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Practical Peacemaking Week 4: Working Cooperatively to Transform Conflict into Peace (Intro to Mediation)
During Week 1 of our Practical Peacemaking series, we discussed the idea of having five main choices for addressing conflict in our lives: avoiding, accommodating, compromising, competing, and collaborating. As the most skill intensive and character demanding of the five approaches, collaborating will be our focus this week as we learn to engage with others in the facilitative negotiation setting of mediation. Nelson Mandela once said, âIf you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.â Even in intensely trying circumstances, Mandela knew he needed to engage with those who opposed him to make progress toward his respective goals…
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Practical Peacemaking Week 3: Preparing to Understand Others to Create Peace â Listening, Perspective Taking, and Empathizing
In a world of increasingly loud and divisive voices of people, organizations, and governments, too few of us are truly listening well enough to really understand each other. As the Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier once said, âListen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.â Yet even when we do desire to listen deeply to each other, we often lack the skills and attitudes needed to bridge expanding chasms of belief, facts, and purposes that lie between us. This week, to strengthen our peacemaking skills, we are focusing on three critical skills for preparing…
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Practical Peacemaking Week 2: Individually Finding Peace
Jesus said, âA house divided against itself shall not standâ (Matthew 12:25). This means we must integrate our thoughts, experiences, and actions into a harmonious blend internally. When our actions and beliefs are out of sync with each other, we are essentially divided, or at war with ourselves. As peacemakers, we need to access and cultivate the calm, tranquility, justice, mercy, and connection associated with inner peace before we can expect to create peace in connection with someone else. There are many real sources of creating inner peace, which largely hinge on the idea of meeting human needs and bringing our souls into balance. We know Jesus Christâs atonement provides…
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Week 1: Introduction to Practical Peacemaking
As members of MWEG, we recognize that peace can feel like an abstract concept. And itâs not merely the absence of violence. Instead, peace is a state of harmony, tranquility, and understanding that requires not only justice and ethics, but also balance, love, and connection. Peace has everything to do with how we feel about each other and how we act in our personal and collective lives. Defining terms We differentiate between conflict and contention because conflict is a normal, ongoing part of our mortality; there is no way to avoid it! Conflict implies that we perceive or actually experience differences that matter to one or more parties. It is…
