The Great Conversation

The Great Conversation
"There is no place that you will go in this world today, no place that you will go in this world today, that you can remove yourself from the God created diversity of this wondrous place that we have been gifted."

I want to start with where Jim was giving some indication, of flying in from this last week in Colombia. It was quite an experience. You don’t very often get to witness the signing of an agreement that ends a half century war. And Colombia is in an extraordinary moment right now. They have placed this agreement into the hands of the whole Colombian population. So on Sunday, there will be a vote of whether or not to accept the agreement. So when you go to vote, it’s a yes or a no. No other choices. And the agreement contains a lot of things that require old patterns to shift into new ways of being with each other. And there are a lot of people that have opposition to one or another aspect of those things. It could be that some want more punishment for those who were involved in a variety of things that were unbelievably inhumanitarian. It could be that some are opposed to how extensively women are included. Could be that some are opposed to the fact that within a peace agreement there are three or four mentions of the LGBTI community. So this vote is getting close. It’s about 60-40 right now…

Lederach, John Paul. “The Great Conversation.” Address presented at the Hesston College 2016 Homecoming Forum, Hesston, Kansas, October 5, 2016.

Recorded at and shared with the permission of Hesston College.

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