Transforming: Applying Spirituality, Emergent Creativity, and Reconciliation

by Gloria Neufeld Redekop (Editor), Vern Neufeld Redekop (Editor), Gloria Neufeld Redekop (Contribution by), Vern Neufeld Redekop (Contribution by), Katherine Peil Kauffman (Contribution by)

Overview

Global crises—from pandemics to climate change—demonstrate the vulnerability of the biosphere and each of us as individuals, calling for responses guided by creative analysis and compassionate reflection. Transforming, building on its companion volume, Awakening, explores actions that create paths of understanding and collaboration as the groundwork for transformative community. The community of scholars in this volume offers perspectives that collectively form a complex tapestry of resources. The volume engages with the complex range of challenges and possibilities across a variety of sectors, and provides an interdisciplinary approach to the prospects for transformative healing of human and non-human communities, and the global environment we inhabit. Spirituality is essential to this, and, as such, the work explores vital dimensions of emerging spiritual concepts, methods, and practices that harbor interfaith potential for genuine reconciliation and communion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498593137
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	01/15/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	486
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Vern Neufeld Redekop is professor emeritus of conflict studies at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. His book From Violence to Blessing has been translated into French and Arabic and has been widely used internationally to promote reconciliation.

Gloria Neufeld Redekop is a researcher and author in spirituality and religious social history. Her publications include Bad Girls and Boys Go to Hell (or Not): Engaging Fundamentalist Evangelicalism and The Work of Their Hands: Mennonite Women’s Societies in Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Transforming: Inside and Out by Gloria Neufeld Redekop and Vern Neufeld Redekop

Part 1: Violence, Spirituality, and Reconciliation

Chapter 1: Reconciliation as Emergent Creativity by Vern Neufeld Redekop

Chapter 2: The Biology of Emotion: Implications for Self-Development, Spirituality, and Justice by Katherine Peil Kauffman

Chapter 3: Violence, Reconciliation, and the Significance of the Subtle Mystical Dimension in the Light of René Girard’s Battling to the End by Petra Steinmair- Pösel

Chapter 4: Coming to Terms with Violence and War: The Experience of Mennonite Women and Children in Russia (1917-1925) by Gloria Neufeld Redekop

Part 2: Reconciliation as Spiritual Praxis

Chapter 5: Relational Ecosystem for Peace (REP): From Division to Deep Connection with Compassionate Listening by Brigitte Gagnon

Chapter 6: Interworldview Dialogue (IWVD): The Emergence of an Applied Theory for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding by Patrice C. Brodeur

Chapter 7: The Dénouement of Religious Leader Engagement in the Canadian Armed Forces by S. K. Moore

Chapter 8: RLE from the Balcony: The Domestic Application of Religious Leader Engagement by Karen Hamilton

Chapter 9: Creative Dialogue between Muslim and Western Worlds towards Reconciliation and Addressing Violent Extremism: A Muslim Perspective by Iman Ibrahim

Chapter 10: Arts Literacy and Nonviolent Social Change: Re-envisioning Spirituality through Creative Practice by Lauren Michelle Levesque

Part 3: Indigenous Insights and Challenges for Reconciliation

Chapter 11: Transcending Traditional Justice Claims: Challenges of Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation by Joseph Cleyn

Chapter 12: Warring with Windigo/Wihtiko: Cree and Algonquian Insights into Spirituality, Emergent Creativity and Reconciliation by Cecil Chabot

Chapter 13: Transforming Wihtiko Systems by Catherine Twinn (with thanks to Isaac Twinn)

Chapter 14: Transforming “Wicked” Problems in an Integral Manner: The Case of Fly-In Indigenous Communities by Robert Logie

Chapter 15: Reconciliation in Australia and Lederach’s Moral Imagination by Sue-Anne Hess

Part 4: Complexity, Community, and Emergent Development

Chapter 16: Harnessing Principles of Complex Systems for Understanding and Modulating Social Structures by Neil D. Theise with Catherine Twinn, Gloria Neufeld Redekop, and Lissane Yohannes

Chapter 17: Development as Emergent Creativity by Naresh Singh

Chapter 18: Sacred Diplomacy as “The Adjacent Possible Praxis”: Transforming Peacebuilding to Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet by Merle Lefkoff

Conclusion by Oscar Gasana

Index

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

In Transforming, Vern Neufeld Redekop and Gloria Neufeld Redekop assemble and convey the dominant hope for our time. Creative reconciliation emerging as an ever new ‘Adjacent Possible’ that is impossible to predict and in a manner that goes beyond what we could imagine. All of life for 3.7 billion years is an emergence that ever transforms into the adjacent possibilities that life itself creates. We are now destroying the biosphere of which we are members. It’s time to transform.

Stuart Kauffman

Transforming is a refreshing and exciting volume that is in itself an example of ‘emergent creativity’—to use one of the book’s key concepts. The approaches to and processes of transformation offer many new theoretical ideas and examples of how to build peace that resonate with concepts of biological life, spirituality, justice, and the human heart. Throughout the book, the focus on creativity, generativity, and transformativity is so needed in our work, our communities, and our world.

Jessica Senehi

This book shows how to apply intelligent thinking and insights from lands and cultures across the world to solve the real problems of our time, right now — when we most need them. It is an exciting book because it spotlights embedded wisdom in the world’s diverse cultures, nurtures it forward in a synthesised, sensitive discussion that is supremely urgent, dynamic and generative. The upswell of deep and practical knowledge presented here has, until now, eluded pronouncement in such a poised way. This book accomplishes the task of what we face across the globe together, because it fosters peace between all people and the flourishing of the Earth.

Felicity McCallum

An extraordinary book that truly transforms you inside and out.. .. Vern Neufeld Redekop and Gloria Neufeld Redekop’s edited book has a fascinating collection of chapters that are intricately related to the three pillars of psychospiritual and transcendental life: spirituality, emergent creativity, and reconciliation. Katherine Peil Kauffman’s presentation of an integrated view of individual emotions; Naresh Singh’s pioneering application of complexity theory to societal development; Karen Hamilton’s and Iman Ibrahim’s positions of religious conflict resolution; and Lauren Levesque’s potential use of music in reconciliation are striking examples of the many pragmatic perspectives. An evocative prescription that emerges out of the book is the use of complexity theory to integrate the interwoven transformations at different scales—intrapersonal, interpersonal, and community—eventually leading to transformation of the entire biosphere.

Anirban Chakraborti