It's so great to be home! Back to the comforts of home after three months away (with 5-day and 9-day breaks in the first and second month) feels like a blessing. The laundry is done and I've been napping a lot. I don't have plans to work on team with CPT at the moment. I am looking forward to being home, to reading and running and practicing yoga and practicing conversational Spanish. Thanks to all of you who were supporting me in various ways during my month in Chicago. Here's one last look at one of the more fun activities we did, a peace song circle, posted by my colleague Chihchun. The page has links to video glimpses of other parts of the training.
This morning I went to federal court with about 10 people from TUMC, accompanying a long-standing fellow church member, a stateless Palestinian whose application for status in Canada has been in process for 14 years. You can read an article about him in an August issue of the Toronto Star, and it wouldn't hurt to send an e-mail to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day asking him to look at the 300 pages of evidence and reverse his decision. There's absolutely no grounds to believe that Youssef poses a threat to national interests, after all. On the contrary, granting him status would reflect well on Canada as a nation practicing justice.
In the meantime, please keep Youssef in your thoughts and prayers. He's in a very vulnerable place at the moment, feeling desperate at the continued separation from his family. I tried to encourage him by telling him the story of my parents' 14 years of refused immigration applications followed by miraculous permission; and encouraging him to hang in there by thinking of his children who need a better life. Canada can't deport him because he has nowhere to go; the refugee camp where he was born was destroyed. Why not let him and his family in?!? I hope the little crowd around Youssef in court this morning will help his chances, and I hope you'll all join to swell the ranks of the crowd and ask the government to give Youssef status.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Selected Quotations from my CPT Training Notes.
The way to get rid of an enemy is to turn him into a friend.
Justice: it will be better when everyone has enough.
A feeling of purpose or meaning in one’s life contributes to a sense of calm in difficult situations. What is my purpose, my meaning in life?
When coming out of a place of privilege, we can forget that our strongest power is the power of non-violent love, and rely instead on our privilege.
Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
The purpose of conflict transformation / non-violent communication is
- to return to a natural way of being, i.e. joy in interactions
- to free ourselves from pre-conditioned thinking
- to build life-serving organizations
Working on undoing oppression (my own and that of my society) is part of working out my salvation with fear and trembling.
Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.
The way out of the mess we have created will mean that people of privilege give something up.
But that’s ok, because there’s enough here for everyone.
Walls are better at keeping people in than at keeping people out.
Do you put a dollar’s worth of energy
into a nickel’s worth of conflict?
Welcome to the fiery furnace.
CPT is in here alongside Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego,
and is pulling the church in as well.
It’s not children’s responsibility to end violence.
They will stop violent play when they stop seeing it in their life.
My intention: to get “self” out of the way of relationships,
to be curious, to see, to ask questions, to enjoy.
Reconciliation is what God does with the enemy problem.
Justice: it will be better when everyone has enough.
A feeling of purpose or meaning in one’s life contributes to a sense of calm in difficult situations. What is my purpose, my meaning in life?
When coming out of a place of privilege, we can forget that our strongest power is the power of non-violent love, and rely instead on our privilege.
Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
The purpose of conflict transformation / non-violent communication is
- to return to a natural way of being, i.e. joy in interactions
- to free ourselves from pre-conditioned thinking
- to build life-serving organizations
Working on undoing oppression (my own and that of my society) is part of working out my salvation with fear and trembling.
Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.
The way out of the mess we have created will mean that people of privilege give something up.
But that’s ok, because there’s enough here for everyone.
Walls are better at keeping people in than at keeping people out.
Do you put a dollar’s worth of energy
into a nickel’s worth of conflict?
Welcome to the fiery furnace.
CPT is in here alongside Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego,
and is pulling the church in as well.
It’s not children’s responsibility to end violence.
They will stop violent play when they stop seeing it in their life.
My intention: to get “self” out of the way of relationships,
to be curious, to see, to ask questions, to enjoy.
Reconciliation is what God does with the enemy problem.
nearing the end of training
Just three and a half days of training to go. I have some assignments to complete this week yet, so I'm grateful for having evenings off for the rest of the week. I also hope to visit the Art Institute and go to one more concert of the Chicago Symphony. I fly back to Toronto at 6:00 on Sunday.
For those who were curious to hear more about our public witness (aka demonstration), I invite you to visit the article which appeared on Medill Reports. In the photo accompanying the article, I'm on the left, in the red toque and the yellow cape (I was handing out leaflets to traffic stopped at the red light, so needed to be visible). You can also read the official CPT report.
More to come once I get home!
For those who were curious to hear more about our public witness (aka demonstration), I invite you to visit the article which appeared on Medill Reports. In the photo accompanying the article, I'm on the left, in the red toque and the yellow cape (I was handing out leaflets to traffic stopped at the red light, so needed to be visible). You can also read the official CPT report.
More to come once I get home!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
learning and acting
We’ve covered a lot of ground in almost three weeks: the history and purpose non-violent direct action, conflict transformation and non-violent communication, spirituality for peace-making, organizing skills for working with media, inter-personal styles, CPT history and mission, undoing racism, trauma healing and self-care. Last week was particularly challenging for me, as we learned about non-violent communication. It’s a long time that I’ve been wanting to delve into this topic, and it feels like it will take me a long time to develop the skills I so badly want. Then I had some personal trouble during the two days of undoing racism, not related to the topic. It took its toll, but my fellow training participants were marvelously supportive. I feel very lucky to have them.
It’s a fabulous group: there are two Catholics in the group, one of them a nun who worked in Africa for 30+ years, the other an activist who goes to a really cool church with a woman priest. Both of them are warm and kind and loving, though their personalities seem different at first. Then there’s a retired minister from the UK who has spent chunks of time in Hebron, appreciates quiet and reads poetry. There’s a college grad who’s an activist and has a very inspiring faith. An older retired couple who came to activism when they joined with aboriginal people in their town to protest a uranium exploration project. Another woman grew up in Jamaica and has worked a lot with oppressed people. There’s a very cool and funny woman from New Jersey who has an amazing life story, and who has been a Mennonite for three years. The other Mennonites are just as interesting: a young woman from Taiwan who learned about CPT when she was on exchange in Goshen, a warm and funny retired missionary from Africa, a young social worker from the west coast who has a shining heart and faith, a musician/teacher/builder, and then there’s me. Everyone is inspiring and admirable in a different way, it seems, and I think I could work with any of them in the field, it things go that far.
Today was our second public witness: we visited Congressman Rahm Emanuel’s office to ask him to vote against any additional war funding. He’s a powerful Democrat who has been voting for war funding even though he is very vocal about opposing the war. Go figure that one out. Some of us stood with banners, leaflets and posters on the sidewalk outside the office, while others went inside to ask him to sign a pledge to oppose war funding. He wasn’t there, so they prayed and read a litany for the victims of the war, both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Outside on the sidewalk we read the same litany and sang peace songs.
I will tell you more about the events after the action at another time. Just now I wanted to invite you again to pray for our training group as people discern where to go from here, and of course to support the work of peacemakers everywhere. You can start by visiting CPT’s newly re-designed website! And please write me e-mails, I am really feeling quite homesick in spite of my great colleagues. Today especially was hard, because it's Richard's birthday! But I'll be home in 12 days.
It’s a fabulous group: there are two Catholics in the group, one of them a nun who worked in Africa for 30+ years, the other an activist who goes to a really cool church with a woman priest. Both of them are warm and kind and loving, though their personalities seem different at first. Then there’s a retired minister from the UK who has spent chunks of time in Hebron, appreciates quiet and reads poetry. There’s a college grad who’s an activist and has a very inspiring faith. An older retired couple who came to activism when they joined with aboriginal people in their town to protest a uranium exploration project. Another woman grew up in Jamaica and has worked a lot with oppressed people. There’s a very cool and funny woman from New Jersey who has an amazing life story, and who has been a Mennonite for three years. The other Mennonites are just as interesting: a young woman from Taiwan who learned about CPT when she was on exchange in Goshen, a warm and funny retired missionary from Africa, a young social worker from the west coast who has a shining heart and faith, a musician/teacher/builder, and then there’s me. Everyone is inspiring and admirable in a different way, it seems, and I think I could work with any of them in the field, it things go that far.
Today was our second public witness: we visited Congressman Rahm Emanuel’s office to ask him to vote against any additional war funding. He’s a powerful Democrat who has been voting for war funding even though he is very vocal about opposing the war. Go figure that one out. Some of us stood with banners, leaflets and posters on the sidewalk outside the office, while others went inside to ask him to sign a pledge to oppose war funding. He wasn’t there, so they prayed and read a litany for the victims of the war, both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Outside on the sidewalk we read the same litany and sang peace songs.
I will tell you more about the events after the action at another time. Just now I wanted to invite you again to pray for our training group as people discern where to go from here, and of course to support the work of peacemakers everywhere. You can start by visiting CPT’s newly re-designed website! And please write me e-mails, I am really feeling quite homesick in spite of my great colleagues. Today especially was hard, because it's Richard's birthday! But I'll be home in 12 days.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Training has begun!
With my 9th day of training behind me, I've reached a certain comfort level with the training content and with my colleagues. The house where most of us sleep (in bunk beds) and eat breakfast is located about a 45 minute walk from the training centre where we spend our days and evenings. Most people do this walk twice a day. We begin with worship from 8:15-9:00, and we take turns leading that. Our sessions then go from 9:00-12:00, from 2:30-5:30, and from 7:30 till 9:00. We've covered quite a lot of ground already, from Biblical basis for non-violence, to learning about public witness and non-violent direct action, to planning and carrying out our own public witness, to reviewing the history of CPT and using a tool to discuss our inter-personal styles. It's been intense, but I've managed to run a few times, usually with colleagues, and occasionally practice yoga. I need more sleep than I'm getting, but it's hard to unwind enough at the end of the day to get to bed at a decent hour. We've been passing around a cold, but I only had it for a day. So I'm actually doing great.
Like other training groups before us, our first public witness was to challenge Toys R Us to remove violent video games from their inventory. Part of this witness can be seen here. We will also carry out a public witness on January 15.
I'm learning a lot, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in the 3 weeks + remaining. Thanks for your support!
Like other training groups before us, our first public witness was to challenge Toys R Us to remove violent video games from their inventory. Part of this witness can be seen here. We will also carry out a public witness on January 15.
I'm learning a lot, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in the 3 weeks + remaining. Thanks for your support!
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