By guest author Alan O’Hare, a Seanchie (Celtic storyteller)
As you reflect upon the visions of peace and reconciliation presented in this blog, I invite you to co-create a living tapestry that celebrates the voices of peace activists and serves as a beacon for others.
Focus now on the center of this limitless tapestry, where visitors from across the ages are eavesdropping on the conversations of teachers of peace. In their midst is a floating multidimensional puzzle that pairs of participants work on together.
What a meditative gathering it becomes as Thich Nhat Hanh, Elise Boulding, and Bishop Tutu move gently and playfully among the guests, offering pieces of the puzzle that have fallen to the floor.
As a band of international roving musicians begin playing, Nelson Mandela joins hands with Aung San Suu Kyi and invites other guests to join their dance of celebration and reflection. In moments, a circle of once-alienated sisters and brothers are singing so joyfully that puzzle solvers stop and join in.
On the rooftop is the entrance to an endless museum of art, co-created by prisoners of war and oppression, celebrating the human dream and spirit. In this world of peace, reconciliation, and harmony, standing alone in a corner are remnants of violence inside a dumpster. They await conversion into mulch for growing new forms of learning, creating, and healing. These remnants include photos, drawings, and scrapings of:
- Fenced-in, starving prisoners from an endless corridor of concentration camps
- Bombed-out images from Rwanda, Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, China, and more others than can ever be counted
- Endless reams of plans and designs for weapons of destruction, cruelty and subjugation
From all of these terrifying remnants, we are reminded once again of the tragic, dehumanizing echoes of the past that can move us to learn new ways to be or not to be with one another.
Is this vision realistic, possible, or even desirable? The mission of the griots and other storytellers is to bear witness to the voices of the past and to move us to search among the endless possibilities for a more loving future.
We hope you will join us in pursuing a path to world peace and reconciliation. Please share your stories and dreams at engagingpeace.com.
Alan O’Hare, LifeStoryTheatre.org