Mysticism
and Diplomacy — Common Ground, Uncommon GoalsBy Valerie Yeager
Social Work Today
Vol. 6 No. 2 P. 40
Creativity and a passion for peace have spawned a project that merges music with conflict resolution.
Recording artists David Wilcox and Nance Pettit feel the same hopeless frustration as the rest of us—how is it possible to overcome the detachment from all that is good in our lives? How can we find a common ground and choose love over hate? They are taking their own step toward peace—with music.
The husband-and-wife team found inspiration in a book of mystical poetry of Jewish, Sufi, Christian, Hindu, and Zen Buddha mystics. Filled with the unifying words of ancient mystics—such as Rumi, Hafiz, Tukaram, ha-Levi, and St. John of the Cross—mystical poetry “lifts the hearts of people everywhere in a powerful call for peace,” say Wilcox and Pettit.
The seemingly simple poems quickly sank into their hearts. “The language was very intimate, passionate, and present tense, using fresh images from everyday life. In a world where there is so much pain and hatred between these religious groups, the poems spoke of a shared experience of a love bigger than all that,” add Wilcox and Pettit.
After adding soothing music to the mystical poems and singing the peaceful verses in harmony, they recorded the songs to promote peace on a global scale. The resulting product, “Out Beyond Ideas,” encourages listeners to have a broader perspective of the world. What innocently began with Wilcox and Pettit writing music to moving poetry quickly grew to birth a peace project.
And so they began searching for an organization to which they could donate the CD’s proceeds: An organization without its own political agenda and one with a matching purpose of finding common ground among humans seeking the divine. For Wilcox and Pettit, this organization was the University of Maryland (UM).
Partners
in Conflict
The unlikely partnering of diplomacy and mystical poetry have merged to unify
across cultural, religious, ethnic, and political divides. Mysticism blends
perfectly with the diplomatic practices of UM’s Partners in Conflict
and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects. In conjunction with UM’s Center
for International Development & Conflict Management, Partners in Conflict
and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects “work to facilitate the prevention
or transformation of complex, violent conflicts, strengthen civil society,
and promote transitions to appropriate sustainable forms of democracy using
the techniques of multi-track or citizen’s diplomacy” (www.cidcm.umd.edu/projects/pic.htm).
The programs are helping establish a peaceful coexistence in the world.
The proceeds of “Out Beyond Ideas” will benefit Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects, strengthening the nonprofits’ operations and helping expand their reach and building the capacity for rapid response and conflict prevention.
Field
of Peace
“Our work and David and Nance’s artistry actually share a great
deal,” says John Davies, a lawyer, social scientist, and codirector
of Partners in Conflict. “The title lyric on their new album begins,
‘Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.’ That ‘field’ is where we aim
to bring opposing parties in our mediations. The idea is to empower them to
work as partners, understanding and addressing the human needs to both sides
that drive conflict, rather than stalemating over who is right, or who is
more to blame,” adds Davies. Wilcox, Pettit, and Davies realized the
music’s power—it could have an impact in peacemaking, opening
possibilities where there previously seemed none.
Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects use multitrack diplomacy where negotiators meet with citizens on both sides of a conflict and assist in forming ideas for peace. The groups then propose the ideas to their governments and new agreements are passed. Davies and his colleagues are currently mediating conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, Latin America, and the Balkans. The work is often conducted alongside official negotiations with approval from the governments.
The use of multitrack diplomacy ensures that everyone’s opinions are heard—not only those in top ranks of government. Partners in Conflict includes people on the front line. Most wars kill 85% civilians: “Everyone is involved. The citizens are being killed; citizens are being displaced; citizens’ lives are being destroyed,” Davies says. Citizens need to understand what is going on around them so the volatile situation can be transformed into something sustainable and supporting; something allowing the community to grow rather than keeping citizens on the edge and in fear.
Predictable
Patterns
Though the world seems especially volatile lately, the number and intensity
of violent conflicts globally has dropped by more than one half since the
early 1990s—including acts of terrorism. There are also currently more
democracies and more successfully negotiated conflict settlements in the world
since 1990 than at any time in the history of nation states. There is hope
for peace.
While creating “Out Beyond Ideas,” Wilcox and Pettit discovered that the decline in violent acts since the 1990s largely coincides with the tracking of events and trends by groups such as Partners in Conflict. Most conflict, in local communities or on national and international levels, follows patterns. These patterns—which can predict at approximately 80% to 90% what countries will be at war within five to six years—help societal violence and even state failure become easier to anticipate and prevent from happening. This information has been shared with both the United States and the United Nations. Wars and violent crimes are no longer a surprise.
Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects come to assistance when fighting is about to happen, is at a stalemate, or has already broken out. Though, the best time is when “people are aware of the danger but it’s not quite gone over the edge yet,” says Davies. The predictable patterns will help assess what countries are at this point and prevent them from moving into war.
In the 1980s, when civil war threatened
Lebanon, the UM team brought together influential members of warring Muslim
and Christian factions. A series of unofficial meetings helped negotiate the
basis for the 1989 accords ending the war. The confidential work eventually
resulted in a consensus agreement at UM’s College Park campus. The Lebanese
participants risked death for their involvement, but the peaceful negotiation
saved their country from violent ruin.
Hope for a Common Ground
As Davies recalls in regard to the Lebanon conflict resolution, “The
breakthrough came when the factions realized they shared a common vision—they
all wanted Lebanon to survive as a single country.” This common ground
is exactly the message Wilcox and Pettit are hoping to spread with “Out
Beyond Ideas”—that we’re all different but generally the
same. It’s a message most of us read in children’s books but one
that should be revisited in our adult lives.
“We all learned in childhood that group play is fun, and everyone deserves to be listened to and included. The same holds true between groups facing civil or international war. When we become too entrenched in defending our own ideas, it is difficult to listen beyond and meet in the field of peace. Someone who is not in the throes of self-defense is needed as a reminder that everyone will win if everyone’s needs are considered. Otherwise everyone will lose. Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding help parties to major conflicts recognize their common human needs and hopes beyond the separate demands which have led to hatred and violence,” say Wilcox and Pettit.
Though peaceful negotiations are a complex task, the music and lyrics of “Out Beyond Ideas” are beautiful and simple. The music isn’t only for sitting by the fire time—Wilcox urges listeners to play the CD while sitting in traffic and worrying about the day. “If you have a poem in the back of your mind that reminds you of a bigger perspective, it’s a huge difference in terms of where it can take you and how you can change the adversarial things,” says Wilcox.
“That’s why we’re here—this whole setting. This life, this planet, it’s made to give us this choice of either fear or love. And, yes, it looks really scary on the outside, but these poems offer us a perspective of the inside where we are given a choice. The choice of love is always there.” Wilcox hopes the music can act as a teacher and encourage listeners to have a more expansive perspective of the world.
The poems have survived and inspired for more than 1,000 years; Wilcox and Pettit don’t want that to stop now. “The poems somehow contain a perspective of people who saw this world differently: People who saw this world full of connection and full of love and full of adventure. These poems are about the experience of being very much alive and awake and in awe and wonder,” says Wilcox.
According to Pettit, “The message we were getting from the poems was that they were all written from a perspective of enlightened folks or saints—people who really had a consciousness of oneness. It seems like it was a message from the ‘other side’ to us and to other people. The message seems to be that once you get to that big of a perspective you’re beyond all the petty differences and these ways we separate ourselves from each other.”
Balance
and Unity
Several poets featured on “Out Beyond Ideas” followed a mystic
tradition of Islam called Sufism. Also referred to as Islamic mysticism, Sufism
is based on the pursuit of spiritual truth and revealing layers of the heart.
Instead of focusing on the esoteric aspects of religion, Sufism focuses on
the direct perception of the truth or God through mystic practices based on
divine love.
Sufism embodies numerous cultures and philosophies. The central concept of Sufism is love. In his text, The Sufis, Idries Shah says, “Sufism, in one definition, is human life.… The Sufi life can be lived at any time, in any place. It does not require withdrawal from the world, or organized movements, or dogma. It is coterminous with the existence of humanity.”
According to The Sufis, mankind is infinitely perfectable. “The perfection comes about through attunement with the whole of existence. Physical and spiritual life meet, but only when there is a complete balance between them,” continues Shah (1971). The awareness of all life and opening of the heart is exactly the message Wilcox and Pettit are hoping to pass through the message of their music … and is the common goal of Partners in Conflict.
The most utilized poet on “Out Beyond Ideas” is Jalaludin Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi poet born on the Eastern shores of the Persian empire—and one of the most widely read poets the United States. For Rumi, the life of mystics is a “gathering of lovers, where there is no high or low, smart or ignorant, no proper schooling required” (Shiva, 1999).
The ancient mystic poets were
simple in their words but powerful in their meanings. The underlying force
in all these poems is one of unification. The underlying goal of Partners
in Conflict is peaceful unification. As Pettit mentioned, this “consciousness
of oneness” is the necessary ingredient we all need to feel to move
toward a final product of nonviolence.
Layers of Peace
It’s well researched that when groups spend time in states of deep peace,
there is a decrease in violence in the community around them. Singing and
listening to these songs can contribute to a greater peace in the world, one
heart at a time. The mystical poets included in “Out Beyond Ideas”
speak of four layers of the heart, as practiced in Sufi tradition. These layers
correspond to the four main approaches to peace. The most outward layer, the
one we are seeing on the news night after night, uses the conventional approach
of using political, economic, and military power to assert control and impose
order.
The deeper layers work to assemble a democratic consensus on managing conflict based on the deeper layers of the heart “out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing.” The deeper layers are more integrative and inclusive, “going beyond judgments of right and wrong and differences in power to bring stakeholders together in partnership across political, cultural, and religious divides to discover and address the core human needs that, if overlooked, drive the parties in complex, violent, and protracted conflicts which are insoluble from the outside or in terms of right or wrong” (Davies & Kaufman, 2003).
Once our core humanity and needs are addressed, we have hope of building and sustaining peace.
Artistic
Bridge
Another layer of artful peace covers the pages of the “Out Beyond Ideas”
CD booklet. At a party one evening, Pettit met Najwa Al-Amin, an Iraqi artist
currently living in Baltimore. Pettit was instantly attracted to the woman’s
colorful artwork. Upon learning the story behind the art, Pettit realized
what a perfect fit Al-Amin would be to the Partners in Conflict/“Out
Beyond Ideas” project.
“Wars and conflict left no colors in the Middle East’s desert life, so I put them into my art to turn sadness into happiness and replace anger with peace,” says Al-Amin. Her bridging of cultures—living and painting in the Middle East and now living in the United States—was the perfect artistic bridge to add another level of internationalism to the project.
Open
Hearts
“How did the rose ever open its heart. And give to this world all of
its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light/ It felt the encouragement/
of light against its being.”
This poem, “How Did the Rose Ever Open?,” written by 14th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Shams ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, explains exactly how “Out Beyond Ideas” is bringing more peace into our world. Wilcox and Pettit are the rose, opening their hearts and pouring out their beautiful music; the light they are feeling comes from Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects.
The central function of poetry in all traditions is to waken the innermost layer of the heart and bond its readers: “Awake my dear, be kind to your sleeping heart; take it out to the vast fields of light and let it breathe.” From this place, “the sail just needs to open and the love begins.” These songs for peace celebrate love and common ground. As Wilcox explains, “…being around these poems and being around these songs changes the way I see the world. That’s why we wanted to make songs out of them, because songs will stay with you.”
— Valerie Yeager is an editorial assistant at Social Work Today.
References
Davies, J. and Kaufman, E. Second Track/Citizens’ Diplomacy: Concepts
and Applied Techniques for Conflict Transformation. Rowman & Littlefield,
Inc., 2003.
Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects. Available at: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/projects/pic.htm. Accessed January 19, 2006.
Shah, I. The Sufis. Anchor, 1971.
Shiva, S. Hush, Don’t Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi. Jain Publishing Company, 1999.
The Breeze at Dawn
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really
want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are moving back and forth
Across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep
Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)
Afghanistan/Turkey