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!

It is the warmest December I ever knew. My group of other delegates from the Church of the Brethren are shuttling back and forth between embassies and hotels in Amman, Jordan. Neither the Iraqi government nor any other really trust us, but we persist, pulling every string we have to get visas into Iraq. It’s just a few months after men crashed planes into NY, DC and PA. Now other men point fingers at Iraq, at a man sitting on top of a a buried mountain of oil. And we believe, I believe, I can do something. Somehow, I’m suddenly in the middle of it all.

Ten minutes before the embassy closes for holiday, we receive our visas. And soon we’re speeding across the desert at 100 miles an hour, seeking bridges far wider than even the desert itself.

A meeting in Mosul with several Christian leaders, 2001.

The hope on this journey isn’t hard to find.  The group is a palpable support, the Iraqis we meet gracious and earnest. No the real desert greets me when i return, when i begin the long, plodding task of relaying my stories, relaying the voices, the faces, the places, the facts. I go to many churches, to colleges and community gatherings. I share pictures, speak a few Arabic words.

Peoples’ eyes light up to see and hear the children i met, but the storm clouds grow darker. They – these ‘men’ – they want to bomb. They don’t need facts or messages or stories.  They need war.  Blood.  Death.

The insane politics of war. The people supporting it, abetting it. I see them. And i see more.

I see what we’re building – the networks, the email lists, the energy and excitement for marching, writing, joining hands in song…for peace. We are growing. We are coming together. Even if the war comes, and with it unspeakable death, folly, tragedy.

I believe. There is more beyond all this. And we shall all know it.

A recounting from 2001 -2004, written as part of a series of contemplative writing exercises in the Lancaster Friends Meeting, November 2009.