Featured Story
A Healing Among Nations
Creating Connections Between Cultures and Countries
by Nicole Pugh
“Maslow said that our most basic needs are for food, clothing and shelter. We have found that the need to tell one’s story, to be heard, to be respected during a time of great shame at the hands of war, trauma and inequities is an equal, if not a greater, need.” – Bonnie Mansdorf, founder and Executive Director, Foundation for a Healing Among Nations
The phrase East meets West can have many meanings. It can signify, quite literally, the blending of Eastern and Western ways of living, healing modalities, and philosophies. It can also mean, in more general terms, a meeting in the middle of different viewpoints and beliefs. Buddhism as well promotes this “middle way.” In a world ripe with genocide, war, extreme economic disparity and environmental crisis, how can individuals and nations find a common ground? Perhaps it lies within the common humanity that exists between and within all human beings.
There are people and organizations around the globe whose life’s work is about finding the middle ground. These are the peace-builders. They come in all forms—from a person whose smile towards another is sincere to groups of individuals who have the skill and willingness to look at life through the lens of the “other side’— and act within that energy. One such peace-building group is the Foundation for A Healing Among Nations (FAHAN), founded in 1999 by Bonnie Mansdorf, M.A., PhD.
Deep Listening for A Healing Among Nations
Bonnie Mansdorf the a mother of two sons and the daughter of a holocaust survivor. In 1995, she was also an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. The Shoah project was created after the making of Spielberg’s movie, Schindler’s List (1993, Universal Pictures), and was successful in documenting the stories of over 50,000 Holocaust survivors, gypsies and WWII resistors. Inspired by how the telling of their stories brought healing to the survivors, Mansdorf decided to carry the basic concepts of the project and the skills of deep listening to other groups who were suffering around the world. She and others organized A Healing Among Nations Prayer Retreat and Summit in the fall of 1999 as a forum for creating a “unified vision for healing and reconciliation of [diverse] cultures.”
“I think one of people’s greatest yearnings is for their voice to be heard and for their gift and their wisdom to have a place to be released,” says Mansdorf. “[With] the skill of deep listening, you allow them to experience who they are from that place because first they feel your interest. That shifts the space tremendously when somebody feels that you are there for them and you are interested in them.”
Deep or compassionate listening is a skill promoted by many spiritual and peace-building leaders, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Thich Naht Hanh, Marshall Rosenberg and Leah Green of the Compassionate Listening Project. Since 1999, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Naht Hanh has sponsored groups of Palestinians and Israelis to come to Plum Village, his global community and retreat center in the south of France, in order to dialogue in the name of peace. Through learning the skills of deep listening and communication, these participants are able to heal from the intense emotions that have built up inside of them.
“With the Buddha Sanga supporting, they are able to breathe in and out, generating the energy of mindfulness and embrace tenderly their anger, their fear, their frustration,” explained Hanh in a September 2002 speech addressing issues of terrorism and global violence after 911. “It is very moving to be there and to listen to them listening to each other speaking to each other. And after several sessions of deep, compassionate listening, transformation took place. This group realized that the other group is made of human beings and they have also suffered very deeply.”
Likewise, at the Prayer Retreat and Summit organized by Mansdorf, spiritual leaders from all over the world, including representatives for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Thich Naht Hanh and the Hopi nation, Arun and Sunanda Gandhi of the M.K. Gandhi Institute, Elaine Steel of the Rosa Parks Institute, and many leaders from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and other communities were able to speak about the struggles and triumphs of their particular nations, ethnic groups and cultures.
“This process assisted in the retrieval and release of the past patterns of fear, creating a clearer and more enlightened future,” says the FAHAN website about the Retreat. “[It] was life-changing for all of us.”
Helping with Peace in the Middle East
The Healing Among Nations Prayer Retreat and Summit was an immensely powerful coming together of leaders in the name of global healing. It was also a springboard that catapulted FAHAN into a spiritual bridge-building journey that continues to this day. Mansdorf explains:
“Everything changed after we had that prayer retreat. Everything that we planned to do no longer was the same. What began to happen was [those who were at the retreat] became our inner counsel and they came forward one-by-one very organically and asked us to help them facilitate with things that they needed for their nations.”
One of the first requests was for an intimate meeting between the Hopi prophecy holders and the Dalai Lama at the request of Hopi Elder and prophecy holder Martin Geshwasome. The meeting itself was, in fact, a part of that prophecy.
“Basically, the Hopi prophecy says that when the Red Hat [the Tibetians] come to the West and stories [are] told at the house of Mica [the United Nations], then a healing among nations will begin. We found that very interesting because we didn’t realize that that phrase [A Healing Among Nations] was very specific in numerous prophecies…In the year 2000, the Dalai Lama was here and the Red Hat was very much in the West. They had talks at the Lincoln Memorial on July 4th and talks in Los Angeles and in New York. Then in August, 2000, the United Nations held the very first talks for [global] religious leaders. The religions had never been part of the United Nation’s agenda….I was [also] holding a forum in New York based on moving from suffering to awakening through the heart of our humanity. There were thousands of people there at that forum and at the U.N. Spontaneously, what occurred was [the U.N. leaders] asked the indigenous elders to get up and tell their stories. That was the second fulfillment of what needed to happen for their prophecy.”
The next event that FAHAN was involved in was a trip to Gaza to aid in negotiations between the Palestinians and Hamas. Mansdorf and her team learned a lot from the visit, including how the truth behind international conflicts is often ignored and replaced with propaganda and sensationalism.
“In the Middle East, each organization is manipulated to create a demonization of who they are—the Hamas, the bombers—and to dehumanize the elements that bring them to that point...What we found in the Middle East was there are thousands of peace-builders on both sides wanting to shift the change. What was usually happening was at the governmental level, the leadership would dismantle a lot of those efforts and the media [would also]. Because of their need to sensationalize stories, they would always bring out the worst crisis. It [creates] a lot of disorientation. People don’t understand what is going on and there is a lot of fear.”
FAHAN is not based in any one particular spiritual or religious tradition. Mansdorf and her team believe that “under all the traditions and at the root of each of those traditions, they are all connected.” The Middle East trip, like their involvement in the Hopi and Tibetian meeting, proved to be full of serendipity and spiritual guidance as well.
“There was this whole other spiritual, prophetic [turn of events] that came through. [We found out that] the prophecy of Isaiah [from the old testament] says that ‘When the tribes will be gathered, a healing among nations will begin.’ The entire Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was turned over to us. There was nobody there and we had it to ourselves for hours to do prayers on behalf of the fulfillment of these prophecies. It wasn’t planned. It just happened because it was such a dangerous time and there were no tourists. We were able to come in and bring this potent energy of awareness and the fulfillment of reconciliation and forgiveness.”
Humanitarian Aid in Indonesia
Mansdorf and her team always do their work in response to an invitation from a group or representative of a nation or organization. Their diverse and high profile advisory board helps them to organize trips quickly in response to these requests. This was how FAHAN got involved in humanitarian work in Indonesia in 2006, roughly a year after the tsunami of 2004 devastated eleven countries along the Indian Ocean, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
“We were called first to Bandh Aceh, Sri Lanka by one of our partner organizations who was unable to go,” says Mansdorf. “We had not specifically been involved in humanitarian work before so we put together a team of journalists, a village planner, an architect, a filmmaker and myself. It was extraordinary over there because we were dealing with such an overlay of issues…It was very intense.”
Initially, Mansdorf and her team interviewed everyone from UNICEF workers to Indonesian public officials to investigate how funds and supplies were being distributed and how villages were being rebuilt. Then they met Kumari Kulatunga, often called the “Mother Theresa” of Sri Lanka.
“[Kumari] is not religiously-oriented like Mother Theresa was but she was a potent force in a certain area of Sri Lanka, working with the women. She took us in to the refugee camps and we started really sitting with the women and asking them what they needed and what the next steps were.”
After listening to the needs of the women refugees, FAHAN was able to start a program that provided them with sewing machines and funds to help them get them back on their feet. The next year, they visited Thailand and India as well as Sri Lanka and began working with female tea pickers in Sri Lanka’s four tea estates.
“They are called the forgotten women [and] are virtually indentured slaves that were brought over from India decades ago,” says Mansdorf. “They have no identity and no rights. They have nothing except that they can work on these tea plantations. The conditions are not very good—there is no education for them and no particular future. So we started a school for a hundred and forty children with [the help of] Kumari and Healing Hands Women’s Collective, [an organization that was] part of the tsunami relief effort.”
They also established a clinic that is supported by six volunteer Belgian doctors and have brought school supplies, books, medicines and food as well as pregnancy education for the women into the area. In order to sustain the tea estates projects, FAHAN promotes and sells “Blessing Shawls” that the women make.
“They weave their blessings in these shawls and they are really filled with so much of their love. [The shawls] say ‘May you be blessed’ in the Sri Lankan handwriting.”
Whether it’s through storytelling, deep discussion, prayer, direct humanitarian aid or the making and appreciation of beautiful pieces of art such as the Sri Lankan women’s blessing shawls, there are ways to build bridges even across the widest of rivers. Take note of the peace-builders like FAHAN. Then express yourself and build bridges of your own in your own, unique way!
For more information on the Foundation for a Healing Among Nations or to buy a Blessing Shawl, visit www.healingamongnations.org. Nicole Pugh is editor-at-large of Vision magazine.