The Mourning Dove and Brenda Waugh's Nurturing Theory of Conflict

Emerging from her conflict of theory class - Brenda Waugh's final paper outlines the theory of nurturing conflict which blows me away.  I've been saying I am not a peacebuilder - that there is too much peace.  We are conflict-born and conflict driven humans.  Brenda is getting at ways of articulating, validating, nurturing that as a concept.  She looks to the example of the mourning doves outside of her front door.  The male incubates the eggs from morning until afternoon, when the female takes a shift. They will nurture the eggs until the little doves are born and then fly away:

"Conflict is not bad any more than a head of lettuce picked from the garden or a new born puppy soiling the new carpet is "bad".  Conflict becomes bad when neglected, ignored, or manipulated for harm by the powerful.  If nurtured conflict allows for the philosophical collaboration which can birth self-transformation.  The nurturing which becomes heavy handed and prescriptive fails.  It may direct the course.  Just as the eggs are going to hatch in good time, or that the baby doves will leave the nest when they are ready, our conflicts need their own time, and need to be nourished, not controlled.  Never managed. "

More Brenda Wow, more!!!  

 

Intuition/Home/Connection/Vision/Power - My Practicum Proposal

Intuition, Home, Connection, Vision, Power. What do these have to do with my experience at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency? And how do they help me define my vocation? For now, they are the concepts that help me explore my practicum experience in Geneve and synthesize life learning and graduate work at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

My practicum committee, and specifically my advisor Howard Zehr were open to allow me time to process how I anticipated this semester would go and why exactly I was moving to Switzerland to work for a massive humanitarian aid organization. I could not articulate it with words initially - but thought that an art project would help. You can't see all the bits... but what came out of the process was this map - where Intuition pushes the concepts of Home, Connection, Vision and Power. I am challenged by what emerged and feel more authentic in this process than I've ever imagined I could be.

I believe that what Center for Justice and Peacebuilding does best is unlock this messy, authentic process, this art that leads us to a transcendent imagination - what Lederach describes as the moral imagination. Not a narrowing through rigid definition and worn-out, overused language, and certainly not moral in a traditional religious sense, but an opening to possibility through an artistic process, a spiritual center and a web of relationship and responsibility.

I am grateful.

Thanks to Mike for the photography and CornDog for his stylish cameo appearance at the end.