How can anyone have hope in times like these?

There is no shortage of voices telling us that peacemaking is impractical or even hopeless in a world this fractured.

And yet, something important has become clearer to me in recent weeks.

On the opening day of the National Governors Association Winter Meetings, pollster Frank Luntz presented data to governors from across the country on how Americans feel about the growing divides in our country. The results were striking, not because they revealed deep partisan differences, but because they revealed how much agreement there is beneath the surface.

Across party lines, Americans overwhelmingly say that what they want most in political conversations is respect—far more than civility, politeness, or ideological alignment. Large majorities agree that the country is deeply divided, that our unity is failing, and that this division carries real costs: rising extremism, unsolved problems, and the erosion of shared civic norms. Most people believe there is more that divides us than unites us, and many experience this moment not as hopeful, but as exhausting.

What stood out most to me, however, was this: despite the frustration, Americans aren’t asking for more polarization. They want leaders who are honest, accountable, fair, and willing to solve problems. They want leaders who govern, not just posture. In other words, the appetite is not for endless conflict—but for collaboration.

Which suggests that what we are facing is not simply a values crisis, but a discouragement and collective action problem.

It isn’t that good people aren’t doing meaningful work. They are. Every day. The problem is that discouragement convinces us our efforts don’t matter, while polarization keeps us stuck “teeing off” on our ideological opponents from a distance rather than participating in the slow, tangible work of repair.

And yet—amid all of this—I’m also struck by another reality, less reported but just as true.

Hope grows when people move.

And people are moving —often far from the spotlight. Amid these dangerous times, so much good is happening all around us. Everywhere I go, even in the midst of deep conflict, I am amazed by the charity, selflessness, and quiet courage of people working to build the bridges of repair.

Over the past week, I’ve worked with several groups of people who give me hope that the efforts of individuals and small communities will not be in vain—from the deeply local to the national.

I want to introduce you to three of them - PeacePlayers Detroit, the National Governors Association and Disagree Better.

PeacePlayers says: This is possible.
The Governors say: This is scalable.
Disagree Better says: This is how.

PeacePlayers Detroit: The Power of Grassroots De-Polarization

Last week I spent some time in Detroit with Jasmine Cooper, the Executive Director of PeacePlayers Detroit and her team.

As many of my readers know, I’ve spent more than twenty years working with PeacePlayers in the Middle East, witnessing firsthand the power of their work to bridge the divides between Palestinians and Israelis.

Over a year ago, one of their leaders in the Middle East asked me a provocative question while I was working with them in Jerusalem: “Why are you here? Why aren’t you back in America, working on the same problems we’re facing here?”

It was a wake-up call.

I’ve been diving deeply into the growing polarization in the United States ever since, and this trip marked my first opportunity to work directly with PeacePlayers in Detroit.

I led a two-day training with Jasmine’s staff and coaches on a community center gym floor focused on bridging divides through the game of basketball and the principles of Dangerous Love.

We centered our time around three core values:

Seeing People as People
Inside–Outside Transformation
Creating a Culture of Collaboration

These aren’t just slogans for PeacePlayers. They are daily practices tested in a city where diversity is real, but integration often is not.

The Detroit metro area is home to African American and white communities, along with large Arab, Latino, and Bengali populations. And yet segregation, limited interaction, and fear across cultural and geographic divides continue to prevent many of its residents from fully thriving.

PeacePlayers Detroit works directly in the midst of this reality. The program engages more than 100 youth ages 10–18 in year-round, multi-year basketball training, conflict resolution education, and leadership development. These young people meet weekly in their own neighborhoods and multiple times each week across communities. They study leadership, mentor younger participants, visit universities, and explore one another’s neighborhoods—learning not just about conflict, but about responsibility, service, and belonging.

Watching this work up close is both inspiring and sobering.

It isn’t easy. Many of these young people have never had meaningful contact with kids from “the other side” and lack significant access to resources. Parents are often hesitant. Communities are cautious. Fear doesn’t disappear just because a basketball is involved. And when conflict flares progress can feel fragile.

But basketball demands collaboration. You can’t win alone. And over time, something begins to shift: passing the ball, calling someone by name, celebrating a teammate’s success. What looks small from the outside becomes transformative on the inside.

PeacePlayers has always understood that this work unfolds over decades, not news cycles. It is generational. Often exhausting. And yet it is precisely this slow, relational labor that makes peace imaginable where many insist it is impossible.

Spending time with Jasmine and her team reminded me of something essential: peacemaking is not about fixing “the world.” It is about creating conditions where people can encounter one another differently—and then choosing, again and again, to take the dangerous steps of encounter and curiosity.

This is the long-short way that starts small and slow with big long term impact.

The NGA & Disagree Better: How to Scale the Work of De-Polarization

What I saw in Detroit on gym floors and in community centers is the same posture I’ve seen, more unexpectedly, beginning to take root in some of our highest levels of public leadership thanks to the recent work of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Disagree Better.

At a moment when national politics feel locked into zero-sum tribal warfare, several governors—Republican and Democrat—chose a different posture. They’re practicing engaged curiosity

In the weeks leading up to the NGA Winter Meetings, I had several behind-the-scenes conversations with key leaders at the NGA and Disagree Better. At the center of this effort was Brandon Tatum, the CEO of the NGA, and Marianne Viray, Executive Director of Disagree Better, whose leadership—often at personal and professional cost—insists that bipartisan cooperation is not a luxury, but a responsibility.

When President Trump initially declined to invite Democratic governors to a White House meeting, Tatum issued a statement that quietly but firmly articulated a different approach focused on problem-solving over partisan politics:

“I know that our Republican and Democratic Governors hold strong beliefs and take firm positions every day. Yet when they lead their states and territories, they lead all of their citizens, regardless of party. Leadership requires serious, good-faith conversations grounded in the understanding that reasonable people can disagree. Americans are weary of constant partisan conflict and the perception that Democrats and Republicans cannot work together.”

The statement did not deny disagreement or minimize conflict. It simply refused to let contempt define the terms of engagement. Ultimately, the White House agreed to invite all governors.

This same ethic was embodied on February 18 during a Disagree Better session featuring Governors Kevin Stitt (Oklahoma), Wes Moore (Maryland), and Spencer Cox (Utah), and again at the NGA Winter Meetings.

All three of these governors risked partisan backlash to come together to find common ground.

Governor Stitt emphasized the humanizing power of relationship:

“When you actually meet someone, you break bread with them, you get to know their families… you know that they care. We’re Americans first.”

He was clear that difference does not require uniformity:

“Oklahoma doesn’t want to be California. California doesn’t want to be Oklahoma—and that’s OK. One-size-fits-all solutions are a big problem.”

Governor Moore added that a culture of collaboration is needed in America right now:

“We’re going to debate our ideas, we’re going to coordinate, we’re going to find places where we’re seeing best practices all across the country, we’re going to model them and adopt them and steal them and bring them for our states. And there is no person, nor one office, nor one administration that is going to disrupt that because governors are just built different.”

Governor Moore extended this vision into civic life, describing Maryland’s statewide service initiative that funds young adults for a year of community service after high school, that looked reminiscent of PeacePlayers Detroit’s model:

“What this country needs most right now is to get to know each other again. People are far too comfortable in their silos.”

Governor Cox named what is truly at stake:

“We’re losing virtue in our country. This experiment in self-government can’t work unless we change the incentives. We have to be civically minded again…It’s OK that we’re different. We don’t all have to be the same.”

Governor Cox closed inviting all of us to be part of the change:

“If you tell kids, don’t change the world—change your neighborhood—the irony is that’s actually how you change the world … We just have to be good people. If America ceases to be good, she ceases to be great.”

From Deep Conflict to Transformation

If we cease not only to be good, but to do good, we, too, cease to be great.

None of what I witnessed last week erased disagreement. None of it denied harm, injustice, or deep moral conflict. But something important was happening—in Detroit and in Washington, D.C.: the logic of dehumanization was interrupted.

What we are facing right now is not just a crisis of values. It is a crisis of discouragement and collective action.

Discouragement tells us our efforts don’t matter. Polarization tells us our only real option is to attack our ideological opponents from a distance. Together, they keep us passive—watching, reacting, “trolling” online—rather than participating in the slow, tangible work of repair.

What we need is not fewer opinions, but more participation.

When a newspaper once asked, “What’s wrong with the world?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton famously replied: “The answer to the question ‘What is wrong?’ is, or should be, ‘I am wrong.’”

Too often, I am failing. It’s not only the world or others—it’s me. I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of contempt swirling around me and in my own heart. I’ve struggled to forgive and to help others forgive. I’ve struggled to choose reconciliation. I’ve too have thought and acted in ways that have created the problem.

And still, the call to be a peacemaker does not fade.

We need more governors and elected officials willing to risk political capital for principled engagement. More local leaders willing to build across lines rather than profit from outrage. And more ordinary people willing to lean into hope—not as a feeling, but as a practice—by getting involved in real, concrete efforts to turn the tide of polarization and destructive conflict in our homes, our communities, and our country.

As Marianne, who leads Disagree Better, puts it, we need to “champion the morally courageous behaviors we want more of—by naming them, acknowledging them, and letting leaders know we saw them and appreciate them.”

So here is the invitation.

Don’t start by trying to change the world. Start close in. Start by showing up somewhere close to home: your family, your congregation, your workplace, your community.

Ask yourself a simple question: Where am I being called to stay rather than walk away?

Choose one place where you will practice peacemaking—not perfectly, but faithfully. Find a local effort (here’s some cool stuff happening in Utah) doing the slow work of repair and offer your time, attention, or support.

If you’re in a position of leadership, use it to reward collaboration rather than outrage. If you’re a citizen, name and encourage the leaders who choose restraint, dignity, and courage. If you are a community member, reach across divides to help solve the problems that beset us instead of running to social media to complain.

Move from commentary to commitment.
From outrage to responsibility.
From despair to participation.

We don’t need everyone to do everything. We need more people willing to do something.

Hope grows when people move.

Peacemaking is not naïve. It is practiced.

It is not the denial of evil or the refusal to name power. It is the disciplined choice to act without surrendering our humanity to fear, contempt, or despair. It is the courage to remain in relationship when walking away—or striking back—would be easier.

By small and simple things are great things brought to pass—not because they are dramatic or sufficient on their own, but because they form the moral habits that make community possible.

Hope is not the belief that everything will turn out fine. Hope is the decision to act in ways that make goodness more likely—even when outcomes are uncertain.

And right now, more than ever, that decision matters.

I have hope because these efforts are part of something much larger. Every day, multitudes of people are quietly doing the work of restoration—supporting families under strain, caring for the sick and wounded, serving their neighbors, reducing violence, and helping communities heal, repair, and bridge divides. They risk their time, health, and livelihoods to restore dignity and make room for healthier conflict.

I’ve seen miracles happen. I’ve seen enemies choose constructive conflict over destructive conflict. I’ve witnessed mercy, forgiveness, and the risk of embrace in some of the most intractable conflicts in the world.

Everywhere I turn—even amid pain and chaos—I see:

People on the move.
Love on the move.
Peace on the move.

The question is not whether hope is possible.

The question is: will we be on the move with them?

We are only ONE WEEK away from Interfaith REPAIR!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures. No religious affiliation required. Curiosity is enough.

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 250 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

NEARLY SOLD OUT “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

  Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

I’m not a cryer.

At least, not in the way most of us think of crying.

Death. Pain. Suffering. Betrayal. Anger. Outrage. Fear. Disappointment. Discouragement. Sadness.

I’ve experienced all of these. Yet these emotions that seem to trigger tears in others rarely unleash them in me.

As a conflict mediator, it’s uncommon to work with people who don’t cry. And that makes sense. Conflict is terrifying. It is deeply frustrating. For many of us, tears are the most honest language available when words fail; just not for me.

Why is the world full of tears?

I recently read Richard Rohr’s new book, “The Tears of Things” where he suggests that tears—especially tears of sorrow—are a divine gift, a sign of deep emotional engagement and connection with God and one another. Acknowledging our tears, Rohr argues, can open a path toward healing and community.

I just listened to U2’s latest song, also entitled “The Tears of Things” which gives voice to a different register of tears—ones born of disillusionment and moral exhaustion:

My eyes were burned from all I learned
There were things I can't unsee
In this, your holy war
There's nothing holy here for me

More the tears of things
The tears of things
Rising like a flood
The tears of things
The tears of things

And then there’s one of the most striking moments in Latter-day Saint theology: the prophet Enoch witnessing God weep—and being stunned by it.

And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?

The Lord said… Behold these thy brethren… they are without affection, and they hate their own blood… (Moses 7:29, 32–34)

God’s tears here are not only sorrowful.
They are indignant.
Grieved.
Fierce.

Indignation, too, belongs among the tears of things.

And yet, I wonder why—after witnessing so much pain and destruction, so much anger and fear, both in my work and in my life—these experiences don’t elicit my tears.

Have I built a dam inside myself to hold back the floodwaters?
(My wife, Amanda, who is a gifted therapist, would likely say yes.)

Am I emotionally disengaged?
Less connected to the divine?
Do I feel injustice differently than others do?

Today I’m sitting in an airport—snowed in. Feeling frustrated.

I’m worried about a major conflict I’ve been asked to facilitate.
Feeling fear.
Feeling deeply unsure of myself.

I’m watching my country strain and swell with anger.
Feeling helpless.
Feeling hopeless.
Feeling indignation.

And I ask myself: Where are the tears in me?

And then a memory surfaces.

In The Peanut Butter Falcon, there’s a pivotal scene where Zak—a young man with Down syndrome who has escaped a residential nursing home to pursue his dream of becoming a professional wrestler—finally reaches the home of his idol, The Saltwater Redneck.

Zak, who has known so much disappointment, finally realizes his dream—only to have it crushed. The Saltwater Redneck is retired. He no longer trains wrestlers. He dismisses Zak without ceremony.

Heartbroken, Zak begins walking. Not toward anything in particular. Just walking. It’s absolutely devastating.

Then, in the distance, an old Pontiac Trans Am comes barreling toward him, dust rising in its wake. It circles. Stops. And out steps The Saltwater Redneck—now fully decked out in wrestling gear—who tells Zak he’ll take him on as his protégé.

I’m sobbing in the theater. Amanda had no idea what to do.

I couldn’t stop crying.

It was unbearably beautiful. Finding hope amidst downheartedness.

Just remembering the scene now makes my eyes well up. And then the memories of tears come flooding in.

Amanda walking through the woods, dressed in white, coming to rescue and marry a lost, broken soul.

Watching my oldest child, Max, win the state championship in debate after years of struggle and self-doubt.

Mediations where couples reconciled.
Where children found their way back to their parents.
Where enemies forgave one another.

Tears every time.

Tears when hope reappears uninvited.
Tears when love risks returning.
Tears when mercy steps back into the room.
Tears when hands reach across the space.
Tears when repair refuses ruin.

The tears of things
Rising like a flood
The tears of things
The tears of things

Maybe the tears of things are not only the mark of what is broken,
but the cost of what refuses to stay broken.

Maybe the question is not whether the world will keep weeping.
It will.

When those tears come, they don’t release me from the world.
They return me to it.
Back to the room. Back to the table. Back to the risk of believing that repair is still possible.

The question is what our tears will serve.

Will they harden us into despair?
Or soften us toward repair?

Will our tears call us back—to one another?
Will our tears move us toward courage?
Will our tears make room for dangerous love?
Will our tears serve—not as witnesses to despair—but as evidence of return, repair, and love?

In a world flooded with tears of exhaustion, sadness, and anger, can we dig deep for the tears of hope?

The tears of hope.
Rising like a flood.
The tears of hope.
The tears of hope.

The Tears of Hope: The Poem

And a poem from me. Because sometimes I still want to be a poet.

Sorrow comes and goes
like dark clouds
that do not release rain.

I have walked among ruins.
I have listened to anger
loudly engulf souls.

My eyes remain dry.

But show me
a door reopening.
A hand extended.
A life turning, quietly,
toward love.

Then something breaks.

A lost soul returning to their calling.
The silenced finding their voice.
Two people choosing one another again.

This is where
the water rises.

Not for what is lost—
but for what is restored.

Not for despair—
but for the sudden,
audacious presence
of hope.

If the world is full of tears,
let some of them be this:
the astonishment
that repair is possible,
and love
never stops its work.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures. No religious affiliation required. Curiosity is enough.

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 200 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

“Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

NEARLY SOLD OUT “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

SOLD OUT! “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

“Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

The title to my book Dangerous Love has its origins in a conversation about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that changed my life 30 years ago.

I was a first-year law student at Georgetown Law school and struggling to figure out what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to do conflict resolution, but my desire to work outside of the court system, with everyday people, wasn’t really aligning with what I was learning in law school. Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy to the US for much of the past 30 years, recommended I meet with Wallace Warfield, a professor at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, so I skipped class and took a train to Fairfax to see if he had any advice for me.

Wallace was a master mediator who had worked at a grassroots level doing conflict work for decades. I waited several hours outside his office to meet him. When I finally got into his office and told him what I wanted to do for a while. He paused for what seemed like an eternity before asking, “What do you know about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?”

I thought it was an easy question. I unloaded all the knowledge I had picked up about King through the years. He was a hero of mine. Wallace didn’t seem impressed.

“What I’m really asking is, what do you know about how Dr. King did what he did? His inspiration? His motivation? His strategies? He was a brilliant man. But he also had a brilliant plan.”

Wallace then slid a copy of the book Strength to Love by King across his desk and told me to read it.

“If you’re still interested when you’re done, come back and see me,” Wallace said.

I walked down the stairs, went outside, found a shady tree and read, cover-to-cover, the entire book.

The book was a collection of sermons King had delivered during the Civil Rights Movement. King brilliantly wove together non-violent philosophy and his Christian faith in a way that brought new, powerful meaning to stories I had read and listened to in church since I was a kid.

At the heart of King’s book was the idea that loving your enemy isn’t easy. Turning the other cheek is scary. Putting yourself in harm’s way to stand up for justice may go against our self-preservation instinct. It takes strength to really love. It requires sacrifice, forgiveness and a dangerous unselfishness.

King believed it was love, not hate, that would ultimately transform the conflict that had plagued America since 1619 when the first slaves from Africa arrived on American shores.

Wrote King:

“In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”

Changing America would require choosing love over fear. Returning hate with love. That was the genius of King.

Several hours later I was knocking on Wallace’s door again. Nothing in my life would ever be the same. That next fall I was enrolled as a Master’s student at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Wallace was my mediation teacher and taught me how to practice mediation in a radically different way — transformative mediation.

I keep a copy of Strength to Love next to my bed and read from it regularly to remind me of what it will take to change the world.

It will take changing me. Changing my heart toward the people my heart is at war with. It will take strength. It will require dangerous love.

Yes. Love.

I know that’s an odd word to pair with conflict. Let alone the pairing of the words “dangerous” and “love.” But I think it’s the critical word and it is too often missing in our thinking about conflict resolution and peacemaking today.

No, I am not talking about romantic love.

Nor the type of love that really means like. I’m talking about the love that allows us to see the humanity of another person so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to me as my own. The sort of love that illuminates a path toward conflict transformation. When that sort of love takes hold, our views — of ourselves, others, and the conflict itself — transform. We no longer see enemies or others in conflict. We see us. It takes that level of care and concern toward the people we are in conflict with to truly solve the most difficult, intractable challenges we face in life. It takes that type of love to mend relationships in our families. To overcome gridlock in the workplace. To solve for deep partisanship in our communities and countries. To collaborative problem solve with our adversaries internationally.

Fear is about self-preservation. Dangerous love is about us-preservation. Dangerous love transcends that fear. It transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of self-concern: “What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with” and embrace us-concern: “What will happen to us if I don’t?” And while many people hear the word and think “soft” — it is anything but soft. There is nothing “safe” in dangerous love. Dangerous love requires more than courage, it demands fearlessness. It is scary. It takes risks. There will be casualties.

It calls upon us to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves up with no guarantee that the person or people on the other side of the conflict will do the same. No, dangerous love isn’t safe or guaranteed … but it is, on the whole, remarkably effective in transforming our conflicts because it creates space for us to truly see the people we are in conflict in a way that fundamentally changes the dynamics of conflict. I have come to believe this is the only way that we truly transform the conflict in our lives – not only in our families, workplaces and local communities, but also within and between nations.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Dr. King. You changed the course of a country and changed my life and so many others for good. I will keep loving strong and dangerously.

Upcoming Events: Devotionals, Workshops and Interfaith REPAIR!!!!

I have three upcoming events I’d love for you to attend if you have the time.

• First, I will be giving a free public devotional at the Logan Institute of Religion on Utah State’s campus on Friday, January 23rd at 11:30 am. The title of my talk will be "This Teaching is Hard, and Who Can Accept It?"

• Then, on January 29-31, I will be holding our second Transformative Mediation Certification Training on Utah State’s Logan campus. This 40 hour, professional certification training if both for experienced mediators as well as therapists, social workers, business, faith and non-profit leaders as well as educators who want to sharpen their skills in a style of mediation that does more than just get agreements — it transforms relationships. This training was initial sold out, but we had two people move to our April cohort last week. If you’d like to join us, we’d love to have. You can register here!

• Finally, on Thursday, Waymakers announced Interfaith REPAIR workshops! This event is going to be awesome.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 200 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

“Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness from a Presbyterian perspective with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

“Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

“The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

“Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

A few weeks ago I discovered a fellow waymaker in an ancient church in Brugge.

Brugge feels a bit like stepping back into the Middle Ages. Cobblestone streets curve gently past windmills and guild halls. The entire city is surrounded by a canal with seven bridges that allow entrance into the city.

On a recent visit two weeks ago with my wife Amanda and several of my children, one place drew me in more deeply than I expected: the Jerusalem Church, founded in the fifteenth century by Anselm Adornes.

Anselm Adornes was many things at once: a merchant in one of the most international ports in Europe, a traveler who journeyed to the Holy Land beginning in 1470, a mayor, diplomat and mediator navigating political tensions, and a man deeply shaped by encounters with people far different from himself. His life unfolded across Italy, Brugge, Egypt, Jerusalem, and later Scotland—each place leaving its imprint on how he understood the world and the humanity within it.

Brugge in Anselm’s time was one of the great trading ports of the world. Long before passports and global markets, this city was already a meeting place of languages, cultures, and religions. Ships arrived from Africa, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, England, Spain, and beyond. Wool, spices, silks, metals—yes. But also ideas. Beliefs. Ways of seeing the world.

To live in Brugge was to live in difference. Anselm learned his first lessons about humanity there—on the docks, in negotiations, in the fragile trust between strangers who needed one another to survive and prosper. Trade required curiosity. It demanded the ability to see the person across the table not as a threat, but as a human being with dignity, story, and worth.

But it was a visit to the Holy Land that deepened this way of seeing.

On February 19, 1470, Anselm set out with several other companions on a journey that would last more than a year. After his return, the story of that journey was written down in Latin by his son, Jan—a record not just of places visited, but of a worldview expanded.

Traveling to Egypt and the Holy Land in the fifteenth century was not tourism; it was risk, vulnerability, and reliance on others. Anselm encountered faith expressed differently, humanity organized strangely, holiness located in unfamiliar places. Such journeys have a way of unsettling certainty while enlarging compassion.

Their route traced the edges of the known world. They traveled through Genoa and on to Rome, where they were granted an audience with Pope Paul II. From there, the group faced a decision. While many pilgrims chose the safer route through Damascus, Anselm—drawn by curiosity and adventure—opted to travel to the Holy Land via Alexandria.

That choice led them through North Africa and into Egypt, to the Pyramids of Giza, to Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine. For centuries, St. Catherine’s had been a place of refuge for travelers—a sanctuary of hospitality, scholarship, and protection at the crossroads of faiths and empires. To pass through its gates was to encounter a rare space where difference was not merely tolerated, but preserved.

Eventually, they reached Palestine.

In Jerusalem, they were granted a rare permission: to spend two nights and a full day inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The return journey carried them through Damascus, Beirut, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Brindisi—a reminder that pilgrimage is never a straight line. The road loops and bends. It exposes you to peoples and places you did not plan to meet, and in doing so, it quietly reshapes how you see the world.

What emerges from the account of this journey is not triumph or superiority, but humility. Anselm appears genuinely open—to cultures, to people, to complexity. Not merely tolerant, but curious. Not defensive, but expansive.

He seems to arrive at a simple, disarming conclusion: no country and no people stand above another. Those who have traversed the world, the account suggests, come to see that the same forces shape human life everywhere. The stars move as they do for everyone. Fate and fortune govern all people alike, regardless of language, land, or belief.

This openness later showed up in his work as a mediator, where the ability to see humanity on all sides is not optional—it is essential.

One line from the account of his journey has been playing on loop in my head since my visit to the Jerusalem Church:

“There is only one road to Heaven, and it is equally long from all corners of the world.”
— Account of Anselm Adornes’ journey to the Holy Land, 1471

For a man of his time, this is a remarkably generous vision. It acknowledges difference without hierarchy. It refuses the temptation to place one group closer to God, truth, or worth than another.

Everyone walks.
Everyone travels.
Everyone begins from somewhere particular.

The road is equally long.
Not shorter for the familiar.
Not steeper for the stranger.
Not reserved for those who begin in the “right” place.

When Anselm returned home, he did not leave Jerusalem behind. He built it into Brugge.

The Jerusalem Church stands as more than an act of devotion. It is a translation—a physical confession that holiness is not owned by one land or one people. Modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it embodies a conviction formed on the road: that what is sacred elsewhere can shape us here, and that encounter does not diminish faith—it deepens it.

Standing in that church centuries later, I realized why Anselm’s later work as a mediator mattered so much to me. You do not learn to hold opposing sides with dignity unless you have first learned to walk among difference without fear. Waymaking is not merely a skill. It is a way of seeing—a belief that humanity does not disappear when agreement fails.

Anselm’s life suggests that openness is not weakness. Curiosity is not compromise. And seeing the humanity of the other does not threaten our own—it enlarges it.

Standing in the Jerusalem Church, I couldn’t help but think about how urgently we need this way of seeing today.

Anselm’s account describes faith encountered “in many forms and habits,” and the necessity of patience when moving among people who live differently. The road, Anselm seems to discover, is a teacher. It strips away the illusion that one way of being human is the default.

This is what struck me most—not how much Anselm traveled, but how deeply he allowed difference, and the people he encountered, to change him.

We live in a world of difference—cultural, political, religious, ideological. Too often, difference becomes a threat to manage or an enemy to defeat. We reduce people to labels, stories to stereotypes, neighbors to positions. Curiosity collapses into certainty. Humanity shrinks.

The life of Anselm offers a quieter, harder path.

To see people who are different from us first as people.
To remain curious about lives we do not understand.
To believe that dignity does not depend on similarity.

This is the work of the waymaker—not eliminating difference, but learning how to live within it with humility and courage. It is the work of merchants negotiating across cultures, travelers learning new customs, and mediators holding space between competing truths. It is the work of anyone willing to walk the long road with others rather than insisting their corner of the world is the center.

Brugge reminded me that bridges are built not only of stone and wood, but of imagination and empathy. Anselm Adornes reminds me that the road forward—toward peace, toward understanding, toward something like heaven—is long for all of us, and shared by all of us.

As I left the Jerusalem Church and stepped back onto the streets of Brugge, I carried Anselm’s life with me.

There is only one road.
It is long.
It stretches equally from every corner of the world.
The question is not whether we are walking.
It is whether we are willing to walk together.

Transformative Mediation Training

I’m excited to invite you to join the second or third cohort of the Transformative Mediation Certification Program a 40-hour training for a select group of Utah’s leading mediators, attorneys, social workers, educators, and change agents:

Second Cohort:

📍 Utah State University, Heravi Pavillion, Logan, UT
📅 January 29-31, 2026 (30 hours in-person)
💻 Follow-up online modules in 2026 (10 hours)
💲 Tuition: $1500

Third Cohort

📍 Law & Justice Center, SLC, UT
📅 April 16-18, 2026 (30 hours in-person)
💻 Follow-up online modules in 2026 (10 hours)
💲 Tuition: $1500

We would be honored to have you as part of either of these select cohorts, helping set the standard for transformative mediation across Utah and beyond.

Training Highlights

Lead Trainer: Chad Ford, JD, MA
Associate Professor, Utah State University
Internationally recognized mediator, peacebuilder, and author of Dangerous Love

Schedule Overview:

Day 1, Jan 29/April 16: Foundations of Transformative Mediation

Morning (5 hrs)

• Welcome & Orientation

• Conflict 101

• Transformative/Narrative Mediation

• The Inner Work of Mediation

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• The Pre-Mediation Process

• Large-group debrief

• Role Play #1: Pre-mediation interviews + first mediation session (fishbowl).

  • Feedback and group reflection.

• Large-group debrief

Day 2, Jan 30/April 17: Narrative & Relational Dimensions of Mediation

Morning (5 hrs)

• Creating Space

• Working the Conflict Story

• The Worldview Lens: Seeing Beneath the Story

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• The Worldview Lens: Seeing Beneath the Story(cont’d)

• When Things Get Tricky: Handling impasse, escalation, and high emotion

• Role Play #2: Mediating across cultural/religious differences (pairs).

  • Observers provide structured feedback on empowerment and recognition.

• Large-group debrief

Day 3, Jan 31/April 18: Practice Integration, Ethics & Application

Morning (5 hrs)

• Problem-Solving: Transformative Approaches

• Reconciliation

• Ethics in Mediation

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• Integrated Final Role Plays w/ USU students

  • Participants work in rotating mediator roles with full case scenarios.

  • Feedback from trainers and peers.

• Developing Your Mediator Practice

  • Application to legal, social work, HR, community, and academic contexts.

  • Reflecting on personal style and growth areas.

• Closing Circle & Next Steps

  • Preparing for online follow-up modules (specializations).

  • Building a professional network of transformative mediators in Utah.

Online Follow-Up Training (10 Hours)

To ensure participants not only learn but also implement transformative mediation practices, the certification training includes 10 additional hours of online learning and coaching following the in-person sessions.

1. Application Workshops (5 hours)
Two, 2.5-hour online sessions will provide targeted training on applying transformative mediation principles across different contexts. Each session will include demonstrations, case discussions, and small-group practice.

• Divorce & Family Mediation

• Environmental & Community Disputes

• Interfaith & Cross-Cultural Mediation

• Social Work & Human Services

• Workplace & HR Mediation

2. Conflict Coaching Labs (5 hours)
Participants will engage in group-based conflict coaching calls (1 hour each, scheduled across five weeks). These sessions allow participants to:

• Share real-world challenges they are encountering in practice

• Receive feedback and guidance from facilitators

• Troubleshoot common obstacles with peers

• Deepen confidence in applying transformative mediation tools in their professional spheres

Participants who complete the program will receive a Professional Certificate in Transformative Mediation jointly awarded by HPI, UDR, and DB as well as up to 40 hours of CLE credit, including two hours of ethics training.

Come Join Me for a Fireside on January 11th in Logan, Utah

Come join me for a special fireside talking about how to become a better Christian peace builder on January 11th at 6:30 pm at the North Logan Stake Center, 1650 East 2600 North, North Logan, Utah 84341-1669

Something extraordinary happened last weekend.

Fifty-three people—from seasoned professionals to emerging student peacemakers—spent three days together at Utah State University learning to approach conflict in a completely different way.

This was the first cohort of the Transformative Mediation Certification Program, a collaboration between the Heravi Peace Institute (HPI), Utah Dispute Resolution (UDR), and Disagree Better (DB). Our goal: to change how Utah engages with conflict—moving from transactional settlement toward relational transformation.

Day One: The Inner Work of Mediation

We began by grounding in the heart of transformative mediation—the belief, articulated by Robert Baruch Bush and Joseph Folger, that conflict is not simply a problem to fix but an opportunity for growth.

Morning sessions explored:

• Conflict 101—how fear, identity, and power shape our responses.

• Transformative vs. Narrative Mediation—understanding empowerment and recognition as twin pillars of transformation.

• The Inner Work of Mediation—how mediators’ self-awareness and humility set the tone for peace.

In the afternoon, participants stepped into the pre-mediation process—learning to create safety and curiosity before parties ever meet. Watching the first fishbowl role-play, you could feel the room shift. Theories became practice; strangers became collaborators in peace.

Day Two: Working the Story

Day Two invited us into the stories beneath the surface of conflict. We practiced “working the conflict story” and applied the worldview lens—seeing how culture, religion, and experience shape what people believe is at stake.

Role-plays grew more complex: mediating across cultural and religious differences, handling impasse, escalation, and deep emotion. Participants practiced staying open when others closed. They learned to see moments of tension not as failure, but as openings for empathy and recognition.

As one participant reflected,

“Sometimes a new training helps you appreciate how much there is to learn about your field. This was one of those, for me.”

By the end of the day, there was laughter mixed with exhaustion—the good kind that comes from honest, courageous work.

Day Three: Integration and Transformation

The final day brought it all together.

USU’s 26 undergraduate students from the Heravi Peace Institute joined the session to role-play full mediations with the professionals. The energy was electric. Students brought real emotion and authenticity; practitioners brought skill and presence. Together, they created some of the most moving mediations I’ve ever witnessed.

One participant shared:

“It was an amazing training and gave me tools that are helpful in my transformative practice. I was able to do a pre-mediation with one of my own pro se clients yesterday. I’m excited to practice and see it through the full mediation.”

And another captured the spirit of the weekend perfectly:

“Each person here has been in training to become a highly skilled neutral, a space maker, and transformative mediator—someone now able to help parties transform from destructive conflict patterns to peaceful paths. Think of a world abundant with trained, dedicated peacemakers. One good act leads to another.”

When we closed in a circle that afternoon, people didn’t want to leave. They had come to learn about mediation; they left believing in transformation.

Why This Matters

Utah’s current transactional mediation model often focuses on compromise and case settlement—too late in the process and with limited capacity to address family disputes, relational dynamics, and access barriers.

Transformative mediation, pioneered by Robert Baruch Bush and Joseph Folger, shifts the focus to:

• Empowerment – supporting parties to see their own agency in conflict.

• Recognition – encouraging acknowledgement of each other’s perspectives.

• Relational repair – fostering constructive dialogue and resilience.

Research shows this approach leads to greater satisfaction, stronger relationships, and fewer recurring disputes.

Join the Next Cohort

I’m excited to invite you to join the second or third cohort of the Transformative Mediation Certification Program a 40-hour training for a select group of Utah’s leading mediators, attorneys, social workers, educators, and change agents:

Second Cohort:

📍 Utah State University, Heravi Pavillion, Logan, UT
📅 January 29-31, 2026 (30 hours in-person)
💻 Follow-up online modules in 2026 (10 hours)
💲 Tuition: $1500

Third Cohort

📍 Law & Justice Center, SLC, UT
📅 April 16-18, 2026 (30 hours in-person)
💻 Follow-up online modules in 2026 (10 hours)
💲 Tuition: $1500

We would be honored to have you as part of either of these select cohorts, helping set the standard for transformative mediation across Utah and beyond.

Training Highlights

Lead Trainer: Chad Ford, JD, MA
Associate Professor, Utah State University
Internationally recognized mediator, peacebuilder, and author of Dangerous Love

Schedule Overview:

Day 1, Jan 29/April 16: Foundations of Transformative Mediation

Morning (5 hrs)

• Welcome & Orientation

• Conflict 101

• Transformative/Narrative Mediation

• The Inner Work of Mediation

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• The Pre-Mediation Process

• Large-group debrief

• Role Play #1: Pre-mediation interviews + first mediation session (fishbowl).

  • Feedback and group reflection.

• Large-group debrief

Day 2, Jan 30/April 17: Narrative & Relational Dimensions of Mediation

Morning (5 hrs)

• Creating Space

• Working the Conflict Story

• The Worldview Lens: Seeing Beneath the Story

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• The Worldview Lens: Seeing Beneath the Story(cont’d)

• When Things Get Tricky: Handling impasse, escalation, and high emotion

• Role Play #2: Mediating across cultural/religious differences (pairs).

  • Observers provide structured feedback on empowerment and recognition.

• Large-group debrief

Day 3, Jan 31/April 18: Practice Integration, Ethics & Application

Morning (5 hrs)

• Problem-Solving: Transformative Approaches

• Reconciliation

• Ethics in Mediation

Afternoon (5 hrs)

• Integrated Final Role Plays w/ USU students

  • Participants work in rotating mediator roles with full case scenarios.

  • Feedback from trainers and peers.

• Developing Your Mediator Practice

  • Application to legal, social work, HR, community, and academic contexts.

  • Reflecting on personal style and growth areas.

• Closing Circle & Next Steps

  • Preparing for online follow-up modules (specializations).

  • Building a professional network of transformative mediators in Utah.

Online Follow-Up Training (10 Hours)

To ensure participants not only learn but also implement transformative mediation practices, the certification training includes 10 additional hours of online learning and coaching following the in-person sessions.

1. Application Workshops (5 hours)
Two, 2.5-hour online sessions will provide targeted training on applying transformative mediation principles across different contexts. Each session will include demonstrations, case discussions, and small-group practice.

• Divorce & Family Mediation

• Environmental & Community Disputes

• Interfaith & Cross-Cultural Mediation

• Social Work & Human Services

• Workplace & HR Mediation

2. Conflict Coaching Labs (5 hours)
Participants will engage in group-based conflict coaching calls (1 hour each, scheduled across five weeks). These sessions allow participants to:

• Share real-world challenges they are encountering in practice

• Receive feedback and guidance from facilitators

• Troubleshoot common obstacles with peers

• Deepen confidence in applying transformative mediation tools in their professional spheres

Participants who complete the program will receive a Professional Certificate in Transformative Mediation jointly awarded by HPI, UDR, and DB as well as up to 40 hours of CLE credit, including two hours of

Looking Ahead

This pilot training is the first step in a multi-year collaborative plan that will expand Utah’s conflict resolution capacity:

• 2026: Train-the-Trainer workshop and launch of a Graduate Certificate in Conflict Transformation at USU

• 2027: Specialty mediation certifications (family, environmental, interfaith, international, restorative justice)

Our shared goal is to position Utah as a national model for constructive conflict resolution while creating sustainable pathways for professionals and students alike.

Your Role

As part of this cohort, you will not only gain advanced skills but also help shape the future of mediation in Utah. Together, we can build a statewide culture of constructive conflict engagement—across families, communities, institutions, and courts.

Space is limited to 25 participants.

You can read more information about the certificate and register here: https://artsci.usu.edu/peace-institute/transformative-mediation-certification-training

We look forward to the possibility of working alongside you in this groundbreaking initiative.

“As I get closer to the end of my life’s journey, I have felt the desire to leave something about me for my children so that they might know me and what makes me, me,” Hank wrote to his ten adult children.

“But first let me say that I respect all, especially my children, to have diverse opinions that are different from mine. Again, this is about me.”

Hank’s letter began by telling his life story, but later in the letter he shared his beliefs about politics, race, sexuality and religion.

Throughout his letter, he would interject pre-emptive defenses against what he knew might be strong opposition from his children, “My political and religious feelings have been with me from a young age. They have not been from talk radio or Fox News. They only confirm, for the most part, what I already know.”

Rebecca, one of Hank’s daughters, was furious when she read the letter. “How dare he!” she cried on the phone to one of her sisters. “He’s so selfish. He just wants to make us believe what he believes. He doesn’t understand or respect people. He wants to shove his awful political beliefs on us. He’s being brainwashed by cable news.” She called several other family members who had also received the letter. Some sided with her. Some with their father.

Rebecca eventually picked up the phone and called Hank. What happened next only deepened the wound. She called him racist. A sexist. She couldn’t understand how her father could ever support someone like Donald Trump and his agenda. The phone call lasted four hours. Both Rebecca and Hank left the call deeply wounded.

I’ve been a mediator for 15 years and seen just about everything. Over the last several years, Hank and Rebecca’s story has become a familiar one. I’m in awe of what seems to be a deepening divide of mistrust, anger and frustration around politics taking place within families. It’s been well documented that our political polarization has taken a massive toll on our country. But it’s also pulling apart families.

“I’m afraid to even call home these days,” one of my students said. “I just can’t stomach what I’m going to hear. I’ve lost my parents to Fox News.”

“I’m afraid to even call my child these days,” said the frustrated parent of one of my students. “They have changed since they went to the university. I don’t recognize them anymore. They’re being brainwashed.”

On social media, people are unfriending family and friends that hold different or offensive beliefs. Others are avoiding any interaction with anyone who doesn’t see politics or social views their way.

“What’s the point?” one colleague said. “I’ve lost all respect for them. It’s made me question whether staying in relationship with them is even worth it anymore.”

“They are deceived,” another colleague said. “How can I respect someone who is so easily manipulated by fake news? It’s time to cut them out of my life. Good riddance.”

The problem of political and social polarization has reached a boiling point in the United States and in many other countries around the world.

As conflict escalates, anger, vitriol and blame limit our ability to engage in the sort of collaborative problem solving we need to transform the biggest problems that face us today: from a global pandemic, to racial and economic injustice.

When even family members can’t seem to have constructive or civil discussion about the problems we face, we are in trouble … but things are not hopeless

No matter how intense or intractable the polarization, we have the capacity to transform this division into something more constructive in ways that show strength of character, accountability for our own ways of seeing the world and openness to the needs and concerns of others.

We have the capacity to dangerously love our enemies.

Practicing dangerous love doesn’t mean we have to agree with people who hold different beliefs than ourselves. Or that we have to like their political or social beliefs. We can even actively be working or campaigning against their beliefs while still showing love and respect for them.

Dangerous love isn’t about conformity of giving in. It’s about caring enough about a person that their needs matter as much to me as my own and being committed to finding ways to get all of our needs met.

Politics is often a zero-sum game. It is about power and self-preservation. Dangerous Love is about us-preservation. It is not a game. It is a deeply committed approach to finding solutions that work for all of us.

We are in desperate need of dangerous love right now, in our homes, in our communities and in the world.

To cultivate dangerous love, I think three critical principles need to be considered:

1. Seeing people as people. This means switching from an inward to an outward mindset toward others and striving to see their needs as equally valid as our own. Others are no longer obstacles to overcome, or vehicles to be used or even irrelevant. They are people with whom we can empathize and feel compassion toward — even when they don’t see us that way. And even when their political and social beliefs differ from my own.

One way we can get better at seeing people as people is to spend more time building relationships and listening and less time teaching or correcting. When we do make time with people, make sure that it isn’t spent just fixing them or teaching them. Do things for the sake of the relationship. Listen without an agenda.

These political divides often are just exposing pre-existing fault lines in a relationship. It was clear from short conversations with both Hank and Rebecca that they were feeling disconnected before the letter. The letter just exposed an already ailing relationship.

In fact, one of Hank’s children said simply, “Don’t write me a letter telling me what you believe. Just spend time with me.” That’s telling.

Had Hank, instead of writing the letter, reached out to Rebecca and asked to spend more time with her, or just to listen and learn more about her, he likely would’ve had a different outcome. The same holds true to Rebecca. If she had taken the letter as an attempt by Hank to engage and to help her see why Hank thinks and believes the way that he does, I think she would’ve reacted differently.

Often times the people in our life that we love are sharing their political and social beliefs with us because they care about us. Those beliefs are important to them. They feel like those beliefs are part of their identity and could be helpful to us. It’s rarely done to create offense.

Yes, there are occasions when our family members are crossing the line between sharing and abuse. There are also real power imbalances that may be at play that may make a conversation uncomfortable without agreed upon ground rules. Toxic and abusive relationships are an unfortunate reality in families. If that is what is happening, then creating physical and emotional boundaries may be the best approach.

However, sharing an offensive belief doesn’t alone make the person sharing it a bad person, nor the sharing of the belief, alone, abusive. Unfortunately, when we fail to see people as people, anything they say or believe that doesn’t align with our own way of seeing the world tends to create offense.

I’ve been working in conflict mediations and programs in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians for over a decade. If their political and social beliefs or power imbalances, alone, were disqualifiers from having collaborative problem-solving sessions, there would never be any progress.

While dangerous love doesn’t require that we enter into or stay in an abusive relationship, it does require us to see the humanity of and try to work with people that hold beliefs that aren’t what we believe.

2. Turning first. This involves an inside-outside transformation. To solve difficult conflicts takes looking inward and asking ourselves, “In what ways may I not be seeing these people correctly? What assumptions have I brought to this conflict?” This is the opposite of the blaming and dehumanization that often plagues conflicts.

One way we can get better at turning first is to get intensely curious about them and where their perspectives come from. When we feel connected to people and people feel connected to us, the chances that we fall out of dangerous love diminish. Regularly check in with people about how they are feeling, what they are struggling with, and how you might help.

When conflict does rear its head, take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What is it that I don’t understand?” When we are seeing people as objects, we are quick to make assumptions about motives and character.

When a family member shares a political or social belief that we find offensive – we get curious about what lies underneath that belief. Why do they feel so strongly about that? What is in their life story that makes them believe what they do? What sort of fears or dreams do they have that aren’t being met? The question “why” is a magic one. The more you ask why, the more understanding you’ll have and the better you’ll be able to find a collaborative solution to your problems.

When family members share misinformation (a major problem right now on social media) that you know to be false, instead of yelling “Fake News” ask them about the sources that they are relying on. Ask them if any other sources are out there that can verify it. Ask them how confident they are that the Facebook post that the reposted is the whole story. Telling people they are wrong almost always leads to resistance. Asking people to look at their beliefs more carefully and deeply can lead to deeper introspection and understanding.

The more understanding we have, the deeper our ability to find solutions that work for both of us. Hank wrote the letter to help Rebecca see his humanity. Rebecca made the phone call to help Hank see hers. But neither were attempting to see each other. That’s why the conflict escalated. They both were waiting for each other to turn. When we are stuck in conflict, that can be a very long wait.

3. Inviting collaborative problem-solving. When faced with conflict with another person, commit to finding solutions that meet the needs of all of us. It doesn’t mean avoiding or giving in to the conflict, but engaging with the other person with respect for both that person’s needs and our own.

Seeing someone as a person and turning first doesn’t mean we agree on things. In fact, we can dangerously love someone and still feel strongly that the other person is wrong.

“So . . . what should I do?”

What should we do when we are concerned that a family member is acting or supporting racist, sexist, anti-religious, or anti-democratic policies or leaders?

“That depends,” a wise conflict professor once told me years ago when I was in grad school. “It’s been my experience that the theory of the conflict often leads us to its solution.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” I responded. “So, what’s your theory of the conflict?”

“Actually, the question is, what’s your theory of the conflict?” he replied. “I’ve found that either we can be right or we can have peace. It’s pretty hard to have both. My question to you is, do you want to be right or do you want peace?”

Typically, in conflict we want to be right. We want validation. We want to change others.

As I’ve gotten older and been through hundreds of mediations, my perspective has changed.

Often, in conflict, being “right” isn’t “right” at all and the way we pursue “peace” doesn’t actually bring “peace.”

Instead of being concerned with who is right and who is wrong, we ask ourselves a related but fundamentally different question … “Am I right with this person.” Are we seeing them and valuing this relationship? And if we truly did, couldn’t we work together to find solutions that work for both of us and not just me?”

Is there a way to stand for racial justice, diversity and equity and still show respect for family members who see such a stand as a threat to the way they have viewed the world in the past? Is there a way to stand by values you hold dear and still show concern and respect for family who are striving to have more inclusive or open values?

I believe there is.

Is there a way to work together to hold the past, present and future together? Can we be both humble and committed? Determined but flexible? Dedicated to change while still showing respect for those that feel threatened by it? Patriotic while still being alive to pain that so many have felt and suffered at the hands of our country?

If we can’t do it with our loved ones, with the people we came into this life with, how are we ever going to do it in our communities and in our country? How will we ever get back to the principles, never fully realized, that make us – us.

Hank almost got it right in his letter. Changing one word would have changed everything else that he wrote and the reaction from all of his children.

“But first let me say that I respect all, especially my children, to have diverse opinions that are different from mine. Again, this is about …” not “me”, but “us”.

This is about us.

This post was originally published on October 29, 2020.

“The news that Israel and Gaza have signed a cease-fire agreement — hostages and prisoners released, fighting stopped, aid flowing in — brings a moment of relief after years of unbearable suffering.

For families of those held captive or killed, deep mourning now coexists with the fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, this is a turning point. As someone who has spent two decades working on peacebuilding initiatives with Israelis and Palestinians, I’m grateful they’re experiencing even a brief respite from a generational conflict.

“This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” President Donald Trump declared after the hostages were released.

It can be — if this cease-fire is followed by courageous, sustained efforts toward peace.

Cease-fires are the pause before the real work begins. True peace cannot be negotiated solely in conference rooms. It must be built — slowly, locally and relationally — by people who have the courage to see one another’s humanity again and the skills to rebuild trust and community.”

Read my full analysis in the Deseret News:

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/10/14/lasting-peace-in-the-middle-east-depends-on-transformed-relationships/

Seventy Times Seven Audiobook is Here

It’s taken us a few months … but the Seventy Times Seven audiobook is finally here!

I read the book and I hope you find it’s a whole new way to enjoy 70x7

You can order the audiobook (as well as the print and digital book) on:

Amazon.com/Audible and Deseret Book NOW!

Note that both Amazon and Deseret Book are offering the audiobook for free with a subscription to Audible or Deseret Bookshelf.

REPAIR is just a week away!

We are almost sold out of tickets, however there are a few remaining tickets for a few of the workshops. My Mediation 101 and Dangerous Love workshops are sold out, but there are a few seats left for my 70x7 workshop and my workshop with Patrick Mason and Katie Searle on Faith Transitions on Saturday, October 24.

If you’ve been on the fence about joining us, now is the time as we will close ticket sales on October 20th.

Tickets are $50 per workshop. Use code “REPAIRBUNDLE” to receive a 20% off discount of admission to two or more different workshops

Here’s what’s available:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

JENNIFER FINLAYSON-FIFE: “From Conflict to Connection: Creating Peace in Marriage” (2 seats available)

THOMAS MCCONKIE: “Divine Vulnerability: The Body as Sacred Vessel for Peacemaking” (2 seats left)

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(3 seats left)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD: “Parenting from the Inside Out: Raising Teens with Presence and Peace” (3 seats available)

JENNIFER THOMAS & EMMA ADDAMS: “Repair in Polarized Times” (3 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

SEAMUS FITZGERALD: “Wayfinding on Waves of Peace” (4 seats available)

CHAD FORD: “70x7: Navigating Conflict Jesus’s Way” (7 seats available)

THE ONE AMERICA MOVEMENT: “The Roots of Polarization” (10 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD & MELISSA MASON: “Peacemaking from the Inside Out: The Inner Work of Repair” (8 seats available)

DESMOND LOMAX: “Getting Ready: How to Engage Conflict within Yourself with Purpose & Authenticity” (3 seats available)

CLAIR CANFIELD: “Acquainted with Grief: Finding our Way Back to Wholeness” (5 seats available)

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(8 seats available)

CHAD FORD, PATRICK MASON & KATIE SEARLE: “Preserving Love in Faith Transitions” (10 seats available)

JENNIFER THOMAS & EMMA ADDAMS: “Repair in Polarized Times”(80 seats available) (8 seats available)

Get tickets to REPAIR

In my first year of graduate school, I mustered up the courage to walk into my professor’s office to ask him for some advice about a family conflict I was enmeshed in.

I had been studying conflict for a full semester and realized I had more problems than I cared to admit. I knew I needed help. The problem was that I didn’t want my professor to think poorly of me. I had to find a way to explain the conflict to him without looking like the bad guy.

I carefully thought about how to tell my story. I even wrote it down to make sure that at no point in the story would it look like I shouldn’t be in his class.

I was nervous walking into his office that day. I knew he was a conflict expert. I was afraid he was going to see right through me.

I spent roughly 10 minutes explaining the conflict to him. He listened without saying a word. When I was done, there was silence.

“So … what should I do?” I finally asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything.

“I’ve found that we can either be right or we can have peace. It’s pretty hard to have both. My question to you is, do you want to be right? Or do you want peace?”

I was annoyed. Of course, I wanted both.

It took me a while to understand that I can be right and wrong simultaneously. I might be “right” on the facts but still deeply “wrong” in the relationship.

“But sometimes, don’t you have to stand your ground?” I’ve repeatedly been asked when presenting the idea of inside-outside work. “I mean, what if you are right? What if you do have the truth? Justice occurs when right and truth prevail!”

I don’t think people are referring to property rights when asking about standing your ground. This isn’t a dispute about ownership or boundaries. What they are asking is, in essence, when others’ truths conflict with my own, isn’t the right thing to do to stand up for my truth?

Which right? Which truth? Some rights or truths are more profound than other.

What I do affects others, and what others do affects me. There is no ground we stand on that is entirely our own. We have to stop seeing the world as us versus them.

William Ury, the author of Getting to Yes with Yourself, offers this admission after thirty years of work as a mediator—

Gradually, over the decades of mediating in a variety of difficult conflicts, from family feuds and boardroom battles to labor strikes and civil wars, I have come to the conclusion that the greatest obstacle to getting what we really want in life is not the other party, as difficult as he or she can be. The biggest obstacle is actually ourselves. . . .

Underlying our poor reactions in moments of conflict is an adversarial “win-lose” mindset, the assumption that either we can get what we want or they can—but not both. . . . Even if we want to cooperate, we are afraid that the other person will take advantage of us. What sustains this “win-lose” mindset is a sense of scarcity, the fear that there is just not enough to go around, so we need to look out for ourselves even at the expense of others. All too often, the result of such “win-lose” thinking is that all sides lose.

Hawaiians have a word for it — it’s ho’oponopono. Pono means “to make right.” Ponopono means “the most right.” And the most “right” thing in Hawaiian means to restore the relationship.

It’s a deep recognition that the only true pono is ponopono.

How do I still hold to my truth while struggling with others that hold a different one?

It’s by prioritizing our truths. We do this every day. In every relationship.

For me, it’s making sure that the truth I hold closest to me, the one I defend the fiercest, is the one that tells me that the only way to win, the only path to sustainable safety, is together.

We stand on this ground together. And when we acknowledge that and insist on finding solutions that honor that idea, we are practicing the only truth that really makes wrong things right again.

Upcoming Events

Sept 18: “Peacemaking and Discipleship” Live Podcast with Jennifer Walker Thomas of MWEG and the Proclaim Peace Podcast. UVU Fulton Library, Room 120, 800 W University Parkway, Orem, Utah (7 pm)

Sept 26: "When Loved Ones Journey Away: Adventures in Peacemaking" Breakout Session with Patrick Mason. Faith Matters RESTORE conference. Orem, Utah. Friday, Sept 26, from 12:00-2:30.

Oct 3: “By Small and Simple Things” Wonders of Scripture Series. BYU, Provo, Utah 3714 HBLL (11 am).

October 23-25: REPAIR Workshops in Provo, UT
Come join myself, Jim Ferrell, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Thomas McConkie, Patrick Mason, Jennifer Thomas, Emma Addams and more for transformative conflict workshops on October 23-25 in Provo, Utah.

Get tickets to REPAIR

Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Emeritus Professor, University of Michigan and Partner, The RBL Group (dou@umich.edu) and I recently collaborated on a LinkedIn post on how the best leaders handle conflict. I thought all of my readers would enjoy this!

Destructive conflict shows up in many settings: national hostilities, political or ideological disagreements, social media rants and comments, popular television shows encouraging tension, family disputes, and organizational disagreements. A Stanford survey of CEOs found that nearly 43 percent of CEOs rated “conflict management skills” as the biggest need in their job. And a CEO Benchmarking Report from the Predictive Index found that 36 percent of CEOs say that their number one challenge is dealing with interpersonal conflicts in the workplace. Fifty-eight percent of CEOs reported mediating interpersonal conflicts among team members at least once a month.

Destructive conflict in organizations can lead to a hostile, dysfunctional, and unproductive work environment. Such work environments are far too common and negatively impact mental health, retention, productivity,culture, and business results. To overcome these challenges, business and HR leaders need to sharpen their peacemaking skills. Peacemaking business and HR leaders turn destructive, polarizing conflicts into innovative, constructive, and collaborative discussions.

Chad has served as a conflict mediator for decades in family, organizational, and international conflicts. Chad and Dave have worked with hundreds of leaders to help them transform contempt into respect, differences into innovation, and polarization into cooperation.

So how do the best leaders become peacemakers? They keep the right mindset about conflict and turn the most destructive conflicts into collaboration.

Mindset

1. All organizations have conflict. Leaders need to embrace that conflict is normal, healthy, and a fact of life. Successful organizations do not lack conflict; rather, how leaders manage conflict affects the organization’s ability to successfully deliver results. When conflict arises, peacemaking leaders recognize a team’s struggle to collaboratively solve problems. They then give the team tools to navigate their differences and find innovative solutions.

2. Great leaders don’t avoid conflict; they step into it. Transforming conflict into collaboration should be a priority for any business leader, particularly HR leaders who should model peacemaking and design and deliver HR practices that institutionalize it. Of the five major styles for handling conflict (avoid, accommodate, compete, compromise, and collaborate), we’ve found that the predominate style is avoidance. When leaders avoid conflict, it festers; and leaders signal to managers and employees that conflict is scary or problematic. When a conflict can no longer be avoided, leaders resort to either accommodate (if leaders desire to be loved) or compete (if leaders prioritize being right). Neither of those are ideal either. The best leaders see conflict as an opportunity to engage, listen, take in new ideas, and wrestle with problems until they find solutions that work for everyone (collaborate). They see conflict as an opportunity to grow and innovate, not as a flaw or something to be avoided. Want to know your conflict style? You can take a test here.

Peacemaking Skills

1. Prioritize relationships. People make up organizations. And people thrive or wither depending on the health and strength of their relationships. But unfortunately, relationships are at the root of most organization conflicts. Organizational leadership guru Jim Ferrell has worked with Withiii to show that when we approach conflict as a relational problem and not just an individual or structural problem, the quicker and more easily we get to the root of conflicts and break down barriers to collaboration. Strong relationships revolve around respecting differences, sharing information, working together harmoniously, and making collaborative decisions. And those relationships start at the top. If your relationships are fractured, you must start there.

2. Listen to learn. Conflict often turns destructive because we make assumptions about those we disagree with. Often, we assume people resist us, instead of our ideas, and we attach bad motives. When we do this, we falsely see others and invite the very situation we assumed: they resist us and not just our ideas. When people disagree, ask questions. Lots of them. Seek to go deeper. Listen to others’ positions and then find out the why beneath them. Why are they interested in pursuing a different path? What values are informing their position? How do they define these values or pursue them? What sort of cultural and religious worldviews might be affecting how they see the issue or the conflict? What needs are they concerned about fulfilling? Figure 1 illustrates the levels we can explore to better understand others, leading to solutions that work for everyone.

3. Don’t call others out—call them in. If someone in the organization has engaged in bad behavior, we may be tempted to either ignore it (avoid) or crush the person. Do neither. Calling them out severs a relationship. But calling them in for a conversation invites people to be accountable for their actions by reaffirming that their actions affect everyone in the organization. Lorretta Ross writes:

“[Calling out is] the tendency . . . for people to want to publicly shame and humiliate people. . . . It’s attaching labels to people without really doing any kind of nuance. Without understanding that even if you disagree with someone, you shouldn’t want to attack their humanity. . . . [Calling in is] done with love and respect. Because you’re really seeking to hold people accountable for the potential harm that they cause, but you’re not going to lose sight of the fact that you’re talking to another human being. And so you extend a hand of active love and active listening to help them.”

4. Invite reconciliation. There’s a tendency for leaders to want to settle conflict as quickly as possible by agreeing on a solution and moving on without addressing the underlying relational issues. We do so at our own peril. We might temporarily “solve” a problem only to have it resurface again and again. Problem solving isn’t really problem solving without reconciliation. Conflict mediator Donna Hicks (in her outstanding book, Leading with Dignity) writes:

“The glue that holds all of our relationships together is the mutual recognition of the desire to be seen, heard, listened to, and treated fairly: to be recognized, understood, and to feel safe in the world. When our identity is accepted and we feel included, we are granted a sense of freedom and independence and a life filled with hope and possibility.”

When people don’t feel seen, listened to, or treated fairly, the quickest way to reconcile this is to give them the very thing they feel deprived of. When we ensure that during conflict employees feel recognized, understood, and safe, we improve mental health, retention, culture, productivity, and business performance.

5. Lead by example. Leaders are just that: leaders. If you haven’t been listening, start listening. If you’ve offended someone, apologize. If you’ve made a mistake, own it. If you turned a disagreement into a personal attack, call yourself in and reframe it. Leaders set the culture for their organization. How leaders handle mistakes, disagreements, and conflict will set the tenor for an entire organization. In fact, leaders should ideally be practicing these principles consistently for three months before teaching them to managers and employees. When leaders model peacemaking by managing conflict, others will learn from their example. Then when it comes time to teach or create a new culture, employees will follow because they’ve seen it working. Ideally, HR professionals model peacemaking, coach others, and design HR practices that institutionalize peacemaking.

In a world and in organizations with too much toxicity, polarization, and hostility, changing mindset about and mastering skills of conflict resolution helps HR and business leaders become peacemakers.

Start Close In

Our Where Peace Begins film series continues this week with one of my favorites, Start Close In, with Thomas McConkie.

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

- David Whyte

Thomas teaches that if we pay intimate attention to our hearts, we can recognize where we feel that pinch of disturbance—that place that we want to avoid. If we have the courage and humility to show up there with love, new life opens up.

“My belief is that conflict is grace in disguise. When we unmask it and realize what an opportunity it is to follow it into a new life, we give thanks that God has blessed us with this conflict.”

More Events Coming …

I’ve got a few more events coming up …

On Thursday I’m at the Harvard Divinity School talking about my new book 70x7

Click here to get more information about the event!

I’m also doing a one-hour Dangerous Love event with Mountain Mediation our of Park City on June 1st at 6 pm.

Click here to get tickets!

The world needs more mediators — people who are skilled at stepping into conflict and creating space so others can successfully navigate their own challenges.

Mediators are waymakers. They help people who feel stuck in conflict make a way out of no way.

In our increasingly intricate world, grasping the underlying causes, conditions, and dynamics of conflicts is essential for comprehending our relationships at home, at work, and globally.

Peacemaking is, of course, a mindset. How we think about conflict and how we see others while we are in conflict is always the bedrock to any real sustainable work. Learning how to navigate our own conflicts is critical to any peacebuilding model.

However, peacemaking also demands a specialized skill set. Mediation possesses some incredibly effective tools. Regrettably, there is a shortage of individuals with the inclination and expertise to guide others successfully through conflicts.

I’ve been working as a mediator for over twenty five years in virtually every setting imaginable — family, organizations, communities and internationally in larger scale religious and sociopolitical conflicts.

One great thing about mediation is that you never run out of work to do. There are so many needs at all of those levels and too few options for people that find themselves stuck in destructive conflict cycles.

When I say mediation, I want to distinguish between transactional mediation and the type of work I do, which is transformative mediation.

Transactional versus Transformative Mediation

Most places in the United States use a transactional mediation model. This model focuses on solving problems and reaching agreements in court. The main goal is to help people reach a practical agreement, often through compromise, to avoid the time and money of a trial. Transactional mediation is great at resolving cases quickly, but it often only looks at the immediate issue and doesn’t consider the underlying relationships between the parties.

Transactional mediation can be a helpful way to resolve disputes. But it’s often used only after people go to court, which can make things take longer to get sorted out. By the time people get to mediation, they may have already paid a lot of money in legal fees, been stressed out by preparing for court, and experienced the negative atmosphere of the court. This not only makes it take longer to resolve disputes, but it also makes it harder for people who want to resolve conflicts without the high costs of lawyers or the formalities of court. For many people, especially those who don’t have much money, the transactional model tied to the court system can be too expensive or not available to them.

In contrast, transformative mediation is a more accessible alternative. It gives people the chance to address disputes before they turn into legal battles, which can save them money and reduce stress.

The current system is particularly tricky when it comes to family disputes. It focuses on quick fixes over the long-term well-being of kids and parents. Many judges and lawyers I’ve talked to feel overwhelmed by the most complicated, emotional, and divisive family conflicts they deal with every day.

Transformative mediation is a creative way to help people deal with conflicts before they turn into legal battles. It’s a great way to save money and reduce stress. In transformative mediation, the focus is on empowering people and recognizing their worth. Instead of just fixing the problem, transformative mediation helps people change how they interact with each other. It encourages self-reflection, understanding, and taking control of their lives. This goes beyond just finding a solution; it addresses the root causes of conflicts and helps people build better relationships. In the end, transformative mediation leads to more lasting and satisfying results for everyone involved.

Robert Baruch Bush and Joseph Folger popularized the approach in the early 2000s with their groundbreaking book The Promise of Mediation. Since then scholars and practitioners like John Winslade, Gerald Monk, Sarah Cobb, Benard Mayer and Kenneth Cloke and have taken grown the field of transformative mediation. Wislade and Monk’s narrative mediation is very useful in transformative mediation. This approach focuses on changing how the parties see conflict by looking at the stories they bring to mediation. It’s about breaking down negative conflict stories and building new stories that make it easier to work together.

Getting Transformative Mediation Training

During my first year at Utah State, I’ve been working on developing mediation training both through classes (our first PI 3010 - Transformative Mediation class launches this Fall at USU), trainings in the community.

I’ve got a big one coming up with the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution (UCCR) on Friday and one later in August with Mountain Mediation in Park City.

If you are interested in these concepts and would like some tools right away, I’d love to see you there!

Over the course of the next few months we will be developing a professional 40 hour training in transformative mediation. If you have any interest in learning mediation skills for the first time or taking your mediation skills to the next level, message me and I’ll get you on the list for our first cohort. Or, if you are looking for a mediator for your organization or family that possesses transformative mediation skills, you can message me below.

Peacemaking Jesus’s Way

Just a reminder Pastor Jamie White of the First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City has invited me to come and have a conversation with her and her congregation entitled “Peacemaking Jesus’s Way” this Sunday, May 18th at 6 pm at the First Presbyterian Church.

All are welcome and I promise that we will have an engaging “interfaith” discussion with lots of space for discussion with the crowd.

I think this is going to be a very special event and hope you will consider coming.

New Where Peace Begins Film

Finally, our Where Peace Begins, film series continues this week …

When going through her divorce, Dr. LaShawn Williams once leaned her head against the wall and imagined she was leaning her head on the shoulder of Jesus. She prayed for a heart at peace.

Conflict often makes us feel helpless, unsure of ourselves and unsure of the future. In this video, “A Peaceful Heart,” LaShawn shares about opening her heart when her life situation felt beyond her control. She found deep wisdom in The Peacegiver by James Ferrell, who used the language “ungird your heart.” Ungirding usually refers to relinquishing our weapons. When we ungird our hearts, LaShawn explains, we find that we don’t need the violence that we thought we needed.

With a heart at peace,

“You see [the other person]; their fullness, their potential, their dignity, their humanity. You see them from a lens of love. And you know that its not just you. You realize its you seeing in a godly way. Maybe its once, maybe its more than once — but if you can get that one time to see as god sees, it never leaves you; it changes you.”

Watch it here!

Seventy Times Seven at Harvard

Finally, if you are in the Boston area next week I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School on May 24th at 6 pm.

If you’d like to attend, you can RSVP below!

RSVP

One of the first drafts of my book, Dangerous Love, included an entire chapter relating it to my favorite film growing up — Star Wars.

Entitled “The Force Is Not With Us,” it was my favorite chapter in the book. Alas, my editor at Berrett-Koehler was not a fan, and it didn’t make it into the book.

When I launched my website, I included an edited version of the chapter, which you can read here!

A year later, I recorded my favorite podcast of all time with one of my former students, Tim Rasmussen.

He was working on a project for his peacebuilding Master’s program at Eastern Mennonite University called PopViolence, which explored the intersection between violence and peace in pop culture.

My episode was on Star Wars and how it influenced a number of key ideas in Dangerous Love.

We explored the Force, the difference between blowing up Death Stars and using Dangerous Love to defeat the dark side, and why Obi-Wan Kenobi is the real villain of the trilogy.

You can listen to it on Spotify

and Apple Music

If you are a Star Wars fan I promise it’s worth it!

In the last five years, I’ve done more than a hundred Dangerous Love and Seventy Times Seven workshops. There are two questions that come up in nearly every workshop.

“What about Hitler?” or some version of my spouse, teenager, boss, neighbor, etc., is a horrible person and I don’t believe Dangerous Love will work on them (I’ll save my response to that for another post, but notice how that’s really more of a statement than a question).

The second is the question I want to address today.

“Can I practice Dangerous Love or Seventy Times Seven and still practice boundaries toward the person I’m struggling with?”

The answer is yes, but it’s complicated. There are good boundaries and bad boundaries.

The poet Robert Frost famously wrote “Good fences make good neighbors” in his poem The Mending Wall. I have had that line from the poem quoted to me hundreds of times as people push back against the peacemaking ideas in Dangerous Love and Seventy Times Seven.

Yes, boundaries can be an effective way of managing conflict.

But … boundaries also have a way of exacerbating conflict by putting barriers where barriers shouldn’t exist.

I think a much smaller group of people have actually read the entire poem by Frost. The poem begins with Frost meeting his neighbor at a rock wall that delineates his property from his neighbors. Parts of the wall have come down and he and his neighbor are mending it. Frost begins to wonder why. His neighbor’s land is all pine trees. Frost’s land is all apple orchards. Frost begins to question whether they really need to rebuild the wall.

Here’s a longer excerpt that more accurately reflects Frost’s views on boundaries.

The poem ends with the neighbor repeating the phrase, “Good fences make good neighbors,” but Frost doesn’t seem convinced, noting that his neighbor “moves in darkness, it seems to me,” and attributing the phrase to the rigid traditionalism of his father.

The poem has been used to justify nationalism, national borders, immigration and has been the mantra of the “boundaries are the key to good relationships” crowd for a long time.

Instead, I think the poem is an appropriate metaphor for the good and bad uses of boundaries. Frost isn’t necessarily against boundaries, but the poem does invite us to think before imposing them, to ask “What [we are] walling in or walling out.”

The What, the How, the Why of Boundaries

Like so many things in conflict, the key to effective boundaries has less to do with “what” the boundary is and more to do with “why” and “how” I set the boundary.

The “what” part is behavioral.

For example, I can choose to limit my interactions with a person by restricting communication to text messages instead of in-person interactions. I can choose to unfollow someone on social media. I can choose not to be alone with someone. I can choose to end a marriage.

All of those moves are behavioral. I am changing a pattern of interaction in a relationship.

These types of changes can be very effective. I find that people in destructive conflict are typically trapped in patterns that are exacerbating the conflict. If the current pattern you are in isn’t working — you find yourself constantly feeling anxiety or stress, or trying to just avoid the person altogether — it’s time for a change. This is especially true when the relationship is abusive, physically or emotionally. Getting out of harm’s way is a must if I’m ever going to reconcile.

The “why” and “how” part are the mindset I bring to conflict. It’s “how” I am seeing the person I am in conflict with and the resulting “whys” that begin to construct the conflict narrative that I tell about myself and them.

And here is where boundaries can get really messy.

Bad Boundaries

If I am seeing someone as an “It” or an “object” … and the reason for the boundary is to exclude, cut off, exile, estrange, humiliate, or punish others, boundaries can actually make the conflict worse, not better.

Most of the time, when people are asking me about boundaries, they are talking about the latter.

Here’s a brief video clip of me talking about bad boundaries at the Compass last week.

If boundaries are just more conflict avoidance. If they are just a way to mask or bury a destructive conflict, they can do more harm than good.

Good Boundaries

If I am seeing someone as a “Thou” or as a person … and the reason for the boundary is to improve the relationship, to invite reconciliation, to help us be neighborly, it can be a powerful tool for good.

Good boundaries reaffirm a powerful truth — we are in a relationship and I’m not trying to sever it.

Here’s a quote from Seventy Times Seven about the difference between “calling out” which is exclusionary and “calling in” which is inclusive.

When we call in, we recognize that there has been a breach between you and me. That breach has caused separation and distance. The call-in is an invitation to move into a space

where we can reconcile our diffrences and replace disconnection with connection in a way that makes us whole.

The people of Oceania have multiple words for this process. In Hawaiian, it’s ho’oponopono. Pono means “to make right.” Ponopono means “the most right,” which in Hawaiian is to restore the relationship. In Tonga, the idea of tauhi vā is about the maintenance of social spaces and “the value and practice of keeping good relations with kin and friends.”

Calling out can be “right” or pono. Calling in is ponopono because it leads to reconciliation. It is creating spaces that invite connection all around us.

Good boundaries come with an understanding that implementing them may be hurtful to others. Others may find that our boundaries are restricting the relationship they wish to have with us. Understanding this doesn’t need to change the behavioral part of our boundary, but it should fill us with a sense of empathy and with a desire to use the boundary as a temporary tool to increase, not decrease, our ability to connect.

If our boundaries truly are about finding better ways to connect, to reconcile, and make things right — they have a high chance of succeeding.

The “what” you choose from a boundaries perspective will matter less than the “how” and “why.”

Carrying vs. Rolling Away Stones

This is one of those moments where we need to take an honest and deep inventory of our “hows” and “whys.”

Am I approaching the conflict from the perspective of, “They need to change for this conflict to end. However, they seem unwilling to change. Therefore, they are toxic and I need to cut them off”?

Are my boundaries a way of throwing stones meant to try to both protect myself and/or hurt others?

Or am I approaching the conflict from the perspective of, “We are caught in a destructive conflict cycle. That cycle needs to end. And it ends by me choosing different behaviors and perhaps even creating boundaries, so that we can find our way back to reconciliation.”

Are my boundaries a way of rolling away stones, and changing our ways of seeing and acting in a relationship in a way that encourages more positive interactions in the future?

The differences in those two approaches will point to whether the boundary will be successful or not.

But how will I know? Sometimes it’s easy to rationalize bad boundaries, especially when the current interactions are hurting us.

I use something called the “Grocery Store Test”.

Say I created a boundary that severely restricts my interaction with another person. Several years later, while grocery shopping, I turn into an aisle and see them.

Am I at peace? Can I stop briefly and say hello? Does my heart feel connected to them, even if I haven’t seen them in a while? We’ve all had experiences like this: we bump into an old acquaintance that we’ve lost contact with, and the reunion brings back a flood of warm memories and feelings.

If this is your scenario, you’ve probably been practicing good boundaries.

Or do I want to run away? Hide? Do I feel the rush of negative emotions flooding back? Do I feel triggered? Does the whole conflict feel like it’s happening to me all over again?

If it’s this scenario, it’s been a bad boundary. It’s done nothing to strengthen connection. It’s simply been estrangement, and sadly, estrangement is the plague of our day.

And the worst part is, I’ve carried this stone, this weight, this pain, for months or years, while believing I’d actually let it go.

There is a Buddhist story that I love that brings this point home.

Two monks traveling together came to a river with a strong current. A young woman stood at the banks of the river crying. She couldn't swim and was worried she'd drown if she crossed the river.

The two monks had taken vows not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, one monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, and placed her gently on the other side.

The other monk stewed in frustration, and several hours passed without a word between them.

Finally, the monk could contain himself any longer and blurted out, “As monks, we are not permitted to touch a woman. How could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”

The monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river. Why are you still carrying her?”

If you are stuck in a conflict, boundaries can be a tempting way of managing it. And done the right way, they can actually help the healing and reconciliation process.

But done the wrong way, they are nothing more than conflict avoidance, and don’t deliver the healing or reconciliation we desperately need in conflict.

The key is understanding that boundaries are a tool that can heal divides or deliver more pain. We should choose healing and bridging divides.

We can’t escape relationship. We are all connected to each other, whether we want to be or not. The key for the peacemaker is finding ways to optimize that connection so we are bonded in love, not in anguish.

There aren’t any words that can fully do justice to how proud and inspired I am by how the young Palestinians and Israelis of PeacePlayers have weathered over 500 days of war and massive cuts to funding, to somehow, against all hope, continue to find creative ways of making peace with each other.

All of us can, and need to, learn from them.

Hooping With the Enemy

I met the incredible people of PeacePlayers twenty years ago as part of a story I was doing for ESPN on sports and peacemaking, called Hooping With the Enemy (back then they were called Playing for Peace).

I had no idea that trip would change my life.

PeacePlayers was founded in 2001 by Brendan and Sean Tuohey, two brothers from Washington, DC. They were former college basketball players who had a crazy idea: kids who learned to play together could learn to live together. The Tuoheys’ goal for the organization was to bridge divides, develop leaders, and change perceptions in divided communities through the game of basketball.

In the Middle East, things were especially challenging. While all four of the countries PeacePlayers worked in had divided communities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the only conflict that was still hot.

In the Middle East, people not only saw each other as objects, they saw each other as dangerous. Every encounter was a potential life threatening exchange.

Getting people to give up a sense of security to play basketball is a challenge in the beginning. Parents are resistant. Communities look on in suspicion. The kids are nervous about interacting with the other side. And besides all that, most of the young participants can’t even dribble a basketball. Wars, terrorism, political shifts, and unrest are constantly threatening the process. PeacePlayers is forging something new, something impossible, in the least fertile soil in the world. Every time community conflicts flare, parents pull their kids out of the program, coaches get angry, and those harrowing, exhausting two steps up the mountain feel like three stumbling steps back. In short, it is physically and emotionally exhausting work that rarely, if ever, says thank you in return.

Watching young and old Israelis and Palestinians try to carve out a future together was inspiring. There were so many reasons to choose hate. Instead they were choosing love.

I was especially touched by a young Palestinian coach named Ahmed (I changed his name at his request to protect his family). The first time I met Ahmed, in 2006, just six months after the start of PPI in the Middle East, he expressed his doubts about the larger goals of PeacePlayers.

Ahmed resembles Yul Brenner in the Ten Commandments. He can be a little stoic and brooding when you first meet him. For the first few days I was with Ahmed, he said very little, but one night, as the topic of discussion moved to middle eastern food, he opened up.

Ahmed told me that Israelis had stolen most of Palestinian food and labeled it Israeli food. Things like hummus and falafel were developed by Arabs but have been co-opted by Israelis.

“If you go into an Israeli restaurant and taste good hummus, go back and check in the kitchen,” he said with a smile. “I promise you you’ll find a Palestinian in the back.”

As we drove through the streets of Jerusalem, Ahmed started pointing out buildings with Arabic script from the Quran chiseled into the door. All of these building Ahmed pointed out were built by Muslims. This area of West Jerusalem all used to be Palestinian.

His family and friends all lived in the area until the war of 1967. Then they were pushed out. Israelis moved into their homes. They weren’t given compensation. Ahmed’s family was lucky. They live in the one Arab enclave on this part of town. Many other Palestinians fled to refugee camps. Almost 50 years later, many of them are still living there today.

Now his village is surrounded on every side by Israeli towns. A recent highway, built for Israeli settlers, cut his village in half. Some Israelis are pushing for the Palestinians to move somewhere else. He doesn’t want to move. No one does. But he also thinks it’s inevitable.

“What Israel wants it takes,” he told me grimly.

So when it came to PeacePlayers, he didn’t have the most altruistic motives.

“When I was a child,” Ahmed said. “I loved basketball but didn’t have anyone to teach me or a place to play. I finally learned when I was 16. When I was 17, I played my first game against Israelis. It was a massacre.”

The Israelis have an amazing basketball infrastructure and hundreds of club teams throughout the country. Ahmed’s team was destroyed by 40 points.

“I was humiliated and said I’d find a way to give Palestinian kids a chance to develop the same way Israeli kids did,” Ahmed said.

When PeacePlayers came looking for coaches, Ahmed was ready. He saw a well funded program who could give his team resources like shoes and a real basketball court to play on. He volunteered despite the potential ramifications he faced.

On the court, his passion and dedication were evident. His two hour practices often stretched to three, sometimes four hours, until the sun went down. His players huddled around him like chicks to the mother hen. Every word he spoke was met with rapt attention – no small feat for a group of 11 and 12 year olds.

While his dedication to the basketball program was unwavering, Ahmed was less enthusiastic about the other goals of PeacePlayers.

“I don’t know if I believe in peace,” he said to me in 2006. “I appreciate what they are trying to do, but I don’t know. There is too much suffering. Too much hate. How can we love a people who are trying to destroy us? Everything here is a reminder of what we had and what was taken from us. I just want my kids to become good players. I know we have to live with them and maybe this is the first step. But peace … I don’t know.”

Ahmed’s sentiment was shared by numerous coaches on both sides. Getting a staff that was both competent in teaching basketball and in teaching peace was especially challenging. As it turns out, many of the best basketball coaches were turned off by the peace aspect of PeacePlayers.

Basketball? Yes.

Peace? Probably not.

And many of the best peace facilitators were turned off by the basketball aspect.

Peace? Yes.

Basketball? Probably not.

Peace work like this is largely frowned in Palestinian communities as well. When PeacePlayers decided to expand the program beyond boys to girls, the animosity deepened. At times, Ahmed and his family, along with the Palestinian kids in the program were ridiculed and even threatened both by Israelis and by other Palestinians.

As I left for my flight home, Ahmed was standing in the shadows. We said goodbye, and he made one final request. "Do me a favor," he said. "Don't write what I told you. I said I don't believe in peace. Maybe I do now. I see this tonight.

"Maybe it is not too late for us."

I was so deeply touched by the change in this man in the space of two weeks that I made him a promise back.

“If you are going to do this, I am going to do it with you.”

The Long-Short Way of Peace

I’ve visited the program more than sixty times over the past twenty years. I have attended workshops with the coaches and staff, played basketball with the kids, and been inspired by this small band of peace pioneers who put aside careers, family, and friends to make a difference in their communities.

As the program grew Ahmed, the coaches, the kids and parents who supported the program, quietly realized that they’d be seen as threats.

Wars, terrorism, political shifts and unrest were constantly threatening the process. PeacePlayers was forging something new, something impossible, in the least fertile soil in the world. Every time the conflict flared, parents would pull their kids out of the program, coaches would become angered, and those harrowing, exhausting two steps up the mountain would, in a heartbeat, be three stumbling steps back.

In the midst of such an endeavor, it’s easy to lose the forest among the trees. We may feel as if progress isn’t being made or that our efforts are only a drop of water in a vast sea.

How can any one person or group of people make peace when the odds and obstacles are stacked so heavily against them? Nine years into the project, the answer to that question came into sharper focus in Jerusalem.

In April 2014, the PeacePlayers Under-18 All-Stars team—the only mixed Israeli and Palestinian girls basketball team in Israel at the time—made it to the Israeli National League Championship game versus Elitzur Yavne. The fact that these young women, many of whom had never seen a basketball before they started PeacePlayers, were even competing in the league was extraordinary.

The game was extraordinarily tight. Elitzur Yavne hit a shot with seven seconds left in the game to put them up by one point. The PeacePlayers team rushed down the court and with two seconds left, a young Israeli girl named Toot hit the game-winning shot.

As the girls fell into a mass huddle of celebration, their parents joined in, then the PeacePlayers staff. There were no more Israelis or Palestinians—just friends, teammates, joined together as one. It took nine years, but it was impossible to ignore the work of PeacePlayers anymore.

As impressive as their work was on the court, what they did the next few days off the court was even more amazing. The next morning, those same girls all shuffled into a small classroom in a local hotel for facilitator training in conjunction with the Arbinger Institute. The curriculum uses short lessons, games, and basketball to teach participants about the power of seeing people as people.

The girls were participating in a program for PeacePlayers called the Leadership Development Program (LDP). The LDP’s purpose is directly tied to sustainable growth for the PeacePlayers team members. The idea is that after four to six years in the organization as a player, members of the LDP graduate from players to assistant coaches and then to coaches. They were learning how to teach the younger participants in the program the same curriculum they themselves had learned over all those years.

These young women spoke eloquently about how relationships both at home and with people on the other side had changed. When they stood up to teach, they spoke with the conviction of someone who had tried, failed, and then tried again to live their lives a different way.

Their change is key to becoming the leaders PeacePlayers envisioned.

Said one of the Israeli participants,

“I learned the importance of sharing a personal story during every session that will both humble us in front of the kids and humanize us to them. If the kids see that I have viewed people as objects just as they have, then they can feel more comfortable and open to believing the ideas I am teaching.

“We are [now] the leaders for the kids. The kids want to be like us, so we make a great example for them. The kids trust us, so when we explain to them the peace curriculum, it makes a strong impact on them.”

In that moment, everyone captured a joint vision of how PeacePlayers could grow, and all LDP members left determined to make an impact on the places that they lived. They didn’t have to wait long for the opportunity to use everything they had learned.

Several years later, many of the same girls came back to Stamford, Connecticut, and were asked to speak to the same congregation, only this time in the synagogue during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement—the holiest day of the year.

The synagogue was full. I’ll never forget the closing words from Jasmine, one of PeacePlayer’s oldest LDP members:

After she was finished, members of the congregation, many with tears in their eyes, flocked to the girls to embrace them and thank them. Several told me it was the most powerful Yom Kippur sermon of their lives.

The power of PeacePlayers is its long-term investment in people who are willing to do the work of peace. Many of the young people that started working with the organization when they were 10 or 12 years old, are still working with them 15 years later. PeacePlayers has helped them get professional coaching training, job skills, language acquisition, and in a few cases, thanks to generous donors, has paid for the university education.

As those young people graduate out of the program at 18, many of them stay on to coach teams, be mentors to the younger generation, and in a few cases, are now the leaders of the organization.

Where many peace organizations focus on short experiences where people can meet the other side, PeacePlayers is engaged in decades-long thinking about how to build a more sustainable future in the region.

They are practicing the long-short way.

But how would that investment hold up in the midst of the worst war in the region in decades.

The Winds of War and the Roots of Peace

Five years later, PeacePlayers faced the biggest test of their organization — October 7th and the resulting War in Gaza.

Roughly 1200 people were killed (many of them at a peace music festival), and several hundred more kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. Israel responded with a mass invasion and attack on Gaza. Since the start of the war, over 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been reported as killed, over half of them women and children, and more than 110,000 Palestinians have been injured. More than a million people have been displaced from their homes.

In such a hostile environment, you would expect the hurricane force winds of war to topple the small peace movement happening there.

For many organizations, that’s exactly what did happen. Israeli and Palestinian participants and leaders walked away — some of them even took up arms. The lines that were crossed were too much for them to bear.

My early conversations with PeacePlayers after October 7th were focused on the safety of our participants and not wanting to do any harm. PeacePlayers, like most organizations in the region, stopped work and tried to focus on providing emotional support to the families they worked with.

But then something amazing happened. Several weeks after the attacks, the mothers of the children in the program began calling, asking for the program to re-start.

When they were told about the safety concerns, they offered to guard the gyms and protect their children. As one Israeli mother said, “We cannot afford to wait while our children are learning more and more hate. They need to be playing together again.”

PeacePlayers initially thought only a few families would return, but after several months, 95 percent of the families were back. A year later, PeacePlayers had more participants than they had before the war. Somehow, impossibly, the movement had grown in the harshest of conditions.

How do they do it?

Margaret Wheatley offers a wonderful illustration of what I think is happening.

I recently heard from my son’s fifth grade teacher that the largest living organism on the planet lives in Utah, where we now live. My son got excited and thought it was a Big Foot, but it’s not. It is a grove of aspen trees that covers thousands of acres. When we look at them we think, “Oh, look at all the trees.” When botanists looked underground, they said, “Oh, look at this system, it’s all one. This is one organism.” You see, when aspen trees propagate, they don’t send out seeds or cones, they send out runners, and a runner runs for the light , and we say “Aha! There’s another tree...” until we look underground, and we see that it is all one vast connection.

Aspens are among the oldest trees in the world. They are incredibly difficult to uproot and kill. PeacePlayers is growing Aspens in the desert. The roots PeacePlayers are nurturing run deep and are interconnected in ways that aren’t easy to break. When the winds come, trees and people with shallower, disconnected roots blow over.

Craig Gilliam, one of my mentors and an incredible mediator and peacebuilder, was the firs to share this analogy with me. He writes in his excellent book, Where Angels Dare to Dance,

People and organizations are like those acres of aspen trees. On the surface, the persons and issues look like separate entities, but if we go deeper, we will see that, like those trees, they have a deep connection; thus, what affects one, affects all. Pragmatically, this means that we cannot deal with one part or one person without considering the effects our actions will have on the whole. And conversely, we cannot consider the whole without being mindful of the effect on the multiple, interrelated parts. Parts and people make sense only in the context of the system of which they are a constituent element.

If we want to create peace in the communities we live that are being torn apart by polarization, this is the way.

I visited PeacePlayers again in February to see for myself what was happening. What I saw was both inspiring and heartbreaking.

I ran an overnight retreat with the next generation of PeacePlayers — their first one since the war had begun. The participants and the coaches spoke about the hardships they’ve endured, the fear and frustration they’ve felt, difficult encounters they’ve had with each other, and the hope and pride that they felt that somehow, they’ve endured all of it.

And they talked about a new challenge — the loss of funding from USAID thanks to an executive order from President Trump, pausing and/or ending USAID funding for all programs — which represented roughly 50 percent of their budget.

They had survived a year and a half of war somehow. Can they also survive a massive reduction in funding to the cause of peace?

My heart broke as coaches and staff quietly raised fears about what would happen to them and the kids in the program without support. I, along with others, began trying to find new donors to the program.

This week I’m writing from Washington D.C. where I have spent the last few days in fundraising meeting and retreats with a select group of participants. They are telling their stories directly to funders in hopes that those who still believe in peace, might open up their hearts and their wallets to what I believe is one of the most successful and significant peacebuilding organizations in the world.

So many would say what is happening with PeacePlayers was impossible. Here are people who should hate each other, who have every reason to fight, holding hands, dancing, speaking out, and dedicating their lives to the cause of seeing others as people.

It’s taken two decades, but something is happening in the Middle East that has the potential to fundamentally change the culture on the ground.

The world needs more peacebuilders. The world needs more people willing to dedicate their lives to waymaking — making a way out of no way. The world needs YOU more than ever. Want to join the movement? Here are some great ways to get involved in being a PeacePlayers.

WHAT'S YOUR CONFLICT STYLE?

Knowledge is empowering! Understanding how we both, see conflict, and act in conflict is important in learning how to better transform the conflict that will inevitably come in our lives!

Take this simple 30 question assessment to uncover which Dangerous Love conflict style you generally employ in conflict! While you take the test, think of someone specific that you are in conflict with. Notice that your results may change depending on who you are thinking about when you take the test. Our styles will change depending on the dynamics of the conflict, my power in the relationship and what has worked and hasn’t’ worked in the past.

This information can be helpful for multiple types of conflict - conflict in your home, conflict at work, and even conflict in your community.

Take the Conflict Styles Test Now!

Note: This quiz is based on the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Assessment test. To take the original test and to get a full assessment click here.

There is an apocryphal story about Mahatma Gandhi that I love.

Gandhi was not just a political leader to the people of India; he was also a spiritual guru. People traveled from all over to ask his help with problems, both small and large.

One day, a peasant woman and her young son traveled a great distance to visit Gandhi. She told Gandhi that her son was addicted to sweets. The sugar made him hyper and too wild to attend school. She hoped Gandhi would tell her son to stop eating sugar. Her son admired and respected Gandhi, and she was sure that her son would listen to him.

Gandhi hesitated and then told the woman to come back in one week. She was confused but agreed to come back the next week.

One week later, after hours of travel and standing in line, she and her son finally reached Gandhi. Gandhi took the little boy, sat him on his lap, and said simply, “Please do not eat sugar. It is bad for you.”

The boy smiled, promised to stop, and returned back to his mother. His mother was understandably stunned. She had traveled over 100 miles. It was a difficult journey. Bewildered, she approached Gandhi and asked, “Why didn’t you just tell him to quit eating sugar last week when I first approached you?”

Gandhi smiled and said patiently, “Last week, I too was still eating sugar. … We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

The story about Gandhi may be folklore, but the principle feels really true to me. I eat way too much sugar, both figuratively and literally.

The original draft of Dangerous Love was completed roughly five years ago. It took five years to get to you because it took another four years to get the courage to write: I too was eating sugar. Once I did, the entire book, almost every word, changed – including the title.

I never felt comfortable with the original manuscript. Every time I went to re-read it one last time before sending it to the publisher, I became consumed by a nagging feeling that something was off – and never pressed send.

I had friends read it and assure me it was ready, but their assurances created more anxiety. Something wasn’t right, and I spent almost two years driving myself crazy trying to figure out what it was.

Then, my world came apart several years ago: a debilitating bacterial infection in my stomach, a broken marriage that I could no longer hold together, and a fragile child whom I struggled to keep alive. After years of helping others “peace” their lives back together, mine was ripping apart at every seam.

As I dove headfirst into solving, and then failing to solve, the problems that were closing in all around me, my confidence waned. Every morning I’d wake up but not want to get up. I’d look in the mirror and avert my gaze from the man who was looking back at me.

I was failing in every way someone could fail. All the years of studying peacebuilding and practicing it around the world couldn’t save me from myself. And I was ashamed.

After mediating numerous marital conflicts, I was getting a divorce. My inability to balance my life as a husband and father with that as a professor and mediator had caused major problems in my marriage. I could help everyone else in the world but struggled to help our family.

My children were suffering from my mistakes as well. Long trips away helping the people of the Middle East had taken their toll. Missed after-school activities, no time for help with homework, and a distracted, sometimes ailing dad who wasn’t as present as they needed me to be created fault lines in our relationship.

My students were impacted too. My office hours shrunk. My personal stories went silent as I was afraid my students would learn the awful truth about me: while I preached peace, I struggled (mightily) to practice it.

I was running from my mistakes, trying my best to hide my weaknesses, secretly afraid that if people really knew who I was, everything I knew and believed about peacebuilding would be instantly invalidated.

My faith in my ability to help others withered. “Why would anyone”, I asked myself daily, “ever want help from someone as messed up as me?”

One day while reading something written by the philosopher Terry Warner, I was struck by a probing personal question that ultimately led me to finish the book.

As a young acting student studying acting with Stella Adler at her studio on Central Park West, a classmate asked him a terrifying question. “Do you love yourself in the theater or the theater in yourself?” “In other words, was I in it for me or because I simply loved it?”

I began to ask myself the most fundamental question someone can ask about their vocation. Was I in doing peacebuilding for the way it made others see me, or was I in it because I loved helping people?

If it was the former, then I’d never write the book. Never expose myself to more harsh judgments over my personal failings and weaknesses. The people who know me best know how much I’ve struggled, in my own life, to really live the principles in this book.

If it was the latter, I had work to do. Because this book, while filled with personal stories from my life, isn’t about me. You can think what you want about my struggles to live the way I know I should and can. But it doesn’t change the truth of what’s written here. It doesn’t change the fact that in those moments in my life when I’ve lived what I believe – I, and the rest of the world around me, were better for it.

So many things were wrong with both me and the world, and so many days those wrong things appeared to be winning.

Many of us have had days when the forces of darkness appear to be drowning out the light, weeks and months when we feel like we are clinging to a sinking ship, years when the problems we face seem insurmountable. When that happens, it’s easy to get discouraged with both ourselves and others, to tell ourselves that we or they can’t do this. So why try?

Yes, we may be stuck in debilitating patterns of inward thinking that aren’t easy to escape. We fail. I fail — all of the time. But focusing on my failures and others’ is just more smog thinking. It’s blindness to the reality that we can and do have the ability to change. Conflict can be discouraging. But it also can give us hope.

I remember these words from Desmond Tutu, as he described the horror and hope that came out of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

All of us have the ability to hurt and heal, to hate and love, to take and give. Our ability to become change agents dramatically increases when we believe — deep within our bones — that we and others can change.

So, I offer you up my life, not as a model of goodness or greatness. I’ve failed and, unfortunately, may continue to fail at that standard. No, I offer you up my life as both an example of the weakness and frailty of the human spirit, and its potential to make a real change in the world.

The people I work with? The people Dangerous Love is really about? They are the heroes of this story. I wish you could meet all of them. I’m still working on giving up “sugar” in my life. The book would be better if I could give it up completely. But I don’t know how long that will take nor how long I’ll be here. Until then, I’ll humbly ask you to join me in giving up the sugar in our lives that is both sweet to the taste and bitter to the soul.

Maybe together we can change the world.

This post was first published on February 26, 2020

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to suck for people who aren’t madly in love.

It doesn’t have to suck for the lonely, the brokenhearted, the widowed, the single or the people stuck in a lifeless, boring or, even worse, loveless marriage.

Valentine’s Day can be a life changing day. A day that heals, that inspires and changes your world. All you have to do is celebrate the right type of love.

The English language has just one word for “love.”

One word.

Sanskrit? 267 words for love. (No wonder yogis need so much time to meditate).

When you only have one word for love, the word tends to mean different things to different people in different contexts.

When we say we are in love with someone, we mean it differently than when we say we love chocolate (well, most of us do anyway).

When we say we love a movie or love hanging out with someone, we mean something different than when we say “I love you” to a dying parent.

In Martin Luther King’s masterpiece Strength to Love, he notes that the Greeks had three different words for what we in the English language call love.[1]

The first type was called eros and referred to romantic love. Eros is sensual. It is yearning. Eros is the type of love everyone is talking about on Valentine’s Day. It’s passionate, all-consuming and sadly, rarely lasts – at least at the intensity it starts with.

The second Greek word for love was philia. It’s the type of love that you feel toward a friend or family member that you have affection for. We reserve this type of love for the people or things in life that we really, really like and who, in turn, like us back.

The third word is agape. I’ll let King take it from here.

Agape is, “… understanding and creative, [the] redemptive goodwill for all men. An overflowing love that seeks nothing in return … At this level, we love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us … we love the person who does an evil deed, although we hate the deed that he does.” [2]

It’s possible to feel, one, two or, ideally, all three types of love toward someone. And of course, it’s possible to feel none of them.

Valentine’s Day typically sucks for people who don’t have eros in their life — the people who aren’t going to spend the next 24 hours writing poetry, putting together playlists, raiding the chocolate aisle at their local grocery store or cuing up Marvin Gaye on their turntable.

It can also be a lonely day for people who lack philia. Perhaps you are disconnected from family or friends. Conflict, health or other reasons have created a gap between yourself and the ones you love.

Valentine’s Day can be an awesome day for agape, however. Anyone can have agape in their life if they choose to. You cannot make yourself fall in love with someone. It’s also really hard to make yourself like people. But agape? Anyone with a sincere desire to see the humanity of another person so clearly — that their needs, wants and desires matter as much to me as my own — can do it.

And here’s the thing about agape. It’s the sort of love that can mend relationships in our families. Overcome gridlock in the workplace. Solve for deep polarization in our communities and countries. Help us collaboratively problem solve with our adversaries internationally.

Writes King, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. Whenever get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. But it’s very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.” [3]

When that sort of love takes hold, our views — of ourselves, others, and conflict itself — transform. We no longer see enemies or others in conflict. We see us. It takes that level of care and concern toward the people we are in conflict with to truly solve the most difficult, intractable challenges we face in life.

Eros and philia can’t do that. That’s easy love.

We all want to live and work with people who love us. People who we like, are fun to be around, understand our brilliance, agree with our ideas and dreams, see our potential, and help us on our journey to become the incredible people we ultimately know we can be.

But, when conflict enters our relationships, easy love makes a run for it.
And make no mistake, conflict comes in every relationship – no matter how strongly we are “in love” with or “like” the person.

Love becomes a lot more challenging when the people we live and work with don’t love us back, when we don’t like them, when they don’t get us or they drive us nuts, they don’t believe in our ideas and dreams or, even worse, they get in the way of our journey.

Here’s the paradox that makes conflict feel dangerous: when conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight — to stop loving.

To transform conflict, we need to turn toward others, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love the people we are in conflict with.

I call that sort of love dangerous love – a love that overcomes fear in the face of conflict. Nothing is “safe” in dangerous love. Dangerous love requires more than courage: it demands fearlessness.

It is scary.

It takes risks.

Dangerous love transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of our self-preservation instinct inspired by fear: “What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with?” and embrace us-preservation: “What will happen to us if I don’t?” [4]

It calls upon us to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves up with no guarantee that the person or people on the other side of the conflict will do the same.

It asks us to be the first to turn toward the people we are in conflict with.

Dangerous love is a love that allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to us as our own, regardless of how they see me.

It is the opposite of easy love.

It is choosing love over fear in the face of conflict.

It is choosing we over me.

Dangerous love is remarkably effective in transforming our conflicts because it creates space for us to truly see the people we are struggling with.

And you can start to practice it – today.

Forget the chocolates. The sappy valentines. The love songs.

Pick someone in your life who you are struggling with. Someone who the eros and/or philia has waned, and do something different this Valentine’s Day.

Give them a Valentine’s Day gift that will surpass anything you could buy or do.

Here’s what you do:

1. Remember a time when the eros or philia was a little or a lot stronger. Feel that moment. Immerse yourself for a few minutes on what it felt like when you were really in love or liked them and/or when they really loved or liked you. If you’ve never felt either toward the person you are thinking about, no worries, move on to step two anyway.

2. Now think about what it is that they are going through right now. Today. What is hard for them? What pain are they feeling in their life? What dreams are crumbling around them right now? What are they afraid of? The more we reflect on them and their challenges, the more we’ll be able to see them in a way that will be helpful to both them and us.

3. Now think for a minute (and this is hard). Has there been anything you’ve done to add to their pain? Intentionally or unintentionally? By action, or inaction, have I not been as helpful as I could’ve been in their life journey right now? How have I not seen them the way I used to? Or the way they really need me to see them?

4. If you have answers to those first three questions … you should be feeling something. The Arbinger Institute calls it a sense – something you could do that would be helpful to them. Perhaps it’s an encouraging text. Or an apology? Or an invitation to go get a drink and catch-up? Maybe it’s a small act of service or kindness. Maybe it’s just coming home from a long day at work and listening –really listening to them for the first time in a while with a genuine to desire to be helpful. And maybe it’s the whole Valentine’s show with candy, flowers and a
large stuffed Teddy Bear. Whatever it is, and only you’ll know for sure, go do that thing. No matter how scary it is. No matter how sure you are that they won’t appreciate it or won’t acknowledge that you’re there. Just do it.

I can’t promise you anything but this: while dangerous love may not work in changing the way others see you, it will always work in changing the way you and I see and ultimately treat others. And that is the sort of love that will save you and me. We love dangerously, regardless of how others see us, because it is the right thing to do, because it is the truth, because they are people. And when we do it for those reasons,
it will be a powerful influence on others to see us for who we really are.

Dangerous love is a gift. A special, sacred one. And there’s at least one person in your life that desperately needs it today.

So put aside the ghosts of Valentine’s Day past and do something that, on a day that celebrates love, reflects the best kind of love. The only type of love that lasts or saves.

Open your eyes and heart to the people in your life you cannot or will not see. Choose dangerous love over fear.

It might not change the world. But it will change yours.

1 Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, p. 46.

2 Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, p. 46.

3 Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, p. 48.

4 Martin Luther King “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” Delivered at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, April 3, 1968https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/ive-been-mountaintop-address-delivered-bishop-charles-mason-temple

This post was first published on February 13, 2020.

The book Dangerous Love opens with a Māori proverb that I hold dear.

About a decade ago I did a workshop with a group of Māori, the indigenous people from the country of Aotearoa, or New Zealand. After I had finished the workshop, one of their leaders told me that what they had learned reminded him of the proverb.

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tāngata! He tāngata! He tāngata!

(What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!)

In their wharenui (a large ceremonial building) you will see carvings of their ancestors, all standing on one another’s shoulders. They believe that they would not exist without all that their ancestors had done to build the foundations that they walk on today. They honor them. They all can recite their ancestral lineage. And they believe that they are still, quite literally, connected to them.

This connection is what’s most important to a Māori. It cannot be broken. It is in one’s DNA. There is no me. Only we.

Peter Raible wrote:

“We build on foundations we did not lay
We warm ourselves by fires we did not light
We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant
We drink from wells we did not dig
We profit from persons we did not know
This is as it should be.
Together we are more than any one person could be.
Together we can build across the generations.
Together we can renew our hope and faith in the life that is yet to unfold.
Together we can heed the call to a ministry of care and justice.
We are ever bound in community”

When we are conflict, self-preservation tells us that “Me” is all that matters. In moments of self-deception, we begin to believe that I can be separated from others by turning others into an It.

Philosopher Martin Buber argued that no matter what we are doing and who we are with, we are always in the world in either an “I-Thou” or “I-It” way.

Buber described an I-Thou relationship as a symmetrical one. In the relationship, you and I count the same. We both have needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires, and yours are no better or worse than my own. You are as real to me as I am to myself.

The I-It relationship is an asymmetrical one. You are no longer a Thou. You are an It. Your needs, wants, fears, hopes and desires are not as valuable as mine are. You are somehow less than I am — less real, less important. Or perhaps, in certain manifestations, you are more than I am — more real, more important.

In both cases, I-Thou and I-It, we are still in relationship. However, we are connected in two very different ways. One offers the possibilities of collaboration, joy, and love. The other offers pain, suffering, and anguish. But nonetheless, we are always connected.

Understanding that connection is the key to bridging the gap between love and fear in conflict. Buber believed that this connection, I-Thou and I-It, ultimately colored how we see others and the world around us. It dramatically redefines the stories we tell about ourselves and one another. It controls our perception.

We are connected either in constructive ways, or in destructive ways.

Seeing others as Its is at the heart of the smog view of conflict. How can I successfully transform a conflict with an It – a disrespectful, selfish, unkind, unreasonable, overemotional, defensive person? Even more basic, how can I love someone like that? That’s not dangerous love. It’s stupid love.

Seeing people as Its immediately invites fear and selfishness in a way that stifles collaboration. It invites a hyper focus on self that ignores the realities and needs of others. That’s why the Arbinger Institute refers to this sort of view of others as an “inward mindset.” The focus remains firmly on me at a time when it desperately needs to include us and hinders our ability to effectively problem solve.

However, if I can recover my ability to see other people as Thous I then see both them and conflict differently. The straight and narrow path of the smog view opens wide. My new view offers possibilities, opportunities to be creative, understanding and empathy, humility and forgiveness. It literally changes everything.

This post was originally published on January 10, 2020

The movie Star Wars changed my life at the age of six and then again at nine and once again at the age of 11. Seeing that movie on the big screen for the first time turned on my hyperdrive of imagination about the struggle of good versus evil.

You defeat evil by blowing up Death Stars.

I immediately identified with Luke Skywalker (it didn’t help that my mom sewed me a Luke costume that I refused to take off after Halloween was over). I spend the entire summers of 1978 and 79 practicing being a Jedi with my toy lightsaber in the front yard and using the force to summon squirrels (yes squirrels) in my backyard. I even wrote letters (yes, letters) to George Lucas asking for a role in the next Star Wars movie.

When the Empire Strikes Back, the sequel to Star Wars, was released in 1980, I skipped school and stood in line with my mother to watch it on opening day. I was shocked to learn that blowing up the Death Star didn’t remove evil from the universe. If anything, it egged it on.The Empire was striking back against the Rebel Alliance with a vengeance in the second film.

Two scenes in that film greatly disturbed my simplistic 9- year-old worldview about how to defeat evil.

The first came in a pivotal moment on the planet Dagobah where Luke was receiving training from the old Jedi Master Yoda.

My hero Luke was struggling to harness the essence of the force. The more he tried to control it, the quicker it slipped through his fingers.

Yoda tells him “Beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side of the force are they. Easily they flow when we fight …” Luke asks Yoda, “Is the dark side stronger?” Yoda responds. “No. Quicker, easier, more seductive … A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.” Shortly thereafter, Luke notices a cave and has an ominous feeling. Yoda tells him that the cave is strong with the dark side of the force. Yoda encourages him to
investigate.

“What’s in there?” Luke asks Yoda.

“Only what you take with you,” Yoda says.

Luke immediately grabs his blaster and lightsaber as he heads toward the cave.

“Your weapons, you will not need them,” Yoda tells him.

“Is Yoda crazy?” I remember asking my mom. “Take your weapons Luke!”

Luke agreed with me and took his weapons anyway.

In the cave Luke encounters his nemesis, Darth Vader, the embodiment of the dark side. Both Luke and Vader draw their lightsabers. Luke attacks and strikes down Vader. As Luke stares down at Vader’s body, Vader’s helmet comes open and Luke sees his own face staring back it him.

As a nine-year old, I had no way of processing what I was seeing. Luke was the good guy. Vader was the bad guy. How could Luke’s face be the one behind the mask?

Thirty minutes later, Luke battles Vader again, against Yoda’s wishes, on Cloud City. Vader is clearly stronger in the force than Luke and eventually cuts off Luke’s hand and has him trapped on the precipice of a huge airshaft.

In one of the most iconic lines in all of cinema Vader tells a defeated Luke, “I am your father!”

Before Luke could object, I was standing on my chair screaming at the screen, “Nooooooooo! It’s not true! He’s lying!” My mother couldn’t console me.

To me, the face of evil couldn’t have the face of a father. Vader had to be a monster. There wasn’t any other way.

Luke flings himself down the airshaft and the movie ends a few minutes later with our heroes all beaten and bruised and me asking the question for the first time, “Is it possible that evil might actually triumph over good?”

The next few summers I had no idea how to “play” Star Wars anymore. But I was sure we’d find out in the third movie that Vader was lying, Luke wasn’t his son, and Vader would get what was coming to him.

The Return of the Jedi, wasn’t released until 1983. It was a long wait.

In the last film, Luke accepts the fact that his father is Darth Vader. Instead of trying to destroy Vader, Luke is convinced that his father still has good within him and decides to help turn him back to the light side of the force.

Luke voluntarily turns himself in to Vader hoping that this act of love would turn his heart. Instead Vader takes him to the Emperor telling him that Luke must turn to the dark side too.

At the end of the film Luke ends up in an epic lightsaber battle with his father. Only this time the tables turn and he defeats Vader, cutting off his hand the same way Vader did to him in the Empire Strikes Back.

While Luke is standing over a defeated Darth Vader, the evil Emperor Palpatine instructs him to kill his father and join him in ruling the galaxy. Luke takes his lightsaber and tosses it aside.

“Never,” Luke responds. “I’ll never turn to the dark side.” It is in this moment that Luke finally becomes a Jedi. He finally understands what Yoda was trying to teach him on Dagobah.

“You have failed,” Luke tells the Emperor. He was speaking the truth. Luke was loving dangerously now. The Emperor had no weapon to stop that.

“If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed,” the Emperor says and commences to shoot force lightning out of his hands.

Luke writhes in pain on the ground. He had done the right thing. And now he was paying the price.

Vader, watching his son in agony, sets aside his fears and musters what little strength he has left to save Luke. Now he was loving dangerously too.

That heroic act by Vader will cost him his life.

Their story ends in a tender moment on the collapsing Death Star where Vader asks Luke to remove his mask.

“But you’ll die,” Luke says.

“Nothing can stop that now,” Vader responds. “For once I want to see you with my own eyes.”

Luke removes the mask and looks upon his scarred, pale father.

“Now leave me,” Vader says.

“No, I’m not going to leave you,” Luke responds. “I’m going to save you.”

“You already have,” Vader says. “You were right. You were right about me.”

That was my first exposure to the idea of dangerous love. The idea that putting aside our fear and loving our enemies dangerously unleashes a force more powerful than anything that force can muster.

The rebels blow up a second Death Star a few scenes later, but something told me that wasn’t the real victory. Luke’s victory was deeper and more profound that anything that violence could produce.

It was life changing. If dangerous love can turn Darth Vader from an enemy into a loving father – it can do anything!

Of course, Star Wars didn’t invent the idea. Ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism have been wrestling with the idea for thousands of years. Gandhi actually created a word, Satyagraha, or “truth force” for it and used it to get the British to voluntarily give up their colony in India. The core of Christianity has Jesus Christ dying for the sins of all humanity – the ultimate act of dangerous love. It provided the philosophical backbone for Martin Luther King’s work in the civil rights movement leading to equal rights for African Americans in the United States.

The stories that we have told for centuries, orally, in print, on the stage and in movie theaters, outside of religious faith have extolled this idea as well.

Dangerous love has been inspiring us for centuries.

Yet somehow, when it comes to conflict, we are quick to follow the dark side. Yes, the dark side is easier, quicker and more seductive.

The book Dangerous Love helps us ignore the path to the dark side and follow the only force that can really change the intractable conflicts in our life: Dangerous Love.

This article was originally published on December 18, 2019.

DANGEROUS LOVE BOOK ENDORSEMENTS

"We are living in a time where the world seems complicated, divided and possibly beyond repair. It's important to remember that there is hope, and hope lies in humanity. In 'Dangerous Love', Chad Ford reminds us that humanity lies within all of us, and although conflict is everywhere in today's world, we have the tools we need to overcome obstacles and to thrive. This is a fantastic, timely book that I highly recommend."

STEVE KERR
Head coach of the three-time NBA World Champion Golden State Warriors

“In Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work and In the World, Chad Ford documents what is hard to fathom today, that building bridges, not walls, is the best way to prevent conflict and promote peace. He reminds us that people to people contacts are a powerful antidote to age old animosities and that so much more unites us than divides us.”

EVAN RYAN
Executive Vice-President, Axios and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs

"Using powerful stories and evocative examples, Chad Ford's Dangerous Love provides a roadmap for resolving the conflicts around the world and in everyday life. This is a book for everyone who wants to overcome their fear of conflict and begin living more positively."

DAN PFEIFFER
Co-host of Pod Save America and former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama

“Dangerous Love provides mind altering and life changing thoughts for building bridges across the gulf of conflict that separates people in their personal, professional and communal lives. Using his years of experience in conflict resolution and powerful stories, Chad Ford lays a path for overcoming fears of conflict and moves readers to see others as fellow human beings rather than objects. And ultimately his advocacy of dangerous love guides the reader to a destination of reconnection and reconciliation.”

RON SHAPIRO
Founder of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute and New York Times best-selling author of The Power of Nice: How to Negotiate So Everyone Wins

“In a world consumed by conflict, Chad Ford charts a way forward that reduces risk and drives happiness for people, communities and nations. I experienced this ethos firsthand as Chad led groups of Palestinian and Israeli girls to play basketball and, more importantly, learn about the other in his PeacePlayers' program in Jerusalem. This effort helped the next generation of Middle East leaders envision a very different and more hopeful world. Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work and In the World is a must read for all who yearn for a more peaceful tomorrow.”

R. DAVID HARDEN
Managing Director the Georgetown Strategy Group, former Director of the USAID Mission to the West Bank and Gaza

“Dangerous Love’ is a prescient and intimate look at transformative conflict solutions. Moreover, Ford provides best practices to operationalize skills applicable across the sliding scale of mundane everyday spats to some of the world’s biggest conflicts. The world could stand to love a little more dangerously right now.”

JACQUELINE ALEMANY
Reporter and author of the daily morning newsletter “Power Up” for The Washington Post

“Dangerous Love provides a clear and compelling path to bridging seemingly impossible divides in our personal and professional lives and in our world. I’ve witnessed the impact of Chad’s principles firsthand and his systems have been lifechanging for people around the world.”

R.C. BUFORD
President and General Manager of the five-time NBA World Champion San Antonio Spurs

“The principles presented in Dangerous Love have become the driving philosophy in defining PeacePlayers’ core value and methodology. The book provides practical and accessible tools for transforming conflicts, whether at home, work or even between nations. I have had the opportunity to see these principles practice, transforming relationships and mindsets in the most seemingly intractable settings. A gifted storyteller, Chad bravely reveals his own vulnerabilities, inviting all of us to "turn first."

KAREN DOUBILET
Former Executive Director, PeacePlayers

“Professor, basketball savant, conflict resolution negotiator extraordinaire, world class author and friend, Chad Ford, provides a must-read exploration of relationships in Dangerous Love; and in doing so, provides a roadmap for all of us to forge our path to peace through our relationships with others. I invite you to read Dangerous Love with the foremost aim to challenge yourself to engage in all the relationships in your life with confidence, optimism, curiosity and vulnerability”

SCOTT O'NEIL
Former CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils

"Stay with this book, stay with its themes and many tributaries, because it will bring healing and growth into your life and everything you do. Dangerous Love is a provocative, easily accessible, dive into the complicated world of healing and transforming relationships across many divides, filled with wisdom, stories, and anecdotes. The idea itself of 'dangerous love' is a remarkable reframing of what we must do to truly grow as human beings and positively affect the world around us."

DR. MARC GOPIN
Director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University Author, Healing the Heart of Conflict.

"Dangerous Love is an engaging and inspiring guide to transforming interpersonal conflicts by living the virtues of love, mercy, truth and justice. While its approach is personalist -- and personal, its understanding of the dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding is also relevant for social and communal conflicts."

GERARD F. POWERS
Professor, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs University of Notre Dame

“This is a book to welcome and enjoy. It is an invitation to be free and to free others. Fear is gripping the imagination of too many in conflict and the solutions that could be found are hidden by the anguish of those who do not know how to see beyond. With captivating and convincing style, Chad Ford is encouraging you to find the transformations that are good for all. Read it and try it!”

DR. ANDREA BARTOLI
President, Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue

01

Conflict Feels Dangerous.

We avoid it if we can. If we can’t, we prepare for war. We build walls to protect us from the impending harm – emotionally and physically — we fear is coming. Fear in conflict can manifest itself in many ways. Fear of conflict. Fear of the people I am in conflict with. Fear of emotional or physical pain. Fear of not being loved or seen the way we want to be seen. Yet, despite our fear of conflict, it plagues our personal and professional relationships.

02

Knowing how to transform conflict is critical.

But generally, we are terrible at it – and we know it. And when we let that fear of conflict, and the people we are in conflict with, take hold, our ability to actually solve the problems that underlie conflict diminish dramatically. In fact, one way to define conflict is simply to say that conflict is our inability to collaboratively problem solve with other people. But what if there was a way to see conflict, and the people we are in conflict with, differently? What if we could learn how to love the people we are in conflict with through the conflict?

03

Yes. Love.

I know that’s an odd word to pair with conflict. Let alone the pairing of the words “dangerous” and “love.” But I think it’s the critical word and it is too often missing in books about conflict resolution.

04

No, I am not talking about romantic love.

Nor the type of love that really means like. I’m talking about the love that allows us to see the humanity of another person so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to me as my own. The sort of love that illuminates a path toward conflict transformation. When that sort of love takes hold, our views — of ourselves, others, and the conflict itself — transform. We no longer see enemies or others in conflict. We see us. It takes that level of care and concern toward the people we are in conflict with to truly solve the most difficult, intractable challenges we face in life. It takes that type of love to mend relationships in our families. To overcome gridlock in the workplace. To solve for deep partisanship in our communities and countries. To collaborative problem solve with our adversaries internationally.

05

What is dangerous love?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. It choosing love over fear in the face conflict. It is choosing we over me. Fear is about self-preservation. Dangerous love is about us-preservation. Dangerous love transcends that fear. It transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of self-concern: “What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with” and embrace us-concern: “What will happen to us if I don’t?” And while many people hear the word and think “soft” — it is anything but soft. There is nothing “safe” in dangerous love. Dangerous love requires more than courage, it demands fearlessness. It is scary. It takes risks. There will be casualties.

06

It calls upon us to be vulnerable enough.

To open ourselves up with no guarantee that the person or people on the other side of the conflict will do the same. No, dangerous love isn’t safe or guaranteed … but it is, on the whole, remarkably effective in transforming our conflicts because it creates space for us to truly see the people we are in conflict in a way that fundamentally changes the dynamics of conflict. I have come to believe this is the only way that we truly transform the conflict in our lives – not only in our families, workplaces and local communities, but also within and between nations.