Transcending Barriers while Life Meets Death
In this time, so full of pain and challenge, I was unexpectedly nourished by an email I received from someone who is consciously, purposefully trying to live applied NVC and Conflict Transformation in work and life, currently doing it in Eastern Sri Lanka. I am sharing an abridged version of …
#MeToo and Liberation for All
“I want to kiss you all over your smile.”
The poetic beauty struck me even while my entire body was contracting. The man speaking was drunk. I had asked him several times to stop calling me, at least not so late. He was married, with four children, 20 years my …
Life, Interdependence, and the Pursuit of Meeting Needs
“Life is arranged to care for all that lives through an endless interdependent flow of energy and resources.”
After years of thinking, reading, writing, talking, teaching, feeling, and communing, that simple sentence came to me in a session I was leading about money at a nine-day intensive training in Chile. …
Nonviolence in the Face of Hatred
Anita was present at almost every one of the 34-sessions of my online course Responding to the Call of Our Times. I have sometimes wondered what this course would have been like without her steady willingness to explore the depths of nonviolence. I was counting on it as a thread …
Moving from Fault to Cause: Looking for Systemic Solutions to White Supremacy
The recent events in Charlottesville have brought even more attention and public conversation to the growing phenomenon of visible, explicit calls for white supremacy. Much of what I have since read and heard is horror and disgust at what has happened, and an intense inquiry about what can be done …
Why Patriarchy Is Not about Men
In response to my recent newsletter, which I named “Tenderness, Vulnerability, and Mourning as a Response to Patriarchy”, I received two comments from men that led me to choose to write this piece. In two very different ways they pointed me to the reality that the word patriarchy is used …
Addendum to Privilege, Responsibility, and Nonviolence
After posting my recent post, I received a comment that completely surprised me, in which I was challenged about what I thought was the opposite of what I said. Given what was written in the comment, I believe it was a person of color writing it. Given my overall commitments, …
Privilege, Responsibility, and Nonviolence
by Miki Kashtan
When I first heard Marshall Rosenberg, back in 1994, say that the actions of another person are a stimulus, and never a cause, for my feelings, I was shocked. Little did I know that this statement would become the nucleus of my growing understanding about what has …
Staying Open to Life despite Losses
By Miki Kashtan
When I sat down to count the number of times that I lost a friendship by actions of another, I didn’t imagine I would reach the number 29 in the last 27 years, almost all of them close friends, or other people with an ongoing connection, who …
When Effects Are Invisible: From Comfort to Freedom
“When a behavior becomes the norm, we lose our ability to view it as dysfunctional.” Jeff Garson, Reflection #42, Radical Decency (URL temporarily inactive).
“To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased.” Ta Nehisi Coates, My President Was Black.
What is it that makes the …