What if the hokey-cokey is what it’s all about? – by Rachel Smith
Posted: 11 February, 19:59 by Jon Dorsett
My name is Rachel. I am 23 years old, and I live in Oxford with my husband Tim. I am the part-time administrator for Fellowship of Reconciliation, England, and I also work as a freelance community musician, specialising in singing for wellbeing.
I started Peace School in 2006 – a year of significant change (leaving university, getting married, moving to a new city) and a year that also brought family upheaval, and the trauma of getting evicted from my student lodgings. When, at a recent weekend away, a few of us talked about our personal peace journeys, using coloured pens and paper to illustrate the major influences and milestones in our life – taking part in Peace School featured as a huge mile-stone. It gave me the tools, the time and space, and the community, to help work through some of the challenges of 2006 and to explore some of the other barriers and challenges I’ve faced over recent years.
A mental block I struggled with from my late teenage years was self-confidence. Despite being a church-goer all my life, I had never really grasped a real meaning of redemption or atonement that was truly applicable to my life. Through Peace School I came to see that atonement can be understood as a way of feeling and being whole in a way which includes the difficult aspects of life and of one’s character, as well as all the good bits. To be redeemed is to be reconciled to oneself, to each other, and to all of creation. As this dawned on me, as I explored with the Peace School community the values of shalom, I found I could feel free of past troubles, and could accept myself more. I could start to get on with what I really wanted to do.
Before I started Peace School I felt that I needed to ‘perfect’ myself in some way, before I could start anything – For example, I felt I had to know exactly how to facilitate in order to run a workshop, or I had to be an ‘expert’ in printing before I could run a textile art project. In the last few years I have discovered that the journey is what it is all about. And this knowledge has given me the confidence to take risks and to embrace the challenge of working for peace in all avenues of everyday life.
Steps on the Journey: Becoming a Peacemaker – by Joff Williams New Beginnings: Peace School 2009/10