot imagine a life without drugs. All we can do, when those we love are hurting themselves, is to open our hearts wider and wider, love them more, understand them more and, at the same time, we do not have to let them hurt us any more or hurt anyone we care for. A delicate balancing act but it can be done. Peacemaking forces you to grow up.

You begin to discover the blessings that come when you give up making other people wrong and give up holding on to your own righteousness. We are so good at this, we humans. We love, love, love to blame other people. We love to make ourselves superior to other people. Well, if I were president, I wouldn't have taken us to war in Iraq! Well, at least I wouldn't have lied about it! At least I would ask other people for help or seek other peoples' opinions. I would admit when I was wrong. Yeah, right! She shouldn't wear a dress like that. She's too fat. He has no business dating a woman that young. Yada, yada, yada . . . . that's what our minds are doing all day long, judging, assessing, evalutating, making other people wrong, finding fault with them, patting ourselves on the back. Yet should someone criticize us, or someone we love, and there's holy hell to pay!

We think there is something to be gained by taking an unrelenting stand for how terribly someone behaved toward us in the past, declaring heroically, as I heard someone do on a talk show yesterday, "I don't do that forgiveness stuff,". He abused me, he used me, she lied to me, he violated me, etc. etc. I do truly believe in calling people to account for acts of violence and violation. However, when our calling to account is unsuccessful, there comes a time when the majestic banner of heroism and justice must be laid to rest. Could it be that sometimes we are so dramatic and so superior in our calling other people to account for their behavior to us, that there is simply no room for them to be human, no space or place for grace, for dignity, for humanity to emerge? I say this as someone who finally realized, after sixteen years of being disowned by my family, that I had mastered the role of victim like nobody's business. If there were an award for drama queen, an Oscar for best Victim of the Year (no the Decade!), I would have won it. That's how good I was at making other people feel bad at what they had done to me. There comes a time to move on in life. And guess what, once you've given up the victim role, life is so much softer, simpler and more spacious. Giving up victimhood opens up the possibility of truly loving other people and truly living in peace alongside and with other people.

Perhaps the most powerful peacemaking tool of all is the simple act of listening, deeply listening, listening with full attention, with all one's heart and soul. Such listening is altogether rare in our world and I am convinced that if we used it in politics, war would indeed be rare. We have a saying in The Compassionate Listening Project, the organization in which I am deeply involved: An enemy is someone whose story we have not yet heard. To listen deeply is to hear and experience the world in a new way and to understand our common humanity with someone whose life may be radically different than our own. To dare to listen, even when you don't want to, is a courageous act. To listen with the ears of your heart, to shush the yammerings of your mind and listen even more deeply is a bold and difficult thing. Our world could use more of it in these dangerous days.

Questions of Inquiry:
1. What are the skills of everyday peacemaking that you use? What can you do to create peaceful relations in your family? your workplace? your religious community?
2. What can we do to create a more peaceful political discourse and rhetoric in our media and between and among our political leaders?
3. What ideas do you have for creative engagement with the Moslem/Arabic worlds and healing the splits caused between them and the Western world brought on by terrorism?