ISSUE No. 43 | March 2024
WELCOME
If you’re new to CULTIVARE we welcome you! CULTIVARE is a monthly field guide for life and faith, brought to you by TEND. Each month we explore a specific “field” – a topic or theme through which we seek to cultivate contemplation, engagement, and deeper understanding. Our guiding questions are:
What are you cultivating in your life?
What fruit do you want your life to bear?
Each issue of CULTIVARE is structured into three parts:
Cultivate: Examines a specific “Field” or facet of life and offers questions to unearth and challenge our held perspective; along with concise kernels of truth which we call “Seeds.”
Irrigate: Explores the ways we nurture our understanding, which varies from individual to individual. We offer six means of irrigation: Art, Poetry, Profile, Film, Essay, and Books.
Germinate: Encourages practical ways to engage in becoming more fruitful and free in our lives.
Our name, CULTIVARE, in Spanish means “I will cultivate.” We hope each issue of our field guide will encourage you to do just that – cultivate new thoughts, actions, faith, hope, and fruitful living. We invite you to dig in and DIG DEEP!
FIELD
For we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field.
(I Corinthians 3:9)
Our theme this month is PEACEMAKERS. St. Basil the Great was noted as saying: Nothing is so characteristically Christian as being a peacemaker. While I love his insight, I lament that too often today this characteristic can be hard to find in many Christians. In an era of wrangling and war, division and discord, revenge and retaliation, vigilant peacemakers are needed more than ever.
The cultivation of a peacemaking culture is very much needed as well. General Omar Bradley, who led the US Armed Forces invasion of Normandy in World War II and who would later become the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected on our culture, writing: We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. . .. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. His words are a call to contemplation and action; we hope this issue of Cultivare prompts each of us to thoughtful responses.
To that end our Profile this month is purposefully not a Nobel Peace Prize winner but rather an ordinary (yet extraordinary) servant called by God to silently serve his neighborhood, and in so doing builds bridges of understanding and unity. Our Artist of the Month has worked hard to redeem the terror and trauma of his childhood by writing and performing music that brings people together and gives them hope. Our Essay is an interview with the highly acclaimed global peacemaker John Paul Lederach, whose Mennonite faith has shaped and sustained him as he brings light and love to darkness and discord.
Peacemaking is hard work, which may partially explain why peacemakers are often hard to find. Theologian and author Jim Wallis observes: Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the peace-lovers.” He says peacemakers. He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life. We pray this issue will prompt each of us the give serious thought and attention to our life vocation as peacemakers. May God’s Spirit encourage us and empower us to be the peacemakers we are called to be. (DG)
***
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
(Matthew 5:9 NIV)
For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.
(Ephesians 2:14 NLT)
Abram said to Lot, "Let's not have fighting between us, between your shepherds and my shepherds. After all, we're family. Look around. Isn't there plenty of land out there? Let's separate. If you go left, I'll go right; if you go right, I'll go left.
(Genesis 13:8-9 MSG)
You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best - the sun to warm and the rain to nourish - to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.
(Matthew 5:43-45)
SEEDS
A handful of quotes to contemplate and cultivate into your life
Odd how we focus on studying wars at school to form our 'education'. No wonder we know so little about making and forging peace as adults. (Rasheed Ogunlaru)
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. (Desmond Tutu)
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall take flack from both sides. (Unofficial UN motto attributed to Robert Aspirin)
The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . And they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure the suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they overcome evil with good and establish peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. (Nelson Mandela)
Peacemakers who challenge the prevailing concept of peace achieved by violence are often, ironically, called disturbers of the peace. That is only true if peace is defined as an uneasy ceasefire in a world dominated by the corrupt, a tenuous subjugation of the weak by the powerful, a hurting humanity suffering silently en mass for the profit of the bloated few. If, though, peace is defined as freedom, equality, safety, health, opportunity, and a voice for all, then we, the peacemakers, aren't disturbers of the peace. We are purveyors of peace because we are disturbers of the status quo. (L.R. Knost)
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break! (Kurt Vonnegut)
When we avoid hard conversations, we are not keeping the peace. We are keeping the tension. (Mastin Kipp)
Peace has come to mean the time when there aren't any wars or even when there aren't any major wars. Beggars can't be choosers; we'd most of us settle for that. But in Hebrew peace, shalom, means fullness, means having everything you need to be wholly and happily yourself. . . One of the titles by which Jesus is known is Prince of Peace, and he used the word himself in what seem at first glance to be two radically contradictory utterances. On one occasion he said to the disciples, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). And later on, the last time they ate together, he said to them, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you" (John 14:27) . . . The contradiction is resolved when you realize that, for Jesus, peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love. (Frederick Buechener)
ART
Artist of the Month
Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal is a political activist, musician, actor and former child soldier from South Sudan. As a young child, he lived in a small village in the Bahr el Ghazal region of Sudan (now South Sudan). At the age of seven, his mother was killed, and his father became a top commander within the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army. Their goal was to fight for the Freedom of Sudan. Not long after this, Jal was conscripted to join the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army. He would end up being one of over 10,000 child soldiers who fought for over a decade in the Sudan civil war.
Jal was orphaned and left to fend for himself. He had lived through a complete horror: “marching through miles of desert toward Ethiopia, past the bones of adults and children who had fallen on the trek; witnessing the deaths of friends and family members; killing soldiers and civilians with a gun he could barely lift; and coming to the edge of suicide.” Extraordinarily, Jal survived this unbearable experience, and this became a turning point in his life. He was rescued by Emma McCune, a British Aid worker, who helped him travel to Kenya. This was the beginning of a journey that would help him recover from the traumatic experience of being a child soldier and lead him to finding music as a form of therapy.
Jal recorded and released his own album and had a number one hip-hop single in Kenya. This led him to perform with international stars such as Bono, Moby, Peter Gabriel, Alicia Keys and Joss Stone. Overall, he has released five albums which include Gua, Ceasefire, War Child, See Me Mama and The Key. In 2014 he received the Dresden Peace Prize.
To watch the music video We Want Peace click here: View Now
To listen to his song Praise the Lord click here: View Now
To learn more about Emmanuel Jal click here: View Now
POETRY
Making Peace
By Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
PROFILE
Brian Bakke
By Eugene Kim
This month, for our profile section on peacemakers, we considered Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela, humanitarians such as Father Gregory Boyle, and human rights advocates such as Narges Mohammadi. In good company, Brian Bakke was nominated alongside this list of household names and world changers. Most of the Cultivare Team were curious to know which nation Bakke had liberated or how many decades he served in prison. Brian’s contribution to peacemaking, as he describes it, is two decades of “sweeping da block.”
For his day job, Brian Bakke was responsible for Mustard Seed Foundation grants to churches and ministries across North and South America. When he and his wife Lisa moved into his all-black DC neighborhood in 2001 he heard God speaking, “Go get a broom and use it. Don’t say anything till someone talks to you – sweep in silence.” As he sweeps the block, Brian has discovered and removed switchblades, used condoms, guns, meth needles, and clubs -- discarded and oftentimes intentionally hidden behind fences and in street gutters. Brian, in his bright orange vest, swept the block in silence for nearly a year before the matron of his neighborhood broke the silence: “Why are you sweeping the block?” Today every neighbor and their child, grandmother and dog in a 3-block radius knows the towering white man who sweeps the block in silence. His Saturday morning schedule is so consistent that neighbors wait at their windows to greet Brian as he sweeps in front of their homes. He currently averages 2.5 tons of trash and refuse a year that he removes from his neighborhood route, and on some mornings, he will remove over a dozen weapons.
After 15 years of sweeping the block, Brian was invited to dialogue with the Imam and the Board of Directors of Masjid Muhammad, the first mosque in the US constructed by enslaved African Americans. They asked Brian to teach them how to serve and engage with their communities, concluding the meeting with these words: “We know that you are a Christian. We have been watching you sweep in front of our mosque for years. You have been preaching a sermon, and we’ve been listening.”
When White extremists threatened to bomb and shoot up the mosque on the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March in DC, Brian showed up with his broom and paced menacingly up and down the street, ready to put himself between his Muslim neighbors and armed terrorists. Recently, he was interviewed and honored on a live global broadcast with Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of the world’s largest Muslim organization with 90 million followers for his heroic acts of peacemaking.
As a result, people have heard about the guy who sweeps the block, and Brian has been approached to help shut down crack houses and get police to respond to emergency calls in black neighborhoods. He hosts progressive dinners up and down his street with his neighbors. He has painted murals of Jesus that local gangs respect and protect. Gang members hand him their weapons. He attends their celebrations and mourns with them at their funerals. He has turned people who wanted to kill him and kill each other into some of his best friends.
Brian is a street sweeper, an untold hero, a disrupter, a peacemaker. Brian challenges us to consider “what is your broom? How might God be calling you to be a peacemaker in your community?
FILM
Each month we recommend films focused on our theme
Gandhi (1982)
Sir Ben Kingsley stars as Mohandas Gandhi in Lord Richard Attenborough's riveting biography of the man who rose from simple lawyer to worldwide symbol of peace and understanding. A critical masterpiece, GANDHI is an intriguing story about activism, politics, religious tolerance and freedom. But, at the center of it all, is an extraordinary man who fought for a nonviolent, peaceful existence, and set an entire nation free. Winner of 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (Richard Attenborough) and Best Actor (Sir Ben Kingsley), GANDHI's highly acclaimed cast also includes Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, Sir John Gielgud, Roshan Seth and Martin Sheen. Available on various streaming services.
Documentary Film
Peacemakers: Crossing the Divide (2020)
Peacemakers: Crossing the Divide brings a message of hope in the midst of the seemingly intractable conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The power of the gospel to transform lives through forgiveness and reconciliation is communicated by powerful personal stories of Jewish and Arab followers of Jesus. This unique one-hour documentary film speaks to deep issues of division in the church worldwide. Ultimately the film is about Jesus’ prayer for his followers:
"May they be brought to complete unity
to let the world know that you sent me…" John 17:23
Full Movie: Peacemakers – Crossing the Divide
Short Film
Blessed are the Peacemakers (10 minutes)
Jobs of Hope in Greeley, Colorado is a non-profit Christian ministry that restores men with felonies to job-readiness with employer-partners willing to give them a second chance. Founded in 2013, Jobs of Hope has helped many men come to faith in Christ and transition from incarceration to integration as productive employees and law-abiding citizens. Jobs of Hope contributes to reductions in recidivism and crime while cultivating economic and relational stability. You can learn more at Jobs Of Hope | Reentry Program | Greeley, CO.
Ted Talk
Compassion & Kinship: Father Gregory Boyle (20 minutes)
Father Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the White House named Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart (2010). Barking to the Choir is his second book, and he will be donating all net proceeds to Homeboy Industries.
ESSAY
The Art of Peace
Interview with John Paul Lederach
What happens when people transcend violence while living in it? John Paul Lederach has spent three decades mediating peace and change in 25 countries — from Nepal to Colombia and Sierra Leone. He shifts the language and lens of the very notion of conflict resolution. He says, for example, that enduring progress takes root not with large numbers of people, but with relationships between unlikely people.
John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In 2019 he won the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize.
In this interview by Krista Tippett for On Being, Tippett engages Mennonite activist John Paul Lederach in the inclusive yet strangely divisive notion of “peace;” by infusing it with unpredictable and illuminating images from Lederach’s wise and adventurous life in conflict transformation around the globe.
We invite you to read (or listen to) the full interview here: View Now
BOOKS
Each month we recommend a book (or two) focused on our theme
Non-Fiction
The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict
By Ken Sande
If you believe that God is watching over you with perfect love and unlimited power, you will be able to serve him faithfully as a peacemaker, even in the most difficult circumstances. (Ken Sande)
Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." But it often seems like conflict and disagreement are unavoidable. Serious, divisive conflict is everywhere-within families, in the church, and out in the world. And it can seem impossible to overcome its negative force in our lives.
In The Peacemaker, Ken Sande presents a comprehensive and practical theology for conflict resolution designed to bring about not only a cease-fire but also unity and harmony. Sande takes readers beyond resolving conflicts to true, life-changing reconciliation with family members, coworkers, and fellow believers.
Biblically based, The Peacemaker is full of godly wisdom and useful suggestions that are easily applied to any relationship needing reconciliation. Sande's years of experience as an attorney and as president of Peacemaker Ministries will strengthen readers' confidence as they stand in the gap as peacemakers.
Fiction
Bread and Wine
By Ignacio Silone
Surprisingly tender and rich in humor, this twentieth-century masterpiece brings to life priests and peasants, students and revolutionaries, simple girls and desperate women in a vivid drama of one man’s struggle for goodness in a world on the brink of war. Ranked with Orwell and Camus among writers who insisted upon linking the hope for social change with the values of political liberty, Silone is one of the major voices of our time, and Bread and Wine is his greatest novel. As Irving Howe notes in his Introduction, “Bread and Wine will speak to anyone, of whatever age, who tries sincerely to reflect upon man’s fate in our century.”
Childrens Book
Enemy Pie
By Derek Munson and Tara Calahan King
It was the perfect summer. That is, until Jeremy Ross moved into the house down the street and became neighborhood enemy number one. Luckily, Dad had a surefire way to get rid of enemies: Enemy Pie. But part of the secret recipe is spending an entire day playing with the enemy!
In this funny yet endearing children's book, filled with charming illustrations, kids learn about dealing with conflict as well as the difficulties, and ultimate rewards, of making new friends.
Watch the book read aloud:
DIG DEEPER
Practical suggestions to help you go deeper into our theme
1. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
Devote some time and thought to these reflective questions on our theme:
a. Do you consider yourself a peacemaker? Why or why not?
b. When conflict presents itself, do you lean into the conflict or lean away? Why?
c. Would the people around you consider you a peacemaker or a peacebreaker?
d. What makes it difficult for you to get along with certain people?
e. Who has been an encouraging model of a peacemaker in our world for you?
f. Who has been a meaningful peacemaker in your personal life?
g. How do you show peace? How do you pursue peace?
2. REMEMBERING RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS
Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died in 2020 after a short battle with cancer. When Krista Tippett of ON BEING spoke with him in 2010, Sacks modeled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honoring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life — indeed, to love the stranger?
3. THE CHURCH CAMPS THAT AIM TO BRIDGE RACE RELATIONS
In this 2016 article from The Atlantic, author Jesse James DeConto writes: “Many American Christians still grieve something Martin Luther King Jr. articulated more than 50 years ago: Churches are among the most segregated spaces in America. King imagined a universal, all-inclusive sisterhood and brotherhood with an equitable distribution of resources—a “Beloved Community” where there is peace because there is justice. Plenty of religious people have felt a duty to help bring this dream to life, yet most have failed to racially integrate their own congregations. Now, though, some church communities are looking outside their walls for the reconciliation they haven’t found inside.”
4. PEACEMAKER MINISTRIES
Peacemaker Ministries (PM) is a non-profit, nondenominational ministry whose mission is to equip and assist Christians and their churches to respond to conflict biblically. PM seeks to partner with people in conflict and help them navigate their conflict and heal their relationships. Christians are called to "love one another" and conflict often gets in the way of us doing that well. Peacemaker Ministries has spent decades developing an effective process to navigate conflict through biblical principles.
5. PRAYER: GIVE ME PEACE
by Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Terrible things have happened.
God, grant me acceptance.
People have been hurtful.
Give me forgiveness.
I am not done being hurt by what has happened.
Help me let go.
I also have done terrible things.
Forgive me.
I am afraid of my own guilt.
Heal me of my shame.
I want so desperately to be “good” that I need others to be “bad.”
Release me from judging.
I am angry because I feel powerless.
Give me peace.
I am afraid of my vulnerability.
Give me peace.
I am addicted to my fear and anger.
Give me peace.
In fear, I desire more violence, that others bear my pain.
Give me peace.
My anxiety, like a gun, makes me feel safe and powerful.
Give me peace.
This world is in need of healing.
Give me your peace, that I may be healing,
for this alone is your desire.
Amen.
ROOTED
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.
(Jeremiah 17:7-8 NIV)
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FIELD NOTES
Images used in order of appearance:
1. FIELD: Leni Kei Williams, Leni Kei Photography, Flint Protests, Flint, Michigan, May 31, 2020
2. SEEDS: GOIN, Maison de la Paix (House of Peace) in Geneva, Switzerland, 2022
3. ART: Photo from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Jal
4. POETRY: Izettin Kasim/Anadolu, Aziz Esmer street artist in Idlib, Syria, 2023
5. PROFILE: Brian Bakke, Showing Photos of Themselves, Nova Iguacu, Rio, Brazil, 2023
6. FILM: Sir Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, centre, with Roshan Seth as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Alyque Padamsee as Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia, 1981
7. ESSAY: Patience Kamau and John Paul Lederach, 2014
http://www.breathingforgiveness.net/2014/04/reflecting-together.html
8. BOOKS: Christian Guemy, aka C215, Ukraine, 2022
9. DIG DEEPER: Possibly Banksy, Nicholas Everitt Park, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, 2021
10. ROOTED: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, 1657-1666
TEAM CULTIVARE: Duane Grobman (Editor), Amy Drennan, Greg Ehlert, Bonnie Fearer, Ben Hunter, Eugene Kim, Andrew Massey, Rita McIntosh, Heather Shackelford, Jason Pearson (Design: Pearpod.com)
WE'RE LISTENING:
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and suggestions for future issues.
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