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• Testimonials
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About

By Andrea Cohen, with Leah Green and Susan Partnow

This practical “how to” book provides a step-by-step approach to helping you implement the practices of Compassionate Listening into your daily life. Whether you’re challenged by self-judgments – or by conflicts in your family, workplace or community, the practices of Compassionate Listening can provide a solid foundation upon which to bring greater peace, understanding and healing into your world. The exercises in this book are based on the core practices of Compassionate Listening as taught in our Basic Intensive training and are geared toward increasing your ability to do the following:

 

 

• Listen to yourself and others with greater compassion
• Avoid the pitfalls of defensiveness and blame in the heat of conflict
• Intervene in conflict in a way that adds the wisdom of heart-to-heart listening to the equation
• Create a safe and respectful environment that supports honest expression of thoughts and feelings
• Step into the shoes of another person so you can truly understand the other’s perspective

People wanting to understand more about the theory of Compassionate Listening are invited to read Carol Hwoschinsky’s Listening with the Heart: a Guidebook to Compassionate Listening.

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• About
• Review
• Testimonials
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• About
• Review
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About

This guidebook has been written to answer the many requests for more information about Compassionate Listening. What is it? Why do we do it? What are its applications? When is it appropriate and when is it not? How do we do it? How could someone become involved? The book is organized around these questions.

The book was written with the belief that this work should expand and become the basis of all dialogue, whether a Compassionate Listening project, or any other communication. It serves as an invitation to enlarge the community of people, world wide, who know the importance of respect and compassion in all human interactions. It is meant to be both inspirational and practical. All proceeds from the sale of this Guidebook go to The Compassionate Listening Project.

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Essays by Gene Knudsen Hoffman, Quaker Peace Activist and Mystic
Edited, with introductory biography by Anthony Manousos

This 348 page book is a testament to the life of a remarkable woman. Anthony Manousos, editor of the Friends Bulletin, spent a long summer interviewing Gene and gathering family photographs for the beautiful and extensive biography section. Gene’s essays, spanning fifty years, show the development of Compassionate Listening in thought and action, including her candid approach to personal healing and spiritual peace-making. This book is a must for all who seek to be greater forces for peace and compassion in the world.

Leah Green, founder, The Compassionate Listening Project

Click here to order “Compassionate Listening and Other Writings by Gene Knudsen Hoffman”.

Editor’s Introduction

For the past twenty years, Gene Hoffman has been engaged in efforts to seek out the deep, psychological causes of violence and to help bring about healing and reconciliation through a process she calls “Compassionate Listening.”

An active Quaker and member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) for over fifty years, she traveled dozens of times to the Middle East and the former Soviet Union during the 1980s and 1990s to do reconciliation work. In 1989, after American planes downed two Libyan planes, she went to Libya with an FOR delegation to meet with Libyan leaders. She has met with and listened to Palestinians and Israelis, and published articles, books, and pamphlets about her experiences, including Pieces of the Mideast Puzzle (1991) and No Royal Road to Reconciliation (1995). Most recently she helped to arrange Compassionate Listening sessions between Alaskan hunters and fishers and indigenous people through the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). She has published over a hundred articles as well as books, poems and pamphlets and given innumerable workshops and talks about peacemaking. Her work has inspired numerous others, including Cynthia Monroe, AFSC staff person in Alaska, and Leah Green, founder of The Compassionate Listening Project. Gene has been rightly called a “pioneer” in the Compassionate Listening movement, and has worked with such other notables as Adam Curle, Herb Walters, Virginia Baron, and Richard Deats.

“Gene is a real prophet,” said Judith Kolokoff, former AFSC regional director in the Pacific Northwest. “And she’s a remarkable facilitator. She has the capacity to bring out the very best of the truth in each individual.”

Gene’s approach to compassionate listening is rooted in both psychological and mystical perspectives. A founder of the Santa Barbara Night Counseling Center in the 1960s, she earned her Masters in pastoral counseling from Goddard College and worked with Ben Weininger, a “Zen-Hasidic” Rogerian psychiatrist. With her background in counseling, Gene came to see all parties in a conflict as “wounded,” as having suffered psychological traumas that need healing.

But Gene’s work also has a spiritual dimension, as Dennis Rivers, a communication skills instructor from Santa Barbara, observes: “Gene is a Quaker mystic. Her calling was to carry pastoral counseling out of the pastor’s study into public life. What has energized her work over the years is the Quaker teaching that ‘there is that of God in every person.’”

As Gene herself puts it: “The call, as I see it, is for us to see that within all life is the mystery: God. It is within the contra, the Nazi, the Africaaner, the Israeli, the Palestinian, and the American. By compassionate listening we may awaken it and thus learn the partial truth the other is carrying, for another aspect of being human is that we each carry some portion of the truth. To reconcile, we must listen for, discern, and acknowledge this partial truth in everyone.”

To appreciate fully Gene’s approach to peacemaking and conflict resolution, we need to understand something about her intense inner struggles. To do so, we need to follow her along a spiritual journey that she aptly calls “a peace pilgrim’s progress to inner healing…”

Testimonials

For more than half a century, Gene Hoffman – through her essays and poetry, her workshops and speeches, her travels and her witness, has been a fountainhead of creative spirituality and courageous peacemaking. This will be a rich resource for those who come after her.

Richard Deats, Editor of “Fellowship” magazine, Author of “Martin Luther King, Junior, Spirit-led Prophet” (Faithworks, 1999)

How fine that a collection of Gene Hoffman’s writings will be published! I loved reading the introductory essay. I want to commend you for that careful and lively piece of work. You let so much of Gene shine through, capturing her vitality, versatility, and passion, and include so many other voices as well. This book will be an invaluable resource.
Joanna Macy, Buddhist peace activist, author of “Widening Circles: A Memoir”, New Society Publishers, 2000) and World as Lover, World as Self, Parallax Press, 1991)

If you are looking for lay wisdom that pierces deep into what psychotherapy is all about you will be gripped and lifted by this autobiographical classic that is written in blood and tears out of her own life by Gene Hoffman, a gifted Santa Barbara Friend.

Douglas Steere, Quaker theologian, writing about “From Inside the Glass Doors” (reprinted in this collection)

I consider Gene one of my most treasured mentors. In fact, I consider her one of our national treasures.

Leah Green, Director of The Compassionate Listening Project

I endorse the program for Compassionate Listening. It’s very important to begin efforts to try to heal the world, and we need to know that we have the potential and the power to do that.

Dennis Kucinich, progressive Congressman from Ohio’s 10th district

Table of Contents

Editor’s Preface
Editor’s Introduction and Biography

Part I: Witnessing Against McCarthyism
“The Oath and I”
Queries on a “single standard of truth”

Part II: Building Bridges Between Races
“Trapped by Thomas Jefferson”
“Let the Rage Uncoil”
Queries on race relations

Part III: Breakdown and Breakthroughs
From Inside the Glass Doors
“Divorce: What Might Friends Do?”
“Our Children Are Guests in Our Lives”
Queries on mutual and self care

Part IV: Peacemaking From the Inside Out
“A Peace Pilgrim’s Progress To Inner Healing”
“No Conflict, No Reconciliation”
“A New Approach to Peace”
“Speaking Truth to Power”
“Reflections on Meeting With Richard Nixon”
“Disarming the Heart”
“Hope from Hiroshima”
“Discovering Your Vocation in the Nuclear Age”
“Thich Nhat Hanh, The ONam Retreat”
Queries on peacemaking

Part V: Soviet-American Citizen Diplomacy
“Planting Seeds of Hope”
“To Live Without Enemies”
“Creation Continues”
Queries on reconciliation

Part VI: Reflections on the Spirit
“Jesus, the Christ, Quakers and I”
“God and Horror”
“Listening for Truth”
“Lester and Gandhi: A Special Friendship”
Selected Poems from All Possible Surprises
“Holy Fools”
Queries on spiritual nurture

Part VII: Compassionate Listening in the Middle East
“Listening to the Libyans”
“Israelis and Palestinians: Two Traumatized Peoples”
“Crevices in the Rock”
“After the Peace Accords ‘What?’”
“An Enemy is One Whose Story We Have Not Heard”
“Compassionate Listening-First Step to Reconciliation?”
Queries on listening

Part VIII: Listening for the Future
“Listening Key to Healing Wounds in Mideast” by Leah Green
“Report on Compassionate Listening Training” by Carol Hwoschinsky
“Why There is Hope for Humanity” by Gene Hoffman
“Aging: A Time of New Possibilities” by Gene Hoffman
Concluding queries

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By Susan Skog

Peace in Our Lifetime: Insights from the World’s Peacemakers by Susan Skog offers a sweeping message of hope and optimism during these difficult and violent times. Who isn’t longing for a calmer, more humane world? Who doesn’t want evidence that the hot spots of the world – and our own chronic conflicts – can be resolved peacefully?

Through the lessons of 50 exceptional peacemakers working in war zones and high-conflict areas, including Leah Green and The Compassionate Listening Project, Peace in Our Lifetime shows how we create peace, personally and globally. Through rich, compelling stories, this book shows how we each can channel our anger for positive change and listen compassionately. It explores how we get to the root of our conflicts, get our real needs met, find common ground, and forgive even our “enemies.”

Peace in Our Lifetime features practical, step-by-step instructions for resolving conflicts and making peace in our own relationships. This book is already striking a powerful chord with the millions working for a more peaceful world and gaining widespread media attention. It celebrates the hopeful story that, even as people pour out their despair, the outpouring for peace around the world is far, far greater.

Susan Skog is a nationally known author, writer, and presenter. Trained as a journalist, she is the author of five books, including Peace in Our Lifetime: Insights from the World’s Peacemakers; Radical Acts of Love: How Compassion is Transforming Our World; Depression: What Your Body’s Trying to Tell You; ABCs for Living; and Embracing Our Essence: Spiritual Conversations with Prominent Women. Radical Acts of Love was named one of the must-read books of 2001 by New Age Journal and the Wisdom Channel. It was also a OneSpirit Book Club selection for 2001.

Peace in Our Lifetime features stories and messages from these and other peacemakers:

• Nelson Mandela
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• Mahatma Gandhi and Arun Gandhi, his grandson
• Swanee Hunt, former Austrian ambassador and founder of Women Waging Peace
• William Ury, internationally known mediator
• Eli Pariser, one of the founders of MoveOn
• Sherri Mandell, mother-turned-peacemaker after her son was killed in Palestine
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Howard Zinn, activist and author
• Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hanh
• Peter Forbes, Trust for the Public Lands founder, who negotiated Walden Pond preservation
• Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter
• Naomi Drew, author and Peaceful Parenting director
• Colman McCarthy, former Washington Post columnist, Center for Teaching Peace director
• Kimmie Weeks, African refuge who fled Liberia as a child, now a peacemaker for UNESCO, United Nations, and other organizations
• Amber Amundson, founder of Peaceful Tomorrows, husband was killed Sept. 11 at Pentagon
• Leah Green, founder of Compassionate Listening Project, Marion Parmagan, Esther Sadeh, who use compassionate listening in Middle East and elsewhere to ease tensions
• Rick Lunnon, prominent Colorado businessman, who dropped a contentious lawsuit and used the money for peacemaking and humanitarian work in Thailand
• Susan Collin Marks, journalist, peacemaker who helped dismantle apartheid. Co-director of Search for Common Ground
• Michael Terrien, Playing for Peace director, a community-based peace organization successfully easing ethnic tensions in communities in India, South Africa, Guatemala, Middle East and United States
• Mike Mahoney, school counselor in New Jersey and Oregon, who has dramatically reduced school violence with mediation
• Julie Goschalk, the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz, she conducts support groups and brings understanding and forgiveness among Jews and Germans
• Life coaches Martha Beck, Tom Heuerman, and Roger Haeske
• Kathy Kenney, yoga instructor, Fort Collins, Colorado
• Anne Benson, founder of Neighbors for Peace, Minneapolis, Minn.
• Natalie Wiesaltier, founder, Hello Shalom-HelloSalaam hotline in Middle East, which connects Palestinians and Israelis
• Margueritte Meier, Mile of Peace, a mile-long mural of children’s visions of peace
• John Paul Lederach, peacebuilding practitioner, trainer, and professor at Eastern Mennonite University and Notre Dame
• Louise Diamond, global peacemaker, author of The Courage for Peace, and founder, with John McDonald, of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, which eases regional and ethnic conflicts around world
• Kenny Moore, ombudsman who eases conflict at KeySpan Energy and author
• Buddhist authors Lama Surya Das and Pema Chodren
• Sarah Oelberg, Unitarian minister
• Cathy Eldon, whose son, a journalist, was killed by rebels in Somalia
• Bob Wicklund, conflict-mediation specialist
• Michael Nagler, University of California-Berkeley professor and author of Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future
• Elissa Tovena, founder, Perspectives on Peacemaking
• Tajae Gaynor, former inner-city street kid now school-mediator
• Takaski ‘Thomas’ Tanemori, who learned how to forgive after he lost his whole family at Hiroshima and directs the Silkworm Peace Institute
• Mark Gorkin, Stress Doc Enterprises
• Rev Noel McInnis

Compassionate Listening: Healing Our World From the Inside Out
Intensive Introductory Training

Facilitator: Therese Charvet
When: May 5-6 2012
Where: Sacred Groves, 9255 Holly Farm Lane, Bainbridge Island WA
Cost: $175-$250 sliding scale, according to need. Discounts are available for this workshop. Please contact us directly to inquire.

This training will be held at Sacred Groves, an eco-retreat center owned by Therese Charvet. Lodging is available for a limited number of participants at an additional cost of $50/night, less if in a shared room.

For more information and to register: contact Therese Charvet or call 206.842.7141.

“To develop the drop of compassion in our own heart
is the only effective spiritual response to hatred and violence.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk

“My father was charged with war crimes – of murdering Jews near Minsk,” revealed a German participant in this year’s Jewish-German Compassionate Listening Project as we sat in our opening circle. I looked at the man who, in hushed tones and with obvious difficulty, had told about his father and said, “my grandmother was from a small village near Minsk. I don’t know what happened to most of her family.” Thus our journey began.

In October of 2003, the second Jewish-German Compassionate Listening Project took place at a retreat center in northern Germany called Lebensgarten. The town’s name means “garden of life” in German. Sixty years earlier, this beautiful, partially forested land had housed a Nazi munitions factory and thousands of forced laborers. And here I was, a Jewish American woman who had grown up hating and fearing Germans, co-directing a reconciliation project between “my people” and “the enemy.” It’s something I never imagined I’d be involved with — and yet it’s perhaps the most profound work I’ve ever done.

How could thirty American, British, Austrian and German nationals – half Jews and half non-Jews – engage in something that in the past I might have characterized as either naive idealism or sheer madness. Jews who had lost family in the Holocaust, children of Nazi perpetrators, and people who admittedly might have joined the SS had they been of age in the 1930s had all come together to explore the dark alleyways of their own personal and ancestral histories.

For the first few days, we meditated together and listened to each other’s stories. We learned the skills of gentle inquiry. We cultivated our ability to remain calm even when triggered by fear and anger. And we practiced suspending judgment in order to stay “present” and connected to each other.
From Lebensgarten, we traveled to Berlin, where we visited memorials devoted to Jews who had vanished during the Holocaust and listened to people who had been directly involved in the war. We also spent a day in Bergen-Belsen, a former concentration camp. Finally, we returned to our retreat center in Lebensgarten. Clinging arm in arm, we traversed difficult terrain filled with the cries of the dead and the angst of the living. We continually practiced moving from our judging, analytical minds to the spaciousness of our hearts.

Shortly after returning from Germany, I had this dream. On a street by a synagogue, Jews were walking proudly into their holy place of worship. I was one of them. Crouched near the path leading to the synagogue were many people throwing stones. At first I tried to ignore them, but they continued. Then I found myself in the crowd that was throwing stones back at the perpetrators – with ever-increasing force. I was angry and wanted to hurt those who were hurting me.

But then something happened. I stood up. Silently. Then two other people stood up. One by one, others joined us. Eventually, everyone was standing – silent, free of stones, connected.

Participants of the second Jewish-German Compassionate Listening Project have returned to their families, workplaces and communities. They are now supported by friendships that have crossed the divide of religion, nationality and personal history. My own dialogue with the person whose father had been a Nazi also continues.

Compassionate Listening is, at its core, a spiritual practice. It is a practice of peace as relevant at home, at work, and in our local communities as it is in “hot spots” half way around the world. I am convinced that the gift of listening is like a small pebble dropped into a large ocean. One splash creates a ripple effect of unknowable impact.

2011 Note: Now, nearly ten years after I wrote this, I’m going back to Germany with the 2012 delegation. This will be a different journey and one I’m very much looking forward to. I’ll be working with some new partners, and we’re adding new components: a Bearing Witness retreat; powerful Constellation work that I’ve now personally experienced the value of; and so much more. Times have changed, The world has changed. I’ve changed. Yet I expect that the amazing capacity of the human heart to hold and to heal remains the same. For that I am ever grateful.

by Ginni Stern, in honor of my father, Victor N. Stern who died ina clean bed on February 25, 2008.

“The past is never dead. It’s never even the past.”~ William Faulkner

MY JOURNEY’S TO AUSCHWITZ

My first trip to Poland to visit Auschwitz was in November 1996 for aninternational, interfaith retreat conceived of by Roshi BernieGlassman, the founder of the Zen Peacemakers. We have returnedto Poland to Bear Witness at Auschwitz annually – and I have served as the retreat coordinator for the past 10 years.

Upon hearing I was, once again, returning to Auschwitz, a friendasked, “Ginni why do you feel the need to return to Auschwitz every year? Why don’t you take a vacation to the South of France or abeach on St. Croix?” Sometimes I wonder myself.

I began going to Auschwitz to remember my fathers’ family who were murdered there…. and to Remember, by reading names from theAuschwitz Museum Archives, of people who died there, alwaysadding the names of my fathers parents, brothers & sisters, their wives & husbands & their children – my father’s nieces & nephews –some just babies – about 40 in total.

I go to practice the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers: Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness and Loving Action, but replied to my friend, simply: “I go to Remember.”  And I do go to remember, but over the years, as I watched wars inthe Middle East, Bosnia, Sir Lanka, Cambodia, Ireland, Rwanda,Darfur, Congo, Chad, Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan and Iraq on TV, I began to ask myself questions like: Why? What is it about basic human nature that has been and continues to lead people to resort to such inhumane violence? Could I actually be driven to murder someone? I doubt it, but what if that someone came to kill or rape my children? Then maybe…Could I step into the shoes of the Nazi and kill?

The Polish people have left the concentration camp there and offer museum exhibits so people can learn about the history of happenedin that Place. But what else is there to learn about the limits of human nature from the Auschwitz State Museum? Beyond the history of thePlace, what does Auschwitz have to teach me – to teach us – about compassion, the limits of compassion, and the malleable boundariesof our own humanity? Why haven’t the carnage & atrocities of the Holocaust been enough to alert our leaders to the fact that it is imperative for peaceful dialogue to become the norm as the way to resolve differences?

Auschwitz, to me, is an icon of inhumanity and one of the most profound Teachers of Love that I have met in my lifetime.So, I go to Auschwitz to search out the small acts of kindness withinthe dark and painful sharp shadows of Auschwitz – to find the inevitable pockets of light within those shadows – and within myself.  I go to search for God. During the Holocaust, when someone asked Eli Weisel, “Where is God?” he wrote in his famous book “Night”, that he pointed to a dead child hanging on a noose and said, “There is God.”

Perhaps I simply go, for Auschwitz to teach me to behave as more ofa mensch (a basically good person) in my day to day activities – atwork, in traffic jams, when communication breaks down and frustration arises. At Auschwitz, when I do an unkind act, or say anunkind word, it is magnified and humbling to see this aspect of myself so stunningly clearly. Auschwitz is a mirror, if one finds the courage, there is a lot to see beyond the landscape, the barracks, the barbedwire and the chimneys that our cameras pick-up.

MY FATHER’S JOURNEY TO AUSCHWITZ

My paternal grandfather was the Hasidic Rabbi and teacher of theregion in Romania where they lived before the war. My father was 18years old when the Jews of his village were evacuated and herded toa nearby ghetto. He was, young and strong and escaped to hide inthe forest. His non-Jewish girlfriend knew his hiding place and brought him food. The non-Jewish villagers knew the ghetto where their Jewish neighbors were taken and began to make the rounds to the Jewish homes, with a wagon, taking food & blankets & clothing left behind in the Jewish homes.

They then brought the wagon to the back edge of the ghetto wheretheir Jewish neighbors were and snuck-in the much needed provisions.  During one such exchange my father’s mother passed along a notefor her son. My father told me her note said, “Come, let our blood be spilled in one place.” So, as people were risking their lives to desperately try to sneak out of the ghetto, my father was looking for away to sneak in. He found it and 3 days later, with his mother, 9 siblings, & their families, he was tightly packed into a cattle car – a cargo train intended for animals – in-route to Auschwitz. They were crammed inthe cattle car for 6 days and 6 nights.“No one died in our cattle car,” my father once told me, with what I sensed was a trace of pride. He was a proud man.

He told me he helped organize inside the cattle car – first directing men to one side of the cramped space and women to the other side –so women and men who were not married would not be forced to press up close to each other – thus preserving their dignity & religiouslaws. They arranged a spot for the old people to take turns sitting,they combined and shared what little food some of the people had intheir pockets, they kept the waste-bucket emptied as best they couldand they took turns holding the babies up over head, so they couldget more air and wouldn’t be smothered in their mother’s arms.  My father said, “I fell in love in that cattle car with a girl from the next village. We promised to meet and escape when we got out of the cattle car. It gave me hope to survive the trip. I never saw her again.” He couldn’t remember her name.

When they arrived at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), my father told me his mother said, “It smells like burning human flesh.” He asked her,“Mom, how do you know, did you ever see a human burn?” My grandmother’s reply was what seemed like an old world reply to me,“When you run your fingers over a red-hot stove the flesh smells like it smells here.” My father added, “My mother knew this smell.”  When the doors where finally opened, they burst out into soft ground, knee deep in mud and shit. My father told me, “The first thing mostly everyone did was relieve themselves right there on the platform.”

REFLECTIONS ON BEARING WITNESS SOJOURNSTO AUSCHWITZ

The post-war pilgrimages to Auschwitz are not easy for me – and have not become easier over the years – still, they feel a criticallyimportant aspect of my spiritual path and a vital link to my family history.Excerpts from my journal – a few experiences of my personal post-war journeys to Auschwitz:~ Preparing to leave for Poland the first time, an overpowering recurring image of hiding loaves of bread in my luggage came to me each night in restless dreams… the image became more vivid and demanding as my departure day approached. The morning I left, I comforted myself with the thought, “What can it hurt – to pack justone loaf of bread?” So, on my way to the airport, I stopped at the bakery and bought a loaf of the densest, richest bread they made andhid it deep in my luggage. This provided some solace for my sojourn.

On the Grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau: In the cold, my German friend, Inge and I sit close together, one blanket wrapped around our legs. She is the daughter of a Nazi. I saw his picture. I heard his words in the letters he had sent to Inge’smother during the war. Letters filled with words celebrating the goodwork of Hitler and riddled with anti-Semitism.

I am the daughter of a Jewish Auschwitz survivor. Together, Inge & I sit at the Selection Site, the railroad tracks… thevery spot where the Nazi’s unloaded the cattle cars. The cargo:Jewish innocent citizens, my father his mother and family amongthem… and today on these tracks, I hear Inge’s voice, trembling asshe chants out names of Jews who suffered and perished here. My voice blends with hers and I am comforted by her tears and her love.

Behind the ruins of Crematorium II, there is an Ash Pit where theremains of the gassed, then incinerated prisoners were dumped. Now it looks like a small, eerie, rectangular pond. A thin film of ice covers the surface of the hushed Ash Pit.

The rabbi says the Kaddish ~ the Jewish Prayer for the Dead in thetraditional Hebrew. Others recite the Kaddish in their own languages:Polish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, English… I can feel the spirits of the people still pulsing and sentient. Auschwitz is a memory in present time. A memory of the spirits I feel are still alive in my own bones.

After Kaddish, a long moment of silence, then Roshi Bernie took a fistfull of earth from the edge of the Ash Pit and tossed it onto the thin layer of ice. Many did the same… and in my minds eye I saw images of the ashes & bone fragments being dumped into this pit. Dizzy, I screamed in my head, “NO! NO! There is enough in there!  NO MORE!” I turned slowly & quietly walked away.

All of our different practices are amplified through the lens of That Place and are herded into the auspicious container that Bernie Glassman created to hold us and teach us in That Place called Auschwitz for a whole week. Like interweaving fingers, we tentatively and firmly hold each other; hold our differences, our similarities, holdour rage, our compassion, hold our violence, our peace, hold our hate and our love.

Walking in an acute state of Awareness, a meditative walk in this most scared of places… thinking… the actual survivors are becoming more and more frail and are dying… then there will be no actual witnesses to all this… but I am here… walking on this very ground my Grandmother, many other family members and about 2 million others came to their very cruel deaths.  I AM HERE.  I am alive and as I walk, placing each of my feet slowly, sacredly on this very ground, I am learning to bear witness… bear witness for my father, who will soon die in not so cruel a manner…

I walk I witness and I lament…

I walk I witness and I accuse…

I walk I witness and I grieve…

I walk I witness and I rage…

I walk I witness and I honor…

I walk I witness and my heart expands…

I walk I witness and love comes to meet me…

I am somehow comforted by realizing the task of learning to bear witness.   I must stretch all my ways of Knowing to be a good student.  This continues to be the journey that shapes my life.

Ginni stern, August 7, 2010

I am inspired by the work of The Compassionate Listening Jewish/German Project (which we can read about below) and so grateful to be part of the Compassionate Listening family.  Compassionate Listening is a beautiful work that teaches us to really listen and speak to one another from the heart; to move beyond judgment and old attachments, and to open to the possibility of being together in new ways.  I am also grateful to Roshi Bernie Glassman for inviting Ginni Stern and me to attend the very first Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz/Birkenau. It was a life changing experience which I will never forget and it is an honor to have Ginni Stern and Barbara Wegmuller create a Bearing Witness event for us at the site of the former Women’s Concentration Camp at Ravensbruck.  Last, but not least, I’m so grateful for the amazing presenters who will join us and for the members of the Jewish/German group on our NING web site; for their on-going help and support of this project.  People are responding with enthusiasm and amazing connections are being made.  Howard introduced his new friend Walter, who lives in Frankfurt, Germany  to our project and Walter has arranged for a concert that will feature the songs that were once cherished and sung by Howard’s father.

With love and gratitude —Suzanne Schecker

Compassionate Listening: Healing Our World From the Inside Out
One-Day Training

Facilitators: Susan Partnow
When: Saturday, February 25, 2012, from 9:30am – 5:45pm (ET)
Where: Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South

Cost: $75-$175 sliding scale, according to need.

Scholarships are available for this workshop for those in need. Please contact us directly to inquire.

To register, click here.

For more information, contact Susan Partnow.

Compassionate Listening: Radical Compassion for Ourselves and Others - Intensive Introductory Training

Facilitator: Leah Green and Therese Charvet
When: January 21-22
Where: Sacred Groves 9255 Holly Farm Lane on Bainbridge Island (30 minute ferry ride from Seattle),

Cost: Sliding scale: $190 – $350 for the training and lunch both days. Some partial scholarships and work-trades available. Overnight lodging on-site at Sacred Groves is additional.
For more information and to register for this training Click here.

For questions and more information about the training:  Contact Allison at the TCLP Office:  360-626-4411

For more information about lodging options at Sacred Groves, please contact Therese at 206-842-7141