Creative Collaborations

Some stories just beg to be retold.  The story of Alexander Yakovlev is one of them.  In 1958 as the Cold War simmered, Russian Alexander Yakovlev was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright scholarship to study a year in the United States. In 1985, he became Gorbachev’s key adviser on perestroika, glasnost and democratization, and helped end the communist dictatorships not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. The cost of one scholarship probably contributed more to ending the Cold War than untold the billions of dollars spent on weapons, which served to aggravate tensions.

What is your vision for this world?  And how do we invest in it? As a community, as a country, where do we invest our resources toward it?

The story was recently retold by a bulletin from the World Peace Academy, a graduate program similar to the one where I studied in Europe, European University Center for Peace Studies.  But it could be retold in countless other places with other names.  One stands out, this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate: Leymah Gbowee.

Gbowee received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership in the “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work,” particular in her strife-ridden homeland of Liberia, West Africa. For most Americans, conflict in Africa is distant and even trivial. But the Nobel Peace Prize committee took note of a woman stepping boldly into a public world so often the domain of men, both war- and peace-making in West Africa.

In fact, Gbowee was supervised in her studies on trauma healing by Sam Gbaydee Doe (no relation to former Liberian president with the same name), a fellow Liberian who’d studied at Eastern Mennonite University’s conflict transformation program. And how did Doe come to the US and accomplish his own studies?

Each of us can make investments in the world around us.  And small amounts of resources well directed now will pay us all dividends – true dividends – in the unfolding of our human story.

Do me a favor. Tell this story again.  And create another one like it.

“Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man (or “the human one”) has no place to lay his head.” ~ Matt 8:20/Luke 9:58

Training for the 250-mile Homeless Horizons Bike Tour - post pneumonia and all

That pretty much summarizes my state in the coming week.  On Sunday, I leave Brethren Housing Association’s Campaign Kickoff Block Party for seven days on my bicycle, raising awareness about homelessness while trying it out as well.

Check out the full schedule, facts about homelessness and how we plan to highlight local challenges – and solutions – here:  Homeless Horizons Handout.

Of course don’t have all the solutions.  None of us.  Some people choose to be homeless.  Perhaps we need to find ways to let people be homeless.  But most of them, research says, want to have a place to call home, a shred of security in an otherwise insecure, changing environment.  And research also suggests that it would be far cheaper to us a society – monetarily and morally – to give them a hand up, rather then let them “fend for themselves.”

There are many solutions.  I hope you can be one.  Most of all, i hope you can ride along with me and my homeless shelter trailer next week.  See more at http://www.facebook.com/brethrenhousing or follow tweets @brethrenhousing.

See you out there!

You see this hole in my sock? It is from this time. When i’m holed up in the house of Save the Children USA on a steep hillside neighborhood of Sarajevo.

The sock, 14 years after being burned on a Sarajevo lightbulb, and still keeping my foot warm... well, mostly.

I am here because i’m looking for adventure and what do i have to keep me company but a turning chunk of cheese and a half-loaf of thick white bread. Why i am here in this house? I’m waiting for the driver from Save the Children to get back in touch with me. I’m waiting for some return phone calls from several other NGOs – a Bosnian woman, a Norwegien veteran of a half-dozen other major relief operations, an American conflict resolution trainer best known back home now for his affairs with trainees and students. But me, a 23 year-old male grad student with barely a clue or any similar post-war experience, i’m inconsequential. The phone doesn’t ring. It’s a drizzly May day, but even though i want to, i can’t go out to play.

The driver eventually comes by. Be barely speaks any English, even working for an American NGO. He tries German. I know only a few dozen words. Still we can smile and laugh, recycling the few words we share, “okay”, “brot” “telephone.” And he leaves again.

I get impatient…venturing out in the drizzle, i gaze at the highly mascaraed faces of the women downtown, the shops for which i have no money, the bombed out buildings still five months after the cease fire, just waiting to be rebuilt.

No body talks about the war, except the adventurers like me who came here to gawk. I walk back up the hill to the house, passing under a cable that still holds remnants of a tarp that protected people from being seen and killed by snipers. It’s all still fresh…and silent.

I walk into the empty house, stripping to dry off. The socks are the worst; i foolishly brought just one pair for these two weeks. But at least there’s electricity on now. At least there’s light to read by.

I hang my socks next to the glowing bulbs on the chandelier. Then dive into my book….

Ten minutes later, i smell a terrible burning odor, like plastic. I rush from my book to discover that my sock has fallen on the light bulb and melted a hole in it. Hey though, it’s salvageable. I can still wear it, and go on with this crazy trip.

So here it is. I guess I’m still going on with this “crazy trip.”

A recounting from May 1996, written as part of a series of contemplative writing exercises in the Lancaster Friends Meeting, March 2010.