In autumn 2007 more than one hundred peace workers from both Israel and Palestine and many other countries went by foot through the Middle East.
Who, where and how?
The GRACE Pilgrimage – organized in cooperation with the Peace Research Village Association – was led by Sabine Lichtenfels and Benjamin von Mendelssohn (director of the PRV Assoc). The route took them from Eilat on the Red Sea through the Negev desert and the Westbank to Bethlehem and on to Jerusalem. The group of pilgrims was made up of people of all ages. Children too were part of it and two representatives of the threatened and peace-awarded Colombian Peace Village of San Josč de Apartadó also participated. The pilgrims slept under a stary sky and were offered hospitality at various places, like Kibbuzims, Ashrams, military camps, refugee camps, Bedouin villages as well as Israeli settlements and Palestinian towns. They experienced the stillness of the desert, the beauty of the "Holy Land". They were also touched by conflict and separation, by misery, displacement and ignorance.
Meaning of GRACE
Being peace workers walking in the name of GRACE, they did not come to the land to judge but to share in the lives of the human beings, to understand their situation from within themselves and to look for solutions from this vantage point. "We refuse to be enemies" was the sentence of empowerment which daily accompanied community building amongst so many diffent people.
As co-workers of the Peace Research Center Tamera in Portugal, they develop a global perspective by researching and constructing concrete models of peace. (more: www.tamera.org)
One of the highlights of the pilgrimage was a night`s vigil at the wall of separation next to the Aida-Refugee-Camp at Bethlehem on November 9th - being the Global GRACE Day. Simultaneously 70 groups worldwide joined with the pilgrim's group which in the meantime had grown to comprise 180 people in their meditation. The intention of the vigil was to search for images of understanding, reconciliation and a desire for the future.
A couple of years ago, the theologian, author and co-founder of Tamera, Sabine Lichtenfels, launched the GRACE-Pilgimages. Her first GRACE-Pilgrimage which took her through many countries - for half a year and without any money - is documented in the remarkable book she wrote, named "GRACE - Pilgrimage for a Future without War" (2005, Meiga Publishers).
Through the protection by the international group, the GRACE pilgrimages provide the possibility to directly experience and witness the state of the world in regions of conflict It allows pilgrims to enter global thinking and to find a position of effectively cooperating in global healing. The GRACE-Pilgrimages show paths out of powerlessness.
Upcoming events and next steps
The next pilgrimage is planned to take place in October 2008 in Colombia in cooperation with the Peace Village of San José de Apartadó. (more www.sos-sanjose.org)
The GRACE-Pilgrimage through Israel/Palestine was a preparatory step towards the planned Peace Research Village (PRV). In only a few years, a "Global Village of the Future" - in the spirit of GRACE - will have been developed in the Middle East. There, Israelis, Palestinians and people of other nationalities will through their way of communal living design a model for a future without war - a vision for a life after occupation and war. (More on the Peace Research Villages: www.prv-association.org )
The next step for the preparation of the PRV is planned for March. In the Palestinian Peace Center "Tent of Nations". A community course is to take place there and a meeting for vision building, as well as a non-violence-training by the Holy Land Trust. Simultaneously, the participants shall actively help to further develop the location of the "Tent of Nations". We want to install a solar system - highly necessary for its work - and at the same time train some young Palestinians in the technique. The "Tent of Nations" is owned by the Palestinian Nassar family and is an exemplary place for the power of vision and will for peace. Futhermore the "Tent of Nations" is intended to become an ecological model place.
Support, ground station and media
For these activities to be financed and for the peace education network, called "Global Campus" to be realised and expanded, Sabine Lichtenfels has set up the "GRACE Foundation - for the Humanisation of Money". This foundation is to be instrumental in drawing monies out of the circuit of globalised violence and divert it to places where it is urgently needed for the rebuilding of a peaceful planet earth. (More on the GRACE Foundation)
At the moment, Tamera, Portugal, is the groundstation for all of these activies. At Tamera the basic training for the development of PRV's is taking place and at Tamera a model solarvillage with ecologically hightec and with solar energy supply is developed - without any involvement of large industry - and at Tamera the core premisis for a non-violent society is being researched, focussing on new social structures, community, communication, love and sexuality.
We invite you to participate in the globalisation of peace.
We invite financial backers to invest in the development of the project.
We invite media and internet experts to cooperate to spread the news of this project.
We invite you to get to know Tamera more closely. (www.tamera.org)
The basic thoughts of this global initiative are to be found most up-to-date in the following books: "GRACE - Pilgrimage for a Future without War" by Sabine Lichtenfels and "Future without War" by Dieter Duhm.
