Bearing Witness Retreat, Rwanda 2014
In April 2014, 20 years after the Rwandan genocide, Bernie Glassman and a group of Peacemakers from 4 different continents came together to bear witness to the effects of the slaughter, in which over one million men, women, and children were brutally murdered in a period of one hundred days.
Rwanda: Bearing Witness
Rwanda: Bearing Witness Circles of Hope: The Continuous Work of Healing Genocidal Trauma in Rwanda Thérèse Uwitonze, a Rwandan clinical psychologist and trauma specialist, and Roshi Barbara Wegmüller, a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order in Europe from Spiegel, Switzerland, met during the Zen Peacemakers Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat in 2014. Below is Barbara’s account of their meeting […]
Circles of Hope: The Continuous Work of Healing Genocidal Trauma in Rwanda
Rwandan clinical psychologist Therese Uwitonze, a participant in the 2014 Zen Peacemakers Bearing Witness retreat in Rwanda, has developed a program, based on Zen Peacemakers practices and co-sponsored by Zen Peacemakers in Switzerland, to support and heal the post-genocide local communities. Read her report here.
Upcoming September trip to Rwanda
At the invitation of the Zen Peacemaker Order, Center for Council has been working with NGOs in Rwanda to develop their capacity to facilitate council circles at a number of villages in-country and, now, inspired by our work in California, inside several prisons, where perpetrators of violence during the Genocide Against the Tutsis are being […]
Reflections on Rwanda (2): Bearing Witness by Russell Delman April 2014
RWANDA. “…The bits of clothing and tufts of hair make this so indelibly real. The idea is to make the reality undeniable. As with the German holocaust, there are those who will deny or minimize the horror. We must create conditions so that humanity never forgets that this is possible.”
Reflections on Rwanda (3): Living with a Broken-Open Heart by Russell Delman
Recently I heard this story: A woman’s son is killed. The killer is convicted and sent to prison for a 10-25 year sentence. The distraught mother visits the man in prison trying to make sense of how he could do such a thing. After numerous visits, the woman’s heart softens to the man. She eventually […]
Reflections on Rwanda (1): Creating Us and Them by Russell Delman
I recently participated in a “Bearing Witness Retreat” sponsored by both the Zen Peacemaker Order, based in the U.S. and Memos- Learning from History, based in Rwanda in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. Having just returned, I am both deeply grateful for the inspiring human beings I have met and […]
Rwanda: April 2014, Report on Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat by Eve Marko
[slideshow_deploy id=’9026′] All Photos by Ola Kwiatkowska Monday, April 14. We’re at the EPR, the Presbyterian Church’s well-known guesthouse in Kigali, seated on chairs assembled in a circle. Downstairs a children’s choir practices for the Easter weekend services; they will sing for us tomorrow at our orientation. But right now we’re 11 Council facilitators, 6 […]
Note from Jared Seide after Rwanda Council Training
This journey has been amazing, emotional, powerful, heartbreaking, connected, overwhelming, impossible, beautiful. The training itself well surpassed our already high expectations and feels now to have been life changing for all involved, as well as a significant contribution to the healing field here, both internally, for the participants involved, and in introducing and embodying a […]
Feedback by Rwanda Council Trainees
“This training has changed a lot of things in my life and I know it will change others who are in my life. I think these changes will lead to greater peace.” “Council brings a great methodology that gives participants permission to be really there and bring up what is alive inside himself or herself […]
