Review: Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace
April 2nd, 2005 by sfuqua
URI Global Support Staff member Barbara Hartford reviews John Paul
Lederach's Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace
, wherein he asks "How do we transcend the cycles of violence that
bewitch our human community while still living in them?"
By Barbara Hartford
United Religions Initiative Global Support Staff
In John Paul Lederach's new book,
Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace, he addresses
the question: “How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch
our human community while still living in them?” URI's
approach to interfaith peacebuilding through our Principles and
networked organization are thoroughly validated in this call for the moral
imagination; at the same time we’re challenged to make our
efforts more effective through strategic and intentional
networking.
Lederach addresses peacebuilding as both a learned skill and as an
art. He suggests and explores moral imagination as “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.”
The Moral Imagination is built around four guiding
stories, using concepts and metaphors from the arts (Haiku
poetry) and nature (spider webs). He eloquently articulates the
importance of seredipity as "the gift of life… It keeps us alive to
constant growth and unending potential, if we develop a capacity to see what
is found along the way and adapt creatively while keeping a keen sense of
purpose."
Charles Gibbs has said: “What excites me about the book is
Lederach’s identification and unpacking of the four disciplines and the
two directions of exploration. In his efforts – including working with
the skill and art of peacebuilding – I find a great deal that both
supports URI’s work (we are doing so much that is resonant with his
articulation of the art of peacebuilding) and a great deal that challenges us
to take our efforts to a deeper level – developing more of the skill of
this discipline, and, in the context of his understanding of critical mass
– being strategic in our web building so we engage the people who can
leverage large scale change.”
As John Paul Lederach says: “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 too
familiar landscape of violence.”
His two broad directions of exploration are to “understand and feel
the landscape of protracted violence and why it poses such deep-rooted
challenges to constructive change” and to “explore the creative
process as the wellspring that feeds the building of peace.”
John Paul Lederach is a leading peacebuilding teacher, trainer, and
practitioner (Northern Ireland, Nicaragua, Somalia, Tajikistan, The
Philippines), teacher and trainer. He is currently Professor of
International Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International
Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Distinguished Scholar at
Eastern Mennonite University’s Conflict Transformation Program.
He has been an inspiration for URI peacebuilding since Christine Kisembo and
I first studied with him at EMU/CTP several years ago. He sees his work as a
religious vocaton.
