Tag: seanchie

A living tapestry of peace and reconciliation (Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Alan O’Hare, a Seanchie (Celtic storyteller)

Rossville Street, Derry Peace mural
Mural in Derry, Northern Ireland. Image used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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

A living tapestry of peace and reconciliation (Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

by guest author  Alan O’Hare, A Seanchie (Celtic storyteller)

In this post, I invite you to “see the voices” of renowned peace activists,  less well known proponents of peace and reconciliation, and all the human beings who have suffered from the wars and conflicts pervading our world.

El Salvador mural with Archbishop Romero
El Salvador mural with Archbishop Romero. Photo by Alison McKellar, used under CC Attribution Generic 2.0 license.

Think of their stories as part of a tapestry of peace, a tapestry that could be displayed in a meditative gathering in which we can envision Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi,  Thich Nhat Hanh, and Nelson Mandela, our brothers and sisters in our own journey towards peace.

As we create this tapestry, allow these images to be your guides:

  • Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin at the 1989 Fall of the Wall
  •  Aung San Suu Kyi being released to the loving embrace of the people of Myanmar after many years of unjust house arrest
  • The life and courage of Archbishop Romero being celebrated in El Salvador Cathedral where he was assassinated in 1980
  • A circle of victims and perpetrators from the 1994 Rwanda genocide sitting on the grass (gacaca) listening to confessions and seeking reconciliation

Recall Gandhi as he sat spinning threads of harmony, independence, and resistance that rippled across the nation of India. Even now we can see the echoes of his voice of peace, a voice that became a rolling thunder continuing to resonate throughout the world today.

Recalling Gandhi should be more than just imagining him; it should be truly seeing him through all those millions of people whose lives have been affected in the search for peace and reconciliation. See him and appreciate more fully the voices that carry on his mission, and the art, music, movement, and fragrance hidden in the beauty and power in each of their words.

Alan O’Hare, LifeStoryTheatre.org

Storytelling and the path to peace

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome guest author Alan O’Hare, who reflects on the role of stories in building community and peace. Alan is a storyteller, psychologist, and university educator.]

On the journey in search of peace and non-violence, we meet many guides. At the heart of each encounter is a story expressed through rich and colorful language.Alan O'Hare

Listening to each others’ stories provides an opportunity to gain new information, insight, and skills to build peace together. Keys to that dialogue can include:

  • Moving beyond prejudices, attitudes, or values that create barriers to hearing the other person’s story
  • Learning what has led the other to this place, thus discovering a way to address each person’s differences
  • Engaging with each other in a way that can promote peace within ourselves and between us.

Psychologists and other mental health professionals bring an invaluable gift to this dialogue–the ability and experience needed to listen, honor, and create connections among stories to build a sense of community.

Over the past several years, I have been fortunate to be in dialogue with many people whose lives are reflections of this perspective, and to co-create with them multi-arts performances that celebrate their life stories. The path that led me to this work began as a community psychologist and has gradually evolved back to my ancestral Celtic roots as a seanchie, a weaver and itinerant storyteller.

It was the seanchie who roamed among the villages of the Irish countryside 2500 years ago, gathering the threads of people’s stories and weaving them into a tapestry celebrating their lives.

This heritage is mirrored throughout the world in our diverse cultural roots. We are all inheritors of these traditions, and we are all called to express and witness stories of peace throughout the world. Please send us  YOUR story.

Alan O’Hare, founder and artistic director of Life Story Theatre, can be reached at bridges95@aol.com

[An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Psychologists for Social Responsibility conference in the summer of 2010, and published in the journal Peace Psychology.]