Home
     
THE MORAL IMAGINATION

LECTURE AT LAMBETH PALACE 18TH MAY 2006

DONALD REEVES

I would like to thank the Archbishop of Canterbury for his invitation to give this lecture and for his presence here this evening.

I would also like to thank Guy Wilkinson, Pamela Harrison and other colleagues for the work they have done in preparing this occasion.

THE MORAL IMAGINATION (1)

Lost elements in the art of reconciliation and building communities.

The lecture will address 3 questions:

How is it possible to dismantle the cycles of violence which so often recur following months or years of negotiation towards a peace settlement? A peace agreement is hailed as a ‘solution’ but often the terror begins again.

and

Why is it so difficult to recreate the fabric of relationships torn apart by war in such a way that stability and mutual respect have a chance of flourishing?

and

What is missing from so many attempts to bring about peaceful change following conflict?

The answer to these questions lies in generating, mobilizing and building the moral imagination.

Because ‘moral’ and ‘imagination’ are not usually associated with reconciliation or conflict resolution I will begin by describing my understanding of the imagination and the moral.

I will then show how the Soul of Europe’s work in Bosnia over 6 years has been informed by the moral imagination.

This lecture is unfinished. Many people have contributed to it not least the experience of our friends and colleagues in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Prijedor. So what follows is like a public conversation with myself and I hope later on other occasions with some of you.

Ever since Aristotle imagination has been regarded as an inadequate and unreliable way of knowing, in contrast to reasonable, logical or empirical discourse. And today the imagination is an even more problematic concept in our post-modern world. Post modernism describes, sometimes too extravagantly, the fragmentation, incoherence and nihilism of our culture. Only ‘market economics’ and ‘the market state’ remain unchanging and invincible.

So this briefest of sketches of the genealogy of the imagination will show that our present melancholy landscape has not always been so.

Once upon a time the artist used his skills and honed his disciplines to lead the worshipper to God through the image of the icon. The intense but passive eyes and stylized features focused attention of the worshipper beyond and through the image. Then the portrait painter stressed the image as a means of self expression in, for example, Rembrandt’s sombre portraits which study his physical disintegration before death or Van Gogh’s paintings which vividly explore his mental disintegration before suicide.

Today the pop poster revels in surface effects, incorporating at random, images, which the artist has ransacked arbitrarily from any source.

Or to put the matter differently: once the artists were craftsmen whose task was to serve and imitate the transcendent plans of the Creator. The inventor replaced this theo-centric pattern, taking the place of God. Today she has been replaced by the artist as an ‘operator’ playing with images, symbols and metaphors.

This genealogy of the concept of the imagination – its development and narrowing of focus is well beyond the scope of this paper, except to say that it is a fleeting reminder that to move beyond the post-modern confusion we need pay attention to how we arrived at where we are, and look for a way forward.

Imagination is our capacity to picture, portray and receive the world in ways other than it appears to be at first glance. (2)

Imagination is an awakening to more than what is visible.

Imagination is the capacity to give birth to something new which changes the way we live in the world.

When the imagination begins to function, then we can live ‘as if’ we are free, ‘as if’ justice can be done, ‘as if’ forgiveness is possible. The imagination rejects as false what has been long accepted and beyond all criticism. (It is astonishing how a long established ‘as’ can keep people in their places until a counter ‘as’ emerges, imagined and given a voice.)

When I describe the imagination as moral I do not mean a narrow confined sense of ‘moralistic’, but in the sense of conveying the idea of an epic journey to new horizons, just out of reach. The way is signposted towards this destination: ‘there is no future unless it is a shared future’.

To respond to the moral imagination means we simply cannot renege on our responsibility to ‘the other’. The face of the other invites and demands an unconditional response: ‘Where are you?’ comes the question. ‘Here am I; here we are,’ comes the response. (3)

This is the ethical requirement of the moral imagination. It invites obedience, shaped, authorised and limited by the imagination. (4)

Ethics follow the imagination. Or as Amos Wilder put it: ‘Before the message there must be the vision, before the sermon, the hymn, before the prose, the poem.’

This understanding of the imagination is neither stern nor censorious. It does not sentimentalize ‘the other’ because it is balanced and informed by the imagination of hope. Neither is the imagination about ‘pie in the sky when you die,’ nor ‘just hoping for the best.’

And, lastly, it is a communal and public assertion where our connectedness is expressed and nourished. Far from being separate, autonomous, distant and detached in a world locked in the strait-jacket of ‘materialistic determinism’ (see note 14),there is a striving on that epic journey for connections, communion and community. (5)

Here are the poets:

I am the necessary angel of earth
Since, in my sight, you see the world again
(Wallace Stevens – on Imagination)

and Emily Dickinson:

The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.

and Adrienne Rich:

We know now we have always been in danger,
Down in our separateness
And not up here together but till now
We had not touched our strength.

And some words of Paul Ricoeur, the philosopher:

I would even say that the imagination plunges into the most impressive tradition: that of liberating acts, of the Exodus and Resurrection. Perhaps there would be no more interest in emancipation, no more anticipation of freedom if the Exodus and Resurrection were effaced from the memory of mankind.

So how does the moral imagination relate to reconciliation and building communities? What does it look like when the moral imagination is mobilized and generated?

There are four requirements.

(6) The first is essential. This is to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships which includes the stranger, the adversary, the enemy. Life has to be kept open for those who are unlike us.

We tried to meet this requirement in our work in Prijedor.

Some 2 years ago Mittal Steel acquired an iron-ore mine in Omarska near Prijedor. Prijedor is a town in North West Bosnia in the Republika Srpska (the Serb entity of Bosnia). It is two hours drive from Zagreb in Croatia and about 40 minutes flying time from Venice. In April 1992 a carefully planned program of ethnic cleansing was put into action. Bosnian Muslims (known as Bosniaks) and Croats were unprepared and unarmed. All non-Serbs were removed from their jobs. 2 concentration camps were established, one at an old tile factory at Keraterm and the other at the iron-ore mine at Omarska. During the months of May, June, July and August 1992 not less than 3000 and not more than 4000 people were killed in the Prijedor region. The figures are still not certain (7). In August 1992 an ITN film crew with Ed Vulliamy of the Guardian discovered and reported on what was going on at the mine at Omarska and international public outcry forced the closure of the 2 camps and that of a further collection centre at Trnopolje where women were being held and systematically raped.

The municipality of Prijedor was a laboratory of ethnic cleansing. 474 days were taken up at the Hague Tribunal for dealing with the events at Prijedor, one tenth of the Tribunal’s existence.

Once it became known that Mittal Steel had bought the mine, Bosniaks began to demand that a memorial to those who died at Omarska be erected in the mine complex, because it was in all the buildings of the mine that not only torture, rape and all kinds of atrocities been committed but also up to 1000 people murdered. Again, the numbers are not known precisely.

Before the war the mine employed around 5000 people, including Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs. Today the workforce of around 700 is nearly all Serb (there are 5 Muslims employed in the administration). The Serbs did not acknowledge what happened at the mine during the war and opposed the proposal for a memorial.

Mittal Steel asked the Soul of Europe to create a process of mediation which would result in a satisfactory outcome to a potentially destabilizing situation. Our brief, given to us by Roeland Baan, the CEO for Mittal Steel in Europe, was to ensure that all three ethnic groups should agree.

There followed 9 months of intensive activity. The Soul of Europe, consisting of myself and Peter Pelz, assisted by 2 local project managers, a Bosniak and a Serb, with an interpreter, began a journey of discovery. Would it be possible to bring Bosniaks and Serbs together (there are barely 200 Croats left in the Prijedor region)? Bosniaks had returned in considerable numbers to the region of Prijedor, about 20,000 of them (before there war there had been 40,000). These included a number of survivors from the killing camps.

Except for a small group of survivors who wanted to close down the mine completely and create a memorial to fuel a desire for vengeance, all the survivors who had returned to Prijedor were ready to meet and work with Serbs.

This journey was unpredictable. We developed a plan whereby a Bosniak would be invited to meet a Serb; after that initial meeting we asked each of them how they felt about it. Would they like meet again, and with 2 others? Slowly, in pairs and then in fours and more, Bosniaks and Serbs came together and started to speak about the Omarska Memorial. All together some 50 people took part. Some dropped out. Sometimes the meetings were awkward. The Soul of Europe brought the people together but we did not participate in the meetings. The intensity and concentration of those who participated was astonishing. There was a natural deference to the survivors of Omarska, but these welcomed the presence of Serbs.

Prijedor is a traumatized community, all sides, including the Serbs (9). A trauma is an open wound which has been allowed to fester. When the trauma is ignored then people begin to see themselves as victims. Then no one else can be trusted. The degree of pain is so intense that it is impossible to begin to imagine the experience of others.

The Bosniaks know humiliation. Their stories of being removed from their homes, thrown out of the country or taken to concentration camps have hardly been heard. And since they have been ignored they feel they do not matter. In Prijedor, they see the guards who worked at the Omarska concentration camp walking the streets as free men. The Bosniaks cannot get work. Many of them are teachers, accountants, lawyers, skilled professionals. And there are still 15,000 people missing in Bosnia, mostly Muslim. Time and again we have listened to the grief, rage and bitterness of these people as they share their experiences.

Bosniaks and Serbs demonize one another (9). Demonizing is described as ‘projection’, the transferring of overwhelming feelings on to others when we sense our survival is threatened. In a state of extreme vulnerability we feel hopeless. We split off from the unbearable feelings inside ourselves and project them on to others.

The more the victims refuse to accept his/her vulnerability, the more they humiliate others and deny those others any human emotion; they dehumanize the enemy, and attribute all kind of negative qualities to them. The Serbs are ‘animals’, the Muslims are ‘pigs’. Gossip in Prijedor is macabre; each of the ethnic groups watches the other and prepares to defend itself. The war carries on.

The Serbs see themselves as victims. Milosevic’s dreams of a Greater Serbia failed. Now they feel they are the under-class: the Bosniaks get everything and the Serbs are neglected. Besides which the Serb community has to accommodate 12,000 displaced Serbs from Croatia now living in Prijedor. They fear the Bosniaks, thinking that Bosnia is being turned into a Muslim state, and that they will be wiped out. There are also those Serb families who, like Bosniaks in the war, lost sons, fathers and husbands who joined the army and just disappeared.

We began a process of healing. I say ‘began’, because healing has to find it own way and take its own time.

One story: a freezing November day we took a group of young Serbs willing to be involved in the mediation process to Omarska. They would have been children when the camps were closed. They knew nothing about concentration camps then. One of the survivors stood in front of a shed, known as the white house, the main killing centre in the camp, and told these young men and women what happened to him there. He spared no details. The Serbs stood there in shock, a forlorn group, not knowing what to say. Some days later one of them opened up saying: ‘We have no alternative but to support the Bosniaks and this memorial. The truth is what matters.’

I have described at length how the cycle of violence functions at the emotional level.

When emotional and human responses to violence are not addressed, when healing in the heart and mind have no opportunities to begin, then sooner or later (even in Bosnia) the cycles of violence will return. Just about everyone the Soul of Europe met in Prijedor – with the exception of public officials who are still in denial – spoke about their suffering as if it was yesterday. We were told many times that we were the first foreigners to take seriously the experience of the traumatized people of Prijedor.

That is one reason why peace agreements fall apart: the personal is indeed the political.

(10)The second requirement is discovering not a critical mass to support a project for reconciliation, but the critical yeast. In creating a web of relationships which includes the enemy, then sooner or later, with sufficient support (kneading), people will emerge who will then move the project forward.

This is not so much mobilizing substantial numbers, certainly not possible in Prijedor, as discovering even just a small group of people, who in the right places and at the right time can make a difference. Yeast is a small ingredient which makes the dough rise. Yeast needs a warm undisturbed space to prepare itself, then, when it is ready, it activates the other ingredients and kneaded well, will do its work. The result is bread.

Gradually a number of people began to emerge, meeting informally, who offered something wholesome for Prijedor and for Bosnia. Serb employees of the mine and young Serbs from the town began to stand in solidarity with the survivors of Omarska.

Although no organization had yet been formed, the people, the yeast of the network, were characterized by an acknowledgment of our human interdependence. They knew they could not live separate lives. They spoke with nostalgia about the Prijedor they once knew, where no one bothered to which ethnic group they belonged. They spoke of Prijedor as their home, for everyone.

This nostalgia was reinforced by personal commitment. For example Miki is a Serb. He is 24, a musician performing with a successful group, recently married with a new-born baby. He took time to get the measure of us, attending meetings, but saying little. One day he told us his story. ‘My brother in law is now in prison in Spain. He will be there for 17 years. He was one of the soldiers who in August 1992 took part in a massacre at Mount Vlasic, where 200 Bosniaks were shot and thrown over a cliff. He did something bad. I want to do something good. Even though my father is ordering me to have nothing to do with this project, I know my own mind.’ These were his exact words.

Whenever the critical yeast begins to do its work then that web of social relationships is made more secure.

So another reason for the collapse of so many peace agreements is the failure to recognize the potential of a ‘small set of the right people involved at the right places. What is missing is not the critical mass. The missing ingredient is the critical yeast.’ (John Paul Lederach’s The Moral Imagination, page 92)

Many peace agreements are just ‘top down’ so what is required at grassroots and local levels are flexible, adaptable, dynamic organizations. (This was the intention of the Banja Luka Civic Forum, founded by the Soul of Europe. Its slogan was: ‘Change happens when those who do not usually speak are heard by those who do not usually listen.’) (11)

The third requirement is honoring serendipity. This means discovering by chance something while in pursuit of something else, proceeding like a crab, developing peripheral vision. The question is not so much: what are our outcomes as a result of our inputs and outputs, but what on the way did we learn? Omarska is a small settlement by the mine. The people there were employed as guards and administrative staff at the killing camp. We met a local restaurant owner there who proposed a meeting between the Serb community of Omarska and the neighboring Bosniak township of Kozarac. Kozarac had been destroyed in the war and is now being rebuilt by returning Muslims, causing alarm and suspicion among local Serbs. This proposal from a Serb took us by surprise.

Another accidental discovery, not so agreeable, was to learn about a rift between the Bosniaks themselves, between those who returned to Prijedor and the diaspora from the region now living abroad, numbering around 3000. Most of the diaspora would like the mine closed down, but the survivors living in Prijedor will settle for less because they know the economic value of the mine for Bosnia and that they have to live with their Serb neighbors.

Serendipity makes the outcome often unpredictable. Funders of reconciliation projects and those who evaluate them need to respect the crab-like progress. (Of course, if the work becomes impossible, the crab can dig a hole in the sand and appear somewhere else later!)

Another requirement is attention to memory.

How do past and present relate to a future which has the potential and the necessity to be a shared future? How can we mobilize, generate and build the moral imagination when an entire region is traumatized? And where can we tap into that source of creativity which might transcend memories of a particular community?

I have to say I do not know the answer to these questions.

Psychologists speak about ‘chosen trauma’. (12) This is an event or a series of events in which the identity of a group was almost destroyed and to which people from the group return again and again. They remember their violation and the atrocities committed against them. The memories renew themselves again and again and are passed down, so that they shape the way people perceive their lives.

In this way we can say that the past is behind us but also before us and around us.

An example: last December the mayor of Prijedor, Marko Pavic, invited us to lunch. It had taken time to establish a working relationship with this significant leader of the Serb community. He had played an important part in the ethnic cleansing, and therefore did not want mediation let alone a memorial. Nevertheless he was someone we needed to know and bring on board, however impossible the task. After lunch in which he expressed his doubts about our project he drove us to the largest memorial in the former Yugoslavia, one commemorating the massacre and eventual victory of partisans in the Second World War. Partisans were drawn from all the communities, Muslim and Croat. The partisan leader, Tito, was himself a Croat. But the present mythology of the partisans decrees that they were all Serb. We stood by the memorial listening to the mayor telling us that now we could understand who the Serbs’ enemies really were, meaning Bosniaks and Croats. But at the same time we were looking at lists of names, Muslim in particular such as Osmanovic etc, which contradicted this myth. Memories of what actually happened are manipulated into myth, which then is allowed to affect our present and our future.

All we can be certain of is the past, the past which is behind us, but also before us, as our lunch with Marko Pavic showed. The present slips into the past, even as I speak, and the future is unknown.

The holders of the myths of the past are the religious traditions: Islamic, Catholic and Orthodox in Bosnia. They keep the memories of the past alive, and are therefore indispensable in the invitation to join on the epic journey to a shared future.

I know and have worked with most of the religious leaders in Bosnia, because of the Soul of Europe’s project there whose primary objective is to reconstruct a jewel of the Ottoman Empire, the Ferhadija Mosque in the now Serb administered Banja Luka.

It would be possible to consider all three religious traditions, but that would take too long. Here are some comments about the Bosnian Serb Orthodox Church and the Diocese of Banja Luka (which includes Prijedor).

The Orthodox bishop of Banja Luka is a friend of the Soul of Europe. We have known him for 6 years. He and many of his clergy cling to the memory of an age which has long vanished. They fear the Catholic Church, remembering as though it were yesterday how Orthodox priests were being murdered by Catholic Croats in the Second World War. So when the late Pope, John Paul, made a one-day visit to Banja Luka, the Orthodox bishop did not attend the Pontifical Mass or even send a priest in his place (although he later appeared at a gathering of religious leaders).

The Orthodox Church is not interested in the fact that the Catholic Church in that part of Bosnia almost vanished in the Bosnia War, nor do they understand the need to rebuild the Ferhadija Mosque as part of Bosnia’s cultural heritage and as a symbol of Muslim-Christian collaboration. Orthodoxy sees itself in Bosnia as the last bulwark against the spread of Islam in Europe.

The Orthodox Church is wealthier than the state, and is able to build large numbers of new churches. These are being constructed and consecrated, but hardly used, the interiors bare. They are statements of ownership: this is our land. The Orthodox Church sees itself in a state of siege engulfed by its ‘chosen trauma’.

The strength of the religious traditions is not governed by those who attend Muslim prayers on Friday or liturgies on Sunday, but by their ability to hold on to the past as if it is before and around them. These traditions still provide the identity of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.

We attended the consecration of a new Orthodox Church in Omarska last June. The bishop arrived accompanied by a procession of priests, chaplains and acolytes, one of them carrying the Episcopal crown in a Jermyn Street hat box. The entire village joined Serbs from all over the region, cramming into the church. They watched the bishop being robed in his Episcopal vestments at the start of a 3 hours service, one of the most significant moments being the blessing of the bells as they were raised into the belfry. After the service we were invited to a banquet. Presentations of an icon and an Episcopal crown were made to the bishop. We stood up in silence to listen to the bells ringing. In Ottoman times this had been forbidden, so the bells signified: we have arrived, we are not going. Though Mayor Pavic and politicians were present, and Serb flags flew, it was not primarily a political occasion, but a demonstration of Serb identity. Hardly any of the people who attended would even say they were believers, but they were proud to be Serb, defiant in the face of Catholics and Muslims.

Bosnia is always said to be experiencing ‘defining moments’. One of the latest is the rejection of the reform of the constitution. This rejection can be traced directly to the holders of the religious traditions. How else to explain Serb politicians’ resistance to the continued pressure on the Republika Srpska to pull its weight? The bands of nationalism are strong and no one has found a way to begin to dismantle them. Whatever the solution, the religious leaders of Bosnia will have to play a significant part.

************************************************************************

I have outlined 4 requirements for mobilizing the moral imagination, the ability to imagine a web of relationships including the enemy, the finding and encouraging of people committed to strengthening this web-critical yeast, the necessity for process and activities across every section of a community, not just ‘top down’ implementation, and the requirement for attention to memory as a past which also lies before and around us. These requirements will assist in preventing the cycles of violence recurring, provided they are integrated into the necessary political, economic and security arrangements.

You may ask where is the evidence for the working out of the moral imagination? What is the framework? Where is the theory? As I said at the beginning this is a public conversation, a process. It is not finished. But I believe there is enough experience from peacemakers around the world to develop these ideas.

There is however a significant obstacle and that concerns the values which inform applications for funding and the way reconciliation projects are evaluated.

An example. In November 2002 the Soul of Europe submitted a bid for funding to the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights under the section Support for Democratization, Good Governance and the Rule of Law.

The funding was for a 3 year project. It took three months to prepare. We submitted it in November 2002. The results of the bid were to be announced in June 2003, but not until October 2003 did we learn that the bid had failed. (13)

One of the more curious aspects of applying for funding through the European Commission is that applicants are forbidden personal contact with anyone connected with the Application. Queries can be submitted to an email address, but that vanished once the deadline passed.

The reason for this regulation is that it prevents any opportunity for bribery of officials. A proper distance has to be preserved between potential recipients and donors.

But there is another reason. Given the way applications are framed and evaluated, human contact becomes unnecessary. The Application asks, quite reasonably enough, for a clear statement on aims, objectives and strategy. And then these demands intensify. Activities have to be described in detail. Priorities for each activity have to be justified. A three year project meant that the activities for each month, month on month, had to be described in detail, and how each activity related to what had happened before, and what was planned. Questions about internal and external continuous assessment have to be answered. Local partners have to provide value; and estimating and measuring the impact on target groups was essential. Every activity had to relate to every other in order that the aims and objectives of the project could be placed in a logical frame, like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Any piece missing and as an official told me: ‘your bid will be binned!’

A technical and financial grid evaluated the Soul of Europe’s application. The title says it all. Social engineering is the core conviction, which affirms that the world ‘out there’ can be analyzed, observed, measured and activities can be controlled and managed. If the world beyond the project is uncertain and unstable, a successful log frame will insulate the project from all that.

If this is the way the world works then inevitably it conveys a view of human nature which is reductionist and mechanistic.

The language in which the work of reconciliation is couched is ‘business speak’: impact, stakeholders, fast track, level playing fields, resources, targets, bullet points, delivery, outsourcing, benchmarking, ring fencing, business plans, etc. The language is ugly. It is sloppy and often meaningless.

But language and bureaucracy are not to blame. Bureaucrats are the guardians of the public purse. Their task is to see that public money is spent in a way that is accountable to the public. If all that is required consists of streamlining systems then changes can and are continually being made to lessen delays and increase efficiency.

But the problem is deeper and more critical.

What I am describing is that the values, assumptions and principles informing the concept of ‘materialistic determinism’ do not fit the patient, slow work of peacemaking and reconciliation. Moreover ‘materialistic determinism’ has become so pervasive, so embedded in the way we operate and in the institutions we have created that it is felt as fact. This it is believed is the way the world is and will be; this is how the world is imagined, described and desired. So, for example, when I speak about these matters to senior diplomats at the Foreign Office they say: ‘we are just marionettes.’ And who pulls the strings? I ask. ‘Our political masters,’ they reply. Talking to politicians, particularly in Brussels they say: ‘Yes, bureaucracy is a problem, is there anything I can do to help?’

The ways of describing the world ‘out there’ are based on illegitimate principles. These secular and autonomous assumptions are based on claims of power and pragmatism. But these claims do not ultimately work because they are cut off, removed from fundamental aspirations. In the west we find compensation in consumerism and a host of diversionary activities. Ultimately the myths around materialistic determinism do not touch people. Ultimately they are not compelling. Therefore they lack legitimacy. (15)


A PROPOSAL
Given the considerable gap between the requirements of the moral imagination and the way projects on reconciliation are now funded and evaluated, there needs to be a more nuanced conversation leading to some research to match the project and its evaluation with the money.

The research could be undertaken by government, university or foundation.

POSTSCRIPT
At the start of this lecture I described the imagination as the capacity to give birth to something new which changes the way we live in the world.

I have been describing how the work of reconciliation and peace building arises out of our imagination. We are like the artist, fashioning something out of what is a barren land, here and there soaked in blood, with memories of great suffering. But we are on this epic journey towards a shared future, otherwise there is no future for our children, grand-children and their children.

This work is risky and precarious. We live in a sacred space, at the threshold sometimes leaving behind what is familiar as we move into an uncertain future. Risk is built into what we do. As with all artists everything is demanded of us, stretching us beyond our limits. Built into working out the moral imagination there is the waiting and the watching, the pondering, the deepening of our vocation and relishing the opportunity for celebrating, even small things.

An example: at the end of a press conference where our group of Serbs and Muslims outlined agreed plans for the memorial we went to the mine and visited the white house. As I said before this was an interrogation centre during the war. Nearly everyone who was taken there never came out alive. Their bodies would be thrown out after torture during the night and collected in the morning to be buried in mass graves.

The manager in charge of the mine in 1992 was there. He had ordered the sacking of all non-Serbs during the war and went to the Hague Tribunal to witness for the then mayor of Prijedor who received a life sentence. He had gone along with everything to protect himself and his family, but acknowledges what he did was wrong. In fact we found out he helped Muslim friends escape, warning them and even driving them to safe parts of the region The manager is deeply ashamed of what he did and enthusiastically became part of the memorial project and mediation process, offering help and advice about the memorial, where it could be sited etc. We will never forget how at the end of the conference, as people prepared to leave the white house and the mine, he went from one survivor to the other, shaking their hands, thanking them for including him in the project. Nothing can destroy or diminish the power and significance of this gesture.

Thank you

Donald Reeves 18.5.06

NOTES

1. THE MORAL IMAGINATION. The title comes directly from John Paul Lederach’s latest book: The Moral Imagination: the art and soul of building peace. Moral imagination occurs in titles and sub-titles in dozens of books. There has been a growth of interest in the imagination among philosophers and theologians, in the last 20 years. John Paul Lederach is a leading Mennonite and world expert on peace building and reconciliation. He is Professor of International Peace Building at the Joan B Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University. Much of the ‘argument’ of this lecture is taken from Lederach’s work.
2. Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament theologian. His writings have made an extraordinary impression on my life and my work. He is one of many theologians who drew my attention to the imagination. His first book, The Prophetic Imagination, is a passionate essay in ‘nurturing, nourishing and evoking a consciousness and perception alternative to that of the dominant culture.
3. The work of Emmanual Levinas has meant a lot to me, in his understanding of ‘the other’, particularly Totality and Infinity, an Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh 1969). More immediately in Bosnia, the Soul of Europe relies on this understanding. Because we have used interpreters, the ‘eyes’, the ‘face’, the ‘body language’ of the other becomes a significant part of communication.
4. Walter Bruegemann often quotes the philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, whose own writing on Imagination and the Text is difficult but inspirational. Somewhere I discovered these words: ‘And it is in the heart of imagination that we let the Event happen before we may convert our heart, and tighten our will.’
5. Mary Grey, the Catholic theologian, has been another inspiration on the ‘epiphanies of connection’ in the Wisdom of Fools and subsequent writings.
6. This is John Paul Lederach’s fundamental insight.
7. Bosnia lacks any Truth Commission. There can be no reconciliation without justice, and no justice without knowledge: ‘knowing who did what to whom, when and where, etc.’ But an NGO in Sarajevo: Research and Documentation has begun to collect records of crimes and atrocities throughout Bosnia during the war. These will begin to dismantle the myths and exaggerations that hamper progress towards peace and reconciliation.
8. Paddy Ashdown, the former High Representative in Bosnia, said that the right to return is a new human right. This may be so but many Bosniaks who returned to Prijedor have left again, there is no work, much discrimination and no attempt to integrate with the Serbs.
9. My understanding of ‘trauma’ and ‘demonizing’ is taken from Making Terrorism History by Scilla Elworthy and Gabrielle Rifkind, 96 pages of gold.
10. The image of critical yeast is taken directly from The Moral Imagination (pages 91-92). I am not a bread maker, but it seems about right.
11. The Civic Forum failed after 18 months because the Soul of Europe was under pressure to produce results too quickly. There was just not enough time for process.
12. The Moral Imagination, page 142 and reference.
13. Our application received 85%. I asked for a copy of the Evaluator’s Report, which I received with the Evaluator’s name removed. They found little to criticize except to say ‘that it was somehow too ambitious’ and that the Soul of Europe had had ‘no experience in handling large budgets.’ A conversation, a meeting or an interview would have resolved the first criticism; and had the Evaluators taken up unsolicited references they would have discovered I was responsible for a budget of a turnover year after year of 800K during my ministry at St James’s Church Piccadilly.
14. ‘Materialistic determinism’ is a phrase used to describe the world view I have been outlining. I came across it in Edward Luttwak: The Missing Dimension, in Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (Eds): Religion: the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (OUP).
15. This is the argument of Jurgen Habermass in his On Legitimization. He is a difficult writer, and I hope I have got his argument right. In the UK there is an instinctive and widespread distrust of politicians who use the language of ‘business speak’ – ‘delivering resources, etc.’ Voters are not impressed with this sort of language applied to Health and Education, etc.
 

 
     

The Ferhadija Trust is a company limited by guarantee. Registered no. 509744, and a registered charity no. 1104416.
All material contained on this site is Copyright © 1999-2005 Revd Donald Reeves.
Any comments, questions etc. about this site can be directed to the webmaster/designer (Steven Stewart).