Activist Toolkit: Practical Peacemaking Series
Our world is undoubtedly not in a state of peace.
We are not taught peace growing up,
but are exposed to the ways of conflict & war.
What if each of us was equipped with peacemaking skills?
A Peacemaker's Toolbox
This series will focus on practical ways we can learn to choose and foster peace within ourselves, our families and communities.
I heard a story the other day about a man who grew up in New York...
He went to a prestigious university to study art and business and started to become a successful artist. He traveled and landed at an income-sharing intentional community near us. Discontented still, he moved in with one of our older friends who had been a medicinal herb farmer and acupuncturist most of her adult life. She asked him why he wanted to live with her, take care of the cows and be a market gardener.
His reply:
I just want to find peace.
This story propelled me to reflect on
- How difficult it can be to experience peace in this world
- The fact that this young man was seeking peace as a goal in life above all else struck me as odd.
I realized I don’t even have peace as a goal in life. Who does in this day in age? And if we do, how do we go about it?
Peace is our birthright.
Personal Transformation: Peace Within
There are many conversations whether we achieve peace by going within and personally cultivating it. Then we meet the world from a peaceful place and therefore can work toward transformation. That is the theory of personal transformation.
Community Transformation: Peace in outer structures
The other conversations deal with peace on a larger scale: in our relationships, families, communities, business, governments, and finally world peace on a massive scale. In case world peace on a massive scale seems like too amorphous a goal (it always has to me), let us focus on building peaceful close relationships to tangential ones that we encounter daily in our communities and businesses.
This series will address peace from both angles, while focusing moreso on peace within Our Relations.
My theory is if we teach ourselves, our children, etc peaceful ways of responding to situations and if we have those tools, the ripple effect can happen on a larger scale. Having peace within ourselves is not enough if we don’t know how to make peace in our most intimate of relations, homes or businesses.
I want to do this to reinforce peace in my own life. I want to stretch myself and learn and grow while writing these articles. I hope this can be a growth experience for many of us. I hope we can be vulnerable about the ways we are currently not peaceful, about the things we need to work on and how we can each step forward as agents choosing peace.
Things you can expect in this series:
Articles focused step by step practical skills to learn how to choose peace in the realms of
- Self
- Families
- Personal relationships
- Non-violent communication
- Rituals to speak from the heart
- Community Skills
- Earth Relationship
- And much more...
We’ll be pulling from our own experiences, workshops we’ve taken along the way, books such as Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, Pathways to Peace by Victor Lacerva, Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, writings by Starhawk and many more.
We are no experts in peace, only humans who want to grow toward more peace!
Love this idea. I will definitely be following to catch future posts.
My grandpa always said "May we all find the inner peace that leads to world peace." As you note, there are those two kinds of peace and they are somehow connected. My grandpa also served in WWII as a US paratrooper. I didn't begin to understand until early adulthood how that early experience shaped his fervent passion to achieve peace within himself and see that spread throughout his community and the world.
Hi! Thanks for your support, @growingpower just upvoted your comment ;) Hope you have a great day
awesome! i'll look forward to hearing your thoughts and potentially a post from you! sounds like your grandfather knew what he was talking about.
what a great force for the world. thanks for sharing <3
Wonderful my friend.@mountainjewel.. Peace begins inside ourselves, then we must live and deal with Peace... Peace must be a part of our lives... We have a great opportunity in Steemit for this upscale project... I'm the first one riding with you on the peace trip.
Wonderful @yagoub! Thank you for joining us <3
Exactly! Steemit is a perfect opportunity to group-scale these projects. Thank you.
Mother Theresa was once declined to march in an anti-war demonstration. When chided for her absence, she responded that if it had been a demonstration FOR PEACE, she would have been in the front lines. There is much we can each do to promote a peaceful world. I've heard it debated for decades now, "Why do we have a Department of War and not a Department of Peace?" Rather than answer that question, why don't we move from what is 'bottom line' profitable as a goal to what is sustainable in all our relations? This post sounds like you're headed in that direction. Bravo!
Yes I have heard that story before. It's very fitting. We can't solve problems using the same thinking that got us there in the first place, likewise feeding war or even "opposing" war only feeds the energy of war.
Yes! This is a great place to move from! Thanks for your thoughtful comment <3
This is such a great article, and is so true. I feel that now I'm older and have been through basically "dirt", all I want is peace. I never understood what that really meant, maybe because i was ignorant to what peace should really feel like. I had a touch of it, and didn't maintain it, now I'm fighting back for it, but most importantly trying to learn how to maintain it once its back. Love the article.
thank you @nickall <3
I think you hit on it here. It's easy to "stumble onto it" or have it in periods of our lives, yet how do we cultivate it and consistently engage in actions that invite it to stay... great line of questioning. thanks, hope you'll chime in more as the series unfolds.
Looking forward to it. I definitely agree that peace, like maybe most social ideals, has to begin at home. One of my favorite topics to teach is conflict management, and although I don’t consider myself an expert, I do have some some simple ideas about how to develop more of a win-win approach, and to learn to see conflict as a natural part of actually growing closer to someone.
Thanks for stopping by @cstrimel, i hope you'll chime in and even write a post for our final curation post! i'm sure you have some fantastic insights being a teacher of conflict management!
I really love this:
I can see this and I really value speaking our truths, though they can be difficult to get across or to be heard by the other person (and visa versa), but really opening to what the other person is saying to be able to get closer.. love it! that's a testament to a successful conflict resolution. Would love to hear more of your insights!! THanks!!!
I'll definitely want to contribute my thoughts about this particularly as it relates to raising children. Excellent topic to get thoughts on.
Yay i'm happy to hear you're engaged! We'll definitely be curating many posts and perhaps will even have a contest. If you write an article before that, let us know and we'll include it: ) such an important topic and I"m sure you have a lot of experienced wisdom
Awww. Flattery will get you everywhere.
;) that’s what my mom always told me hehe
Mamas know stuff.