HISTORY
Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy. ~ Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMPASSIONATE LISTENING PROJECT
by Leah Green, founder
The Compassionate Listening Project began in 1990 as Mid-East Citizen Diplocmacy, under the umbrella of the Earthstewards Network on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Danaan Parry, co-founder of Earthstewards, was an early pioneer in the citizen diplomacy movement, taking U.S. citizens to the former Soviet Union and creating many exchanges and projects. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Danaan turned his attention to the Middle East to focus his citizen diplomany efforts. He planned the first Earthstewards’ citizen delegation to Israel and Palestine for November, 1990 and asked me to assist with the trip itinerary. Danaan saw my passion for this work and after the trip, he asked me to continue leading delegations to Israel and Palestine for Earthstewards, which I did for the next 7 years.
As an American-Jewish woman who had lived in Israel and worked in the West Bank, my vision was to strengthen U.S. support for peace by connecting citizens from the United States to Israeli and Palestinian reconciliation leaders and providing them with a firsthand experience of the complexities on the ground. This served my great passion for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and healing, which I had been involved in since 1982.
In 1996, after leading nine delegations, I sought out Gene Knudsen Hoffman (1919 – 2010), who became my trusted mentor. I adopted Gene’s listening framework as an overarching framework for the delegations and Gene and I traveled together to test "Compassionate Listening" in Israel and Palestine.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and poet, was one of Gene’s teachers, and the essence of Compassionate Listening comes from his teachings: a call for peacemakers to initiate humanizing contact and cultivate compassion for those on all sides of a conflict. Gene and Thich Nhat Hanh knew each other from their work with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and she organized his first retreats with U.S. Vietnam Veterans in the 1980s in Santa Barbara. Gene was convinced the the "peace movement" was too wedded to having enemies, and not focused enough on reconciliation work.
In 1997, after experiencing the powerful nature of Compassionate Listening, and with the encouragement of Gene and Israeli and Palestinian NGO’s, I applied for non-profit status for Mid East Citizen Diplomacy, and several years later we changed the name to the Compassionate Listening Project. (My first choice for the new name was "The Listening Project", but the name was already being used by colleagues, so Gene suggested "Compassionate Listening", after Thich Nhat Hanh's term.)
COMPASSIONATE LISTENING JOURNEYS
TCLP has now guided over 800 American citizens in 36 delegations to Israel and Palestine to listen to the grievances, hopes, and dreams of people on all sides of the conflict, including religious, political and grassroots leaders, settlers, refugees, peace activists, citizens, soldiers, and extremists from both sides. Educator and trainer Carol Hwoschinsky of Ashland, Oregon participated in our first delegation with Gene in 1996, where we attempted to practice Compassionate Listening, and she joined me afterward with her dear friend and colleague Larissa Keet, to develop the first training curriculum for delegation participants. Carol joined me on five delegations as our group facilitator, until 2002.
With the support of Israeli and Palestinian colleagues, TCLP has built trusting relationships across political, religious and social divides throughout Israel and Palestine. We also bring Israelis and Palestinians together for Compassionate Listening trainings and events. TCLP offers a powerful conflict resolution model and concrete skill building for our participants. I included Jordan on three delegations, and in 2002 I expanded our regional involvement with a successful delegation to Syria and Lebanon, co-led by Munteha Shukralla.
TCLP is respected as one of the oldest established NGOs working in Israel and Palestine in the field of Track II (Citizen) Diplomacy. Our delegations have resulted in an extensive, active network of informed leaders across N. America as a result of their transformative experiences in the field. Our alumni play a positive role in peacemaking efforts, educating in their home communities and inviting others to support reconciliation leaders in Israel and Palestine. Some of our alumni have created successful Mideast peace programs that promote cross-cultural and interfaith understanding, as well as human rights and humanitarian work. Their leadership and efforts are especially important as the Israeli - Palestinian conflict continues to create harsh divisions among religious communities and political groups, on college campuses and within the peace movement.
COMPASSIONATE LISTENING TRAINING
As the Journeys continued in the Middle East and the project began receiving local and national publicity, the demand for Compassionate Listening training in the U.S. increased. In response, I designed and adapted training curricula to teaching Compassionate Listening in the U.S. in academic, public and private settings. We call the training "Compassionate Listening – Healing Our World from the Inside Out". These trainings have always focused on Compassionate Listening as a skill-set and practice for use in everyday life – at the personal, professional and community level.
In addition to training thousands of people in the United States, we’ve also held trainings in Israel, Palestine, Canada, Germany,
Switzerland, Austria, the U.K., Bosnia and Croatia, Cuba, India (and Kashmir), Guatemala, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Spain.
ADVANCED TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION
Beginning in 1999, a core group began to meet together with us to practice in the U.S. Sometimes Gene Knudsen Hoffman joined us for these weekends. Once she hosted a large group of us at her home and her community peace center, Sola House, in Santa Barbara. Carol and I made a decision early on that since this was an evolving field and we were learning so much together, that it would be important to stay together as a community of practitioners. Carol became our Training Director and twenty of us spent four long weekends together in 2003-2004 in our first Advanced Training series. Most of the participants were already trainers and facilitators, and together we accelerated the practice and body of work that today we call “Compassionate Listening.” It was truly a group effort and I have enormous gratitude for our early practitioners who began incorporating Compassionate Listening into their own work, as well as facilitating introductions, practice groups, and trainings. Many from this group became our first certified Compassionate Listening facilitators and are still teaching to this day. I am especially grateful to Carol Hwoschinsky, Susan Partnow, Brian Berman, Karen Bonnell, Andrea Cohen and Eryn Kallish, for the many hours they invested in the design and structure of our first Advanced Trainings and our Certification path.
We have held many Advanced Trainings in the U.S., and have a Facilitator Certification program where participants mentor with our experienced facilitators to integrate Compassionate Listening into their lives and work. TCLP currently has 45 independent, certified facilitators, and more joining the certification track each year. Together, we form a learning community and continue to evolve our curricula and trainings. We came together many years for facilitator gatherings. We also meet regularly for conference calls and participate in a group e-list where we share our best practices and offer support. We often lead programs and train together. It is our passion to share and practice this work.
JEWISH-GERMAN COMPASSIONATE LISTENING PROJECT
Our international work moved beyond the Middle East for the first time in 2002 when Beate Ronnefeldt and I co-founded the German-Jewish Project. Beate was active at the time with the European Earthstewards and as one of the first German Trainers of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Beate and I brought together 34 Jewish and (non-Jewish) German participants for a 10-day Compassionate Listening healing retreat in Germany in 2002. Participants used the skills to listen to each other’s experience, as well as to “witnesses” ranging from victims to perpetrators during WWII. This deeply moving program continued as a powerful reconciliation model. In 2003, Andrea Cohen and Brian Berman, certified facilitators with CLP, took over the leadership of this program and they continued with two more stellar retreats. Two German participants produced a film about the project in 2004 called “Embracing Story” which has screened widely in Germany and the U.S. – bringing this work to a much larger audience.
Brian and Lisa Berman, certified facilitators who met and fell in love during our first Jewish-German project (a truly Jewish-German couple), led a couple of “Compassionate Journeys” to Germany and opened them to anyone wanting to help heal the wounds from WWII.
To read a report from our first Jewish-German project, click here.
This was the most transformative, essential workshop I have experienced.
~ Meg, Vancouver, British Columbia
Compassionate Listening is vital in every situation I find myself in. At work, home, out on the street and with friends, family and broken relationships…
~ Steve, Boulder, Colorado
This experience has exceeded in depth anything I could have known I wished for. I will carry this experience in my heart forever. ~ German participant
I recommend making this project a global ‘must’! ~ German participant
This was the most wonderful, loving, important project I have ever been a part of. I feel proud to be a part of the human race! ~ Jewish participant
EDUCATIONAL VIDEO PRODUCTION
CLP has produced two documentaries profiling our work on the ground in the Middle East: “Children of Abraham” (1998) and “Crossing the Lines: Palestinians and Israelis Speak With The Compassionate Listening Project” (2002). These videos are used in universities, high schools and religious institutes throughout the world and have been shown widely in public and private screenings. The videos are available to 80,000 public high school students in major cities across the country through contracts with educational television companies. We also produced a 12-minute introduction to the Compassionate LIstening Project, Compassion In Action. You can view Children of Abraham, Compassionate In Action and other short films on Media page. A special thank you to Peter Hwoschinsky for all of his work on our first two films.
Len and Libby Traubman, co-founders of the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group and mentors for many of the Mid-East dialogue groups across N. America, wrote: “Crossing the Lines is one of the best films there is to help people begin to listen to both peoples, and to truly understand both narratives equally – the beginning of the end of war.”
BOOKS
In 2001 we published our guidebook for Compassionate Listening, “Listening with the Heart,” written by Carol Hwoschinsky. Now in its fourth edition, it was also translated into German and published in Germany. This book has spawned Compassionate Listening Practice Groups throughout the world as a grassroots movement. (If you run an open practice group, let us know and we’ll post it on our website on the Practice Group page.)
In 2012 we published Practicing the Art of Compassionate Listening, written by Andrea Cohen, with Leah Green and Susan Partnow. It contains most of our introductory curriculum and is intended for both individuals and facilitators. This book is used in college courses in N. America. Both books are available in our store. It's the perfect book for starting your own practice group.
ANNUAL GATHERING
From 2003-2011, our Annual Gathering brought Compassionate Listeners old and new together for two inspiring days to deepen our practices to cultivate compassion in our daily lives. The Gatherings took place at a beautiful retreat center outside of Seattle, Washington. Who knows - with the new wave of facilitators coming in, perhaps we'll revive the Annual Gathering.
ADDITIONAL GRATITUDE
I am immensely grateful to our remarkable administrative gurus: Eric Kuhner served for three years as our Administrative Director, Sally Metcalf for one year, Cathy Keene Merchant for two years, Therese Charvet worked in the office for two years and helped out afterward when needed, Allison Goldstein for a year, Cyndi Merritt for 5.5 years, Laurie Archbold for 2 years, and our current Managing Director, Lindsay Christensen. Eric developed and streamlined our systems over a period of years with his technical expertise; Sally brought us to a new level of organization; Cathy Merchant, who moved to Washington from Princeton, NJ for the position, brought many skills and great dedication to the work. Allison Goldstein brought a host of personal and technical skills to the position in 2011, and Cyndi brought decades of experience from her professional administrative work with the Nature Conservancy and Parker Palmer’s organization.
I am also indebted to our many board members who have served over the years to guide our development. Many have given above and beyond the call of duty to guide CLP through challenges and opportunities over the years.
The community of facilitators is a remarkable group of humans who I have had the great pleasure to know, work with and learn from. Each one has contributed to the evolution of our work.
And of course, we would never have been able to accomplish any of this without our dedicated community of donors and the foundations who have gifted us with large and small grants.
It has been a great honor to accomplish a mountain of work with this small but mighty band of warriors of the heart. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all!
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead