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COMPASSION IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND PEACE ACTIVISM
Date: Sunday 18th January 2009
Time: 2.15pm to 4.45pm
Venue: London Mennonite Centre (Just off Archway Road), 14 Shepherds Hill, London, N6 5AQ. Nearest Tube: Highgate (Northern line): 5 mins walk: (Take the Archway Road exit).
Streetmap:Click here
Speaker:
Gene Stoltzfus (Christian Peacemaker Teams, Director Emeritus)
Compassion is a powerful human emotion activated by the pain of ourselves or someone else. When we work for social change we can lose touch with or forget to draw upon this essential but defining human characteristic in the midst of our work. In the context of conflict, campaigns for change and the search for victory, compassion can grow when the spirit is connected to our deepest humanity and the real purpose of our work. Because this work is so outward directed, those of us who are activists can easily forget the lingering vestiges of pain in our own lives, but when we remember, this is one place to restart the journey to universal compassion. For people of faith, compassion is considered one of the greatest virtues.
So, how can we connect with a higher purpose, while engaging within a context in which we begin to lose hope? How can frustration, despair, and anger be transformed into compassion and indeed love? Join Gene Stoltzfus for what promises to be a revealing afternoon, in which he will draw on both personal experience in conflict zones such as Iraq and Vietnam, as well as on the examples of Abdul Ghaffar Khan ('Nonviolent Soldier in Islam') and Gandhi.
We will also catch-up with recent activities and ideas for the future. No charge and open to all - simply turn up for the start time. Donations welcome.
About the speaker:
Gene Stoltzfus was the director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) since its founding in 1988 until 2004. CPT trains and places violence reduction teams in high conflict situations like Iraq , the West Bank, Columbia and various native communities in the United States and Canada.
Gene traveled to Iraq immediately before the first Gulf War in 1991 and spent extensive time in Iraq again in 2003, consulting with Muslim and Christian clerics, Iraqi human rights leaders, families of Iraqi detainees and talking with American administrators and soldiers.
Gene's commitment to peacemaking is rooted in his experience in Vietnam as a conscientious objector with International Voluntary Service during the US military escalation there from 1963-68. He recalls that watching the helicopter personnel unloading their cargo of bloodied bodies in Saigon set him "on the search to make sense of life and death where the terms of survival, meaning and culture don't forbid killing. I had to ask myself," he said, "whether I was as willing to die for my conviction as the Vietnamese and American soldiers all around me were being asked to do."
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