Life as a Palestinian Christian & Holy Land Trust Nonprofit

Elias Deis from the Holy Land Trust elucidates the deep-seated historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting challenges such as military occupation, settlement expansions, and restrictions on movement. He emphasizes the importance of addressing collective trauma and fostering mutual respect between diverse communities, including Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Holy Land Trust focuses on transforming […]

Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness Retreat in Auschwitz 2024

by Barbara Wegmüller   The security checks have intensified over the last few years. The numbers and names of all the international passports were given weeks ago to register the group of retreat participants. The entire entrance area was recently rebuilt. In the first year, the museum recorded 170,000 visitors. Currently, there are more than […]

Pilgrimage, Place, and Commemoration in Personal and Collective Healing

Join us for an insightful session in our Peacemaker Circle format, featuring Ellen Korman Maines. Ellen shares her experiences and reflections on the significance of pilgrimage in personal and collective healing. Through her narrative, Ellen delves into topics such as bearing witness, the power of place, and familial and ancestral connections. This episode also explores […]

OLD EGYPT ROAD

December 4, 2024 ~ Eve Marko   I was in Takoma Park, Maryland, for the Thanksgiving holiday and returned home on Saturday. The following morning, I took out the dogs in freezing temperatures on one of our favorite walks, Fiske Pond in the Town of Wendell, some 10 minutes from the house. The place had changed dramatically […]

“Never again – for everyone!”

An interview with Zen Peacemaker Roshi, Barbara Salaam Wegmüller Roshi (Bern) and Cornelius von Collande Roshi (Würzburg), about the upcoming Auschwitz Retreat in November 2024 against the backdrop of the current war in the Middle East. The interview was held in May 2024, therefore only the war in Gaza and not in Lebanon is addressed […]

Bearing Witness to the Night

March 2024 Many mornings, as something of a ritual affirming my connection to a Home Place, I log on and connect to a webcam feed from Big Sand Lake in northern Minnesota. Over a cup of coffee 600 miles away, I can look east from a webcam mounted on a pole at a resort—the same […]

The Receptivity of Bearing Witness & How we Rekindle it after Shutting Down

As Peacemakers or Buddhists, we face the challenge of dropping our fixed ideas and opinions in order to meet difficult situations freshly, with open hearts. Meanwhile, the world keeps hitting us with louder displays of brutality, dehumanization, and disregard for life, including the systems that protect it. How can we alleviate our desperation and connect […]

Remember This (trailer)

After surviving the devastation of the Blitzkrieg, Karski swears allegiance to the Polish Underground and risks his life to carry the first eyewitness reports of war-torn Poland to the Western world, and ultimately, the Oval Office. Escaping a Gestapo prison, bearing witness to the despair of the Warsaw ghetto and confronted by the inhumanity of […]

Auschwitz Retreat Q&A Session

Since Bernie Glassman, Jishu Holmes, Eve Marko, and Andrezej Krajewski began the annual Bearing Witness Retreat at the old site of the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim, Poland in 1996, the Zen Peacemakers have been returning for over twenty-five years to continue to bear witness to oneness in diversity, in the place that became a […]