Peace Treatments

Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength They shall rise up with wings as eagles They shall run and not get weary They shall walk and not grow faint Teach me Lord to wait (Isaiah 40:31) Was on a hike yesterday.  15 kilometers, up and down.  By the time we were a kilometer or two from the parking lot, my knees ached, my hips were screaming and my feet were protesting.   Upon realization on how old and broken down I sometimes feel at the grand ole age of 51, the scripture about waiting on the Lord popped into the head...actually, it was the walking and not fainting part that popped in...and then I started to ponder it. Here's what I got... Have you ever received a promise?  A certainty from God concerning a plan, or destiny, or much hoped for answer to prayer?  I have.  In 1998 God promised me that He had and was preserving my marriage for a purpose and that it was good to wait for the salvation of the Lord.  But the actual manifestation of a preserved an

Western culture values independence. Eastern culture values interdependence.  Western culture raises up children that become adults who hold to a "I'm great, you're great, we're all great" mindset, and if it turns out that someone is not so great as one would like, well, that is attributed to a flaw in their disposition.   And if that flaw in their disposition caused a harm to another, then even the forgiveness the harmed person is asked to extend serves the independent value set.  In other words, in order to keep being great, it's a therapeutic benefit to self,  to forgive.  More importantly, forgiveness itself remains an individual choice in Western culture. Eastern culture on the other hand raises up children that become adults who hold to a "we're in a community, and in order for the community to be great, we each must do our part" mindset.  And if it turns out that someone in the community has not quite done their part and this ca

For a number of reasons I've been in a very dry place spiritually.  There have been times when all I wanted to do was give up.  Walk away from more than just my life, job and faith.  Temptation is a harsh thing and thank God He delivers us from evil, and leads us not into temptation...we do that all on our own quite well. Long story short...He found me this weekend.  In fact, the prayer and word spoken over me was that "I was lost and now I'm found".  God is good.  So faithful.  So incredibly faithful. Too much happened this weekend to blog it, and besides, it's mine and God's anyway.  Some things are just meant to be pondered in the heart, cherished between Father and daughter.  I will say this though.  We pray - I pray - often, for the wrong things.  Like we pray for faith when we ought to pray for trust or we pray for clarity when we ought to pray for obedience.  Let me put this into perspective... Let's say I'm watching a man wheelbarrow

Having to make a decision.  Tough work that.  Particularly when the choices are equally attractive for different reasons.  One choice appeals to the head with it's logic and rationality, while the other appeals to the heart, with it's compassion and need to make a difference.  I've been faced with 2 very different choices these past few weeks at school.  Head / heart;  marketplace career / ministry vocation calling.  In the midst of these choices, I've also been faced with the ease of falling back into old patterns of behaviors, because when I'm stressed, those old patterns are useful for distracting me. One option is that which I'm called to, compelled to, while the other is the "set up", the counterfeit, designed to get me out of the game.  But which is which?  Therein lays uncertainty. One thing I do know - it's decision time and I have to pick one and commit to it, 100% no holds barred commitment.  You can't sit on two chairs and

Sometimes my rational, logical and pragmatic mind bids me well. And sometimes I need to ignore it while it attempts to talk me into and out of things,  and simply listen to my heart. This residency at school has convinced me of one thing - I didn't listen to my heart (His whisper) and rationalized myself into something that I now feel just a little silly about. When I first began this journey into the world of conflict resolution, it was always with the future vision of doing post conflict capacity building with a specific focus on traumatization and truth and reconciliation.  You know...forgiveness work that makes conflict transformation sustainable. More specifically, working with women in post conflict zones training and teaching them how to do trauma healing and restorative mediation in their own communities (though the idea of doing problem solving workshops in post conflict also tugs me) So, why did I chose organizational conflict? Because I'm in an organization

I'm sitting in a dorm room at RRU in the 2nd residency of my master's program, taking a break from endless readings and assignment outlines. What a crazy journey this has been, getting from "there to here". The irony is that RRU is in my old neighborhood, where I grew up, where all the things that tried to interrupt or even destroy me, happened.  In fact, I walked up to the old neighborhood today, stood in front of both houses, and felt this really tangible sense of triumph.  If I wasn't so dignified I would have danced a jig and sang  "na na na na boo boo!"  From a violent, abusive past to drug addled high school drop out, to master's level student.  Somewhere in there I  got to find, almost lose, and then salvage a marriage to a wonderful man who, 29 years later, I still love with all my heart;  raise up in a "hit and miss, did the best I could with what I had, but no excuses" sort of way, two absolutely incredible, intelligent an

Baylor University did a study of couples in conflict, and found that spouses stated that they would rather see their significant other give up power than apologize.  And when asked to define what giving up power looked like, spouses reported that they perceived their other as having given up power if they were to accept blame or responsibility, acknowledge harm, and work collaboratively towards solution...in other words, things that don't involve lording it over or typical "I win - you lose" scenarios. It got me thinking...isn't apology really about accepting blame, taking responsibility, acknowledging the effect or harm and then working collaboratively to solution which might be another way of saying making amends or fixing the problem? If apology was what it's supposed to be, then apology is synonymous to giving up power. But apology isn't what it's supposed to be...it's been cheapened and diminished by culture, cop out, and self serving mot

It seems to me that the most intimate relationship we can have is with Jesus.  He knows everything there is to know about us, including those things we don't know about ourselves, and that makes it pretty intimate.  There is nothing I can hide from Him.  There is nothing that I want to hide from Him.  There is nothing that I hope He doesn't see.  That's not to say there is nothing that is down right selfish, or self serving or sinful in me, only that I hope He always sees it so He can always redeem it...a sort of rescue me from myself kind of thing.  I love Jesus.  I want Him to be my be all and end all, and I want to grow even closer and even more intimate and authentic in relationship with Him.  And this morning, while standing alone (Jim was ushering) in my 4 campus "mega-church",  being led into the intimacy of worship by a leader I do not know, sitting next to fellow worshippers I have never met, and being taught by a pastor who is a stranger to me, it fe

This is interesting...at least to me. In Matthew6:9-15, Jesus teaches the disciples to pray.  In His model prayer, He teaches us all to request of the Father, " And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" (NKJ) .  Other translations say "our sins as we forgive those who sin against us".  Jesus then elaborates..." for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt 6:14-15) This discourse is early in Jesus' ministry.  The apostle's to whom He is speaking are relatively "young" insofar as spiritual/Christian maturity goes.  Later on in His ministry though, in fact, after His resurrection, Jesus makes another statement about forgiveness, this time in John 20:21-23.   Jesus has resurrected and finds the apostles shut up behind closed, locked doors.  He appears to them and says , "Peac

Jesus said, "You have heard it said,  You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who  hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" (Matt. 5:43-45) This scripture makes me think of another He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" (Matt.5:9) Love Sons of your Father in heaven Peacemakers Sons of God Love and Peacemaking = children of God Children of God = love and peacemaking Easier said than done. Especially when those who say it, people like me,  live comfy lives a world away from violence and hatred and revenge. Sometimes I read and ponder the power of Jesus teaching and am so hopeful... and sometimes I read and ponder the power of Jesus teaching and am so pes

 oh, but they can! When repeated abuse,  trauma or neglect result in a baby, toddler or young child not getting the healthy affection and love they needed growing up, the naturally regulated, stress responses in the brain do not develop.  And neither do the social and communication aspects that help things like empathy, social longing and sense of belonging and attachment become 2nd nature in us. The child grows up "missing something" which can best be described as a sense of connection.  I have known this well...this missing something. Sometimes, particularly when I'm stressed or fearful, I still fight this battle. And yet,  I've always had hope, and have indeed seen healing...huge healing.   I can't say that the healing is done, and that I've reached my shalom, that place of peace when you know you're exactly who God intended you to be all along before you got interrupted.  And that's not to say He was surprised by the interruption, in fact

I was at the "Trauma, Reconciliation & Peacemaking after Mass Violence: Learning from Rwanda" seminar last week at the Justice Institute, and met Ramond.  He's working on an MBA in London, after which he'll return to his homeland to work on economic development. Simultaneous to that, I've been reading "Rwanda Inc." by Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond, and got to thinking. There are NGO's and various other "ministries" that do and or train Rwandans in trauma healing, restorative justice, mediation, conflict transformation, and there are various NGO's, and socially conscious businesses that transfer knowledge, invest, and build capacity towards poverty reduction. My heart is in trauma healing and restorative practices; and at the same time, I've been a successful businesswomen for almost 30 years.  I had thought (assumed perhaps) God was asking me to leave  the business market place to do peace building but now I'm

to tell my own story of my journey to forgiveness... prompted by my own personal aversion to what I've heard called "the forgiveness industry" ... that industry within the church that tells believers that if they want their prayers heard, or if they want to be healed or made whole or made emotionally well, they must forgive... that sort of forgiveness that is born of duty and expectation and shame and fear... the kind of forgiveness that I've become convinced is not real forgiveness at all... I'm not talking here about forgiveness over what I'll call "every day sin".  There are sins that offend our ego and those we are called to forgive by choice and will.    No, I'm talking about sins that wound our hearts, that go to the core of our soul and cause serious damage.  I'm talking about sins born of evil, and don't just offend our ego, but are intended to kill us on the inside...things like rape, violence, molestation, murder,

Our most recent assignment has us counting the costs of conflict.  My team had a "moodle" discussion about that today and during one of my turns to speak, I said, "The ultimate cost of any conflict will be the destruction of the goal you fought for in the first place and that will play out.  It might not play out today, it might not play out tomorrow, but eventually, at some point, the goal that you fought for today and continue to fight for, will become destroyed by the atmosphere and the attitude that is generated into the future because of that intractability".  Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth are happy accidents and I have no clue where they came from. But think about it. When we are in a deep conflict, we think about our goals and then fight for them tooth and nail.  Maybe we win.  We often count the cost as being the relationship that was damaged and that is a dire cost indeed.  But what about the goal itself?  Is my means to my end a se

Was pondering about forgiveness again. I move back and forth between two "world's" in my conflict work - the  secular world and the believer's world.  I use the term world because each holds to a worldview when it comes to forgiveness and why it's "good for us".  Having studied and pondered forgiveness from both perspectives, it grieves me to see that the prevalent worldview of the one has infiltrated the other.  Take, for example, the statement above.  That is a very common perspective on why we ought to forgive.  It's therapeutic, psychologically and emotionally liberating, and hence a good idea.  This is a common argument to rationalize forgiveness from a secular point of view, and now seems to have become popular reasoning amongst believers too, only with the added claim that usually goes something like this: .....  "besides, the bible says if you don't forgive, neither will you be forgiven". The trouble here is that this

I've been restless for a really long time. In fact, I suspect I was born restless. Always, there's been a sense of something more than this, and I don't mean the obvious, as in eternity and being homesick for eternity.  Something more, here, in this life.  Always, there's been an intense longing to "help", to be a difference.  For the longest time, in my de-personalized days, I didn't give a crap, but even under that layer of deception, when the enemy tried to take me out, the core of me was still the core of me, and that core has always seen and cared deeply about injustice and inequity...and wanting to do something about it is what has always had me restless...either that, or I just simply bore easy (hence my tendency to escape into frivolous entertainment) The restlessness has often compelled me to strive forward, in search of whatever "it" is that I think I can fix, when inside I perceive that I ought to be waiting.  Waiting is really

There's a reason only God can search out and transform the human heart.  While we try to search out and discern the condition of our own hearts, it's futile, mostly because of our tendency to justify what we find in there.  Therein lies the deception, and why the Word says that the human heart is deceitful above all things.  When I search out my heart, find something there I don't like, it's easy for me to justify why it's there, why I need it, why it does me well to keep it.  It is easy to believe my own justification because then it allows me to keep the thing I found, and it is that justification that deceives me. For this reason I am so very grateful for my Father who puts His finger on my heart, touches the thing that He wants to change, and opens my eyes to the justifications that would deceive me.  He truly is a loving, caring Father, always intent on de-cluttering the crap that I have become complacent about or have deceived myself about needing...and tran

Jesus said "You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder and who ever murders will be in danger of the judgement.  But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgement." (5:21). What is the best guess for why one would be angry with a brother or sister without a cause ? Envy.  Usually, generally, the person who is the target of envy has no clue they are being envied; the anger of the person who is envying them is without a cause.  Now, in the mind of the one who is envying, there is plenty of "cause", but in every single circumstance I can think of from scripture, none of the ones who were angry and murdered or did evil against their brother or sister, did so with a cause.  Cain killed Abel because he envied his relationship with God.  Cain had no cause to be angry. Joseph's brothers sold him because they envied his giftings and place in their father's heart.  The broth

James 3:13 - 17 contains one of the most powerful disclaimers against envy found in scripture...and links it hand in hand with disunity, discord and lack of peace in the Body.   Considering that the early church in Acts were "all in one accord" (Acts 3:42-45) unified in their devotion to Christ and service to one another, one assumes that envy had not taken hold to dis-unite them.   As a result, the early church saw incredible fruit...thousands of people saved in such short time, along with miracles, signs, and wonders. My Ungers Bible Dictionary defines envy as "that malignant passion that sees in another qualities that it covets, often resulting in hate of their possessor".    Is it not evident that envy that manifested in hatred sent Jesus to the cross?  Matthew 27:18 says "for he knew (Pilate) it was out of envy that they (the Pharisees) handed Jesus over to him". Envy kills...Cain was envious of Abel's relationship with God.  Or at the ver

Restorative action Restorative justice Justice Peace Forgiveness Recovery Transformation Transformative justice Shalom...how God always intended it before we messed it up.  In 2003 I heard a still small voice whisper "justice" and thus began my journey. Step in this direction.  Just one step.  Never knowing where it would take me, never knowing just  how it would unfold.  Losing the grace to take my market career to the successes I know it could go, and gaining the grace to surrender all to whatever God has in store.  They say each journey of discovery starts with a single step.  My single step took me into some real deep healing of some real deep wounding and I was truly born again. In 2010 the still small voice got louder.  Time for preparation, time for training, time for equipping, time for capacity building, time for getting serious.  These next  steps took me into mediation, coaching, leadership and trauma studies, culminating in this master's pr

Woke up early this am and went downstairs to pray.  As often happens, I fell asleep mid sentence and had several dreams.  As very occasionally happens, I woke up with a bazillion thoughts racing around my brain, some of which took the leap from the head to the heart while I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes. I'm beginning to think this is how Holy Spirit talks to me.  During my waking hours my mind is so pre-occupied I only hear Him in the fog between sleep and wakefulness. Anyway, I gotta get these down....the thoughts that took the leap... Is it possible to forgive without Holy Spirit? Do we forgive first so that we can then love or do we love first so that we can forgive? And again,  can we do either without Holy Spirit grace and power? Does the motive behind our forgiveness matter much to God?  If I forgive because my church upbringing has inculturated a sense of duty to forgive,  what then is my forgiveness borne out of - self  protection or other loving? Has fo

I admit, I've been caught up in the possibility of God working a miracle in Rwanda and wonder if that is what has compelled me to want to go there.  When I hear of things like reconciliation villages between Hutus and Tutsi's, and restorative justice Jesus style, I think the world is going to see something like they've never seen before ... love and reconciliation at work on an impossible scale and I get excited...what with me being a sucker for reconciliation and all. But apparently it's not all that true.  There is some forgiveness there, sure, and even some authentic reconciliation but mostly (apparently) the reconciliation that is occurring in Rwanda is "imposed"..expectations pressed upon a Christian people in a self declared Christian nation so that peace and order are maintained.  It brings to mind words like "accommodating" and "compromise"... or even worse, images of a numbed out, frozen smile, that hides behind the kind of che

Following on the metaphor that our lives are a patchwork quilt, it seems to me that when we turn and look at the patchs that have already unfolded, we begin to see patterns.  Events, circumstances, words, deeds, people, et al that were lessons or threads or patchs of material that went into the making of our quilt.  And often we see how those previous patchs influence us today. Take being an adjuster for instance...I deal with all sorts of people, from all walks of life, in every socio-economical sphere, in every nation, creed and colour...and I love it.  The favourite part of my job is sitting at the kitchen table with someone new to Canada and asking them to tell me their story.  While I appreciate the differences in cultures,  at the end of the day, I value each and every person I meet and can say that I have never had a racist or bias bone in my body.   I've always made a point to learn about someone's culture, and unpack the stereotypes that may form an unconscious bias

Mercy Me have a rendition of Hosanna with a stanza that I've made my prayer. Heal my heart and make it clean Open up my eyes to the things unseen Show me how to love like you have loved me Break my heart for what breaks Your's Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause As I walk from earth into eternity Sometimes you have to be careful what you pray for. This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for MissionsFest, I prayed that God would show me where, how, what He would have me involved in and with.  This afternoon, as we meandered thru the exhibits, I had a sense that if there was something God wanted me involved in and with, it would be made obvious.  Well it was... First, I approached a booth for PureLoveNow and saw the words "rescue", "African", "child prostitutes" and froze; then as I listened to the founder tell me how in 2011 she had a dream, my heart started breaking.  In the dream a young Kenyan girl named Sarah aske