Where Have I Been? The Story of a Freedom Tour

Hello, friends. I've been more quiet than usual in this space of late, and I'd like to share with you why that is.

But first I want to tell you how meaningful it was to read your stories on our last post about how each of you came to care about the subject of nonviolence.

You shared stories that were so varied and thoughtful, as I expected they would be.

And yet each story spoke of how strong and brave you are.

There was such vulnerability there.

Thank you for sharing your stories with us.

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And now for more of the scoop on where I've been.

Have I told you what I do?

I am a concert producer for Storyville Live.

Storyville Live is a division of the Seattle-based coffee roaster Storyville Coffee Company that was designed to do something really unique and beautiful.

We produce private concerts all over the country in the incomparable setting of private homes, all with an aim to help end modern-day slavery in our lifetime.

And this coming Tuesday, June 1st, is the official launch of our nation-wide Freedom Tour.

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[Storyville Coffee Company's roasting studio in Seattle, affectionately known as the Temple of the Bean. Image by Brad Ruggles]

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You might wonder, "How did the idea of marrying music and coffee in a home setting come about, all for the sake of freedom?"

That's a great question.

And the answer holds a really great story.

Want to hear it?

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[Beautiful vintage guitar collection in a Seattle loft, location of a Storyville Live private concert in May 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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Early last year, the leadership of Storyville Coffee Company met with Gary Haugen.

Gary Haugen is the founder of International Justice Mission, a human rights agency based in Washington DC that has been rescuing children, women, and men from slavery and other forms of violent oppression for nearly 15 years.

Under Gary's leadership, IJM operates in 17 countries around the world.

• They rescue young girls -- some as young as 5 years old -- from the evils of forced prostitution.
• They free families from the tyranny of bonded labor in brick kilns, rock quarries, salt mines, and rice mills.
• They protect widows from the victimization of illegal land seizure.

And then they help those they rescue find healing, restoration, and dignity.

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[A view of the ivory keys in a Seattle loft at a Storyville Live private concert in May 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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Did you know slavery still exists today?

That an estimated 27 million people are literally owned by another human being on this planet?

That at least 2 million of those individuals are children?

And that this number far exceeds the number of people who were ever enslaved in over 400 years of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade?

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It's true.

And the worst part is, these individuals will be perpetually tyrannized and brutally detained by force every single day of their lives.

That is, unless someone shows up to rescue them.

Because the truth is this:

Slavery is illegal around the world.

But enforcement against it is rare in so many places.

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[Jonathan Kingham and Ryan Shea Smith perform a Storyville Live private concert in May 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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That's where International Justice Mission comes in.

They employ top-notch lawyers, private investigators, and social workers -- nationals in their own home countries -- to conduct the necessary investigations.

They gather data, interviews, and video footage, and then they present this evidence to the local governmental authorities.

Sometimes it takes a bit of time to persuade the local authorities to do the right thing.

So often their systems, too, are quite corrupt.

But IJM takes those local authorities to task on enforcing the law, on choosing what is right, on changing how things are usually done.

And then they help change happen.

People are set free to go home.

And healing then begins.

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[Legendary guitar phenom Willy Porter performs for a Storyville Live private concert in April 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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It's dangerous work, but do you know what IJM has found?

They've found that truth and justice win when people are willing to stand up, show up, and bring accountability where it's needed.

And they've found that when one person is held accountable, others like them in that same village often flee.

The status quo becomes unprofitable, so the problem scatters.

Slavery disappears.

Freedom wins.

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[Storyville beans, freshly roasted and blended to perfection. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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So, again, how did music and coffee come together for the sake of freedom?

Ah, yes.

Let me get back to that story.

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When the leadership of Storyville Coffee Company met with Gary Haugen last year, they learned something truly remarkable.

"There are a lot of problems in the world that nobody knows how to do anything about," Gary acknowledged.

"But for us at IJM, slavery is not one of them. We know how to bring an end to slavery. We know how to put it out of business."

Did he just say that -- that they know how to bring an end to slavery?

That it's a business they know how to stop?

We couldn't help but ask, then:

"How can we help?"

Because seriously, we couldn't imagine not doing something -- anything within our power -- to help.

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[Artful preparation and service of Storyville coffee at a Storyville Live private concert in May 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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With Gary's charge that awareness and resources are key, we set out on a mission.

In May 2009, we produced a month-long series of private concerts in almost 20 locations around the country.

Exceptional artists like David Wilcox and Pierce Pettis offered private performances in beautiful homes for 50-100 people a night.

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And do you know what happened?

We raised over six figures in that one month.

And with those funds, IJM opened a new field office in Ecuador.

Do you realize what this means?

People are being freed from slavery in Ecuador today . . . simply because we shared exceptional music, the perfect cup of coffee, and the story of IJM for one month last year.

Is that insane, or what?

So, how can we not help but do it again . . . and again . . . and again?

How can we not help but do it until slavery disappears forever?

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[The incredibly talented and deeply humble Grace Pettis performs a Storyville Live private concert in May 2010. Image by Brad Ruggles.]

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Enter the nation-wide Freedom Tour.

For the last year, we've been putting all the necessary pieces in place to take this show on the road full time.

And this time, we'll stay on the road for years.

We'll share the mission and story with thousands.

Just think of that potential impact, after what one month allowed last year.

Needless to say, we're amped to combine the best possible experience of live music with the freshest, most delectable cup of coffee on the planet so that others can come alongside and help free the world from slavery.

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So that's the story of where I've been these days.

It's the story of hope that occupies me just now.

It's the epic opportunity we're bringing to as many people as we can.

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If you'd like to learn how you can bring a Storyville Live private concert to 50-100 of your own friends and family in a private home setting, feel free to contact me.

I can be reached at christianne [at] journeytowardnonviolence [dot] com. Or feel free to leave a comment.

I would, of course, love to share Storyville Live with you and those you know!

[And we'll get back to our regular pace of posting here soon . . . once the tour is officially on the road and life slows a bit more for me.]

When Did You Begin to Care about Nonviolence?

Hello, friends. I've become curious to learn how each of us came to care about the subject of nonviolence that draws us together in this space.

Each person's journey is unique, and the access points are many, I'm sure.

Wouldn't it be fun to hear each person's story?

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As I reflect on my own journey to getting here, I notice the story unfolding in major chapters that keep extending further and further back into my history as a person in this world.

Eventually, I land at my childhood.

I see, then, that this journey has just led me deeper into the person I have always been.

It begins to seem that my landing here was inevitable.

That pretty much blows my mind.

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Maybe you'll find the same is true for you.

Maybe you'll find that trying to pinpoint the moment you began caring about nonviolence only propels you further and further back into the connected layers of your own story.

Maybe you'll find, for you, this was an inevitable landing point too.

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There will be opportunities for us to explore the deeper, interconnected layers of our stories together here.

But for today, let's focus on our conscious recognition of this subject.

Let's share how we became aware of the subject of nonviolence and how we made the decision to move toward it.

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For me, an initial big step was the 2008 election.

Whereas I'd never thought much about voting before -- usually allowing the faith community to guide the way I cast my vote -- this time I found myself caring to learn about the issues and the candidates.

What I found surprised me.

I found myself caring about things I didn't know I cared about.

• Things like poverty and war and health care and torture.
• Things like international relations and the way we treat the environment.
• Things like civil rights and education and how we each help contribute to society.

In other words, things that made the whole world bigger to me than it ever was before.

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I don't share this part of my story to get political at all.

In truth, I'm still working out my views on all these things.

I share this because it was a huge whoa moment for me.

It was the first time I realized the greater implications of my ongoing journey.

What I mean is, over the course of many years, I had slowly become a person who cares deeply about each individual person's journey toward living with dignity and hope and peace. My life had firmly become about these things.

Now I realized something:

Caring about those things also made me into a person who cared deeply about the workings of the greater world and all the people living in it.

That, I guess you could say, primed me for my journey toward nonviolence.

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I didn't know it at the time, but within a year of this initial recognition, I would:

• Sincerely ask the question, "Are we called to love Al-Qaeda?"
• Become deeply affected by any notion of torture.
• Consider adopting an ideology of pacifism.
• Ask questions about the difference between charity and systemic justice.
• Commit a year of my life to studying the great peacemakers of history.

All stories, perhaps, worth saving for another day.

But now I'd love to hear about you:

How and when did you begin to care about nonviolence?

Moment of Love Monday: May 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvG1iVw8IjQ&w=500&h=350] [A video for inspiration on this first Moment of Love Monday, submitted by one of our fellow tribemembers, Gigi.]

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Hello, friends.

Can I take a moment to say how honored I am to share this space with you?

Your response to our first Repentance Thursday amazed me, and I was deeply moved by your willingness to practice confession with each other in this space.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for being a part of this community.

Thank you for being a community worthy of each other's trust.

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As we take the first Thursday of every month to practice our personal need for repentance, we will take the following Monday of each month to celebrate moments of love.

This second monthly ritual will be known as Moment of Love Monday.

Our first experience of it is today.

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As many of you already know, one foundational pillar of this website is our belief in the prevailing power of love.

We explored this idea as part of the JTN manifesto series when we acknowledged two things:

• An unwavering belief in the power of love to overcome violence.
• A commitment to offering creative, life-giving love in response to any degree of violence or hatred.

At the core, we are a community of people about the work of love.

As we go about our work together here, we are seeking to grow in our capacity to embody and express that love.

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Moment of Love Monday will keep us mindful of this core belief and give us regular opportunities to share stories and learn from each other in this process.

It is a place to:

• Share how we practiced love in a difficult moment the previous month.
• Share how an injection of love into that moment affected the circumstances (if at all).
• Share how the choice of love in that moment affected us in the aftermath (if at all).

In some ways, I view Moment of Love Mondays as a bit of a laboratory. Together, we are testing for ourselves this idea that love has the power to transform.

In other ways, I view Moment of Love Mondays as a place of true inspiration and testimony. We will see ourselves grow in love over time, and we will teach each other how love, in all its varied and creative  forms, can look.

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Since this is our first Moment of Love Monday, I don't expect you to have stories at the ready for sharing.

(Though if you do, feel free to share away!)

So perhaps instead . . .

Be mindful today of an opportunity to practice love.

And then, when you find that opportunity, come back here to share the story.

I'll be joining in with my story later today.

Will you join us?

Repentance Thursday: May 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e08dBbEXtFM&w=500&h=350] [A song for reflection on this Repentance Thursday, sung by me.]

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Hello, friends.

About a month and a half ago, when we were in the thick of chronicling the finer points of the JTN manifesto, we explored the need to examine the violence in our own hearts and lives in this journey toward nonviolence.

I truly believe this is essential.

• Reckoning with our own frailties and failings keeps us in touch with our humanity.
• It keeps us on equal footing with our common man, no better or worse than our brothers or sisters in this world.
• It increases our capacity for compassion.

Ultimately, it reminds us that we cannot hope to be part of the solution if we aren't willing to acknowledge our contribution to the problem.

Change begins with us.

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At the time we originally explored this, I mentioned a recurring feature coming soon to this blog called Repentance Thursdays.

Now, here it is.

What is it?

• A safe place to acknowledge our own violences of heart and deed over the previous month.
• A place purification begins each month anew.
• An opportunity to receive forgiveness from God, others, or ourselves.
• A chance to do it together.

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How does it work?

The first Thursday of every month will be deemed a Repentance Thursday.

On that day, we will be invited to reflect on our actions and the interior movements of our hearts over the previous month.

• Into what dark mires did our hearts traverse?
• In what ways did we bring harm to our fellow man, either in thought, word, or deed?
• How did we sin against God?

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After reflecting on these things, we will be given an opportunity for confession.

The comments section is available for this purpose.

The public nature of this practice is rooted in the idea that confession -- to both God and man -- heals us:

"A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light."

--- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Please note that this ongoing ritual is not meant -- in any way -- to dispense humiliation. It is not a place for judgment, either. It's not a place to take delight in learning each other's dirty laundry.

It is a place for us to practice our own repentance.

It is a place to encounter the healing gifts of confession and forgiveness, as well as to discover the solidarity of our shared humanity.

To that end, any comments judging or disparaging another's confession will not be tolerated and will be removed.

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And so now, I would invite you to reflect on the state of your heart. Feel free to listen to the song posted above in your moments of reflection.

And then, in the comments section, I would invite you to bring your confession.

Please note:

• You are welcome to leave your confession anonymously.
• You are welcome to make up an e-mail address (since the comment section requires you to leave one).
• You are welcome to be as general or specific as you want.
• You are welcome to write your confession as prayer.
• And remember: any judging or disparaging comments of another's confession will be removed.

It is my hope that you'll find safety in this place to offer and regain your own humanity. Thank you for joining us.

Whistleblowers for Peace, Unite!

I came home from work on Monday night to discover my whistle had arrived!

I was giddy with excitement and immediately loped the chain around my neck, where it stayed until I changed into pajamas for the night. (I may or may not have delayed changing into pajamas a bit longer than usual, simply to keep wearing the whistle . . . )

And then I discovered a second gift for the day.

Mallory, one of the staff members from Falling Whistles, had discovered the whistle post from last week and all the encouraging comments you left in response.

She left a comment for us that reads:

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All of this totally blissed me out!

So then, of course, I went straight to social media. :-)

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First, Twitter:

And:

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And then, of course, Facebook:

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To top off all the excitement, I then discovered others of you had also received your whistles that very same day!

A few comments came out of the woodwork on Facebook:

Another friend tweeted in response that she'd also received hers:

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Is this exciting, or what?!

So this makes me wonder:

What kind of stories are emerging out there as we wear our whistles for peace?

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Yesterday, I wore mine to work in a snazzy justice-themed ensemble: dark blue jeans, black Seek Justice tee that supports International Justice Mission, charcoal gray blazer, and shiny black Mary Jane heels.

And, of course, the whistle.

I had a chance to share the story once with a co-worker who admired it when I stepped inside her office.

I admit, I was a little clumsy in my first telling.

But still, the story can't help but shock and educate.

This is a symbol of protest, I said.

It's a symbol of activism.

And 100 percent of the proceeds helps rehabilitate those young boys who are lucky enough to be rescued from the front lines of war.

It felt surreal to cup the whistle in my hand, tell the story, and know that right in that moment young boys were dying at the sound of their falling whistles, one by one by one.

This cannot -- and should not -- be.

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If you haven't bought your whistle yet, you can buy yours here today.

And if you have received yours:

Have you shared any whistleblowing conversations yet? What were they like?

Where on the Journey into Love are You?

The tagline for this website says of the journey toward nonviolence that "in the end, it's about increasing our capacity to love." I believe that wholeheartedly.

That is why we're here.

To grow in love.

Together.

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Coming to a place where we listen compassionately, regard the full dignity of every human person, and respond to violence with curiosity instead of judgment or anger (among other things) means having within us an ever-expansive and welcoming spirit of love.

We cannot live this way if we have not love.

But how does that loving spirit within us grow?

How is our capacity for love enlarged?

Great questions.

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I have found that an ability to love emerges from a security in our own belovedness.

"We love, because he first loved us." -- 1 John 4:19

I used to read that passage in the Bible and think that love was my obligation. Since God had loved me -- he had, after all, saved my life by giving up his Son's own life! -- so I needed to love others.

But knowing this truth of God's love did not produce a spirit of love in me.

I didn't know love simply because I knew -- in my mind -- God's love. Mental assent did not produce transformation.

Instead, I found I only knew love once I knew love:

. . . once I had experienced it in a deep, profound, and personal way.

. . . once it had pierced the deepest fibers of my being.

. . . once it had touched the depths of my identity.

Once that happened, I found my desire to love others simply overflowed. My heart just grew, almost of its own accord.

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How does that happen, then?

How do we experience love in a deep and profound way?

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I've found it requires a journey.

That's why this space is named for the journey.

We are walking a path that takes time and intention, and it is leading us toward a love that encompasses all things.

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As we set out on this path together, then, take a few moments to reflect on your current state of learning love.

Which of these statements best describes your place in the journey right now?

1. I don't know what love is. This is where my own journey began. I came to a point of reckoning, a moment of revelation where I realized that I didn't know what love or grace or even God meant to me. This began a process of intentional exploration where I learned that my heart had built up walls -- many walls -- that made it quite impervious to love. This first part of the journey, then, was about unlearning the many false forms of love I'd adopted inside my soul. It was about unlearning unlove.
2. I'm learning how to be loved. Once we unlearn unlove, we find a space inside of us that is ready to learn what real love is. All kinds of questions crop up here. What does real love look like? How does it apply to me? How is it different than the forms of unlove I carried before? What is it like for me to touch, taste, and feel it? This can be a wobbly, uncertain time in the journey as entire realities begin to shift and sway in the laying of an entirely new foundation. But it is also a remarkable time of testing boundaries and learning that love -- real love -- is truly limitless.
3. I'm basking in my belovedness. Eventually, the fact of our belovedness becomes more natural, more comfortable, more real. More a part of our everyday make-up. It becomes something we believe with increasing certainty. We find that chains of guilt, shame, and obligation have loosed their hold upon us, and we begin to breathe in freedom. This is a delicious, joyful, contented part of the journey as we rest in our worth and utter acceptance to God.
4. I want others to know their belovedness, too. As I shared above, love begets love. It is creative. It's generative. Once we taste love, we want others to taste love, too. In this part of the journey, our eyes begin to train themselves outward. Compassion becomes a currency of life. As we see others who are broken, downtrodden, and striving -- just as we once were doing the same -- we increasingly long for them to experience a journey of freedom and love in their own lives, too.
5. I am willing to die for love. This last stage, I must confess, took me completely by surprise. I didn't know it was there, even though the example and words of Jesus Christ should have made it plain as day. But there it was, waiting for me in my own journey over the course of this past year. In this stage, I'm learning that we move from basking in our own belovedness and wanting others to experience their belovedness, too, to finding that our own lives mean less to us than the lives of others. This is not about a degradation of self, but about a giving of self -- all for love. Here, love begins to foment within us with so much vigor that we become willing to bleed, spill, and even die if necessary because of it, trusting our own lives into the loving arms of God if it means becoming vessels of love and peace for the salvation of others. This part of the journey into love is quite mysterious, I'm finding, but it does await us on the path to love as we keep leaning into the ongoing journey.

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A few items of note as it relates to our journeying together here . . .

• Because each person's story and pace on the journey is unique, we will spend time exploring all five of these stages in greater depth on an ongoing basis. It is my hope to provide food for persons in each stage of the journey here.
• As such, pilgrims in all stages are welcome here, and you are welcome to walk at your own pace!
• I find it also worth noting that we can sometimes journey back and forth between stages, as we sometimes discover new walls inside our hearts exist that make us impervious to love in other ways we hadn't yet discovered, and we need to unlearn unlove in those places, too.

So now my question for you is:

Where on the journey into love do you find yourself right now?

Become a Whistleblower for Peace in Congo

Several months ago -- I can't recall the specific circumstances that led me there now -- I landed on a website called Falling Whistles that completely undid me. Perhaps it will undo you too.

Here is the video that greets you (in full-screen mode) upon arrival at their website:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7351545 w=500&h=350]

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I can't tell you how many times I watched this video that first day. I watched it over and over again and just cried and cried.

Young boys.

Their bodies used as disposable buffers of war.

A shrill whistle cry their saving grace or single death knell.

How can this be?

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I scoured the website, hungry for more information.

There, I found the journal entry referenced in the intro video above -- the one Sean Carasso wrote the day he met those boys.

Busco.

Bahati.

Serungendo.

Claude.

Sadiki.

The boys who changed his life.

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I learned about the devastating war in the Congo that day.

I also learned about this remarkable band of impassioned activists at Falling Whistles that are spreading the word and asking for our help in doing the same.

Here is how we can help.

We can become whistleblowers for peace in Congo by purchasing a whistle on their website.

• We can wear the symbolic whistle as a symbol of our protest.
• We can wear it to raise awareness for the cause.
• We can wear it to be reminded of those boys and the countless others who need our voices, our help, and our prayers.
• We can wear it and know that 100 percent of the proceeds benefits the rehabilitation and advocacy of war-affected children in the Congo.

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Today, thanks to the boon of an unexpected tax return, I finally purchased my whistle. I can hardly wait for it to arrive!

I will wear it proudly.

I will eagerly await the conversations it inspires with complete strangers.

And I will be reminded on an ongoing basis to pray for peace in Congo.

Will you?

Our Central Question: How Do We Grow in Love?

I shared early on that my preoccupation with nonviolence began when I discovered the idea that love is not only more powerful than violence but also the only force in the universe strong enough to overcome it. At first my interest was purely fueled by curiosity.

Was this really true?

How come?

Prove it.

But then, as I studied an increasing number of social concerns through this lens of love, I became enamored by that central undercurrent:

LOVE.

How does it grow?

What is its source?

How do we increase our own capacity to carry it deep in our hearts?

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I walked through the pages of Gandhi's life and watched him live with circumspect dignity and care for all he met. How did he develop the strength to live that way?

I read about the bombings on Martin Luther King's home and his unwillingness to fight back or even demonize those who did it. How did he find the inner reserve of strength to respond that way?

I read dozens of Thomas Merton's private letters, so many littered with the conviction that wars and bombs are merely outcomes of our fears. How did he develop that conviction?

I went back to the teachings of Jesus again and again. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hurt you. Turn the other cheek. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. How do we become people who willingly love this way?

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Something else happened along the way.

My heart became tattered and torn into tiny pieces, over and over and over.

Violence in the Congo.

Violence in Iran.

Torture in Guantanamo Bay.

The true tale of Dead Man Walking.

Child soldiers in Uganda, felled deftly by the sound of falling whistles.

And while many, many tears fell for the victims inside these stories, something altogether foreign began happening in me.

I became increasingly wrecked for their enemies.

With every news report I read of the green revolution happening in Iran, I could see the eyes of the Supreme Ayatollah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad staring at me.

When the torture memos were released from Guantanamo Bay, I couldn't stop seeing the eyes of those applying the torture.

When I watched Dead Man Walking, I cried and cried and cried as Sean Penn's eyes stared back at me from the screen, his arms stretched outward in the shape of a cross as he received that deathly dosage in his very last scene.

Their eyes haunted me.

Everywhere I went, I could see them.

I balled up in bed many times, and I wept.

For them.

These enemies.

What was happening to me?

How in the world did I end up here?

How did I come to care for those it is so easy for us to despise?

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I don't fully know the answers to these questions, though I've been developing some ideas. But one thing I've determined is certainly true: the road to nonviolence is about the journey toward increasing and overwhelming love.

That is the work we will be about here. We will explore and walk together the road toward increasing love.

The JTN Vision: What Do We Believe Can Happen?

On that day in early January when I sat on a plane and dreamed aloud in my journal about the creation of this nonviolence tribe, I wrote:

What does it take to create a tribe around the journey toward nonviolence?

I think it begins with deciding to go. To do it.

The next step is declaring the vision.

What is this tribe about, and what do we believe can happen? What are we about, and what do we want to see happen in the world?

As you now well know, a careful brainstorm followed the asking of those questions. I set down a list of all the truths that a tribe devoted to the nonviolent path would consistently uphold.

And then I sat and thought about the vision.

What do we believe can happen?

What do we want to see happen?

I settled into the small crook of my airline seat and leaned my head against the window. I tapped my pen against my lip.

Thinking.

Dreaming.

Daring to believe.

And then I tried to capture in words the images slowly forming inside my mind.

This is what I wrote:

I see pulsating hubs all over the geography of this planet.

Each hub represents a JTN tribemember who is impacting his or her community by consistently contributing an energy of love to each encounter of his or her life.

This injected love begins to infect other people so that lives and events within that hub become transformed into even greater forces for love.

Eventually, hubs grow in magnitude and strength.

Individuals within each hub assemble to effect even greater change concerning specific areas of need in their localized communities.

In this way, the world is taken in by the beauty of love and transformed into a loving family of peace.

It is somewhat grand, I know.

But aren't visions worth dreaming meant to be?

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The central focus of this vision, for me, are the pulsating hubs.

These hubs represent you. They represent me.

Right now.

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Day by day . . . one by one . . . we begin to infuse love into the pulsating hubs we represent on the geography of this planet. As we grow in love (which is the work we will accomplish here), we bring even greater love to each moment that we meet.

And slowly, we watch things change.

We change.

Others change.

Situations change.

All because of love.

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And then one day, these hubs begin to grow.

We lock arms with other pulsating hubs of love around us -- others whose hearts have also been infused and transformed by love -- and we bring life, through these growing communities, to the forces of death surrounding us.

And change on a grander scale begins to happen.

All because of love.

Do you believe this can happen? Is there anything you'd like to add to this vision for our tribe?

We Are About: Building Community

As we round the bend on the final points of the JTN manifesto, I couldn't help but notice that the last four declarations on our list all share a common theme:

All of them touch upon how we'll build community here.

And so I decided to group all four of these points together in one final post, with a few words on each one.

So here they are . . . the final four pillars of our JTN manifesto:

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1. Learning with each other and from each other.

No one person has a corner on this market. We are all beginners, and we are all teachers.

Thomas Merton liked to say, "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners."

We have so much to learn from one another, and it is of great value in this community to give and receive from each other on this shared journey.

We will share stories and questions and discoveries and quandaries . . . and we will listen, and hold space, and seek to understand, and in humility receive each other's wisdom.

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2. Celebrating acts of love and nonviolence within this community and around the world.

In a previous post, I mentioned that we will shortly begin a recurring feature on this blog called Repentance Thursdays. I'll share more about this when it officially launches (perhaps as early as next week), but it affords at its root a weekly opportunity to repent as a community of our individual violences of heart and deed.

But here's the beautiful thing . . .

As we choose to grow together along our rough edges, we will also make plenty of room to celebrate our ongoing growth in love.

That's where another new weekly feature will come into play.

Moment of Love Mondays will intentionally create space for us at the beginning of each week to reflect on the specific ways we chose to love in difficult moments the previous week.

(Interestingly enough, Kirsten and Katy-Did already offered two great glimpses into what this type of story-sharing can look like for us each Monday morning in the comments section of the previous post!)

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3. Finding specific situations and places to actively choose and practice nonviolence.

Our fellow tribemember Sarah offered this suggestion for our JTN manifesto when it first debuted -- and I love it!

• What if we, as a community, actively chose to demonstrate nonviolent action in response to specific situations that crop up in the greater world?
• And what if -- eventually -- we coordinated group efforts along these lines?

I think it's possible.

In fact, this notion falls right in line with the original JTN vision I promised I would share with you at the conclusion of this series (and which is coming, as promised, in the next post later this week).

I would count it a great privilege to explore what this could look like with you.

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And finally:

4. Forgiving ourselves and each other when we fail to live this journey well.

Let's face it. This journey is not easy.

It is, first of all, not one most people choose willingly.

And once chosen willingly, it is full of its fair share of fits and starts.

But just as this journey is about learning to extend compassionate grace toward those we might find difficult to love, it is also about extending that same compassionate grace toward ourselves and everyone else here.

We will bumble along.

We will discover our many egregious human frailties.

We will want to hide our eyes from these shortcomings.

And we will sometimes find it hard to love and forgive ourselves and each other these failings.

But here is grace.

And grace is here.

Always.

We Are About: Offering Creative, Life-Giving Love in Response to Violence or Hatred

In an earlier post in the JTN manifesto series, we explored one of the foundational earmarks of the nonviolent ethic: the power of love to overcome violence. This ideological affirmation has implications in reality, and that brings us to the next point we affirm:

Offering creative, life-giving love in response to any degree of violence or hatred.

Really, this point gets down to the nitty-gritty.

• What are we doing in real life to express this love we say has the power to overcome violence?
• Do our actions generate life, or do they perpetuate toxicity and death?

This is an affirmation that asks something of us. It asks, "What kind of person will you choose to be?"

On this point, we choose love in response to any degree of hatred or violence because it is the small, incidental choices that begin building in us a character worthy of greater acts of love.

We must begin where we are.

The journey toward nonviolence begins with a single step.

I remember one of the first times I tried putting this into practice.

I was driving in a car with someone who was, in all honesty, not a lot of fun to be around in that moment. No matter the topic discussed, their response was negative, sarcastic, or just generally unhelpful. Any attempt to spin a positive outlook by me on any broached subject was met with immediate dismissal.

I felt at a loss in that moment.

And my immediate inclination was to spew exasperation and frustration all over the conversation, once I reached what felt like my upper limit of patience. (Truthfully, that has been my reaction on more than one occasion before.)

But in that moment, I allowed myself to take a longer view.

Or rather, to take a longer look at the person sitting beside me.

Somehow, I was given the grace to see that their pessimism and fatalism were really symptoms of something larger: a great degree of disappointment in their circumstances. This colored their view of everything else they saw.

And somehow that produced a new wellspring of patience in me, as well as a willingness to demonstrate love. (This goes back to that curiosity bent that produces compassion we discussed in a previous post.)

Instead of returning their negativity with more than a bit of my own ("I'll show them how difficult they are to be around right now!"), I turned toward their heart and sought to address its tender places.

This doesn't mean I invaded their space or trespassed emotional boundaries.

It means that I listened what what they were saying.

And instead of telling them why they shouldn't feel that way, I mirrored back that I heard their concern. (This goes back to the compassionate listening we've also discussed previously.)

I was surprised to find the conversation turn a corner.

Something came disarmed in them.

I have my suppositions about what happened.

• Perhaps they felt seen in a way they hadn't in a long time.
• Perhaps they felt safe because I extended patience, acceptance, and care, rather than immediate judgment or rejection.
• Perhaps they simply no longer felt a "me against them" tenor to the conversation, but rather an "us, together."

Whatever the reason, it gave me greater faith in love's power over all that carries the stench of death.

Granted, circumstances are not always this simplistic, nor are the outcomes always this positive.

But we must begin where we are, and adopting a nonviolent ethic of love means choosing to move toward another with generative and creative energy in moments that normally invite us to fight back, dismiss, reject, judge, ignore, or altogether avoid.

So, what about you?

How have you chosen love in the face of hatred, negativity, or violence in your life? What was that choice like for you? Did it make a difference at all?

We Are About: Responding to Violence with Curiosity

Our fellow tribemember Gigi, who early on suggested that we add to the JTN manifesto a commitment to look out at the world with and through eyes of love, also offered up the following:

Responding to violence with curiosity, rather than anger or judgment.

I believe curiosity is the starting point for compassion.

Curiosity gets us exploring outside the lines of our own experience. It opens up the possibility for someone else's story to hold more than we immediately see. It meets us in a place of being willing to learn.

Consider this:

• How often do you experience curiosity in your daily life?
• Is curiosity a source of delight for you, or does it scare you?

I can see how curiosity holds the potential to provoke fear. To be curious implies meeting up against something we don't yet know and therefore don't yet understand. It requires humility from us, an acknowledgment that realities exist beyond our personal experience of them.

It allows the world -- and the people in it -- to be larger than the container we've thus far held them in.

On the road to nonviolence, curiosity becomes an essential component of learning to love our enemies.

This is because curiosity is rooted in the acknowledgment that all human stories and all of reality are more complex and mysterious than we can imagine or pin down. From this acknowledgement, we come to regard our enemies as larger than their immediate actions.

We give them the dignity of their whole story.

What's more, we want to understand it.

This is a tough one, isn't it?

Here's what that can look like in practice.

A few weeks ago, a friend told me about some scenes in a couple movies I've been meaning to watch. In one (and I apologize for the explicit details about to be mentioned), a key character was beaten and killed by a group of people because of his sexual orientation. In another, a transgendered person was gang-raped and murdered.

When I heard these details, I was initially stunned. The violent acts were so gruesome and devastating, I felt my heart squeeze with pain that any person could sustain such aggression against their personhood.

But in the next moment, my heart squeezed with pain for a different reason.

I couldn't get these questions out of my mind:

• What caused them to do it?
• What beliefs and fears led them to such violent acts?
• How had they come to believe and fear those things?
• Did they really understand what they had done?

I wished so much that I could understand the individuals who had done those things. I wished they were real people of whom I could earn the right to ask.

I think it is this kind of curiosity that creates in us a love for those we would normally consider our enemies. Rather than anger or judgment, we ask questions. We wonder at their stories.

And our hearts break because of them.

What about you?

How easy or difficult is it for you to respond with curiosity to people you'd normally consider your enemies?

We Are About: An Unwavering Belief in the Power of Love to Overcome Violence

(We are in the middle of a series about the JTN manifesto. To learn more, click here.) I remember when I first encountered the idea that love is more powerful than violence.

It was October 2008.

I was reading a book for graduate school called A Holy Longing by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser and encountered these words:

One of the reasons why the world is not responding more to our challenge to justice is that our actions for justice themselves often mimic the very violence, injustice, hardness, and egoism they are trying to challenge. . . . The anger, crass egoism, bitterness, hardness, and aggression of so many peace groups and movements for justice can never serve as the basis for a new world order. It will convert few hearts, even when it is politically effective. . . . Love, not anger, is the basis for nonviolence and nonviolence is the only possible basis for a new world order of justice and peace.

That idea got me thinking for days and days.

How deeply had I believed justice was merely about making wrong things right, no matter how it was done? To be truthful, pretty deeply.

If one was on the path to truth, I assumed it was okay for indignation and self-righteousness to come into play. That seemed excusable to me in defense of truth. After all, "they" were wrong! The situation needed to be made right! It wasn't okay that "that" was happening!

But here was a new idea.

Somehow, it might matter what kind of energy I put out into the world in the quest for justice.

Somehow, the way I treat my neighbor might affect his or her heart and openness to truth, and their heart and openness to truth might also matter.

I realized this made sense.

People matter as much, if not more, as ideas in God's economy. After all, it was a love for the world that compelled Jesus Christ to enter into it when we were hopelessly unable to live up to the lasting perfection of God's ideas.

The more I thought about this, the more it continued to make sense.

Any change for good that had ever happened in my heart had been the result of an encounter with love.

Not guilt.

Not anger.

Not indignation.

Not violence.

Guilt may have motivated me toward right action, but it never converted my heart.

Anger may have made me cower in fear and comply, but it never made me trust and embrace.

Indignation merely served to make me rise up in defensive indignation, too, unwilling to change.

Violence made me lash out in violence, too, or quietly fade away into a mere shell of a human being.

The only thing that ever pierced the flesh of my heart and made me more fully human was an encounter with sincere, genuine love.

What about you?

We Are About: Examining the Violence in Our Hearts and Lives

(This post is part of a short series we're chronicling based on the individual points of the JTN manifesto. It is also material that may be familiar to some readers, as it contains a large section of material I published elsewhere on the importance of allowing ourselves to "sit in our sin.") ---

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

I’ll be honest.

I can’t say I’ve spent much time in my life owning up to the things I have done wrong.

Yes, there are things I wasn’t proud to have done (many things!). But somehow I always found a way to quickly explain away my having done them.

Usually I did this by believing myself to be the victim. If another person brought some wrong against me, then I believed anything I did — either to retaliate or to participate in the wrongdoing, too — exempted me from judgment.

I had a culpability problem.

What’s more, I believed God saw things my way in this, too. He could see the root causes motivating all I did. He could see my sins as mere attempts to survive in an environment. In my mind, God understood, took pity on me, and gladly let me off the hook.

I believed all these things — sometimes consciously, but mostly unconsciously — for almost the whole of my life. Then last summer I had an opportunity to begin facing my sin for what it really was (and is).

It all began with Gandhi.

As part of a two-day silent retreat I took for a school requirement, I cracked open Gandhi’s mammoth-size autobiography and began to read.

I was not even 10 pages into the book when I came to a section describing his early marriage. Nestled inside these few pages of description, he made a passing comment about an incident that had happened between him and his father that he said he would describe in greater detail later in the book. He used the word “shame” in connection with this incident, and he said he still felt the flooding of this shame each time he recalled the incident to mind.

Such strong language for a small, passing comment caught my attention.

Then, about 20 pages later, he related the specifics of this incident. It concerned a way he had behaved on the night of his father’s death. He was not proud at all of what he’d done. He called it his “double shame” and said it was “a blot [he had] never been able to efface or forget.”

Gandhi’s genuine, enduring remorse for his sins astounded me. Here was a man, arguably one of the most holy men ever to have walked this earth, who genuinely grieved the ways his humanity had ever brought harm to another or dishonored another person in some way.

I found myself touched in a very deep place by this story, too, because of the similarity this incident carried to an incident I faced in my own life on the night of my grandfather’s death. (I wrote about this incident here.)

Then slowly, as I sat with this memory surrounding the night of my grandfather’s death, another memory of something I’d done even earlier in my life began to surface.

I was eight or nine years old, and I’d done something really cruel to someone I loved. I’d inflicted a rare breed of physical pain on this person, and in the split-second that followed my having done it, I remember reeling in a bit of shock that I could possibly have done such a thing. But after that initial moment of shock, I resolutely shook the remorse away and reared up in self-righteous justification: this person had wronged me, so they deserved what I had done to them.

Slowly, more and more memories of my wrongdoings rose to the surface. I started scrawling them in a list in my journal. A long, specific list. A dreadfully incomplete list. A list that could have filled an entire journal if I’d gone on long enough to let it.

A bit later, somewhat spent, I turned to a clean page and wrote the following:

I have only just begun, but this feels like a purging process and also an exercise in truth. Gandhi would approve, I’m sure.

I will probably continue adding to this list — continue “sitting with my sin” — for the next period of time. It feels important to do so. Perhaps when I am finished I will sit with each instance and try to ascertain what motive lay at their roots. Perhaps there are common threads. Perhaps they all share the same thread. Perhaps I will learn much about human nature and original sin by examining my own catalog of sin.

I’ve come to believe the road to nonviolence must be marked by an honest reckoning with our own sin. This is what helps us see that we, too, have contributed to the sin, chaos, and devastation of this world. I remember being profoundly arrested by this truth after I spent time listing my own catalog of sins. I began to see how much I, too, have been part of the problem.

In the near future, after we finish exploring each point of the JTN manifesto in greater detail, we will begin a recurring feature here called Repentance Thursdays. This is going to be a place for us to repent of our own violences of heart, to the extent each of us is comfortable doing so. More details to come on this, but I wanted to give you a heads-up that it's in our future.

In the meantime, let's hear your thoughts on the subject:

How in touch have you been with your sin and violence of heart over the years?

We Are About: Compassionate Listening

Do you believe listening can change the world? Because I do. I know this is possible because I've experienced its change-making power inside my soul. I've also witnessed the effects of true listening on the lives of others.

Not only that, but I've seen how one soul changed by the power of listening produces a multiplication effect: we listen, because we've been listened to. The more we listen, the more we invite others to do the same, and slowly the whole of humanity gets lifted up.

That's why one entry in the JTN manifesto declares that we are about:

Compassionate listening that heals, empowers, and ultimately creates a more loving human family.

You may wonder, what exactly is compassionate listening?

Compassionate listening is the act of "listening and feeling with."

It is the act of entering as fully into another person's experience as humanly possible, simply with the intent to understand.

Not with the intent to demonstrate how much we understand.

Not with the intent to share our own related experience.

Not with the intent to give advice.

Not even with the intent to heal, empower, or better the world.

Simply to know them.

It means being fully present to another person. Putting aside our own ego. Laying down our own desire to speak and be listened to. Casting aside our assumptions about the other person and the experiences they're relating to us.

It means holding open the possibility that another person's thoughts and feelings and reactions could be -- and almost certainly are -- different than our own would be, simply because the whole of their life experience carries different associations and memories and meanings than ours does.

Compassionate listening accords another person the dignity of their own life, story, experiences, and humanity. It is a truly human act. And it has the power to change the world, one listened-to soul at a time.

Do you believe in this? How do you embody and/or experience this kind of listening in your own life?

We Are About: Forgiveness and Reconciliation

(This post is part of an ongoing series about the JTN manifesto. To learn more, click here.) Some of you know that my journey into nonviolence this past year landed me squarely in need of greater silence and solitude. I took several months this past summer to focus more intently on the works of peace and to journal and explore my own thoughts, feelings, reactions, and prayers on the subject.

What is less commonly known is how pointedly I knew that would also be an intentional journey into forgiveness.

My conscious journey toward grace, love, and freedom over the past ten years has primarily focused on inner healing. It has been a discovery of God's lavish love. And in that context, I also came in contact with God's heart for justice. I found him to be a God who comforts the afflicted and soothes what is bandaged and broken in us at the hands of others.

This was a beautiful, needed journey, and it will always be precious to me.

But over time, other thoughts began to tug at me. These were thoughts about forgiveness. Thoughts about the implications of God's radical grace and love.

Questions kept bubbling to the surface that would not go away:

"What does it mean to forgive, as God asks me to forgive?"

Or:

"How do I hold God's love for so-and-so alongside God's love for me?"

Or:

"If I forgive them, what will my story be anymore?"

These were troubling questions. I wanted to ignore them, and I did ... for several years. I kept clinging to God's tender love for my sore places. I knew that his love for me in those places was true.

But still.

There existed a tension between God's love for me and his ability to forgive those who had hurt me. I was so aware I didn't have that God-like ability in me yet.

As I approached this past summer, I knew it was time.

I knew going deeper into a lifestyle of nonviolence -- if, indeed, I was going to embrace that ethic -- meant addressing my own violence of heart, and that included (among other things) my own anger and unforgiveness.

I just didn't know what that meant or looked like.

I was grateful for the extended time of reflection the summer was going to afford me. I needed expansive space to hold those big, hard questions without noise or distraction.

I'll be writing about this long forgiveness journey I took in greater detail at another time.

For now, I wanted to share the truth I've learned through all of this that living at peace with our fellow man in a truly nonviolent way means facing our demons of unforgiveness.

It means embracing forgiveness as a way of life.

It even means opening ourselves to the restorative, blow-your-mind creativity of reconciliation.

I can't wait to share that story with you. But in the meantime, what about you:

How have you walked (or avoided) the path of forgiveness and reconciliation in your own life's journey?

We Are About: Looking Through Eyes of Love

Our fellow tribemember Gigi offered a great addition to the JTN manifesto:

Looking out at the world with and through eyes of love.

When I read this suggestion, it took me back to grade school.

I used to walk a half-mile to and from school every morning and afternoon. As I walked, I looked at the ground.

I have vivid memories of cracked chunks of sidewalk that could trip you up if you weren't careful ... or strange names and symbols scrawled into the concrete with a stick or a pencil when the concrete had first been wet ... or patches of weeds and grass pushing up through the sidewalk slits.

I carry these memories because I looked at the ground as I walked.

When I got to junior high, I walked the indoor hallways between class periods staring at the floor then, too. I still remember that tightly meshed orange and black pattern that was probably put down in the 1970s. I remember the tiny greenish square tiles of the bathroom floors.

And in high school, I got to know the wide, expansive walkways between each building on the campus.

Then there are the ways this shows up in my adult life:

• It is always easier for me to look others in the eye while they are speaking than while I am speaking.
• I avert my gaze instinctively when encountering another in the aisle at the grocery store.
• I assume the hipster riding his bike down the street devalues my presence on the road.

It's strange, this proclivity in me.

I've been aware of it for many years, but it wasn't until last summer that I began trying on a different posture with conscious attention.

I believe the impetus was my irritation with the checkout person at the grocery store. She struck me as utterly rude, and for no particular reason at all. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why she'd acted so short with me.

She'd probably just been having a really bad day.

I pushed my cart to the car in steam. I drove home with pursed lips. I thought of all the pointed remarks I wished I had said.

And then I found myself wondering:

What would it be like to love her?

This is the equivalent, to me, of looking out at the world with and through eyes of love.

Instead of assuming an inferior posture (read: looking at the ground while we walk) or a defensive shield (read: fuming at someone else's actions or inactions), it means adopting an approach of welcome. Embracing another's presence with a smile. Holding our heads up and looking other people in the eye with confidence and gladness.

I desire to live that way with ease and readiness.

I'm still working on it.

As I said above, it's something I've begun to do with more conscious attention. But it's not natural to me yet. I still drive down the road and assume I'm the least deserving one to be there.

I suppose that's the adult equivalent of still watching the ground while I walk.

What about you:

What is it like for you to look (or not look) out at the world with and through eyes of love?

We Are About: The Precious Dignity of Every Human Person

(We're about to embark on a series of posts that explores the individual points of the JTN manifesto. As each post gets written, I'll update the original post with links to each of these descriptive posts so that we'll always have an easy way to access the conversations that describe all that we say we believe and why. That original post will then be permanently added to the sidebar for our future reference. The links will also be nested on the About JTN page, where the manifesto also exists.) ---

When I sat on the plane that day and began to think about what a tribe committed to the journey of nonviolence would be about, I knew the first thing on the list would be:

The precious dignity of every human person.

I'll admit, I kept coming back to the wording of this statement. Was the word "precious" too frou-frou? Too feminine? But I couldn't allow myself to cross out that word.

Precious.

That's really what it all comes down to. We believe in the inviolable nobility of every human soul.

Every.

Human.

Soul.

Even if they've committed great crimes?

Yes.

Even if they've enacted great atrocities?

Yes.

Even if we see no hope of life in them at all, given all that they have done?

Yes, even then.

Because what it comes down to is this.

Someone who has committed a great crime, or enacted a great atrocity, or seems to have no hope of life within them ... has ultimately began where we stand now: in a place of judgment.

At some point, they came to believe that an individual standing before them was unworthy of life or freedom. They lost the belief that other people carried their own innate sense of dignity. They chose to look upon others as objects to be manipulated or destroyed at their own whim.

If we stand before them in that same judgment seat, how are we any different?

The judgment is the same. And it is a murderous judgment.

A person walking the nonviolent path believes life -- all of life -- holds innate within it something precious, something mysterious that we cannot bestow and do not possess the authority to snuff out.

(And it should be noted that the broadest views of nonviolence would extend this to life of every kind -- creation and animals included -- so that it affects the way we care for and inhabit the earth, the way we eat, and even how we treat pesky bugs and spiders crawling along the living room wall!)

Ultimately, this aspect of nonviolence presents questions to us about the value of life, its origin, and its end.

It also asks of us questions of hope:

• Do we believe human beings can change?
• Do we believe we are meant to, through the intention of God?
• If so, how do we believe change in a human soul truly comes about?

These thoughts have only scratched the surface of this subject, and I'm sure you have more to add. So let's hear your thoughts:

What do you believe -- or perhaps struggle to believe -- about the precious dignity of every human life?

The JTN Tribe: What Are We About?

In early January, I traveled from Orlando to Michigan for a graduate school residency and ended up having an encounter with a little book that led me here. The flight from Orlando to Michigan was delayed by something like an hour. During that window of time, I finished reading one of the required texts for the residency and pulled out the next one: Tribes, by Seth Godin.

In it, Seth Godin talks about the need for leaders willing to step out in front and engage others with an idea. He talks about the power of following the trail of an idea that has gripped us with a passion. And he talks about how change can happen in the world when a tribe of people devoted to a singular idea have a place to gather and communicate about it.

I'd been pondering the idea of a dedicated online space to explore nonviolence and my own journey deeper into it for a little while before reading this book. But it wasn't until Seth Godin framed it in the language of a tribe that something really clicked for me about it.

I wrote in the margins of that book while I was reading:

How can I invite others into their own nonviolent journey, and to share what they're doing with the rest of the tribe?

Then I put down the book, picked up my pen, and let it fly across the pages of my journal with the following:

What does it take to create a tribe around the journey toward nonviolence?

I think this begins with deciding to go. To do it.

The next step is declaring the vision.

What is this tribe about, and what do we believe can happen? What are we about, and what do we want to see happen in the world?

I sat for a moment and thought about those questions. What would this tribe be about, if it existed? What do people traveling the journey toward nonviolence believe? More pointedly, what had I, in my own journey along this path, come to embrace as the bedrock foundation of my beliefs?

I tapped my pen against my lips for a few moments and stared at the page. Then I wrote, very deliberately, the following:

THE JTN TRIBE IS ABOUT:

• The precious dignity of every human person
• Forgiveness and reconciliation
• Compassionate listening that heals, empowers, and ultimately creates a more loving human family
• Examining the violence in our own hearts and lives in a commitment to confess and repent of our contribution to the world’s destruction and devastation
• An unwavering belief in the unique power of love to overcome and transform violence
• Offering creative, life-giving love in response to any degree of violence or hatred
• Learning with each other and from each other
• Celebrating acts of love and nonviolence within this community and around the world
• Forgiving ourselves and each other when we fail to live this journey well
• [Edited to add -- from Gigi] Responding to violence with curiosity, rather than anger or judgment
• [Edited to add -- from Gigi] Looking out at the world with and through eyes of love
• [Edited to add -- from Sarah] Finding specific situations and places to actively choose and practice nonviolence

This is our manifesto, at least to the extent I was able to craft it on my own. I'd love your feedback and suggestions, too! Personally, if I were to add anything extra to what I wrote in my journal that day, I think it would contain something about the need for divine assistance to accomplish any of this.

It is my plan to explore each of these points in greater detail over the next several weeks. As I write each post, I'll come back here and link to the new post for each point. And when we're done with that exercise, I'll share the original vision I imagined for this community as I dreamed aloud in my journal on that fateful plane ride in January.

In the meantime, is there anything you'd add to the list above? Anything you'd add, change, or remove?

(For future reference, this bulleted declaration will always be nested at the top of the page under the About JTN link. There, I'll also update the points with links to the posts that explore each one in further depth.)

Oh, the Places We'll Go

I've spent some time this weekend planning out the future of this online space. I know changes will crop up along the way and that there's no way to mapquest our way to the future, but it's been fun to brainstorm things I'd like to see and write about here.

Some ideas I've been developing so far include:

• Open letters to the great peacemakers
• Stories that get us reflecting on our journeys to this journey
• Reflections on what this path requires or asks of us
• Posts that ask the hard questions about nonviolence and peacemaking
• Recurring features to share moments of love and places of repentance in our own lives
• Exploration of the theological underpinnings of nonviolence
• Review of cultural artifacts (books, movies, music) that move us toward nonviolence
• Ongoing definition of the subject

I thought it would be helpful to open this brainstorm up to the community. When you think about the subject of nonviolence, what haunts you? What excites you? What troubles you? What have you always wondered? What would help you along in your own journey?

Ultimately, my question to you is:

If you could put forth your own topics or questions to showcase in this space, what would they be?