Quotes from John Paul Lederach

To speak well and to listen carefully is no easy task at times of high emotions and deep conflict. People's very identity is under threat.

Conflict in itself is not sin. But sin may enter into the situation, depending on how we approach conflict, how we deal with it, and especially how we treat each other. Sin is a feature of the quality of our relationships.

We live in a 'two-hundred-year present'.

The signs of sin entering conflict appear when we want to be God, when we assume superiority, when we oppress, when we try to lord it over others, when we refuse to listen, when we discount and exclude others, when we hold back deep feelings, when we avoid, when we hate, and when we project blame with no self-reflection.

It is about joining God in the mission of reconciliation by building bridges and bringing down the dividing walls of hostility between individuals and groups.

Reconciliation is not to quickly forgive and forget, as if it never happened or we somehow are gifted with a form of amnesia. Reconciliation requires that we remember and change, but with honesty about our experience and curiosity about the humanness of the other whom we fear.

We are called as individuals and congregations to learn the disciplines and skills that help us define ourselves, engage each other in nonanxious interaction, and maintain emotional contact even when we disagree.

Deep conflicts are stressful and painful. At worst, they are violent and destructive. Yet at the same time, they create some of the most intense spiritual encounters we experience. Conflict opens a path, a holy path, toward revelation and reconciliation.

Reconciliation is getting to the heart of the gospel and getting on with the gospel.

It is not possible to pursue reconciliation except through people who risk the journey to relate across the social divides. In this way they help make present the reconciling love of God. In other words, through people who reach across the lines of hostility, a new relationship between enemies becomes possible.

Often we think that anything and everything is acceptable. True and committed relationships have honest accounting and steadfast love. Love without accountability is nothing but words. Love with accountability is changed behavior and action. This is the real meaning of restoration. My purpose is to bring action and accountability to the words.

Let us create the social space that brings Truth, Mercy, Justice, and Peace together within a conflicted group or setting. Then energies are crystallized that create deeper understanding and unexpected new paths, leading toward restoration and reconciliation.

Be careful about what you hate. You may find that like a blindfold it removes your ability to see. Look first for what you see of yourself in others. Love the sinners, and see yourself in them. There you will find God.

The emphasis of interpretation was rooted in their understanding that their endeavour would take a long time and that outside intervention too often comes wrapped in agendas and time frames that offer help but which demand outcomes related to foreign understandings of purpose and results.

our place is known by the songs that give birth, name us and bring us home.

social healing is made up of spacemoments of resonance, voices touching voices in a common space.

To reconcile requires a commitment to see the face of God in the other, to feel the world from their perspective, and to place ourselves not in control of but alongside the human experience and condition.

We commit ourselves to the journey toward reconciliation because we believe it is right-even when we are not sure, as John Paul says, how it will progress or end. We believe that walking down the path to peace offers a way better than violence and an instrument more powerful than force to conduct the affairs of humankind. We pray that others will join us. -Harold

We tend to view compassion as something we project outward—that is, as a presence or gift we offer to another person or on behalf of a suffering world. This keeps compassion as an act of superiority, something the healthy offer the sick. We rarely offer the gift of compassionate presence to our own person.

The turning point in our 200-year present is pregnant with enormous potential to constructively impact affect the fundamental well-being of the human community. However, contrary to the range of scientific and political projections, this turn in humanity's journey does not rotate on which specific forms of governing political, economic, or social structures we devise.

The north of peacebuilding is best articulated as finding our way toward becoming and being local and global human communities characterized by respect, dignity, fairness, cooperation, and the nonviolent resolution of conflict. To understand this north, to read such a compass, requires that we recognize and develop our moral imagination far more intentionally.

God is working to bring all things together. The purpose is to heal and to reconcile people with each other and with God. God's mission is also ours. We have been given the same ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

Discernment emerges from understanding the nature of the conflict and what level of response is needed to deal with it adequately. Creativity is needed for flexibility and innovation.

True atonement and holiness place us on the journey to make real the reconciling love of God in our lives and to heal our broken communities across the globe. Our mission is to walk the path by which all things come together.