The Below and the Beyond in Peacebuilding

Aspen Art

“How are you with situations, people, communities in ways that the outer pain, ugliness, whatever it is that's been there, is actually giving way to something that's always been there, but it hasn't always been noticed or hasn't had opportunity to be expressed?"

John Paul Lederach: The aspen itself, some people refer to them as the healer of the forest, and I made note that they’re considered to be one of, if not the largest living organism and that their connections are all underground often in harsh terrains. So their root systems run laterally more than deep. They run out and around and cover– They can cover a lot of expanses and they come up in groves. They grow not by seed dropping, but by the shoots coming up.

Tree that was no longer alive and it had bark that was peeling. The places where the bark exposed was gray in color. It seemed dry and one of the things when I’m looking at that that I notice is how much our eyes can easily fall onto the immediate surface, but there’s a story behind the surface, there’s a life under the surface.

This video emerged from a retreat John Paul facilitated in Rollinsville, Colorado, in April 2014 under the same name. Photographs and participant reflections of the experience are collected in “Reflecting Together: Retreat & Intentional Dialogue with John Paul Lederach.“

Produced by and shared with permission by Yago Abeledo. Additional permissions to share this video provided by Marilyn Raatz, Bridget Mullins, patience kamau, Andrew Nussbaum, and Fabrice Guerrier.