As I don my thick autumn coat, I think back to a few short months ago when we were facing baking heat and dramatic thunderstorms. The splendour of creation is glorious. Yet we know there is an almost-unstoppable change in the climate. ‘Deep Adaptation’ is being called for across the globe, as we anxiously search for new ways to care for our common home.
All change, and the transitions that accompany it, can induce anxiety.
In the work of faith-based reconciliation, we hold out a hope that by working robustly through transition and change we can reach a place of peace and unity – the shalom/salaam – of the Gospel. This is not an easy peace, but a peace wrought out of struggle, turning, listening, and ‘deep adaptation’.
Place for Hope supports 35 trained and accredited mediators who travel in pairs throughout Scotland and the north of England, mediating towards peace, hosting very difficult conversations, and building reconciliation in churches and faith communities.
Our teams accompany groups in conflict over theological differences, buildings closure, bullying, communication issues, management concerns, bad behaviour, transition and change: the ordinary things of life.
We often find nested beneath a presenting issue can be years, sometimes decades of difficult behaviour, buried for the sake of ‘peace.’ While churches are organisations, they also operate like families, with accepted practices being handed down over generations. Norms become habits, and habits embed and present as culture, as ‘just the way it is here.’
Our vision is to nurture a counter-culture of mediation, reconciliation and the transformation of relationships, so that every place of worship will be a ‘Place for Hope’. We don’t bring a magic wand or a drafted script. We bring robust companionship, dedicated practitioners unafraid to go to the hard places, un-phased by the rage, guilt, despair and depression that often accompany such conflict.
There are parallels to the journey of reconciliation in scripture. The despair and lament of Good Friday followed by the not knowing of Holy Saturday, then turning when the time is right to the hope of Easter Sunday is a holy pattern of conflict transformation.
From Thursday 31st October – Saturday 2nd November, we meet for the
Gathering in Glasgow on Conflict and Faith. We are delighted to be joined by partner organisations committed to faith-based conflict transformation, celebrating both the diversity that distinguishes us, and the synergy that we share. Workshops, worship, keynote input and time for networking will be hallmarks of the Gathering.
Please help us make this a turning point for our communities and for our churches. Join us – and please also pass on news of the event to those who may be interested.
We settled on the dates for the Gathering in Glasgow before 31st October 2019 was declared B-day. Whatever happens in the political sphere on Hallowe’en, let us remember that we will gather in Glasgow in the season of All Saints and All Souls, when we remember and give thanks for all those who have held and nourished, protected, challenged and led us courageously in the past. We pray for all, great and small, who lead us now and in the future.
Ruth Harvey, Director, Place for Hope