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The Human Face

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As I have mentioned several times, there are many nationalities here at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.  It struck me at some point how we were relating to one another – simply as human beings, and not on the basis of nationality or religion.  That may seem a pretty obvious thing to do, but it’s surprising how often we relate to others on the basis of difference, rather than on what unites us, that is, our common humanity.

We heard a speaker from Egypt last week talking about the problems of the Middle East, and a follow up discussion was organised for all those interested.  I joined a group of about 15 people from Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran sharing experiences and views about the Middle East.  
In that, and all the other discussions and training we have had, religion has not been something that divides us.  What has united us, apart from this basic humanity, has been our common concern to work for peace with justice.
Wherever you are are, seek to meet with people who are different to you, whatever that difference may be – race, religion, educational background, colour, political persuasion or indeed anything that would divide us one from another.  It is only in such engagement – putting a human face on those who are different – that we will be able to learn to understand and grow in our efforts for peace.
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Hurt People Hurt People

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I’ve been learning with an amazing group of people this week.  They come from all over the world, with a variety of backgrounds, and different faiths.  As this temporary community, we have thought about traumatic events, and how they affect our lives, and have shared stories with each other.  I consider it a great privilege to have been here this week.

We have thought about the hurts in our lives, and the hurts that we have seen in the lives of others, and how our reaction as ‘hurt people’ can often be to hurt other people.
We have seen examples of those who, sometimes with a great deal of support, have been able to escape from the cycles of violence in their lives, and find some measure of healing.
Especially moving was the account of how two members of a family in Texas took the brave step of making contact with the man who had murdered another family member.
The lives of the White family were changed forever in 1986, when Cathy was murdered.  Linda White (Cathy’s mother) and her granddaughter Amy (Cathy’s daughter) went through a year long process of preparing to meet Cathy’s killer, Gary Brown.
Gary was a classic example of ‘Hurt People Hurt People’.  Through the work of a restorative justice programme, Linda and Amy were able to meet Gary and tell him some of the devastating results of his crime in the life of their family.  
For more on this, read the account in the Houston press:   http://www.houstonpress.com/2001-09-27/news/face-to-face/
And for more on restorative justice, see Howard Zehr’s blog.  (Howard is a teacher here at EMU and widely regarded as one of the first to pioneer restorative justice)
Or for more general info on the subject:
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Rich Experience

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Today I started the second of the two courses I am taking here in Harrisonburg.  Strategies for Trauma Healing and Resilience …. It’s an intense course from 8.30 am – 5 pm, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for Blogging or looking at Mark’s Gospel.  So forgive me if the entries are a bit sparse for the next few days.

This week we have over 80 students, from 33 countries, the youngest of whom is only 17 – from Memphis Tennessee.  It’s a amazing and wonderful to be sharing stories with people from Iran, India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Afghanistan, Jordan, USA, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Mexico, El Salvador, Bolivia, Canada, Israel, Egypt, Korea, Burma …. that’s the ones I can remember for now.
A rich experience!
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Jam and the Pink Cadillac

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Today was the last day of my brief trip down to the South West of Virginia to see some real bluegrass music.  

I arrived at the Floyd Country Store at lunchtime and decided to try the Barbeque Platter, which was verry nice!  A quick detour then to see some of the sights along the Blue Ridge Parkway, where I visited an old mill and sampled some more bluegrass, this time accompanied by some dancing!
After the Sunday Bluegrass Jam back at Floyd, I sadly returned to Harrisonburg, but decided to stay off the Interstate as far as possible.  (The interstate is only a dual carriageway, and with 18 wheeler trucks thundering by it’s not conducive to relaxed driving)
So on route 11, I came across the Pink Cadillac Diner.  I couldn’t resist going in and buying a coffee, and had a brief conversation with a rather bemused woman at the till who couldn’t quite understand why I was so taken with the place.
I stopped a few times on the journey to take a few snaps.  What was interesting me more than anything was the broken down abandoned clapboard houses and barns that are as frequent a sight as churches!
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The Floyd Country Store

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I’ve driven over 150 miles to get to this place, so it had better be good.  Of course, it is.  It’s amazing, if a bit touristy.  (I can’t complain, I’m a tourist too).  I can’t say that I know a great deal about the bluegrass and gospel music, but I know enough to appreciate what’s happening.

Floyd is a little place, with one stop sign and a few shops.  I don’t get to see much of it tonight, as I want to make sure I get a seat for the Friday Night Jamboree.  I arrive to find it filling up nicely, and just about to start at 6.15 pm.  It costs me $4.00 to get in.  Wow!  It’s filled to capacity (275, it says on the fire notice) by the time the show gets under way.
The MC welcomes everyone, and before the first band, he invites someone to come and open in prayer!  Hey, that’s a first.  A concert with an opening prayer.  I feel as though I am back in my childhood as he opens his prayer with the words “Almighty God, our heavenly Father ..”  What a wonderful way to kick things off.  He prays for the bands that are to play, for safe travel, and for those of us visiting tonight.
We get an hour of gospel songs (I’ll fly away, Keep on the sunny side etc), which is a good start, but things really get into gear when the second band come on at 7.30.   I have already struck up a conversation with Jim and his wife, (I never did get her name) next to me, and she tells me it’s about to get interesting.  As the Jugbusters are setting up, I can hear some loud clacking noises, as people walk past me towards the front.  The sound comes from their shoes, which look to have bottle tops screwed into the soles, which make a mighty fine sound when they all start dancing.
As soon as the band start, the dance floor becomes a mass of gently undulating swaying bodies, accompanied by the click of their dancing shoes.  There are all ages dancing, from little children to an older man with overalls, a long white beard and a wide brimmed hat.  He is having a great time, and is even happy to stop when a tourist wants to take a photo of him.  Some of the older men (I guess in their 70’s) dancing have a kind of studied, slightly self conscious look on their face as they look into the middle distance.  They are taking this seriously!
In the interval, we have a raffle, which makes me feel at home, but I don’t win.  The MC has a prize for the person who has travelled the furthest to be there, and unfortunately, it’s not me.  There are people from Ireland, Sweden, Holland, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia visiting, to name a few.
The last band is the Sigmon Stringers, a family band from North Carolina.  The youngest is a 7 year old fiddle player.  That was neat!  At about 10.15 pm, after they have played for an hour or so, the MC gets up and thanks everyone for coming … “You don’t need to rush off folks, we’ll be here for a while clearing up an’ all”  The crowd drift off slowly into the night, and emerge from the country store to hear the sound of a banjo, guitar and fiddle being played by some young folks, sitting outside, just up the street.
More from Floyd tomorrow.
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Floyd

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Today is Friday.  It’s the last day of the first class I am taking here.  Most people have gone off campus to return on Monday, and I am driving down to a little town called Floyd, to investigate the music.  http://www.floydcountrystore.com/

It’s a town that has one stop light, and sounds like going back to the 60’s – flower power etc.  The flower power era had a peace emphasis, but as far as I remember it was mostly about protesting against the Vietnam war.  One of the ways in which the Mennonite church has made a contribution in the last 50 years is in changing their focus from simply protesting and withdrawing from conflicts to engaging positively with conflict in a peacebuilding way.  I am looking forward to seeing what I can learn about peace and peacemaking as I visit the town of Floyd.
I’ll report back tomorrow hopefully.
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Out Of His Mind ? Mark 3:19b-27

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Mark 3:19b-27  

I probably should have been putting links in to the relevant Bible passage, so here it is if you want to read it:

http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+2:23+-+3:6&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

Jesus comes home, at least that’s what it most likely means.  He was probably living at the home of Peter’s extended family.  The crowds are back again.  And for some reason, people close to Jesus try to ‘lay hold on him’.  They’re not happy with the way things are going, and they have some concerns about the way Jesus is in himself.  The Greek word is existemi, which means in this context – out of balance, out of alignment, out of his mind … 

That gives Jesus’ opponents a way in to score a point.  Their thinking might have been along these lines:  if Jesus’ own friends are concerned about him, use this to take advantage of the situation.  They go a step further and say that Jesus is evil – his power comes from the devil.

Well, if I’m looking at the Gospel through conflict eyes, there’s no shortage here!  All the various conflicts that have been referred to in the Gospel already are here! Conflict between Jesus and his own circle, (whether it is family or friends), between Jesus and the authorities and between Jesus and evil.

I’m making connections now with the political situation here in America.  I’m a novice when it comes to American Politics, so these observations may not be very deep or well informed, but what I think they do is point to the insecurities that we all feel, and the speed with which we can make judgments, usually to bolster our own position.

President Obama just made a speech at Cairo University.  

Link to the relevant page on the  BBC website (which has a video link for the whole speech)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8082676.stm

The speech has generally been well received as good news.  It seems to build on other things that the president has said that indicate some changes of the approach to the Middle East in this American administration.

However, one of the members of our class, a church pastor, had a call on his mobile phone that took him out of class this morning.  It was a member of his congregation, ringing to ask if he (the pastor) thought that President Obama is the antichrist because of the nature of his engagement with the Arab (Muslim) world.

Sometimes we confuse what is good with what is evil.  We wrongly identify a work of God as a work of the devil.  Or sometimes we’re just not quite sure to make of what we see and hear.  Our beliefs and preconceptions prevent us from seeing and hearing things clearly.

Again, a question I want to ask is ‘What are you afraid of?’

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Engaging the Powers. Mark 3:13-19

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Mark 3:13-19

In which Jesus appoints 12 to be apostles (messengers of the Kingdom).  In common with elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus sends his followers out to do three things:
to proclaim the message of the Kingdom, to heal and to cast out evil spirits.
We’ve been having some discussions in our class about the nature of evil and what it means to confront evil.  Experiences from the two thirds world suggest that our post enlightenment scientific world view is not capable of explaining all that we see and experience.  This comes as a bit of a shock to those who think that science is the end of everything.  (The view that a scientific worldview has put an end to other ways of seeing the world, along with the view that science is also the end (as in goal) of everything).
One of our friends here is from a Mennonite congregation in Colombia.  Like most Christians working in similar settings, he has witnessed individuals being delivered from the power of evil spirits.  His view is that evil presents itself in different ways according to the culture.  Evils in the Global North & West are more likely to be encountered in the structures and institutions that work to maintain oppression and injustice.
What I am learning here is that there is much to be done, in different ways,  to engage with the powers that prevent people from living with peace and justice.  Part of the Mennonite way of engaging with evil is a commitment to Pacifism.  However this does not equate to passivism!  
‘The ‘Pac’ part is traced back to the Latin word, Pax that means peace or harmony.  Fism derives from the suffix ficus which comes from the Latin ficere that means to act or take action.’  
The word pacifism then is to do with acting in such a way to bring peace.  In the Bible the Greek word eirenopoios (peacemakers, Matthew 5:9) is translated into Latin as pacifici, which means those who work for peace.  
I am praying that those of us who would call ourselves followers of Jesus discover more about ways of living such that peacemaking and peacebuilding flow from our daily lives.
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Crossing Boundaries Mark 3:7-12

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Mark 3:7-12
In which Jesus is followed by great crowds.  Jesus’ fame has spread!  They come from many different places, including Tyre and Sidon.  In Matthew’s Gospel, (15 v 21) Jesus meets a Canaanite woman from this region.  It’s clear that Jesus initially doesn’t want to have much to do with her, but as the conversation develops, he decides to help her.  His mission would cross boundaries of language, ethnicity and background.


It struck me that here in Mark 3, Jesus is already attracting attention from people who come from different areas, and different ethnic backgrounds.

Today is an especially good day to remember this as today is Pentecost Sunday, in which Christians remember the coming of the Spirit to all peoples.  We thought about this in church today.  (I went to one of the Mennonite churches in Harrisonburg today)

To convey to the children present that God’s Spirit is at work all round the world, we heard a verse of the reading from Acts 2 in Arabic (Egypt), Portuguese (Brazil), German (American with German antecedents), Chinese (China), and Kirundi (Burundi).

Today we celebrate the power of God’s Spirit to bring together people from all backgrounds. Really  Good News not only travels fast, as it has done here in Mark’s Gospel, but it travels far.  It travels across boundaries that are otherwise impossible to penetrate.

In my time here, I have reminded of the central message of peace in the Gospels.  The ‘Jesus Project’ is at its heart one of peace and reconciliation.