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From a talk given at University of California at Santa Barbara, 1995
[Host's introduction:] Gene Knudsen Hoffman, a writer, therapist, and international peace worker, was invited by Project Crossroads[at UCSB] to talk about Compassionate Listening, a unique tool for reconciliation. She developed this tool after realizing that all parties in a conflict were wounded and needed to be heard. Her overarching principle is that hearing each other's story reveals unhealed wounds and allows for mutual compassion and understanding. In this way Compassionate Listening helps to build bridges between individuals and communities in conflict and can ultimately lead to reconciliation.
Reconciliation is the most difficult of peace processes because it requires the resumption of relationship between those in conflict. It means the coming together in harmony of those who have been sundered.
My sense is that if we would reconcile, we must make radically new responses to the radically new situation in a world where violence is mindless, hopeless, meaningless, and almost every nation has nuclear weapons-or soon will. We must move beyond initiatives we formerly used, into realms we have not yet considered, not yet discovered, trusting that there are always open to us new divine possibilities.
We peace people have always listened to the oppressed and disenfranchised. That's very important. One of the new steps I think we should take is to listen to those we consider `the enemy' with the same open-ness, non-judgement, and compassion we listen to those with whom our sympathies lie.
Everyone has a partial truth, and we must listen, discern, acknowledge this partial truth in everyone-particularly those with whom we disagree. That remarkable Saint, Thomas Aquinas, would support this, for he wrote: "We must love them both, those with whom we agree, and those with whom we disagree. For both have labored in the search of truth, and both have helped in the finding of it."
To reconcile, we must realize that both sides to any violence are wounded, and their wounds are unhealed. From my study of post-traumatic stress disorder in Holocaust victims and Vietnam veterans, I am persuaded that a great source of violence stems from our unhealed wounds.
In 1980, I had a life-changing experience. I was on a world tour of peace centers to learn what new ideas I could bring back to the USA. Outside the London Quaker Meeting, I saw a huge sign which said: "Meeting for Worship for the torturers and the tortured". I'd long known I should listen to the tortured-but listen to the torturers? I'd have to think about that.
I soon realized that without listening to the enemy I could not make informed decisions. If I was an advocate for one side, I would never know the causes of the oppositions' anger and violence, and I couldn't possibly know the suffering they had endured. My choices would be half-ignorant ones. So when I arrived in Israel, I began listening to Israelis and Palestinians. I found it changed my perspectives on each. I began to practice listening to both sides everywhere I went.
In 1983 I worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, creating their US/USSR Reconciliation Program. This was in the depths of the cold war and a way I found to listen was to try to "Put a Human Face on the Soviets" for Americans. It was a remarkable learning experience and the perspectives of quite a few people were changed on both sides.
In 1989, after Glasnost and the feelings that the Soviets were no longer a threat, my work moved to the Middle East. In that year a small group of us went to Libya to listen to the Libyans after we'd bombed Libya twice, first to kill Khadaffi and second, after we'd downed two Libyan planes over Libya. We knew our government's side and we wanted to hear the other. We did.
We met with Libyan leaders, professors, government members, religious representatives, and many more. We had new messages for our government such as "Please remove the mines you've sown in the Sahara desert [in World War II]; we can't do it alone. Please resume conversations with our government over our differences." and "Please let Libyan students return to American universities."
Our government wouldn't listen to us since we'd gone there illegally. So we wrote our articles, spoke publicly where we could-and were considered dangerous.
My next efforts were on my own. Between 1989 and 1996 I went to Israel and Palestine five times to listen to both sides. I listened to Israeli psychiatrists, settlers, government officials, peace people, writers, publishers, the Knesset and just plain people. Since I stayed in Palestinian homes in the Occupied territories, I had more opportunity to listen to the people: refugees, families, parents whose sons had been killed, some of their sons who hadn't, academic and peace leaders, and twice I met with Yassir Arafat. Out of these experiences came a book for Pax Christi, The Just World Book of 1991 called Pieces of the Mideast Puzzle.
The breakthrough for practicing compassionate Listening on a wider scale came in 1996 when Leah Green, Director of Earthstewards' Mid-East Citizen Diplomacy Project, contacted me. She said she had read everything I'd written on Com-passionate Listening and she would like to have her delegations to Israel and Palestine begin to practice it.
She did. in January of 1998 she took a group of American Jewish leaders, including two Rabbis and one Rabbinic intern. The participants came with varied prejudices, stereotypes, and deep fears. Some had never set foot in Palestine before. On her return Leah wrote: "All the participants submitted positive evaluations, and all have expressed that they underwent some degree of transformation from the experience. ...I can honestly say I have come away from this trip with a new level of compassion, awareness, and understanding for people who hold views with which I have been in deep disagreement."
Possibilities for reconciliation occurred among both the visiting Americans and the Israelis and Palestinians. It was in three words-an astonishing success. Much was due to Leah's skills and deep commitment to the spirit of the process.
Now-back to process. Compassionate Listening is adaptable to any conflict. The listening requires a particular attitude. It is non-judgmental, non-adversarial, and seeks the truth of the person questioned. It also seeks to see through any masks of hostility and fear to the sacredness of the individual and to discern the wounds suffered by all parties. Listeners do not defend themselves, but accept what others say as their perceptions. By listening, they validate the other's right to their perceptions.
I'm not talking about listening with the `human ear'. I'm talking about discerning. To discern means to perceive something hidden or obscure. Like the potential for good-will in hostile people. We must listen with our `spiritual' or psychological ear. This is very different from deciding in advance who is right and who is wrong, and then seeking to rectify it. And, it's very hard to listen to people we feel are misleading, if not lying. Hard to listen to such different memories of the same event. Hard!
Two definitions of reconciliation were used. The first is by one of my teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, teacher, poet, and peacemaker. "If we align ourselves with one side or the other, we will lose our chance to work for peace. Reconciliation is to understand both sides. First we go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side. Then we return to the other side and repeat the process."1 Someday I hope Compassionate Listening teams will go wherever there is a conflict, listen to both sides, and work for reconciliation, I believe this is our next step.
Adam Curle, another of my teachers, and Senior Quaker mediator from England says: "We must work for harmony wherever we are, to bring together that which is sundered by fear, hatred, injustice or any conditions which divide us. I begin with a concept of human nature based on the belief in a divine element within each of us... We must remember, this good exists in those we oppose."2
There are similar traditions in Judaism and Islam. Michael Lerner in his book Jewish Renewal, reminds us that "Compassion must be extended to the enemies of the Jewish people...(for) they, too, are created in the image of god, and the distortions which lead them to wish us ill are the product of a world of pain and cruelty that shaped them in this particular way."3 From Islam comes this teaching by Abderrazak Guessoum, Vice Rector of the Great Mosque of Paris. "..Islam is tolerance, service, and mercy.. The Koran rejects all violence. Even Jihad... `Holy war'...refers to the struggle of every Muslim to stay on the path of obedience to the will of god as revealed in the Koran."4
I believe the call is for us to see that within all people is the mystery, Spirit, God. It is within the Afrikaaner and the Africans, the Americans, Israelis, Palestinians everyone. By Compassionate Listening we may awaken it and thus learn the partial truth the other is carrying.
Finally, I treasure this quotation from the American poet Longfellow: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."5
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Gene Hoffman expands on this theme in her 1995 Pendle Hill Pamphlet, No Royal Road to Reconciliation (Pendle Hill Publications, 338 Plush Mill Road, Wallingford, Pa. -- 800-742-3150)
Notes and Bibliography
1. Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, Parallax Press, 1988
2. Adam Curle, True Justice, Quaker Home Service, London, 1981
3. Michael Lerner, Jewish Renewal, Harper Perennial, 1994
4. Nell Platt, Passing from Belief to Practice, Reconciliation International 1987.
5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, Little Brown & Co.
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