A few weeks ago a number of us gathered at the church on a Saturday to participate in an Active Bystander Intervention and De-Escalation training. The Leadership Team at CMC had coordinated this training through the organization DC Peace Team in response to questions about how we as a congregation are preparing to live our peace witness in a world that feels so openly hostile. Additionally, one of our congregation’s “open questions” for this year is “What is the relationship between courageous public witness and safety and security?”
There are no easy answers to these questions, but this training was an attempt to help us live out our values of nonviolence and peacemaking. It was an attempt to prepare ourselves for the realities of a world that is in desperate need of more peacemakers and those who can transform conflict through nonviolent means.
During the training, the presenter talked us through various strategies of de-escalation and then had us practice a few of these strategies through roleplay. I admit that this was very challenging at times. Even though I knew it was roleplay, I could still feel my body reacting in ways that tried to pull me away rather than courageously engaging. Yet that is exactly why we practice these kinds of things.
Theories and theologies of peace and nonviolence are really great, but can we embody them when the time comes? We can’t anticipate every possible thing that can happen and all the strategies in the world can only take us so far, but it is in the embodied practice that we become more comfortable in those spaces of conflict. I’m reminded of the MLK challenge, “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”
So much of our society seems to follow the drumbeats of war and violence, so we must learn to organize and follow, just as effectively, the voice of the Prince of Peace. Our training and our roleplays seemed to raise just as many new questions as they offered any answers, but this is what it means to do this work. We make the way by walking it together. We walk alongside our Anabaptist forebears whose stories show us what it takes to commit to peace. We walk alongside those in this congregation and community to support and challenge one another along the way. We walk with the anticipation of those to come and our hopes to leave a better world for them.
May we continue to find new ways to prepare for peace, answering each new question and challenge that arises with a deep commitment to our values.
