Like most people in the field of peacebuilding, we used to think that peace among humans was primary, a pre-requisite to being able to attend to healing the environment, as if the two were sep-

arate, or separable, and sequential. As our work in Liberia evolved over the years, with so much devastation of the land and the forests due to the war, we began to realize that these two healing arenas—human and environmental—were, at the very least, concurrent. Once we realized this, we began to see that the damage to the natural world needed to be repaired in order for humans to find peace with each other. Conversely, modernity’s assault on the environment is itself a sure path to contin-ued conflict: over-hunting, overgrazing, water diversion, pollution and depletion, monoculture, etc., clearly result in or contribute to ecological collapse, drought, scarcity, starvation, and illness.

We began to see that healing occurs when we humans are able to heal our relationship with the earth—through restoration work such as Permaculture, veterans who find healing by putting their hands in the soil, people planting urban vegetable gardens and inner city youth learning to feel at home in the wilderness. As we dug deeper, our research and experience inverted our early assumptions, and showed us that the rupture of the relationship between people and the land is, literally, the root cause of conflict among humans.

In recent weeks, we have begun to refer to our work as non-human-centric peacebuilding. By this we mean both peacebuilding that is not centered on humans, and peacebuilding that focuses on elements other than human beings, including nature, the sacred and the spirits in whatever way a particular culture, group or individual understands these. What is important is the relationship, and the ways that rela-tionship is tended so that balance is restored, not a particular ideol-ogy or belief.

Last week, while walking on the beach, I saw a woman I know. We fell into step with each other and walked for some time while our dogs romped and played. As we neared the parking lot, she turned to me and said, “Tell me again, what do you do at everyday gandhis?” It was a wonderful opportunity to distill our recent insights into a quick summary—the beach equivalent of the ‘elevator pitch’. I was surprised to hear myself say, “We’re in a transition. For the past seven years we’ve been working in post-war Liberia. Now it’s time to bring the work and the stories home.”

Here is a glimpse of what we have learned and the insights we are ‘bringing home’…

Peace with Nature Means Peace for Humansby cynthia travis

ISSUE IX • SUMMER 2011

Hope Ranch Beach, Santa Barbara, California - Photo by Jesse Smith

Continued on page 3

Table of ContentsPeace with Nature…by cynthia travisOur research and experience inverted our early assumptions, and showed us that the rupture of the relationship between people and the land is, literally, the root cause of conflict among humans.

Principles of Restorationby carolyn raffenspergerThis piece is about the principles and think-ing that are the foundations of a practice of restoration. Restoration is about restoring relationships. The only real rule of restoration is compassionate intimacy.

Recovery & Restoration…by ian amitinSeven Liberian ex-combatants trained by the everyday gandhis project will spend their sum-mer break from school engaged in intensive community service. They will travel to two counties in Liberia, where they will facilitate peacebuilding workshops and story circles, and bring residents together for soccer matches.

Talking Peace…by danelia wildStories have power—power to revisit trauma and anguish; power to lead us to healing and to peace. The everyday gandhis Peace Archive is a repository of such wisdom in stories of recrimination and reconciliation, of conflict and peacemaking, of violations and amends, of devastation and renewal—between and among people, communities, nature and the sacred.

THE PALAVER HUT • ISSUE IX • SUMMER 2011

visit us on our updated website!

The everyday gandhis website has undergone a series of up-grades over the last few months to make your user experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible. One new feature you

may notice on our site is the option to view the site in Flash or html, so that no matter what type of internet connection you have, you can see all of our amazing offerings.

Is there something that you may have wanted to search for before on our site— but couldn't find a way? Now you can find an easy to use search bar, located in the bottom right corner of the home screen. Type in keywords, like peacebuilding, Liberia, and ex-combatants, and find all the articles and videos we have relating to your search.

The Peace Archive now has an updated video player that enables users viewing interview clips to also read a short biography of the person be-ing interviewed as well as a transcript of the interview. We frequently add new clips to the Archive. To stay up to date on the Archive, sub-scribe to our weekly Talking Peace emails. Not on our email list? Con-tact ana@everydaygandhis.org and ask to be added to our mailing list.

Remember to check our Updates and Events page! It’s a great way to see what we're up to and how you can get involved. You can also check out our blog, Outside In, where each week, founder and president Cynthia Travis shares her insights and experiences about peacebuilding.

everyday gandhis offers so many wonderful peacebuilding and conflict transformation resources that we want to share, please come visit us!

Ana Brush is the Media Coordinator for everyday gandhis.

River ceromony - Photo by Andre Lambertson

• A consumer economy commodifies relationships that were once based on balance and reciprocity and has brought neo-colonization in the form of resource extraction, monoculture (human and agri-cultural), political manipulation and international aid programs. Peace cannot flourish within these structures because they are not patterned on nor in alignment with the deep, intrinsic interdepen-dence of nature and healthy and self-sustaining living systems.

• Dreams, councils and observation of the natural world are more effective planning tools than meetings.

• Healing spreads from the edges to the center and from inner struc-tures (templates) to the outer manifestation.

• People and places at the margins of society have the great vitality, experience and resilience necessary for each community to learn to function as a healthy and sustainable whole where every part is valued and acknowledged.

• Former fighters—particularly former child soldiers—have an as-tonishing capacity for peacebuilding.

• Often, the smallest possible gestures of healing are the most lasting and powerful. We call these ‘Quantum Gestures’.

It has taken time to absorb and metabolize our experiences of the past seven years. Now we have begun to articulate what we have learned. This includes many exciting changes and new offerings:

• A shift in focus from Liberia to the U.S.

• Strengthening and continuing our work with former child soldiers and ex-combatants

• The completion of our forthcoming documentary, Future Guard-ians of Peace…from child soldiers to peacebuilders, due out this fall.

• We are writing a companion curriculum for all our documentaries and launching film screenings, photo exhibits and a speaking tour.

• Our updated website debuts summer solstice ( June 21) with two new features we are very excited about.

ɳ The Peace Archives, with over 75 film clips of peacebuilders from around the world. You can sign up to receive the weekly clip, Talking Peace, and add your story to the conversation at www.everydaygandhis.org.

ɳ The launch of our Blog, Outside In, with explorations of the deeper insights we are harvesting.

• We are collaborating with partner organizations to bring forth a new and innovative organizational model for non-profits.

My beach walk companion and I arrived at a rivulet that forms as the rising tide meets the out-rushing waters of a nearby slough as it emp-ties and fills with the rhythm of the ocean. As we stepped into the increasingly turbulent water tumbling towards the sea, she stopped and said, “But it’s so overwhelming! There’s so much to do, so much suffering and destruction. How can we undo it all?”

I heard myself say something I didn’t know I knew: “A very small ges-ture, if it’s the right gesture—especially the right ritual gesture—can have a quantum healing effect.”

How marvelous! It only took seven years to learn anew the immense power of the small. It’s nature’s way.

Cynthia Travis is the Founder & President of everyday gandhis.

Continued from cover Santa Barbara Palms - Photo by Jesse Smith

everyday gandhis  •  summer 2011  •  3 

Carolyn Raffensperger is a colleague of everyday gandhis and an environ-mental lawyer specializing in the fundamental changes and law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the envi-ronment. She also writes eloquently about the deep underlying changes of thought that are necessary for such shifts in policy and action. This piece is about the principles and thinking that are the foundations of restoration.

This morning friends and I were discussing the role of plants in mending the Earth. In the course of that conversation my friend Hawk described a neighbor’s plan to put 30 non-native

roses in an Arizona desert garden. His point was that this is the op-posite of mending. Roses in that garden will be dependent on humans for survival. They will suck up precious and scarce water. And they will get in the way of native plants that belong to that place. This conversa-tion brought to mind these principles of restoration. They are equally applicable to human and ecosystem health.

1. The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.*

2. The goal of restoration is to enable the system or organism to re-new itself.*

3. All restoration is undertaken in a bio-geo-mythic field. The myth-ic is part of the healing field because humans use stories to under-stand their relationship to each other and to the biological and geological elements. The mythic field can be as damaged as the physical components.

4. Death is essential. Remember the phoenix rose out of the ashes. But she needed the ashes.

5. A healthy system is resilient. It can move with disturbances, storms, the elements.

6. On Earth, every natural force is essential for restoration — fire, air, water, earth and dreams.

7. Every being has a place but not a place in every place. Membership is place specific.

8. Health is membership.** A being, a force, a myth, a cure, a tech-nology out of place is disease.

9. Human intervention must be scaled appropriately. The small re-spectful gesture is a good start.

10. Timing may be everything. Music and dance can teach us the right rhythm especially the music of the spheres, the dance of the pol-linators.

11. Restoration is about restoring relationships. The only real rule of restoration is compassionate intimacy.

* After Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac ** After Wendell Berry in Another Turn of the Crank

Carolyn Raffensperger is an attorney and the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. (www.sehn.org)

Principles of Restorationby carolyn raffensperger

everyday gandhis Culture Troupe - Photo by Andre Lambertson

4  •  everyday gandhis  •  summer 2011

'future guardians' to facilitate summer workshops and games in two communities

Seven Liberian ex-combatants trained by the everyday gandhis project will spend their summer break from school engaged in intensive community service.

These "Future Guardians of Peace" in training—six young men—Lassana Kanneh, Ezekiel Mavolo, Akoi Mawolo, Varlee Sheriff, Mo-hammed Kamara, and Morris Kamara, and one young woman, Esther Kpaku—will travel to two counties in Liberia, where they will facili-tate peacebuilding workshops and story circles, and bring residents to-gether for soccer matches.

Although it won't be the first time these Future Guardians have en-gaged in community service, this summer's program represents a quali-tatively different phase of their recovery work: for the first time, the Guardians will be involved in coordinating and implementing these ac-tivities, with the help and guidance of older citizens who have worked with everyday gandhis over the years.

voinjamaIn Voinjama, in Lofa County, the Future Guardians will facilitate a workshop for and about the challenges to creating lasting peace faced by war-affected youth. In addition, they will invite local young people to take part in a "Community Clean-Up Campaign” in preparation for a visit from the President of Liberia, Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will be passing through Voinjama during Liberia's Independence Day celebration on July 26th. The workshop and clean-up day will culmi-nate in a spirited soccer match to strengthen the friendships among the war-affected youth.

monroviaThe last workshop of this project will be held in the capital, Monro-via. Here, the Future Guardians will coordinate a group discussion designed to give ex-combatants—many of whom were forced to take drugs as part of their indoctrination as child soldiers—a chance to ex-plore the dangers and consequences of drug and alcohol abuse as well as strategies for recovery. The Future Guardians will also make presen-tations on the process of becoming community peacebuilders, and on ways to build healthy relationships.

To learn more about how Liberian ex-combatants are training to be-come “Future Guardians of Peace”, please visit our website www.everydaygandhis.org.

Ian Amitin is the Administrative Director for everyday gandhis.

Recovery & Restoration Through Serving the Communityby ian amitin

Soccer spectators, Liberia - Photo by Varlee Sheriff

Soccer for Peace, Liberia - Photo by Varlee Sheriff

Healthy Relationships workshop - Photo by Varlee Sheriff

everyday gandhis  •  summer 2011  •  5 

This summer solstice, as we engage in the ongoing task of re-storing and re-Storying our common heritage of and capacity for peacebuilding that is at the heart of our work, we invite

our supporters to look at the latest additions to the everyday gandhis Peace Archive on our updated website.

Stories have power—power to revisit trauma and anguish; power to lead us to healing and to peace. The everyday gandhis Peace Archive is a repository of such wisdom in stories of recrimination and reconcilia-tion, of conflict and peacemaking, of violations and amends, of devas-tation and renewal—between and among people, communities, nature and the sacred.

The collection includes written material, interviews, video clips, and photographs from the archive of materials gathered in our work. They are accessible on our website, on video and in print and via emails. We will be adding to this archive each month as we continue to explore this heritage and the actions of the ‘everyday gandhis’ who find themselves in this work.

• Stories of peacemaking in the natural world are collected in Re-Storying the Land.

• The words of dozens of those who have thought and worked for peace can be found in Peace Quotes.

• Dreams, Paths to Peacemaking, the ways of Guardianship, and Peacebuilding are to be found under Stories.

• Talking Peace holds an expanding collection of more than 75 film clips selected from our archive of interviews with those on the front lines of creating the foundations of peace.

The film clips in the Talking Peace collection are organized to illu-minate the processes and challenges of transforming conflict into the healthy, equitable, sustainable relationships that are the basis of lasting peace between people, the natural world and all those who inhabit it. The clips explore the ways storytelling creates hope—hope that heal-ing and peace are possible, regardless of how things may look in the moment. As Northern Ireland peacebuilder Joe Campbell says, “Every conflict is solvable.”

Talking Peace with everyday gandhis is also our new weekly conver-sation with peacebuilders sharing stories of their experiences and in-sights from around the world.  Each week we release—and send out to subscribers—a new film clip from our archive of interviews with peo-ple around the globe who have worked to heal conflict and create peace in difficult situations. These 'everyday gandhis' are a living resource of peacebuilding practices and traditions; many have worked for years at the grass-roots level to cultivate the conditions where peacebuilding can become a dynamic, ongoing reality.

The film clips include stories from John Paul Lederach, professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, who has worked in these ways in 25 countries; Emmanuel Bombande, who co-founded the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP),

Talking Peace and the everyday gandhis Peace Archiveby danelia wild

Children for Peace, Liberia - Photo by Cynthia Travis

My father - Photo by Varlee Sheriff

6  •  everyday gandhis  •  summer 2011

which has a membership of more than 450 civil society organizations spread across 12 national networks throughout West Africa, and How-ard Zehr, known as a grandfather of the Restorative Justice movement.

Other conversations are with Joe Campbell, who worked to end 30 years of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Anne Goodman (Adelson) of Canada and South Africa, who has worked with women's peace groups across the globe; Ron Kraybill, who worked in South Africa during and after the fall of apartheid; Samuel Gbaydee Doe, who lived through a brutal 13-year civil war in Liberia, co-founded the West African Network for Peace, and who now works in Sri Lanka in the wake of another civil conflict; and Joseph Babu Ayindo, a Kenyan who has worked in 10 countries to transform community conflict using the tools of theater and the arts.

As everyday gandhis’ founder and president, Cynthia Travis, reminds us, “Grief is a Doorway.” One of the interviews is with Tammy Krause, who worked with defense lawyers in capital cases so that victims of violence and their families would not be re-traumatized by the trial, speaking of the common and shared grief of two fathers that led to mo-ments of grace. Other clips lead us to consider the power of unexpect-ed forgiveness extended to a torturer by his victim that transformed both their lives, and of enduring, resilient shards of deep humanity still

miraculously present in those who have both suffered and who have inflicted great suffering on others.

Writer and healer Deena Metzger, a senior advisor to everyday gandhis, speaks about the path from ex-combatant to future guardian of peace, and of the astonishing impact the natural world, in all its intercon-nected beauty, has on the work of building a sustainable peace.

These stories, and many like them across the world, arise wherever people are working to mirror and catalyze the wisdom of an individual or community (including the natural world) and restore its intrinsi-cally sustainable authentic nature.

We invite you to join in this conversation about the power of personal story. We hope to hear from you and that you will share your own sto-ries of challenges in peacebuilding and healing from conflict, of what gives you the strength, hope and courage to do this work, in your per-sonal life and in the wider community.

May we all find ways to listen to each other deeply and find the paths to peace and restoration.

Danelia Wild is the Peace Archivist for everyday gandhis.

Peace? Yes! - Photo by Cynthia Travis

everyday gandhis  •  summer 2011  •  7 

everyday gandhisph: 805.966.9300•fax: 805.966.9301•www.everydaygandhis.orgeveryday gandhis is a California 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation.

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