Peace Treatments

I have this picture, a memory really, of a scared little girl sitting on a stone bench in a breathtaking Japanese garden situated in front of a huge stone castle.  The little girl has butterflies in her stomach and is sad.  Her life up to that point has been fraught with beatings and sexual abuse.  She feels utterly alone.  She has no grid with which to decipher this, no way with which to deal with it, so she slowly becomes numb and false, unknown to herself and others.  That little girl was me.  The garden was in front of a military college on Vancouver Island.  I found it after wandering away from an adults softball game.  I remember the beauty of that garden and the wee sense of sanctuary I found there but only until  the butterflies in my stomach returned at the dread of when and how the next attack would come.  I was maybe 8 or 9 and  I remember wishing that I could stay and l...

Harkening back to a post from several months ago on anger, I continue to be amazed that so many people blame their anger on others.  Here is a test...if you are wondering whether or not you truly take responsibility for your own anger, check out how you excuse anger.  If you use statements like "It's just something that comes over me", or "It makes me so anger when you do that...", or "It's something I can't control it" ..then there is a pretty good chance you don't take ownership of your own anger.  Dissociating yourself from your anger and making anger an it suggests that you do not see the responsibility that is yours alone to own.   Imagine the power of change that would come from saying instead, "I let my anger come over me" or "I allow my anger to overwhelm me when I see you do that" or "It's like I can't control my anger".  The sooner we own the emotions we feel, the more empowered we are to...

If there is one thing that stands out from my days of rage and anger, it is the fact that my mind was forever clouded.  Uncertain.  Double minded. Scattered. Unfocused.  Well, ok, not entirely unfocused...more like overly focused...right on the thing that I had organized my life around, being the abuse and all it's ramifications.  Through the early days of my career I made mistakes, had trouble learning, remembering my course load and training and overall, had a general sense that my mind just wasn't working as well as it should have been.  Thoughts would stray, concentration was hard, daydreaming became second nature and I would fog or brown out of a conversation.  Nothing held my interest for very long and chasing down an idea was like trying to remember a dream. It did not get much better when I surrendered my life to Jesus in my late 30's.  In fact, scripture and trying to understand what God was saying only confused the issue. So, fa...

I have just finished reading one of the most powerfully impacting books I have ever read.  I cried, I learned, I sat amazed and in wonder.  Everything, absolutely everything, that God is about when it comes to righting wrong flies in the face of how we humans normally and naturally (on account of our fallen natures) do it.  Humans hate, and want revenge, God loves,  and wants forgiveness and reconciliation.  It astounds me, He astounds me.  His grace is indeed amazing. The book is called As We Forgive, Stories of Reconcilation from Rwanda by Catherine Claire Larson (Zondervan, 2009).  I highly recommend it.  This is not just a book for restorative justice advocates and practioners like me;  it is a book for anyone who has been harmed or who has harmed another (and any harm will do, for all conflict that does not transform us so that we do the loving thing inevitably has and will cause harm) There was so much to take away f...

How many times over the years have I heard Matthew 18:19 - 20 referenced by people who are praying for a specific thing?  For example, when praying with others for healing, I myself  have voiced the "promise", to remind God that "where two are agreed on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven".  Now though, as I study reconciliation, biblical peacemaking and conflict transformation more and more, I am fast becoming convinced that this promise, made by Jesus, is contextual to the passages that precede it, and the promise holds true for the miraculous that occurs when two or more people agree to make things right between them. Matthew 18: 15 - 18 concerns strained relationships that result from sin and the conflict that arises from unacknowledged and or unrepented sin and lays out one of the most important, biblical teachings on how we are to respond when this happens.   First, Jesus teaches,  "If a...

I have slowly - emphasis on sloooooooowly - been learning something of late. Loving your neighbour has little to do with actually liking them.  Accepting that you do not necessarily like someone and then committing to treating them with respect, dignity and honour in any event, is love.  That is how we love our enemies.  That is how we do good to those who persecute us and that is how we pray for those who harm us.  For almost 4 years now I have been working with someone I personally interviewed,  hired and trained.  This person has been the proverbial "thorn in my side" from day one.  Whereas everyone else I have hired and trained has blossomed in their role as an adjuster,  this person has not.  She takes feedback as criticism, is extremely defensive and attacking with confronted with an error, and has a narcissistic manipulative way about her.    There were days that I beat myself up for having hired her ...

This weekend I met a women who most would have labeled a crack head.  She told me a story about how when she was on the street, one day she felt an overwhelming sadness and despair.  She sat on the street corner at Hastings and Main and cried and cried and cried and people walked past.  She said if just one person had of stopped and looked at her, seen her humanity and asked her how they could help, she would have felt like she was not so alone.  Now many years later, she has found the love of God, is in recovery, and struggling to become whole again.   I thanked her for  honouring me, for letting me into her circle and telling me her story.  From now on I will take a risk, notice and engage the people on the streets instead of walking past, shaking my head and judging that they actually want to be there or had the capacity to change if they truly wanted to. This weekend I met a man who was out on a weekend pass from his sentence....