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Peace and
the Environment
by Ron Eberle
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This article has been reprinted with permission from
The Raven’s Way
Journal, Winter 2002.
Ron's article captures
the essence of why our committee experiences with
T.E.A.M. are usually
very positive and uplifting. It really deals with
respect, listening
and being open to the process we bring to planning the
conference every
year. Ron Eberle has been our committee co-chairperson for
the past two years
and started The Raven’s Way Journal to conscientiously
make a positive
difference in the world. E-mail: theravensway@aol.com. Pat
Cleveland has been
involved with the conference committee for nine years
since she was a
freshman at NEIU, and models in her classroom all the values
we bring to our
conference. Our efforts at T.E.A.M. work because of
volunteers like
Ron and Pat who bring their hearts, passion and commitment
to servant leadership.
As some of you may
know, I participate on a committee through Northeastern
Illinois University
called Teachers of Experiential and Adventure
Methodology (T.E.A.M.).
T.E.A.M. is an organization that is dedicated to
promoting and supporting
the process of experiential and adventure based
learning.
Experiential and adventure based education is a transformational
process that develops
a spirit for learning and is a legitimate part of the
educational and
emotional growth process in both children and adults.
Through the sharing
of ideas, skills, and curricula, T.E.A.M. provides
individuals and
organizations growth opportunities through its annual
conference held
each February at Northeastern Illinois University and its
bi-annual newsletter
(www.neiu.edu/~team).
Each month the conference
committee meets to plan for the upcoming T.E.A.M.
conference.
During June's meeting, the discussion focused on the various
presenters and how
their workshop topics would be classified in the
conference brochure.
One of my peers commented that the peace and
environment topics
were being considered as a single subject classifying a
grouping of workshops
offered at next year's conference.
As usual, my mouth
opened before the brain could catch up and I commented
that I thought it
was a strange combination, peace and environment. My
initial reaction
was that the topic of environment should be filled with
earth oriented workshops
like naturalist and ecology programs, while the
topic of peace was
a category unto itself.
Before I commented
any further beyond what a strange combination these two
topics made, the
brain finally took hold of the mouth. For at just that
moment, I remembered
a passage I had read that very morning in the book The
Company of Wolves
by Peter Steinhart, 1995.
"Animals in the state
of nature do not make war upon their own kind; they
have no Attilas
or Hitlers. They seldom exhibit the kind of savagery that
civilized men exhibit
toward one another. It was precisely because humans
denied their own
nature that they devastated much of the world, and
wilderness offered
a change for redemption. Man may yet restore himself to
health if he will
learn to understand himself in relation to the world of
nature in which
he evolved." This quote was attributed to the
anthropologist Ashley
Montagu. Have you ever heard the saying that lessons
are repeated until
we learn them? Well, twice in the same day I had the
lesson in front
of me.
While the brain reprimanded
the mouth and wasn't paying full attention to
the moment, Pat
Cleveland, a teacher and committee member, explained her
reasoning for the
combination. I admitted my mistake and contradicted
myself by reading
the above passage to the group. Pat, a third grade
teacher at Dewey
Elementary School in Evanston, IL, explained how she held a
peace ceremony with
her kids which culminated with the planting of a
symbolic tree on
the school grounds. From that ceremony came the following
statement, written
by a class of third grade students:
The
Children
We
the children of the world are asking the adults to listen. We think
that
you
need us to help you find peace in yourselves. If you start from the
heart,
peace can spread to other adults and it will get bigger. We ask you
to
forgive and be kind to one another. We are asking you to be respectful
and
to treat others the way you want to be treated. We want you to try
a
different
way to solve problems. If everybody thought fighting was the only
way,
then the whole world would be at war. If you don't give peace to
others
then they won't give it to you.
This
is a world we love but we would love it more if all the wars and
fighting
stopped. We have hope to bring peace to the world. We want
our
loved
ones safe. We want our families safe - no matter where they are.
If
we didn't fight, the grass would be greener, the water would be cleaner,
and
the animals would be healthier. The world would be the best place.
We
want
you to stop cutting down trees and hurting living things.
We
are saying "ENOUGH!" We want the land mines, the nukes and suicide
bombing
to stop. We want the judging people to stop and want to know people
by
who they are on the inside.
We
need to try and understand each other and to learn about each other.
We
want
people to come together and share their hearts. We want the adults
to
be
nice and to make your voices count. We are asking you to help our
families
get along. We know that peace starts with a thought. You need
to
let
that thought come out. We are telling you that this is important
because
peace can change your life, our lives, someone else's and even the
world.
There
is a wonderful world waiting for us. We just need to believe in peace
and
in ourselves. That's the beginning. We can help each other.
Peace can
go
on forever. Peace can be so great.
3rd
grade class
Dewey
Elementary School
Evanston,
IL
Thanks to the third
grade class of Dewey Elementary School for explaining to
me how peace and
environment are really one. And thanks to Pat Cleveland
for sharing.
On the train ride
home that night, I thought a lot about why I launched The
Raven's Way and
how peace and environment can be further merged, or more
importantly, how
environment can foster peace.
It wasn't until the
following week, at a celebration honoring the life of a
TEAM family member's
passing that the word "Balance" came up and resonated
within me in regard
to peace and the environment. When you think about it,
it's really all
very simple— when your environment is in balance, peace
comes naturally.
However, as the children of Dewey Elementary School
pointed out, our
communities are out of balance and before we can make
peace, we need to
balance our hearts.
In closing, I recall
a quote from David Brower, " We do not inherit the
Earth from our fathers,
we borrow it from our children." In recognition of
the third graders
at Dewey Elementary School, plant a tree this summer as a
symbolic reminder
to work toward balancing your heart for peace. A cedar
would be a good
choice.
The
Spring 2003 edition of The Ripple Effect will be published and available
only on this Wesite.
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