Quaker Weekend on Peace and Justice, 20th-22nd March
From Zang:
This weekend I was invited as one of three guest speakers at the annual Quaker Universalist Group conference. It was held in the beautiful Roman Catholic pastoral centre, Hinsley Hall, just outside Leeds city centre, and was attended by about 45 people from all over the country- mostly Quakers or regular attenders at Quaker meetings.
The theme of the weekend was "The Roots of Peace and Justice", and I led a theatre-based workshop based on the techniques of South American activist/director Augusto Boal. The aim was to allow people to explore their sense of injustice and peaceful solutions in an intuitive and physical way, to compliment the excellent conceptual ideas presented by the two other speakers (Prof David Cadman and Prof Joseph Milne). We used a sequence of exercises learning to "sculpt" another person's body into an image of "peace", "violence" and "injustice", and then in larger groups we created bigger images that allowed people to explore their collective sense of injustice and peace, bringing their own ideas together. In the end we created large images of injustice, then found ways of opening them outward smoothly into new images of peace/justice/harmony. This gives a sense of how peace can be found within the very movement and shapes of injustice- to create peace we begin by looking at the ingredients of the situation which are actually there, rather than beginning with a Utopian idea of what peace should be like.
We ended by using a couple of Sufi circle exercises as a whole group, letting go of images and just entering into shared presence together, chanting the Arabic sounds "Hu" and "La illaha ilallah". I hope this brought people together in the end, after the challenge of creating the physical images, into a sense of what in Zen we sometimes call the "One Body". As the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "The People of Faith are like one body- when one part experiences illness, the whole body feels the pain". I hope the workshop in some small way gave a sense that peace and justice are found in recognising our being 'one body' all together, and in making the one body whole and health we restore what may be thought of as 'justice' to all of the parts which make the whole.
This weekend I was invited as one of three guest speakers at the annual Quaker Universalist Group conference. It was held in the beautiful Roman Catholic pastoral centre, Hinsley Hall, just outside Leeds city centre, and was attended by about 45 people from all over the country- mostly Quakers or regular attenders at Quaker meetings.
The theme of the weekend was "The Roots of Peace and Justice", and I led a theatre-based workshop based on the techniques of South American activist/director Augusto Boal. The aim was to allow people to explore their sense of injustice and peaceful solutions in an intuitive and physical way, to compliment the excellent conceptual ideas presented by the two other speakers (Prof David Cadman and Prof Joseph Milne). We used a sequence of exercises learning to "sculpt" another person's body into an image of "peace", "violence" and "injustice", and then in larger groups we created bigger images that allowed people to explore their collective sense of injustice and peace, bringing their own ideas together. In the end we created large images of injustice, then found ways of opening them outward smoothly into new images of peace/justice/harmony. This gives a sense of how peace can be found within the very movement and shapes of injustice- to create peace we begin by looking at the ingredients of the situation which are actually there, rather than beginning with a Utopian idea of what peace should be like.
We ended by using a couple of Sufi circle exercises as a whole group, letting go of images and just entering into shared presence together, chanting the Arabic sounds "Hu" and "La illaha ilallah". I hope this brought people together in the end, after the challenge of creating the physical images, into a sense of what in Zen we sometimes call the "One Body". As the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "The People of Faith are like one body- when one part experiences illness, the whole body feels the pain". I hope the workshop in some small way gave a sense that peace and justice are found in recognising our being 'one body' all together, and in making the one body whole and health we restore what may be thought of as 'justice' to all of the parts which make the whole.
Comments
I wanted to thank you again for your workshop. It was challenging (and therefore valuable) to work on ways I have caused pain to others. I was thrilled to try some Sufi practices; I've read some things on Sufism, but would like to know more.
You brought something really important to the weekend!
metta,
Mark