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Engaging the Moral Imagination
Charles Gibbs
In a world where each day is a tug of war between despair and hope, I’d like to tell an interfaith story of authentic hope. A story of extraordinary ordinary people. Of their vision and courage. A story of “building new tomorrows from the rubble of today.” This is a true story, except for the parts that haven’t happened yet.
In December 2006, twenty-one people gathered at a retreat center nestled among the redwoods on a cloud-shrouded slope of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County California. These people came from Ethiopia, India, the Philippines, Uganda, Maine, Colorado and California. They were Muslim, Christian and Hindu. Men and women. Younger and older. And all sorts of sizes, shapes and colors.
They were drawn together by the United Religions Initiative because of their work for peace, justice and healing.
Work waging peace, rescuing child soldiers, and doing economic development in the middle of 20 years of civil war in Northern Uganda.
 Work creating community based infrastructures for peace and supporting high level efforts for peace in the middle of growing Christian-Muslim tension in Ethiopia and the threat of war on Ethiopia’s border with Somalia.
 Work to create interfaith community and to promote peaceful reconciliation in the midst of an intra-Christian conflict that threatens to erupt violently with dire consequences for people of all faiths in Southern India.
 Work to create an interfaith leadership council inspiring peacebuilding and addressing issues of poverty in a Christian-Muslim community in Metro Manila that could, at any moment, either explode or become a model of interfaith cooperation for the good of all. Work to knit together and empower a global interfaith community dedicated to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing.
They were drawn together, for five week-long sessions over fifteen months, to engage the moral imagination as an essential tool for peacebuilding.
Their teachers – John Paul Lederach, whose nearly thirty years of peace building, teaching and writing has produced his extraordinary recent book: The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace; his colleague, Herm Weaver, who, among many other things, brings the gift of music to their shared work; and each other.
In the
beginning of his book, John Paul asks this core question: "How do we
transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still
living in them?" The answer, his years of reflection, teaching and
experience have led him to believe, lies in the moral imagination, which he
defines this way: "the capacity to imagine something rooted in the
challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not
yet exist." John Paul identifies four dimensions of exploration/engagement
that help develop the capacity for and practice of the moral imagination:
Stated simply, the moral imagination requires the capacity to imagine ourselves
in a web of relationships that includes our enemies; the ability to sustain a
paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic
polarity; the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act; and the
acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown
that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence (page 3).
So, how do we awaken and deepen our capacity to engage the moral imagination? First of all by creating the space to inspire and attend to our own deep inner wisdom, especially as that wisdom may connect with the Source of all wisdom. To help create this space, we began each morning with a walk through the woods.
Though we walked in a group, individuals were free to talk or be in silence, as they wished. Everyone was invited to be alert to the beauty and deep wisdom of the natural world.
When we returned from our morning walk, we spent half an hour alone together writing morning pages, a practice of free writing that is akin to rambling through the woods, not worrying about where you are at any particular moment, or even if you’re headed in the right direction, but paying attention in each moment and trusting that direction and insight will emerge. As most people experience a special power meditating in a group, so the extraordinary ordinary individuals in this workshop experienced a special power in writing in a group, and came to trust the insights that emerged from allowing our hearts and minds to wander.
Walks and morning pages were only part of connecting us with our Source and our deep inner wisdom, only part of creating the space to engage the moral imagination. We also prayed together. We placed more value on deepening relationships – with each other, with our Source, and with our own inner wisdom – than on accomplishing specific tasks. So, we allowed enough time at meals for mindful eating and spacious, reflective conversations. We sang together, often, learning a song from each of the five groups.
We recognized the value of story – the unfolding stories each of us represents, and the core, guiding stories that John Paul offers at the heart of The Moral Imagination:
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the story of how a handful of women in Wajir, Kenya, acting courageously, creatively, humbly, stopped a war in their part of the world;
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the story of how a professor in Tajikistan helped end a civil war when he assured an enemy leader, I will go with you, side by side. And if you die, I will die;
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and the story of how a Columbian peasant empowered an entire community, caught between guerillas and the army, to stand firm in their unwillingness to take up arms in the face of demands from an army commander that they either fight against the guerillas or die.
We mined these stories, and the stories of each group’s efforts at peacebuilding, for a deeper understanding of how the moral imagination worked. We took time to reflect and listen deeply and to seek shared understanding. We explored the importance of recognizing our fundamental interdependence, and working to nurture the relationships that sustain us. We explored the dynamics of crafting and sustaining a web of relationships that includes the grassroots and high-level leaders whose decisions and action can affect the lives of many, many people.
In a sense, all this attention to inviting the moral imagination created a river that we journeyed down together. The river was at times broad and slow, inviting easeful reflection. At other times it was narrow and fast, demanding our best cooperative efforts to navigate challenging waters at a rapid pace.
We learned about what motivates and challenges each person involved; and each group. We learned about our work, our dreams, our plans. We learned about our victories and our defeats. We learned about the commitment that insists on forging victory, even from defeat.
As we prepared to leave as this first of five sessions was drawing to a close, we were able to celebrate the plans each group had made to deepen our work when we returned home.
The Uganda team committed to work for sustainable peace and development in Uganda through advocating and lobbying for peace, strengthening a women’s interfaith network in peacebuilding, and being actively involved in mediation to end the civil war.
The Ethiopia team committed to train youth in conflict prevention work, to launch a newsletter in different languages and to establish six new Cooperation Circles in Ethiopia.
The India team committed to help resolve the century-old conflict between two warring factions of the Indian Orthodox Church.
The Philippines team committed to form a core team of Muslims and Christians in four grassroots communities in Metro Manila to promote Muslim-Christian relationship building leading to enduring, peaceful cooperation.
The URI learning team committed to introducing the new wisdom gained through the Moral Imagination Project into the URI system to help the whole network increase our effectiveness in fulfilling URI’s Purpose.
We were able to celebrate by singing each other’s songs. We were able to give thanks for the space for deepening insight and commitment we had shared. The space for deepening relationship and joy.
And we stood, in our final moments together, in a circle, facing each other in deep love and gratitude. And then we turned around, still in a circle, and faced outward into our beautiful, troubled world where each day can be a tug of war between despair and hope, and pledged to go forward bearing hope into the world through actions for peace, justice and healing inspired by our Source as we engage the moral imagination.
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