Living our discernment
Gerald Hewitson reviews a book on Quaker witness in Eastern Europe
In A Small Share in History: A Quaker initiative in Eastern Europe Diana and John Lampen describe a Quaker initiative – visiting Belarus and Ukraine between 1991 and 2004 (at the time these countries were emerging from the Soviet Union) – sharing methods of creative conflict handling in schools and inter-active classroom approaches; and working in Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1996 to 2012 with civil society groups that were trying to forge a positive way forward after the civil wars.
It is a very short pamphlet – just over thirty pages long. Sitting on a Meeting house table, it would be easy to pass over; I’m delighted I did not. On one level, it is another chapter in the history of Quakers picking up the pieces of other people’s wars – mending hurts, binding wounds, comforting the afflicted. On another it tells a more compelling story – one that the world often finds incomprehensible. In one presentation a man interrupted in frustration: ‘Everyone knows that political problems must have political solutions! And you talk to us about working with women and children!’ For this is not politics as the world understands it, of power and control, where war is an extension of politics. It is a story of healing – stitching the torn fabric of society and, therefore, enabling people – often women and children, who often bear the heaviest burden of suffering in and after war – to undertake the necessary heartwork so that they can live in peace with their neighbour.
Like many stories, this can be read at several levels. From the point of view of the children who were recipients of the programme of work, many of them by default become empowered to be mediators and translators. The teachers and psychologists involved seized every opportunity to take up materials, approaches and activities that would allow them to work most effectively with their charges – sometimes, in the face of a reluctant or unsympathetic authority. From the point of view of those running the programme, it is a story of small steps acquiring a momentum of activity.
Diana and John Lampen are honest about the limitations of their achievements. But theirs is a story of continuing faithfulness, responding to guidance, which was not always clear, with results which could not have been predictable. ‘Over the years we worked with several hundred teachers and school psychologists, through whom our work must have reached hundred of children in some form or other, making it impossible to quantify the impact of our visit… sometimes the most useful aspects of our work may be quite unknown to us.’ This is, then, a story of discernment in action.
Discernment takes many forms. The programme Dealing with the Past was another Quaker initiative, a piece of discerned work, facilitated in the Post Yugoslav region by Quaker Peace & Service and Quaker Peace & Social Witness from 1991 to 2009. This programme was undertaken in the face of damaged relationships, lack of forgiveness, mistrust and ethnic conflict. From this experience, and that described by the Lampens, we can learn, yet again, that peace building is just hard work. It is a slow, arduous exercise in patience: the softening of human hearts in order to reconfigure the mind; allowing people to see their past, and thereby their future, in a radically different way. Both these pieces of work may be small steps – but vital steps in providing the skills and tools people need to rewrite the story of these regions so that it becomes one based on reconciliation and hope instead of strife, division and conflict.
All three former programme workers – Goran Bubalo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zorica Trifunovic in Serbia and Goran Bozicevic in Croatia – remain active. Goran Bubalo promotes the Network for Building Peace, which aims for a comprehensive renewal of social and economic life by dealing with difference and conflicts constructively, using nonviolent means; Zorica is a prime mover in the Women in Black movement in Serbia, which has been campaigning since 1991 against nationalism, militarism and all forms of hatred, discrimination and violence. In Croatia, Goran Bozicevic and his wife Ana received funds from the QPSW Grants Group to run a rare summer retreat for peaceworkers in 2012, to promote networking and exchange of good practice. Another retreat is planned this year.
