Laboring at conflict on Labor Day

Image via VeloTraffic/Flickr

Yesterday my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and my folks met in nearby Grinnell and rode a nice paved bike trail from town to Rock Creek State Park, about 7 miles west. Once we got there, we stood around the boat ramp for a while and decided to ride further west on the county highway to see if we could circle the lake. We got a few miles out but couldn't find or see a south-bound paved county road, so we decided to turn back around.

On our way up the last hill before the lake, in a single-file line on a road with no paved shoulder (the norm on county roads in Iowa), a huge pickup truck pulling a fishing boat came barreling down the hill behind us and didn't slow down whatsoever as he came upon us on the uphill side. Rather than giving us the full lane (which is the lawful and safe thing to do), he pulled maybe into the middle of the road and flew by us going probably 65 mph (speed limit is 55), scaring the crap out of all of us, given his speed and the truck's and boat's proximity to our exposed bodies, and the fact that trailers aren't exactly the most stable things when being pulled down the road.

Reactions were mixed. My dad swore (one of my friends has lovingly nicknamed my dad "Swear Gumm"), my mom said something about wishing she had rockets on her bike to catch the guy. My daughter up in front of our line was shaken. Like most of us, I too was angry, but I knew where the guy was headed: The boat ramp, where we had just come from and where we were again approaching. I rode up to my wife and said, "If that guy's at the boat ramp, I'm gonna go have a talk with him."

"Take your dad with you," was her response.

#MennoNerdsOnSyria: A personal connection

Mohammed & I; April 2012

See other MennoNerd reflections on the escalating situation in Syria.

In the spring of last year I sat on the lawn of Eastern Mennonite University and participated in the university graduation ceremony. Clustered by program and by the order of our last names, I was happily seated next to a friend from my days at EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Mohammed.

Mohammed is from Syria, and shortly after he began his graduate work at the CJP, the civil war in his home country broke out. I remember seeing him in those early days of the conflict deeply troubled, and mentioning in class his distressing phone conversations with family back home. (I blogged about this two years ago.) The conflict became the intense focus of his peacebuilding education (of course it likely was even  before the conflict). After graduation, Mohammed began working in DC, advocating foreign policy with regard to Syria to US lawmakers.

I offered him my prayers then, just as I continue to offer prayers for Mohammed and his country now, in these dark days of a tragedy of vast humanitarian and environmental proportions. And with his permission, I'd like to offer a few remarks on where I sit with respect to the conflict...

First off, Mohammed is not a pacifist. It might come as a surprise to some that not all who go through EMU's graduate program in peacebuilding are committed pacifists, but it's true. Indeed, even some of the faculty are peacebuilders who hold to the just war tradition.

Mohammed has been very active on Facebook in recent months, posting a stream of updates on his work and the situation in Syria. In the past week, in the wake of the chemical attacks that Assad seems to have carried out on his own people, and as the US has begun signaling that it will indeed militarily intervene in the conflict, Mohammed has become joyous, even exuberant, at the news of this military intervention.

So on the one hand, I have Christian friends both pacifist and otherwise saying, basically, "This is not a good idea." On the other I have my friend, Mohammed, whose first-hand witnessing to the conditions on the ground in Syria, his home country that he loves, saying this military intervention will be a good thing and it won't be like US interventions in recent years: Limited in scope, targets already communicated, no "shock and awe," etc.

I hold to my Christian pacifist convictions in this or any other situation, yet my empathy for and friendship with Mohammed and his longing for justice in his ravaged country I also hold in my heart and mind.

My only meaningful response is this: Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy. Grant grace and peace to those who suffer in Syria; and patience, humility, and wisdom for those with their hands on the levers of world power. Kyrie eleison.

Micro-saga: On becoming a peacebuilder

In March 2008, Howard Zehr entered my comfortable life as an IT professional climbing the corporate ladder in central Iowa...and he promptly pulled me off. This encounter with Howard led me and my family to EMU, the CJP and seminary, and the dual degree program between the two. To say that I’ve been challenged and changed is a vast understatement, and CJP has had a big say in that process. The notion of “lenses,” for example, has become deeply embedded in my approach to the world. So thanks, Howard et al, for ruining my life in all the right ways!

[The preceding 100 words were written for my "blurb" in the forthcoming (25 more days!) graduation program for the Center Justice and Peacebuilding here at EMU. Sometimes narrating a significant experience in a ridiculously small amount of space is a very good discipline. I provide it here for posterity.]

The shape of a conflict transformation course

Tonight will be the first session of my "Intro to Conflict Transformation" course at Bridgewater College. I just put the finishing touches on the syllabus and sent it off to have photocopies made for the students. At this early stage of my becoming a teacher, I thought it would be good for later reflection to post some of the particulars of this course. So here's a bit of what the course is looking like right now. Who knows what it will look like on May 1st when it concludes, or what I'll think of all this if/when I come back to it down the road to see how my thinking about teaching has shifted. Here goes...

SOC/PHIL 319: Introduction to Conflict Transformation

Bridgewater College, Spring 2012

Course description: This course starts with the assumption that conflict is neither good nor bad. Rather, conflict is an opportunity. How one responds to that opportunity is the focus of this course, because conflict transformation seeks to respond constructively to the natural experience of conflict. Course concepts and activities will progress through four levels of conflict, from personal to interpersonal (micro) to organizational to societal (macro). Analysis tools and intervention strategies will vary from level to level but a nested-systems view of conflict will help illuminate the connections between all four. While the weight the course will be practical in nature, offering students tools for use in their daily lives, various interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks will also be introduced throughout the course.

On the social media wave of the Nobel Peace Prize

Leymah Gbowee
Nobel Peace Prize winner &
CJP alumna

On Friday of last week, I had the most fun day at work ever. I had the fortune of being the web & social media nerd for the alma mater of a Nobel Peace Prize winner! Liberian nonviolent peace activist, Leymah Gbowee, was one of three women to win the 2011 prize. She is also a 2007 alumna of Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), where I have been studying and working for the past three years. Leymah has been back on campus a time or two since I arrived in 2008, and I even got to hang around behind the camera while one of my teacher-colleagues, Paulette Moore, filmed this short interview with Leymah about her time at EMU. She is truly an amazing person and commands a powerful presence when you're around her.

In my 10+ years as a professional web nerd, I've never been involved in anything that's "gone viral," until Friday. We weren't caught completely off-guard at CJP, as we'd been hearing rumors of Leymah's being considered for the prize for months. But that still didn't prepare for me for riding the social media tidal wave on Friday morning, when the winners were announced. It was the quickest 5.5 hours of my professional life, keeping track of the activity on Facebook and Twitter, watching with amazement when at one point on Friday morning, "Leymah Gbowee" was one of the top-trending phrases in the U.S. on Twitter. When the digital dust settled by Monday morning and I checked stats, I saw that the EMU website as a whole doubled its traffic on Friday alone, not to mention the thousands of "likes" on the EMU News article which announced her winning.

So John Howard Yoder, Gene Sharp, and Bashar al-Assad walk into a bar...

...and they all order "Peace."

(Or the boring title: "Christological-theopolitical pacifism and strategic nonviolence in conversation.")

Syrian protests in Washington D.C.
(Photo by Elvert Barnes via Flickr)

On the heels of my intellectual-existential catharsis last week about theology and peacebuilding, I had a conversation with one of my fellow graduate students at the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, Mohammed, who is Syrian. He's been here in the States since last year and has watched with horror and heartbreak over these recent weeks at the events unfolding in his home country, as Bashar al-Assad's regime violently cracks down on protesters. Mohammed referred to this crack-down as "the mowing machine," a grimly apropos metaphor for the ruthless and bloody attacks on protesters which have left a trail of dead. (To which the protesters have not responded with organized violence, unlike rebels in Libya.)

When Mohammed and I spoke, I was in the midst of reading this article: The Syrian revolution as Gene Sharp sees it (GlobalPost), to which I promptly sent him a link, especially after he spoke so glowingly of the scholar and advocate of nonviolent resistance. Sharp's name also came up earlier this year when our peacebuilding program was discussing the revolution in Egypt, which one of our alumni saw up close and personal. As I read through Sharp's reflections on the situation in Syria, it got me thinking about the connections and departures between strategic nonviolence and Christian pacifism.

Riffing on David Brooks: Sociality, virtue, and vocation

David Brooks;
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

David Brooks intrigues me. He is considered a social and political conservative but he speaks in such a way as to set himself apart from most commentators of that ilk. He published a book this year - The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (also see his TED talk) - that uses contemporary neuroscience to make the case that humans are not primarily rational beings. We are thinking, feeling, yearning, and always-already social creatures. Promoting such a perspective puts him at odds with pretty much the entire post-Enlightenment Western world in its social-political manifestations, which all assume a very individualistic and overly rational view on human nature. (Encapsulated in Descarte's dictum, "I think, therefore I am.")

One of my favorite Christian thinkers - philosopher, James K.A. Smith - has taken note of Brooks' recent work, going so far as to defend Brooks from those who seem to be missing his point. Plus, Brooks' work comports well with Smith's own, especially his book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. One of Smith's biggest beefs with American evangelicals is that they've been duped into the individualist-rationalist view of human nature and so only seem to explicitly care about Christians' beliefs. To counter this Smith dusts off pre-modern, classical views of human nature and virtue that account for the whole being and restore a sense of work or vocation to the Christian life.

For Christian formation to do its work, it needs to operate on our (the Church's) entire personal and collective body as well as our desires...as in desiring the kingdom of God. Smith argues that we are shaped and pointed toward certain ends (such as the fulfillment of the kingdom) by liturgies - worship, work, or just simply practices. Smith contrasts sacred liturgies (Christian worship) and secular liturgies (eg. going to the mall). To not allow the former to operate in a holistic sense allows the latter to swoop in to fill in the gap, and eventually take over as the primary formational liturgy. So well-meaning evangelicals can (and do) become functional consumerist atheists with their bodies while purporting to be Christian in terms of their beliefs. Such split-being as we've inherited from the Enlightenment is ridiculous because, after all, the mind is part of the body and knowledge also exists outside the brain, even outside our corporeal bodies (eg. social consciousness).

[This post was subsequently picked up by the Mennonite Weekly Review blog: David Brooks, John Howard Yoder, and the sociality of virtue. Thanks again to Sheldon C. Good for his editorial work!]

Peacebuilding in Ethiopia, a story and a request

Sitting with Mekonnen in my class

In the early months of practicum planning for teaching in Ethiopia, one of my tasks involved finding a supervisor for my work. One name was consistently suggested by my mentors: Mekonnen Desalegn. Mekonnen has been working for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Ethiopia for nearly 33 years. He's also been heavily involved in church life and leadership within the Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) since the age of 18.

One of my colleagues in peacebuilding, Krista Johnson, who works for MCC's Peace Office, just posted this interview with Mekonnen: Seeking Justice and Peace in Ethiopia

Building Peoplehood and Peace

Footwashing: Peacebuilding disguised as worship practice;
Photo from the last day of class

Sometimes God can and will work through the seemingly incidental or mundane aspects in the academic endeavors of higher education, such as the sequencing of classes. This was the case for me this summer in the months leading up to our trip to Ethiopia for my teaching practicum. One of my two wonderful summer courses was "Biblical Foundations of Peace and Justice," which I briefly alluded to back in June. The last paper assigned for this class was due on July 11th, my first day of teaching. Thankfully my professor, Mark Thiessen Nation, granted me an extension until the beginning of August, just after the conclusion of my class.

Writing this paper not only provided the occasion for me to reflect theologically on my first teaching experience but it also represents my deepest academic integration of theology and peacebuilding thus far. In it, I take a narrative approach, essentially telling the intellectual story of the class. I wrote most of the paper the weekend before the third and final week of class and finished it up the day after we got back to the States, August 1st. So I was in the thick of things as it was being written.

Another sad-shocking-powerful expression of costly grace

Chloe Weaver;
MWR file photo

A few months ago I theologized about a Mennonite family in Washington whose children were tragically killed in a car accident, and how the family's response was shocking to many, including the news journalist covering the story as it unfolded over years.

Last fall, 20 year-old, Chloe Weaver, met her tragic end while bicycling on a highway in Colorado, being struck from behind by a teenage boy driving a pickup truck who then fled the scene but was later identified and charged. Again, this Mennonite family's response is not typical by broadly American justice standards:

Weavers seek 'healing response' at sentencing - Sheldon C. Good, Mennonite Weekly Review

Earthy discipleship and peacebuilding in Jeremiah

Photo by snowmentality (via Flickr)

Today ended a three-week intensive class at seminary, studying the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament. It's great to have those classes where the primary textbook is the Bible, which doesn't happen as often as some might think at a seminary. For one of my papers, I chose the topic of "to pluck up and to pull down, to build and to plant," which is a theme that is established in the very first chapter and runs throughout Jeremiah, giving it somewhat of an organizing principle.

In the paper, I do a literary and narrative-theological analysis of that theme with special attention paid to historical and sociopolitical events that drive the narrative forward in Jeremiah. In an academic paper, you have to do all the hard and boring work first before you get to say the interesting and relevant stuff at the end. Since this is a blog, I'll skip most of the boring stuff and say up front why I think this theme and Jeremiah in general is an excellent source of inspiration for faithful Christian peacebuilding. If you really want to see the academic treatment, the paper will be embedded at the end. If you read both, you will see me repeating myself, because I'm lifting material from the paper for the post...

No villain, no hero... Just faith

Periodically, stories arise from the Anabaptist traditions that shock and sometimes offend sensibilities of the broader society. Perhaps most prominent in recent American memory is the 2006 Amish school shooting at Nickel Mines, Pa., and that community's response of near-immediate loving outreach to the shooter's family. Another story that exhibits costly Christian grace comes from a Mennonite family from Chewala, Wa., whose five children were killed in a car accident five years ago. But the story doesn't end there as this piece from the local TV station details...

Grace in Grief: The Schrock Family, Five Years Later - KXLY.com

Christian pacifism in the 21st century

Lisa with the late Glen Lapp, in Afghanistan

Lisa Schirch's name has come up before on this blog. She was one of the first professors I studied with upon coming to Eastern Mennonite University over two and a half years ago. Recently having "retired" from her faculty position at EMU, Lisa is now focusing most of her energy on being the director of the 3D Security Initiative, which, according to its website, "(promotes) conflict prevention and peacebuilding investments and strategies in U.S. policymaking." Lisa is a Mennonite, Christian pacifist, yet her work often takes her into the halls of power in Washington, D.C. - where 3D's office is based - and also gets her audience with the military. For the past few years, she's been making trips to Afghanistan to teach peacebuilding and work with local and national issues on the ground there.

For this work and the convictions which fuel it, Lisa is often criticized from all angles. From within her own tradition, fellow Mennonites blast her for working with the military. Anabaptist theologians get nervous that she's not "theological enough" in her peacebuilding work. From fellow Americans outside the Mennonite tradition, she is criticized for her "irresponsible" pacifism, enjoying the freedoms that the State has fought/still fights so hard to secure and maintain. Check out this wonderful confessional and challenging piece that Lisa recently had published, and then read on after the link for some further reflections:

Confessions of a modern day pacifist: What should pacifism look like today?
by Lisa Schirch, in The Mennonite

Children of the incarcerated: What will happen to them?

Kevin, photo by Howard Zehr

In 2007, when I was co-facilitating a writers' workshop in a women's correctional facility, one topic that consistently came up in writing and discussion with the group was the deep pain associated with the break-up of families. Many of the the women were mothers who had lost access to their own children because of drug or alcohol arrests and subsequent incarceration. I don't wish to ignore the wrong committed by these women, just as I don't wish to ignore the psychosocial realities which fostered an environment for their wrongdoing to take place. But even while keeping these things in view, it was impossible not to feel compassion as they shared through sobs and tears, their stories of love and loss.

A new book of photographs and stories, What Will Happen To Me?, co-authored by one of my mentors here at EMU, Howard Zehr, focuses the lens on the other side of these kinds of situations: on 30 children whose parents are incarcerated. The book is co-authored with Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, a restorative justice practitioner and trainer working for Mennonite Central Committee/MCC in their Office of Crime and Justice.

Since 1 in 15 black children in the United States have a parent in prison, African American magazine, Ebony,  ran a story this week on the new book:

‘What Will Happen To Me?’: Restorative Justice Pioneer Takes Look At The Impact Of Parental Incarceration On Children In New Book
by Margena A. Christian
These move through society unnoticed. They harbor a secret they tell no one for a myriad of emotions consume them. Shame. Anger. Confusion. Isolation. They aren’t alone but one wouldn’t know it because people don’t like to discuss “the secret.”

As the article notes at the end, Howard was the first white student to attend Morehouse College, a traditionally black school in Atlanta. That a white Mennonite from Indiana did this at the height of the Civil Rights movement is still striking today. Howard once told me that his decision to attend Morehouse was partly influenced by John Howard Yoder, which I of course thought was totally awesome!

A pastiche tribute to Art Gish

Photo credit: Sahal Abdulle

On that day this past July when Art Gish was tragically killed on his farm in Ohio, I was on another farm a few states away in Iowa, reclining on a porch swing at my in-law's reading Gish's 1972 book, Beyond the Rat Race. It was my first substantive engagement with Gish's writing, and that it was being done on the day he died was sobering and sad. Those two concurrent realities will forever be fused in my mind.

In the ensuing months I've been thinking of a way to honor Gish's life, which I see as deeply resonant with traditional Brethren attempts at living "the simple life" as disciples of Jesus Christ. Art and Peggy Gish have let their lives narrate their faith and theology. In this post, which will be somewhat lengthy and mishmashy, I'll do a few different things that attempt to honor this legacy.  First will be a video that I had nothing to do with, but stands as a great snapshot of Art and Peggy from earlier this year, just months before Art's death. Second, I will do a Gish-inspired social/technological critique of the digital age, which I wrote as part of my Brethren studies over the summer (the occasion for reading Gish's book).

Here's a little Gumm family connection to Gish before I get going: My paternal grandfather and Art were both at the Brethren seminary in the late 60s. One of my dad's little brothers thought Art was Jesus, as he was often seen walking around Bethany's campus with long hair, a beard, and sandals. Finally, as my wife and I have recently been dreaming about what we want to be when we grow up (or at least graduate), the witness of Art and Peggy has had an impact on me. I've recently been thinking that I'd like to be a farmer/peacebuilder/theologian when I grow up.

So read on as I add my little voice to the many who have lamented Art's passing and how Gish's ongoing witness may be relevant to the digital age we find ourselves in...

Justice on the healing edge

Earlier this year, my mentor & friend, Howard Zehr, told me about an organization that had reached out to him for help in their formation: the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers, whose website just went live last week. Howard guest-blogged one of their first posts on the site. He nicely describes his cross-disciplinary and arts-infused work in both fields of restorative justice and photography. This approach is one that I seek to embody in my work. Here's a snippet from his post:

Photography at the healing edge

One part of me is a photographer. I’ve worked internationally as an NGO photojournalist. I’ve done marketing and magazine stories. I love landscapes and portraiture (see www.howardzehr.com).  But what I like most is doing documentary work. In my experience, documentary photography can help bridge the chasms that separate people. If done respectfully and collaboratively, it can also provide a way for people to share of themselves. My vision, like that of the IGVP, is to use photography as a way to work on the healing edge.

The other passion, and much of my career, has been in the criminal justice field, and specifically a field that I helped found called restorative justice. Unlike criminal justice that tends to divide, restorative justice is essentially a peacemaking approach to justice. Restorative justice is justice on the healing edge. (emphasis mine)

See also Howard's Restorative Justice blog at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

So many myths, so little time

Perhaps based on the success of the show on the Discovery Channel, I've encountered a raft of books this year that are in the myth-busting business. Early on in January it was Greg Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation (2006), which I got a few chapters into before getting too busy with the spring semester. Boyd also recently published The Myth of a Christian Religion (2009), which sounds fascinating but I haven't looked into it. It sounds like the negative image of Brian McLaren's new book, A New Kind of Christianity (2010), which I also haven't read. Phew! All this newness and debunking of myths makes for a long reading list to a guy who gets excited about both of those endeavors.

So between my spring and summer classes this past week, I quickly read through William T. Cavanaugh's recent The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford, 2009). It was recommended to me by my theology professor, Mark Thiessen Nation, with whom I had a number of conversations last summer while taking a course at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute called "Faith-Based Peacebuilding." Mark wasn't teaching the course but made some great contributions to my learning in it. Among the long list of authors and scholars that Cavanaugh critiques is Scott Appleby, who wrote one of the textbooks used in the course, The Ambivalence of the Sacred (2000).  With such a tight timeframe to read this considerable book of Cavanaugh's, I didn't bring my full capacities to bear, but I'm still grateful for what I was able to pick up. Read on after the break for my reflections...

The poetics of restorative theology

As a gift for my high school graduation in 1997, someone gave me a journal. The first use of this journal was a guest list for my graduation party. I've gone over that list a number of times in the intervening thirteen years and have been surprised again and again at the people who showed up at my parents' old house in Prairie City, Iowa. I'm still writing in this same journal these days, but I'm starting to run out of pages, and it won't be long until it's completely filled up and I'll move on to another.

The other night, I couldn't sleep, so I did something with this journal that I had never done before. I read it cover to cover. Thirteen years of my life captured in periodic snapshots, covered in about two hours. The highs and lows of college, a career in IT/corporate America, being in a family, life in the church, going back to college, and finally moving to Virginia into our current phase of life.  Something struck me as I waded through all this reflective writing, and that was a near-constant expressed desire to be doing something creative or artistic in some way. Early on it was focused on my band/music project, Honnold, which started as a band in high school and has since morphed into a website that joins the music we've produced with a small virtual community. As I transitioned back into college in my mid-20's, I was studying English literature and taking a writing class or two, and my journal entries became attempts at creative writing in either fiction or non-fiction, and sometimes poetry. I can trace this artistic impulse all the way back into my childhood, so it's clear to me that this is a life-long dimension to how I come at life. So read on after the break for a few more thoughts on how the arts inform my life's work/project/ministry/whatever, that I've here called "restorative theology..."

Why can't we be friends?

In this lengthy, all-text post, I will reflect on two experiences this week that ignited no small amount of spiritual and intellectual energy in me.  If you're up to the challenge of hanging with me, read on after the break for an exploration of interfaith dialogue, psycho-social theology, and discipleship...

Did I accomplish my goals?

About two weeks ago, with just over a week to go in my project for "Research as Art & Transformation," I had a quick discussion with my professor-adviser, Howard, and asked him for a bit of advice on how to finish out my project, which was still in fairly nebulous shape at that point. In Howard's office, unloading what I had learned so far but was still wondering how to put the finishing touches on, he sat and listened intently, as is his way. Howard's advice is always so simple and common-sense. In some ways, I think restorative justice, the field he helped envision and begin articulating is also a no-nonsense/back-to-basics/common-sense innovation (revolution?). But his advice here was just what I needed to hear: "go back to your initial project goals."

[slapping forehead]

This helped focus me in the final days and get the thing wrapped up and ready to go for the class presentation this past Tuesday in class. But I forgot to include any reflections on goals in my summary post. So here's a little postscript to tie the whole project in a bow, connecting it back to what I envisioned way back in September, which was distilled in this post from early Oct.: A (hopefully) modest proposal.

What I didn't list in that post, though, were these two goals I had for the project:

• To deepen my understanding of how theology and peacebuilding intersect and interact
• To facilitate a dialog along these same lines, hopefully building bridges in the process

So did I accomplish these goals with this class project? Read on after the break as I attempt to answer. A note on audience: I'm essentially writing this to anyone with familiarity with EMU and its Seminary and CJP, the two programs I'm studying in.