Copy of "Proclaim Peace" Season 2, Episode 11 // The Art of Reconciliation and Moral Imagination, With John Paul Lederach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1BfxINeIRs

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Jen and Patrick are joined for a profound conversation with conflict transformation pioneer John Paul Lederach, who shares deep insights on peace, reconciliation, and the power of moral imagination rooted in faith and human connection. They explore the story of Jacob and Esau, why reconciliation is a horizon more than an event, and the four ways to use moral imagination to achieve reconciliation.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to John Paul Lederach and the podcast topic

02:04 Lederach’s background and influence in conflict transformation

05:00 How Lederach defines peace as relationships characterized by dignity and justice

07:44 Peace as a journey, not a destination—peacebuilding as ongoing process

08:38 Lederach’s Christian faith shaping his work and worldview

15:12 The biblical story of Jacob and Esau as a case study for conflict and reconciliation

16:09 The story’s relatable family conflict and its lessons for peace work

22:27 The process of making the turn towards reconciliation, facing oneself, others, and God

25:16 The importance of facing truth and emotional honesty in reconciliation

28:33 Jacob’s transformative encounter and the divine in the face of the other

31:26 Forgiveness as remembrance and change, not forgetfulness

34:01 The interior journey of relational change and the ongoing nature of peace

37:28 Moral imagination explained: web of relationships, curiosity, creativity, risk-taking

44:54 The importance of small, creative acts in conflict zones and peace work

50:36 The role of family, nature, faith, and multigenerational legacy in personal peace

52:50 Hope as a step-by-step embodied action, not just an abstract ideal

Transcript

Patrick Mason (00:00)

Hi everyone and welcome to the "Proclaim Peace" podcast, where we talk about what we can learn about peacemaking by diving into the scriptures. I'm Patrick Mason. I'm here with Jen Thomas. Jen, good to see you.

Jennifer Thomas (00:10)

It's good to see you too. And I have to tell all of our listeners that I'm super excited. So if I were an 18-year-old girl, this guest would be like my Taylor Swift. So I am just so really excited about what we get to bring to you today. And I've been looking forward to this conversation all week long. So yay.

Patrick Mason (00:30)

Yeah, let's, let's dive right into the Taylor Swiftness of it. so, so our guest today is John Paul Lederach. I got to know John Paul. I was fortunate enough that he was my professor back in graduate school. So when I went to the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, he was on the faculty there, but he was only, I don't know exactly what his arrangement was, but he was only there sometimes because he was literally all around the world, like mediating and being involved in.

Jennifer Thomas (00:34)

Ha ha ha

Patrick Mason (00:57)

in situations of real violence. He was mediating conflicts all around the world. He'll talk about it or mention some of the places that he's been. He spent a lot of time in Columbia, a lot of times in other places. So he would literally like parachute in, well, he did not literally parachute in. He would figuratively parachute in for, for like, we'd have like a two or three day intensive, you know, ⁓ during the middle of the semester, kind of whenever we could get them. then at the very end of the, of the semester, when all the other classes were done, he came in and I think it was like two weeks of like nonstop. And it was, ⁓ I loved all of my professors at the Kroc institute. learned a tremendous amount, but like John Paul is, is just kind of like an iconic figure within the field of conflict transformation. actually sort of like invented the field of conflict transformation.

And just he is one of the greatest teachers I've ever had. So almost everything that I think about when I think about peace and conflict transformation, a lot of that stuff goes back to those times and reading his work and everything.

Jennifer Thomas (02:04)

Well, and I have to say, I owe my knowledge of him to you because when I came to this work of peacemaking and conflict transformation through my work here at MWEG I was new to the field. I didn't have a deep understanding of it. I hadn't had the benefits of a graduate school education in this work. And I felt very at sea in a boat. I was like, I believe in this. There's something in my soul that this is calling out to and I want to find a pathway towards it.

And I kind of Googled and found some heavy tomes and I'm like, ⁓ this is not doing it for me. And in a passing conversation, you mentioned his book, The Moral Imagination, The Art and Soul of ⁓ Building Peace. And I immediately ordered that. And to say this book was transformational for me is to not do it justice. It really opened up the world of possibility to me in a way that was accessible, that didn't feel really overly...I don't know, didactic or... It just was very accessible. And so this has been, he has sort of been my patron saint of peacemaking. And I've really, really appreciated learning at his feet through his books.

Patrick Mason (03:08)

Yeah, and I think for both of us, so much of his work resonates because it's deeply grounded in his background as a Christian. He's a lifelong Mennonite and has spent a lot of time working with faith communities and Christian communities all around the world, also other faith communities as well, not just Christians. And he's a person, he unlocked for me certain aspects of the New Testament, certain aspects of the Bible that then allowed me to see scripture in new ways. So anyway, we could go on and on talking about him.

Jennifer Thomas (03:38)

Well, yes, but I will, and we will talk with him, but I will say one more thing. I do feel like as a Latter Day Saint, one of the reasons that his work has been really instructive for me is because he does just he's just committed to the fact and the knowledge that we don't that we can innovate and expand and try new things and and that that the art and act of doing that is divine, and it's a signifier that the divine is with us. And so to me that we've so deeply through Latter-day Saint theology, this idea that we are not stuck where we are, and that the more we are in tune with God, the more he will raise possibilities for us and open pathways that we would not have otherwise found. And the way that he's applied that lens to peacemaking, I just think is so, it just invites us to to live in a higher way and gives us, I think, an access road to get to that state of being.

Patrick Mason (04:36)

Yeah. All right. So we will stop fanboying and fangirling and bring John Paul on with, I've already mentioned that he's spent much of his career at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He's written a number of books, I think like almost 30 books, which is crazy while he's also been doing all this other stuff. But two books that I would highly recommend for people to check out, one that you already mentioned, The Moral Imagination, The Art and Soul of Building Peace.

And then another one that I think would be really interesting to people, it's called Reconcile, Conflict Transformation for Ordinary Christians. so he writes for academics, but he writes for the church and for ⁓ kind of ordinary people like you and me too. And so we're just really grateful to have him on to talk about, we're going to talk about Jacob and Esau, that great story in the Bible, but we're also going to talk about the moral imagination and what that means for us as peace builders. So we're excited to bring on John Paul Lederach.

Patrick Mason (05:28)

All right, well, John Paul Lederach welcome to Proclaim Peace.

John Paul Lederach (05:31)

Thank you. Great to be with you both.

Patrick Mason (05:33)

Thanks, we are thrilled to have you here. And I can't wait for this conversation. And just to learn from you, it's always great to be around you. So we always start by asking our guests the same question. This is a question that you've literally spent your life trying to define. So we'll see what the one or two minute version of it is. But how do you define peace?

John Paul Lederach (05:56)

Patrick, this takes us back to our Notre Dame graduate days. Yeah. Well, I think I would probably, no matter what day you asked, it might be a slightly different version. It's one of the wondrous words in the world that requires a lot of wandering. I think what I've come to is that peace is really about the quality of relationships that's characterized by a great deal of dignity and love and justice. that Psalm 85 that I often referenced in my writing brought together those four kind of voices in life, was when truth and mercy meeting together and justice and peace, embracing or kissing. And that unfolds an understanding of something that is about a holistic health of personhood, of relationships, of community and of a globe. And so those, just tells us that it is a wondrous, mysterious, and complex concept that sort of defies the simplicity of academic definitions that we often give to it. So I think ultimately, I come back to the notion of it being relationally based. And those relationships are characterized by respect and dignity and love and truth and, forms of justice and repair often. So where those things all come together, you have a sense of a more holistic understanding of peace, I think, which is by necessity an ongoing journey. that's part of it. It's when we kind of define it as something that can be handled or held, it kind of defies the nature of it always and constantly and continuously, just like relationships, as something that is unfolding with a range of things that move in and out and interact with our lives and our relationships.

Jennifer Thomas (07:44)

I think that's a beautiful insight that we are trying to kind of reinforce over and over again with this podcast, that peace is not something you can achieve and then you're there, but it's a process that we all go through. For a lot of our listeners, peace building and peacemaking that work, they are new to it and this podcast has been sort of a gateway for them, which means that they don't know you as well as we do.

and don't understand how excited we are to have you with us today. So I think for a lot of people, certainly for Patrick and I, our discipleship has been our pathway to peacemaking. There are certainly other people for whom Christian discipleship is not the path, but I know that that has been true of you. And I would love it if you would start this conversation by sharing with our our listeners, just having them get to know you a little bit. If you could talk about how your Christian discipleship has impacted your entire life's work and ⁓ your dedication to peace building.

John Paul Lederach (08:38)

Yeah, absolutely, Jennifer. Well, I do come, I come from a Mennonite Anabaptist background, and one that is generationally based in the sense that I think at least three generations back, we have, I have pastors and church leaders in my lineage, so to say, I grew up as a preacher's kid in just in the rural areas outside of Portland, Oregon. And

My brother and I often laugh with my father, who's still alive, 94 years old and just a wonderful, amazing person, that during our very early years, he was more of an evangelical outreach kind of thing, which was very much a part of the work of the way that the church that was conducting summer camps and all kinds of stuff. And we used to travel, of course, because you're a preacher's kid, you get in the car and you go, can't leave everybody home.

So we always kind of laughed that we had been saved more than anyone else in the world could possibly have been saved. Because we were the two little, know, toes in the back, in the back pews not paying much attention until that moment came where everybody had to bow their heads and decide whether to make a decision. And we would always stand on the pews and kind of wave it bad up front. So he could legitimately say, I see that hand. Anyway, I just say that I grew up in a very caring, loving, rural community. And there is a lot to be said, I think in today's world of polarization, we don't always understand how rich some of that really is. But I grew up in a community and in a church that had a kind of an ethos of care for each other and for people who were strangers, people that were not fully known. My mother grew up on the borderlands of Texas and Mexico, bilingual.

In Oregon, the migration patterns were often Mexican, berry picking, all the seasons that came. We were among the few families that had those people in our homes all the time. And so I grew up with this ethos, I think, of care for the other and for your neighbor, love of God and neighbor was actually very incarnational, very much a part of, you know, less words and more and more actions. you ask a Mennonite to describe their theology, they will struggle sometimes to put all the words together. But if you ask them to get a pitchfork and go clean the barn or to build a house, they will have no hesitation to what it is that offers care to the world around them. And that, think, is what I grew up with. Now, when I became roughly in the age of teens, we were still in the Vietnam War period and our church tradition of pacifism, of doing, you know, to the extent of loving your enemy, which is sort of the guideposts of the actual actions and teachings of Jesus as the center around which everything else is understood. During the First World War, there was no exemption for conscientious objectives. So I had great uncles that spent time in Leavenworth.

The Second World War, there was an emergent exemption for conscientious objection And by the time that I was coming through that, as a young boy, man coming in those teenage years, you actually had to start thinking about how you're going to present in front of a panel, and if you're going to do it or if you're not going to do it. And while we were at the very end of that and was kind of in that lottery system of pulling birthdays.

It was a place where I began to give real thought to what it means to say these words and to believe that there is a way other than violence to respond to conflict. That was formative at a very early age. By my middle years of college, we were at a point where it was kind of an interesting paradox, but for me, it was extremely shaped much of my life. And it had to do with the ways that conscience objection structures were set up at that time, that if you waited to see if you had a lottery date pulled and you were required, you were still under a draft, which ended roughly the period I was in college. But so we were just at the edge of that transition. But if you waited to see if you got an early pull on that lottery system, you would be required to do like a one or one and a half year service domestically here in the US.

But if you volunteered to go for a longer period, you would be placed somewhere around the world in a service position. Could be Africa, Latin America. In my case, I had hoped to go to the Middle East, but it turned out that the choices that were available ended up in Europe. And it very kind of interesting. So it was a three-year commitment. I was a volunteer working in a hostel that was holding mostly African students coming from Rwanda, Burundi, and then Congo, Zaire, which today's Congo was at the time Zaire, and French-speaking Africa, former colonies of Belgium. And so I was in a house of mostly 30 to 40 university-age students coming from Africa into Europe. I was washing floors, painting rooms, serving meals and playing chess till two in the morning with people who pushed that the only way they could really imagine change in their home countries was some form of armed revolution. This is what, you know, they were so frustrated with what they were experiencing in so many of these places. One of the conflicts between Hutu and Tutsis broke out in our home, in the home where we all lived. And so was like this, these conflicts were never far from our daily lives.

And I was grappling with how you really make sense of change in the world. that's what I think when I came back from that experience, having to finish two years of college, I looked for where it was that I could get a degree in conflict and peace studies. And there were about three programs at that time in the US. And I ended up in one of those that was Mennonite based. And I've never left that kind of vocational field. I feel like that was fortunate that sometimes your deepest vocational sense can align with a way that you can make a career of the work that you do. And that's what I've done. I've mostly worked with, from that point forward, finding better ways and better alternatives to conflict than violence, whether that's interpersonal or global.

Patrick Mason (14:51)

That’s fantastic. I think that helps people get to know you a little bit and where you come from. And I can really see the connection even over the last few minutes just of your own personal story and then your definition of peace being all about relationships, Those relationships, a ⁓ community full of relationships that you were embedded in, that you were formed in. And then...

And then this experience of actually living with people and saying like, literally, how do we live together in a house? You know, with all these kinds of things. And then you've just taken it from there to think about that. we want to, in terms of framing this conversation, we wanted to talk about the Jacob and Esau story, which is a story you've written about a lot as a kind of model for thinking about conflict and conflict transformation and reconciliation.

And I think it is just a ⁓ terrific model. So that'll allow us to kind of unpack some of these other themes. And if you want to tell any other, you know, peace stories, you know, war stories or peace stories, and you have a lot of good peace stories. But why don't we dive into Jacob and Esau and what makes this, what draws you to this story? What makes this story in your mind such a rich case study for thinking about conflict and reconciliation.

John Paul Lederach (16:10)

Well, I think first, one of the fascinating parts about stories that emerge, especially from the Hebrew Bible tradition that I always grew up referencing as the Old Testament, is that 90 % of them are stories of failure. You know, stories of people getting themselves in horrible trouble. And so like the teaching mode is dead square always in conflict. mean, so this is one of those places, but it's so relatable because it's a family. And I think that's one of the points that we have to constantly grapple with is that sometimes we can make these things so abstract and our discussions and arguments so abstract that we lose sight about how grounded they are in the actual day-to-day things. So here you've got Isaac and Rebecca who spend a lifetime, you know, waiting for children and never get them.

And now suddenly when they come, they're going to come in a pair. But then there's like this hint that they're going to be in a fight. And so it starts, it starts one of the interesting things about the biblical stories is characters of this sort always get to argue with God. And you can't, you know, it's very interesting because we tend not to want to think about it in those terms. But here you're getting, you know, Rebecca's getting like messages and a sense of what's coming and that there'll be one that will be more important than another. And Isaac, you know, just out of his mind happy with the, and the first one out, the firstborn has such significance. And it's this red haired, Patrick, here we go. You know, it's like, it's like this hairy, big hunter dude that comes out who couldn't be... well, there you go. Anyway, it comes out, this guy could not be more of the prototype.

Patrick Mason (17:45)

I'm only the redheaded part, the big hunter dude, not so much.

John Paul Lederach (17:55)

In this day and age, you'd probably be the quarterback of the local high school team and on to college, you know, like that kind of figure as the first born. And the guy hanging on the heel is Jacob. know, as the Esau comes out and Jacob is hanging on the heel and is the one that stays home close to the mother. And what kind of a story is this where the mother secretly and often kind of openly is preferring one and the father is preferring the other?

They're not talking about it, they're not saying anything, but they put in motion all kinds of secret plans around what's going to be done. And then that you have these events that happen where Jacob and Esau come to realize that there is going to be secrecy, manipulation, humiliation. Jacob makes plays for receiving the firstborn status at a time when Esau is vulnerable, he hasn't eaten and he needs food.

And then comes that extraordinary story of the deception, you know, where to the degree that he wraps goatskin around his arm so he appears more like his brother in order to receive something that is not his, deceiving his dying blind father. I don't know how we can get this. This literally is like what we watch, you know, in the evenings on Netflix. So anyway.

Jennifer Thomas (18:58)

This is ready for HBO, right?

John Paul Lederach (19:10)

And then then Esau comes in and there is this moment that I sometimes when I sometimes read it when you read through it and what I often do with this story, by the way, is I I work with groups where we bring people up who who take on the body of each of the four characters. And I will stop when I'm telling the story. I will stop and I will say to Rebecca, what what are you feeling right now?

Because I think sometimes we leap through this to the conclusions of everything, rather than sitting with the humanity of it all and the human emotion that accompanies it. So here comes this moment where first Isaac realized he's been deceived because Esau says, I've come now for my blessing. And he says, I've already given it. If you reread those portions, you'll see how three times Esau insists it's not true, that he has been deceived. And that his father, who has loved him all his life, tells him there is nothing to be done about this injustice. You will forever, you will forever suffer this. And he comes out of that. And so one of the things that rings for me in that story is at the very, when he comes out of that tent and then back into the open village, the last words that any that

Jacob hears as he's running from the village, fleeing the wrath of his brother, is if I find him, I will kill him. Now, so I just want to, there's a big part of this story, but one of the things is right there in that moment, the nature of conflict, the nature of moving away from that that we fear, those things that we've done.

The emotionality that is there that had Jacob turned and come back right at that moment, he might have been killed. So there's all this deepness of questions that begin to emerge. But the metaphoric element of the story is that people move away from the conflict. In this case, it's a physical movie. Of note, it's of great distance and many years. And a particular note,

It's close to three decades. It's 30 years. Now, one of the things, as Patrick would know, one of things I work with a lot is that so many of these conflicts we deal with, the international community wants to get them over in a project of one or two years. I don't think we can imagine anything other than this deep notion of how profound and long humiliation, deception, and injustice really sits in those things that we have participated in.

And those things that we have experienced from others. So now in this story, what you get is the movement away. One of the biggest questions is, how do you accompany the movements? How do you accompany the person that has lost, has been deceived? How do you accompany those who felt innocent and have been deceived within that? How do you accompany those that are moving away and that are not yet ready to face what they have done? It may continue a life of...of sneaking around the actual elements. A fascinating part for me in all of this comes at the point at which 30 years later, 28 years later, Jacob faces some issues that are similar to the ones that he produced. And within that context, he makes a decision to go back. We all think, it's interesting, he's going back. I always raise the question, how do people make the turn?

How do people actually make a decision to turn back toward conflict, place their face, and by the way, this whole story is filled with descriptions of face, turn their face in the direction of the conflict and turn their face in the direction of their enemy. And what we find from Jacob is something that has a profound truth to it, which is that he turns and begins, but he turns many times before he gets there.

Because he keeps questioning himself, can I do this? Can I actually go to the place where I have to face what I have done and I have to face the brother that I have harmed? And then we have untold parts of the story. This is the other thing about biblical stories. They never give you like a full Netflix run of the thing, a full HBO, right? So we don't actually know what all happened with Esau. Esau disappears from the story until he reappears when Jacob begins to move his direction and he reappears with legions of horses and camels and cattle and wives and children and entourages. In other words, the person harmed somehow had a life that led to enormous wealth and success, powerful. And here comes Jacob on the other side coming back and he's getting news about this. I'm getting news that this dude is coming with the full entourage. He's coming with everything he's got. And that opens up a fear. Now, what I talk about when I reference reconciliation is that I often say that reconciliation is more proximate to a horizon that gives us orientation, gives us a sense of where we're going. But our horizon is never quite fully reached in perfection. You never kind of sit in perfection in all of this. But you take pathways, and you begin to find the pathway that lead, so that notion of leading toward that Jacob had, and that in that pathway, you will have encounters. And those encounters, I think, this story exemplifies three of them in this latter part of the story that are very powerful. So it has to do with Jacob's deep struggle with what he's moving toward. And there is that story of the night that he fights with the angel or the man, as it sometimes is described. And he's struggling all night with this person, somebody that is, they're wrestling, right? And we can ask the question, I think rightly so, about this might be. So one, I think it's very legitimate to imagine that Jacob is struggling with himself. He's trying to get a sense of his own true face, his own true self. Does he have the courage to actually face what he's done and to face those that he fears? I think it can be rightly understood as him struggling with his brother before it happens. Can I return to this?

And I think as the text itself begins to exemplify that he's struggling with God, because in the morning when he rises, part of what he says is, I have seen the face of God and I've survived. So here comes the first notion of face.

Jennifer Thomas (25:31)

I love this idea that you've raised that anytime we want to involve ourselves in repair or we want to return to repair, there's sort of three parts of that struggle. We've got to wrestle with ourselves and the harm that we might've done, the role we might've played, the falsehoods that we might've told, because I think it's important to remember we all lie to ourselves and lie to other people, even if we're trying to be scrupulously honest. Like we make up...

recent stories and then that's how we move forward. So that's the first. And then the second, I love that you've outlined that it requires us to think deeply and wrestle with the reality of the other person because we can't go into a place of repair if we haven't tried to inhabit at least their space and understand where they're coming from. And then I love that final notion that ultimately for repair to happen there has to be an engagement with God. We have to sort of involve a mediator in that or someone that gives us clarity about our role, the needs of others, and pushes us to look beyond that.

John Paul Lederach (26:30)

Absolutely. And all of these are actually described as struggle, as wrestling. So it's not like there's simple clear paths that I'm just waiting for the right word and then I know what to do. It's a struggle. And in Jacob's story, of course, in the first part when he sees his brother Esau coming with all the horses and the men, just think about what he does. He puts everything that he has in front of him. So all his children, all his...

why all everything he wants to be the last dude to arrive right so now that's before the struggle so he is so fearful that he's going to try to find a way to be the last one arriving at the camp right now after the struggle it is so metaphorically powerful after the struggle he steps to the very front without anything to the degree that when they meet he goes down on his knees

Jennifer Thomas (27:01)

Yeah. Jacob's not looking great here.

John Paul Lederach (27:20)

and drops his head on the ground, deep signs of both respect and recognition that were never present at an earlier stage. And then of course, this, so then comes the moment that everybody imagines is reconciliation as event. That's one of our problems is ⁓ those who want a cheap understanding of reconciliation will only look for reconciliation as event. And that event is Jacob coming off of his metaphoric coming down to the same level, I mean, Esau coming down to the same level as Jacob, Jacob being picked up from his knees and two brothers embracing. And if you're reading the story, it bring tears to your eyes at that moment. You feel the emotion of these two estranged brothers embracing. Right. And in that conversation, there is this phrase that emerges, which is Jacob trying to offer something to Esau and Esau saying, I don't need it. But, then Jacob saying, but to see, now I want to go back to the face. He had to turn and face his enemy, he had to turn and face the conflict. He had to face himself, images of his enemy and God. All of it was referenced in the story as face, right? And now he says to his brother, former enemy, currently in his arms, But to see your face is to see the face of God.

Powerful for me from my tradition, which is kind of Mennonite Quaker in many ways of what has influenced me this notion that we have a capacity to rehumanize in a way that sees the divine in the other even our enemy. And that is something that is so foreign to many of us within faith communities, but very, very foreign to the political community that must always kind of envision enemy as a need for fear and dominance.

This story says, no, I see in you something of the divine. Now, I don't want to finish this story without saying they spend some time together and then one morning they get up and they go down different valleys. Okay, so we don't have any what? We don't have any, they kissed, made up and it was a happy forever after, you know, ending. There was...ongoing, something that led them to say, will now separate. And we're kind of left with all of these extraordinary elements, each of which we could spend probably a half hour just bringing forward the questions.

Patrick Mason (29:39)

Let me ask, follow up on that point specifically, and maybe we can go back to some other things. But we oftentimes think about reconciliation. You said, I think of a few notions we have sometimes just there's this big event and then we live happily ever after, right? do we think about reconciliation that does not lead to kind of intimacy of like actually, you now we're, it's like we're brothers in the same house again, right? And we're, and is it actually possible to reconcile with somebody and then go your separate ways? Is that really reconciliation?

John Paul Lederach (30:15)

Well, I would love to ask you the same questions. My sense is that there's always kind of a yes and, and yes and, and yes and element to this. So yes, I think the embrace is powerful. And I think the ability to come forward with ⁓ acknowledgement, there's so much, there's such a deep difference between knowing and acknowledging.

Knowing as we know these things happen, but being in a place where in the presence of others, we acknowledge what has happened. It brings forward an ability for transformation to happen. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we all have to still be alike, think alike, and be together in the same ways that one might imagine kind of end of story. That there will be a continuous journey.

It's very much, think, like at least my understanding of forgiveness, that too often forgiveness is placed kind of in a rubric of forgive and forget. That you forgive and then you let go and that's all done. It's gone. I think forgiveness at its deepest level is not forgive and forget, but remember and change. That we have a capacity to recall those things that we have fallen short of, to recognize them and to help repair what has been done. And we have an ability to remember that as a guidepost and not do it again. And we begin the process of change. think so the word convert is actually convere with in French it's turn. It's the notion that you are actively turning and changing, that you are going to become something more than you were at the point at which those things happen. But you don't kind of simply let go in the sense that memory no longer has a place. And I so I, for me, reconciliation, ultimately does have to do with the quality of our relationships. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we all have to be and think and do exactly alike. And I think that's one of the biggest elements of this is how we continue to live into what is, I believe, a lifelong journey, as opposed to exclusively imagining this as a one-time event. And that, to me, has been part of the challenge, particularly within faith communities, is that people's imagination of this is much more event and one-time thing, and somehow that will take care of it. I think what a lot of people experience is that forgiveness can bring a deep sense of relief, of release, that it can free people, but it frees them to go deeper with what it is they're truly understand, what they truly understand, and how they truly can seek forms of repair.

Patrick Mason (32:54)

Yeah, that's really powerful. I think there's something here that tells us about there's a kind of virtue or a quality of reconciliation that may have less to do with external circumstances or externalities. The fact is they lived in different places, right? And so they went home and they had three decades worth of relationships to go back to and all those kinds of things.

But it seems what changes in the process leading up to that event and then coming out, we can almost think about like an hourglass, right? Is their hearts have changed. Truly the relationship has changed, even if the external circumstances, they go back to their separate places, but they go back not in a relationship of enmity or suspicion or fear, remembering and recalling all those past hurts and wrongs and resentments and all of this, but actually going back to that place with a completely different heart, a completely different orientation towards the other person. I think that, that I think sometimes we undervalue or underplay. mean, the Bible is so rich on this, like turning our stony hearts into flesh and so forth. So much of it is about attitudinal and we...

John Paul Lederach (34:02)

Yeah, exactly.

Patrick Mason (34:06)

We can, I've been guilty of this myself, certainly, to sometimes kind of downplay that because we want to focus so much on the externalities. But I think this story and so many others and your work, like with the moral imagination and everything, so much of this is interior work that has to be done.

John Paul Lederach (34:22)

Yeah, and that the interior work is ongoing. This is, I mean, part of the things that defies the event notion of the single moment that ends it all is that that would essentially mean that there is no ongoing journey. There is no further depth to be had, no further understanding to be gained. And I think what it does is it's really about the phrase I've been using more recently is the notion that we all are wounded in some form or fashion, but that the real element of becoming, you know, moving toward healing is really about how we carry our wounds together gracefully. That is that, and when I use the word gracefully, it's not about smoothly, it's about grace-filled. It's about having sufficient space to give grace to ourselves, to others and to the wider community, knowing that we continue to have wounds and they're not hidden any longer. They are a part of the story of who we are. And I think that's kind of an ongoing thing. And so it's not always easy to locate the best images for this. For me, the notion of reconciliation as horizon permits an orientation.

And you will have moments of extraordinary embrace. I mean, I think those can happen. You will have moments where you will feel that it fell way short. fact, I tend to have worked much more with people who feel that the efforts to get there, to that embrace, never are what they expected them to be. That it isn't a full ⁓ acknowledgement. It's not truthfulness. It's not a form of justice that I was expecting. And so we carry with us imperfection. My wonderful Catholic colleague in Columbia, who was the head of the Colombian Truth Commission, wrote a book that had the title Imperfect Peace. There's a kind of an ongoingness to these things that attend to who we are as the human community. That we are ultimately imperfect.

I think one of the reasons that most of the stories in the Bible are a failure is because it's trying to tell us that. But why it is that we seem to want to have either perfection or nothing, I think that is not carrying your wounds gracefully.

Jennifer Thomas (36:34)

So I want to pull at a thread that Patrick mentioned and hopefully connect it to what you've just said. We'll see if I can cross that chasm. Patrick mentioned something that you are, dare I say famous for, which is this concept of moral imagination. And I'm wondering, this isn't exactly what you mean when you say moral imagination, but I'm wondering if this failure that you just expressed to us, where people feel like they come to repair and they come to reconciliation and they feel that it was inadequate or it didn't live up to expectations or it didn't have that soaring ending with the soundtrack behind it that like all is well. And I'm wondering if that's also a little bit of a failure of imagination. And I'm wondering if you could just share with our listeners why you believe moral imagination is so important and how it can help us on our peace journey to kind of let go maybe of some of the expectations that we go into it with.

And say, hey, I'm willing to imagine a different future than the one I conceptualized. I think if maybe, we don't know, but if Jacob came to this reunion with the expectation we will live together to our ripe old dead age in a valley harmoniously sharing flocks, then he might leave this saying, hey, this didn't go the way I planned. But it's possible that the reason they were able to separate is because they were able to let go of preconceived notions and imagine a future that looked different than maybe that storybook ending. Again, that's a little bit of a chasm, but I'd love for you to share with people why moral imagination and just the ability to imagine a future that is different than the one you walk into conflict with a preconceived notion about is so important to success and repair.

John Paul Lederach (38:13)

Yeah, but I can't help but add one small piece before I jump to your question, which is what mindset did these two brothers come to that moment in? I'm going to give you kind of my view from just a little bit of a distance. I think Jacob maybe was not imagining the valley full of sheep together. He was probably saying, I hope I live till tomorrow.

Jennifer Thomas (38:18)

Please.

Patrick Mason (38:33)

Yeah.

Jennifer Thomas (38:33)

Yeah.

John Paul Lederach (38:34)

That's what I think really deep down, all what you see him doing is I may not survive. I need to do it. I may not survive it. Esau, why did he come with everything he's got, a whole army, to meet one person? Right? I think in the back of his head, he's thinking, if this dude is going to be who he was, the party's over. And then something shocked, something, something was transcendent. Okay, now I'm going to because to me, this is important when I come to my explanation of moral imagination. So let me walk around both context and the nature of how I've written about and have tried to understand moral imagination. The context of much of my work across now nearly four and a half, five decades has been in settings of very protracted, violent conflict.

Colombia, it's Nicaragua in the 80s, it's Somalia, Northern Ireland, Basque Country, Nepal, many places that one would define as having open civil strife, if not war, and certainly longstanding division, intractable, coupled with open violence. Those are the settings, and those are some where the proximity to human suffering is never more than a single relationship away, always. And so you're in that cauldron. And so the context that I was noticing was it still was in that place there were communities who behaved in totally unexpected ways, leaders who came to conviction and process that transcended those constant cycles of pulling them and their communities back into violence.

And those little pockets I sometimes call those little pockets of vitality were ones that I tried to describe in some stories. How a few women in Wajir ended a war, the poet who met the warlord. I have those four stories that kind of the community in Columbia that was just extraordinary, West Africa. These were all the kind of work I pulled as just a little illustrations, four stories of actually people that I've known, been close to, worked with.

And then I asked what was happening in those stories. And I came to four forms of imagination. So I'm going to describe the four imaginations and then try to make why it is that I chose the word moral. First imagination, before anything else started, I sometimes call the grandparent or grandmother's imagination, is that people come to a place where they realize that the well-being of their children and their grandchildren is ultimately and intimately tied to the well-being of their enemies grandchildren. But there is no extricating yourself from the web of relationships that we are bound in many ways by the enemies we have. And when they come to that conviction, that conviction is at its deepest level, one of them being a part of a web of relationships that will need to be inclusive of our enemies.

And that's the starting point for a lot of people. And the simplest ways that they put it is just enough is enough. We just can't go on generation after generation after generation like this. And so there's this kind of moment where people say, we have to get beyond this notion that we aren't connected and that our well-being isn't connected to the well-being of people we fear and that hate us.

And so that's that first imagination that you're part of a web of relationships that includes your enemies. The second imagination, sometimes there were variety of ways to put it, was people just simply always wanted to get beyond what was presented on the surface of things. They were curious about another level. I call it paradoxical curiosity because it kind of had the paradox of them having to know what story they lived but having to find enough openness to engage with something that they didn't know and had not lived, which is, what did you all live? And that curiosity, I think that deep curiosity is one level underneath what's immediately visible. And they were insatiably curious, such that it led to conversations, such that it led to being, I sometimes call it the pause of curiosity, a small enough pause that they could be open to something different. Or that they needed to ask in order to understand something that was different. Those campesinos in Colombia would actually send little delegations out to meet paramilitary commanders and to make a case for something they wanted. But they had to open up conversations that everybody else in the community was, don't go, you're just going to get shot. And off they would go, you know, unarmed, always, it was extraordinary. They operated exclusively by saying, no gun will protect us. So they would just go without any weapons. This is how they, that little, the association of workers on the Karate River, that was their movement.

That imagination about curiosity is a big one because I think what highly toxic polarization does is it absolutely destroys curiosity. The main outcome it wants is some form of paralysis and incuriosity. And so this imagination was, you know, you don't have to jump across from one mountain top to the other, but at least open up some conversation with somebody who's one step different than you. Get a little bit curious.

That's the imagination. The third one was that the imagination itself, the word is about some form of bringing into the world something that does not now exist. It's about the capacity of the human being, the innate capacity, God-given capacity of the human being to continuously create, to invent, to imagine. And the creative act was what I found most striking. In fact, I talked about it almost as a professional crisis, that the most interesting things that happened around the world in peace building, nobody that did it had any training from me or anybody else. And they didn't even use the word peace building. It was like this set of people were brilliant. They invented something that nobody else did. So the unexpected, so creativity, there is such a close bridge between creativity and spirituality – 

Patrick Mason (44:07)

Right. So what's the point of getting all the training?

Jennifer Thomas (44:12)

Ha ha ha ha!

John Paul Lederach (44:28)

– that we don't fully recognize. This ability of the human and the human community to engage in the unexpected and creative act that brings into the world something that doesn't exist that makes us all better for it. And that sort of ability to say imagination is actually at the absolute core. In fact, to some degree, more important perhaps than the technical skill that we impart to people when we teach them conflict resolution stuff might be the imagination of myself as a part of a community of artists that are trying to bring forward something that right now doesn't exist and that nobody actually has the answer. So we're in as good a position as anybody to try out some things. And that's what those folks are doing. Yeah, play around with it. Yeah. So, and the fourth one was that I noticed consistently there was kind of an imagination about risk.

Jennifer Thomas (45:08)

Play around with it, right? Experiment, yeah.

John Paul Lederach (45:17)

And because these are highly risky situations, you often, when you talk to people 10 years later, they would kind of make a narrative that made a huge leap. And they would say, we were here and then we got here. And I was always curious about how they got from here on the first step. You know, one on four. And when you talk to them in detail, their imagination of risk was always about two things. One step at a time and never alone.

A small group, which I call the critical yeast, instead of the critical mass, a small group, one step at a time, imagination of what we need to do today, and testing that with a small group of people who are a little bit mixed, know, to the degree you can, but never alone. So, and I sometimes call it just the imagination of one step at a time, which is, think, extraordinary, by my view, description of hope. That hope is actually an embodied one step at a time. What we have access to today, who we have access to, what we know, what they might know, what we might try, how we might learn, and it's just one step at a time. Right? So now we got four imaginations. Imagination about the web that includes your enemy, imagination about curiosity of going one step further, imagination of around what creative thing might emerge and that we're capable of creativity and trying it out one step at a time. And that I called those things when they combine is the moral imagination. And I have been criticized many times by people who would prefer terms that are more acceptable that wouldn't be quotes too theologically loaded. So they might prefer civic imagination, evaluating.

Jennifer Thomas (46:52)

Yeah, value laden.

John Paul Lederach (46:55)

that moral sometimes has translated into morality, that you have to accept a certain param. In fact, the opposite of what I'm describing is that it breaks out of things that may bind you not to think creatively, right? But it mostly came from conversations that I have with that group in Columbia, the ATCC, and people who knew very well some of the, and still were live members of the originating founding group who talked about when they initiated their movement. Part of it was around a small public talk in a very difficult moment that Josue Vargas, a person embedded in their community, made in front of a military commander and his former torturer. And his appeal, they said, had such a capacity to be true to self and to the situation that it transcended everything else that was happening, that it brought forward something that was beyond that moment. So moral also has this notion of looking for sometimes we call it the higher moral ground, which we saw, I think is mis-queuing in some ways, because it seems to be we're leaving the situation. Actually, it's very, very grounded. And it's grounded in what is, but it's choosing to show up differently, unexpectedly, true to self, true to the well-being of community, true to the well-being of even those who we fear. 

And when that happens, there is an experience of something that opens up possibility, opens up new potential, new ways of understanding. And I think that's what moral imagination is really about. It's about finding ways, in the various chapters of that book, I try to move through different elements of it, but it's trying to find ways of not stopping short of going into really complex things, but going through that complexity to find essence. What is it that's at the core of this? How do we imagine ourselves more as artists than as technicians? How do we imagine even small sets of people having the capacity to help everything else grow? And, you know, a lot of this you can, you can make leaps into faith traditions and you can make leaps into social movement traditions in varieties of ways. But the mustard seed notion, it's the small things that can really have a capacity for a tenacity that offers something up into the world that is nourishing in spite of the harsh conditions in which they're found.

And this, ⁓ you know, a lot of the things I learned about this was from the communities that were spectacular in the ways that they responded to what had been long cycles of violence. And ⁓ I never saw them as victims, and I rarely saw them as narrowly defined survivors. I always saw them as artists. It's the art, I think, of ⁓ rehumanizing the face of conflict and living into it in a way that transformed their communities and far beyond.

Patrick Mason (49:48)

Amazing. Well, this is John Paul. I mean, there's so much wisdom born of experience there and long conversations. I love, mean, one of the things that I love about your work, your writing is that it's always derived from the experience of just ordinary people who have done their best to navigate creatively situations of extreme conflict. The last hour has transported me back 23 years ago to sitting and those of you who are listening can now understand why for me even having a couple of intensive weeks with John Paul, it still felt like it wasn't enough at the end of things. Well, John Paul, we could be here forever, but we're mindful of your time. So I want to wrap up with with the final question that we ask all of our guests is that you've gone around the world in a lot of conflict-laden, violence-prone places. I'm sure you've experienced conflict in your own life and in your own relationships or at home. Where and how do you find peace?

John Paul Lederach (50:51)

Yeah, well, certainly, the hearth and the home have been such a big part of it because I've been blessed with an extraordinary family. And I think that we have traveled together and that we experienced that that family embedded within a community of support, I think was really significant. At a very personal level, you know, I have these little practices I walk nearly every morning, I write haikus.

Patrick Mason (50:54)

Mm-hmm.

John Paul Lederach (51:17)

I am very connected to nature in that I find nature less as kind of a milieu that you go to and much more as a mentor, that noticing how things happen in nature has been ⁓ very nourishing for me, very restorative. I say of my faith tradition that you, the older you grow, maybe more the questions that come. But I've not felt that questions or uncertainty suggests less faith. I think it's more. I think the real test of faith is the ability to sit with hard questions for a lifetime and to keep wandering around them. I just, I'll make a little ploy here maybe, but I just finished a recent book that I would love to send both of you you send me your mailing addresses.

Patrick Mason (52:00)

Please do.

John Paul Lederach (52:00)

It's titled The Centuries Wrap Round Us. And it has to do with this notion that there is ways in which we are embedded in a multi-century place that can be attended to by the way Lise Bolding talked about it in my early years of work, which is that whoever held you at your earliest age, their birthdate goes back, in my case, to the 1860s in the Civil War period, compared to my grandkids that I hold in my lap who will crisscross the next century, there are actually centuries of what has touched us and what we have touched. And I think there is a depth to that that I find powerful and that permits us to hold questions for a lifetime and to do that with people we care about. And then it doesn't mean we have to break relationships if we don't all exactly think the same way.

And that to me is very nourishing. And I think that that exists in a lot of ways. So the last chapter of that book comes back to this question that I mentioned earlier about hope. I think that hope is really a step by step. It's hope in the embodied action with others that we feel as much as it is this notion of something that's not yet here.

Those are pieces of my, I suppose, my little – So send me your addresses.

Patrick Mason (53:17)

Absolutely. Thank you, John Paul. We're so grateful for you joining us today and shedding so much light on the story and just on the broader processes of what it means to try to reconcile.

Jennifer Thomas (53:17)

Thank you.

Yeah, deeply appreciate it.

John Paul Lederach (53:29)

Absolutely.

Jennifer Thomas (53:34)

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Proclaim Peace." To hear more, you can subscribe on a podcast app of your choice or on YouTube. You can always find full show notes or transcriptions at proclaimpeace.org.

Patrick Mason (53:47)

"Proclaim Peace" is a partnership between MWEG and Waymakers. You can learn more about Waymakers at waymakers.us. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.