[Deutsch/English] Roshi Barbara Wegmüller shares about lay practice in Pajamas, with soap bubbles
BERN, SWITZERLAND. «Since her accident in May, she can only use her left arm. I put it around my neck and remind her to feel her feet and to trust the floor she is wearing. I hold her close to my body and like in a dance we manage together two steps to the night commode, where she sits down powerlessly…»
Between Walls and Holy Places: Peacemakers Plunge in Palestine and Israel
ISRAEL-PALESTINE. In April 2018 a group of Swiss, Brazilian, Israeli and Palestinian Zen Peacemakers visited Israel and Palestine. Read Zen Peacemaker Iris Dotan Katz’ reflection on the trip, with photographs.
Diversity Day in Brattleboro Vermont USA: High School Students reflect on Not-Knowing & Non-Violence
VERMONT, USA. On Friday May fourth, Brattleboro Union High School held its annual Day of Diversity. The four presenters engaged sixty students on questions like “what labels do you use for others?”, “what is violence?”, “what is the relationship of identity and violence?” and “what is non-violence?”.
Bearing Witness to Land, Food and Race: Organizers review the 2017 retreat at Soul Fire Farm
PETERSBURG, NEW YORK, USA. In September 2017, Zen Peacemakers Roshi Paco Genkoji Lugoviña and Zen Peacemakers Minister Ariel Pliskin organized the retreat «Bearing Witness to Land, Food, and Race» with Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, New York, US. The retreat will be offered again in September of 2018.
Great Doubt and Great Faith on Guard Towers and Trading Floors: Interview with Sensei Grant Couch
KEY WEST, FLORIDA, USA. Interview with Sensei Grant Couch. «Suddenly, I realized I was standing in the boots of the commandant … reading the camp (Auschwitz) just like I had “read” the operations of the big company I once managed. Had I been raised the way he was, I could have walked that same horrible path.»
Prayers on the Plum Tree: Sensei Engu Dobbs’s Reflection on the Zen Peacemakers Native American Plunge August 2017
SOUTH DAKOTA, USA. Each day we sat in a large circle and began and ended our meetings by smudging with sage smoke, offering tobacco, and listening to Lakota songs and prayers. Listening deeply and bearing witness to the grief of others tends to be hard, hard practice…But if we’re able, more or less, to stay with the grief…The result is often a powerful and surprising feeling of joy.
The Territory is My Body: More on the Indigenous Leaders Workshop in Colombia, Interview with ZPI Executive Director Rami Efal
SIERRA NEVADA de SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA. Interview with Rami Efal, executive director of ZPI on his experience in the First Workshop for Indigenous Leaders in December 2017, which saw leaders from indigenous communities of Africa, Asia and the Amazon come together to learn, train and bond.
An Endless River: Roshi Genro On Returning to Auschwitz-Birkenau
OSWEICIM, POLAND. With more than two decades of bearing witness practice at Auschwitz, Roshi Gauntt offers a brief, potent reflection on this Bearing Witness Retreat.
The Face I See Everywhere: Why Barbara Wegmüller Returns to Auschwitz
OSWIECIM, POLAND. «There is the face of a woman, looking at me, ever since I met her eyes for the first time. She is looking at me on one of the pictures in one of the memorial halls in Auschwitz I, the original camp. The photo shows her as she is waiting with a group of women and her children at the selection site. Her face shows disgust, fear, distress, and she seems to know what will happen to her and her children as she looks into the camera.»
Barbara Wegmüller, a Zen Peacemaker Roshi and Bearing Witness retreat Spiritholder (facilitator), responds to the question of why she’s been coming back to bear witness at Auschwitz for nearly 20 years.
Yet the Ground Holds Firm: Highlights from the 2017 Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness Retreat in Bosnia and Herzegovina
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. Bearing Witness Retreats reveal how, even though each place of tragedy reflects a unique circumstance, they all share in common universal human experiences – even the tendency to violence can be seen as a source and expression of commonality and connection. Several years ago, Zen Peacemakers began collaborating with Bosnian peace-builders at the Center for Peacebuilding, to plan a bearing witness retreat following the genocide there in 1992-1995. These planning efforts were passed to local European Zen Peacemakers leaders, who brought it all to fruition this past May. In this post Zen Peacemakers thanks the organizers and features the stories of four European Zen Peacemakers who attended the retreat.
