The Anatomy of PEACE. RESOLVING THE HEART OF CONFLICT. The Arbinger Institute

ht think that that would have paid off in good grades," he chuckled, breaking some of the tension of his story, "giving me plenty of time to study. But like many who are lonely, I was more preoccupied with others than were those who lived to socialize. You see, I was never really alone, even when I had physically separated myself from others, because I was thinking about my father, my people, the Arabs, and Hamish. Everyone I hated was always with me, even when I was alone. They had to be, for I had to remember what and why I hated in order to remind myself to stay away from them.
"After my second suicide attempt and a brief stay in the hos�pital, I was released to ponder my future. At the time it seemed
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bleak. I had been placed on probation after my first year at ASU, and my second-year grades were even worse. I expected to be ex�pelled. One day in early May, I received a letter from the pro�vost's office�my expulsion notice.
"Or so I thought. In reality, it was a final, merciful lifeline. I was being invited to enroll in a forty-day survival program being run by one of the university's faculty�an Arab by the name of Yusuf al-Falah." He extended his arm toward Yusuf, who nodded ever so slightly in response.
"Which of course meant that I wasn't going to do it," Avi continued. "I would sooner be expelled than be forced to spend forty days and nights with a hate-monger, which is what I, as a hate-monger myself, assumed he must be. And I told my mother as much, who by then had moved to the States herself.
"'You will enroll in this program, Avi,' she scolded me, 'or you will no longer be my son. And don't think I don't mean it,' she continued. 'You've twice already tried to remove yourself from my life, and something in you stole the boy I once knew some four years ago anyway. So I will make it easy on you, Avi: if you turn from this opportunity�this gift you do not deserve� because of some blind grudge you hold toward someone you have never met, then you will not be my son. You certainly would be no son of your father.'"
Avi paused in his telling to take in a deep breath. "And so I went," he said. "I went to live with my enemy."
The group waited for him to continue.
"So what happened?" Gwyn asked.
"Would you mind?" Yusuf asked permission of Avi.
"No, not at all," Avi said. "Please."
Yusuf walked to the front of the room. "To give you a feel�ing for what happened, perhaps it would help to tell you about something that happened here yesterday�with Carl and Teri's daughter, Jenny."
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Jenny! Lou thought to himself. He couldn't believe he'd let her slip from his mind.
"Carl, Teri," Yusuf asked, "would you mind if I shared with the group how you brought Jenny here?"
Carl fidgeted beneath the attention that suddenly came his way but said, "That would be fine."
"You're sure about that?"
"Yes, go ahead."
"Teri?"
"Sure, it's fine."
"Okay then," Yusuf began, turning to the rest of the group. "When Jenny climbed in her parents' car yesterday morning, she didn't know she was being transported to a treatment pro�gram. Now you know we don't recommend that, but it happens. Jenny's brother was in the car as well. He held Jenny so she wouldn't bolt from the moving vehicle when her parents broke the news. You of course saw the state Jenny was in after she got out of her brother's clutches and bolted across the street. You may not have noticed that she was without shoes. That may not seem vital at 9:00 a.m. But it's a different story when the Arizona sun begins to heat the city pavement, I can assure you. Even in April.
"As I mentioned yesterday afternoon, Jenny ran shortly after we began our session, and two of our young people set off af�ter her. What I'd like to tell you about is what happened over the next few hours as they followed her."
"Few hours?" Lou asked.
"Yes. The young people who followed her are named Mei Li and Mike. They were each once students in our program but now work with us. Mei Li is twenty, and Mike, twenty-two.
"In fact, they are with us this morning," he said, extending his hand toward the back of the room.
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The group whirled their heads around.
Mei Li and Mike, each of them comfortable in worn khakis and T-shirts, smiled back at them. Mike slipped the bandana from his head and tipped it, like ball players tip their caps. Mei Li waved sheepishly.
"Would you mind coming up and sharing what happened yesterday?" Yusuf asked.
They smiled and nodded and walked to the front.
"Well," Mike began, "Jenny took off running about fifteen minutes after you came into the building. She had a few blocks head start when Mei Li and I took off after her. We called to Jenny as we caught up, but she yelled at us, and started scream�ing about how her parents had betrayed her.
"Sorry," he said to Carl and Teri, when he realized what he had said. He winced slightly and ducked his head in apology.
Carl shook his head and waved the concern away with a perfunctory flick of his wrist. "Don't worry about it," he said.
"Jenny was crying," Mei Li chimed in. "Nothing we said helped; maybe made it worse even. She began running faster and jumping walls trying to ditch us."
"She runs steeplechase," her mother offered, almost in apology.
"Figures," Mei Li laughed. "We did our best to keep up though."
"And to keep up a conversation," Mike added. "We contin�ued that way�jogging after her and trying to talk�for quite a while. But then Mei Li noticed something."
"What?" Teri asked.
"That Jenny's feet were bleeding. So we asked her if it would be okay if we called someone to bring some shoes."
"And?" Teri asked.
Mike shook his head. "She wouldn't have any of it."
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Teri sighed.
"But then Mei Li sat down," Mike continued, "and began removing her own shoes. 'Take mine then, Jenny,' she said. 'Your feet are beat up; mine are fine. Please.' But Jenny called her something I'd rather not repeat and kept running."
Jenny's father, Carl, shook his head in resignation.
"Didn't matter though," Mike continued. "Mei Li took off her shoes anyway."
Teri and Carl looked at them inquiringly.
"Mike did the same," Mei Li added. "Dropped down on the spot and took his shoes off too. Then we tried to catch up to her."
"Barefoot?" Lou asked.
"Yes," Mei Li answered.
"For how long?"
"Oh," she said, "another three hours or so."
"Three hours! Barefoot on the pavement? In Phoenix?"
"Yes."
"But why?"
"That is the question," Yusuf jumped in. "And I bet at the time Mei Li and Mike couldn't have even articulated the rea�son. They just knew it was the thing to do."
"But it doesn't make any sense," Lou retorted. "She didn't want their shoes. All they did was beat themselves up."
"Actually, Lou," Yusuf responded, "it makes the deepest sense in the world. And while they certainly inconvenienced them�selves, their act accomplished something of great importance."
"Then what? What did it accomplish?"
"What indeed."
17 � Marching Bootless
"No, seriously, what did it accomplish?" Lou persisted. "What good did this do�taking off their shoes?"
"It isn't so much what good it did," Yusuf responded, "as what good it invited."
"Okay, then, what good did it invite?"
Yusuf looked at Mei Li and Mike. "Do you want to speak to that?"
"Sure," Mei Li said. She looked at Lou. "I'm not sure what good it invited, Mr. Herbert," she began.
How does she know who I am? Lou wondered.
"But I know what happened�to Jenny," she continued. "She decided on her own to enroll in the program. And I bet you wouldn't have predicted that."
"No," Lou agreed, his eyebrows rising in surprise, "I can't say that I would have." Then he added, "How did that happen?"
"Well, after a few hours, we finally ended up at a mall. And Jenny ran into one of her friends. She started telling her what her parents had done to her and about this program they had tried to take her to. She mentioned that we worked for that program as well and that we had been following her for most of the day.
"The friend then looked down at our feet, which were all bloody, and asked the question you just asked, Mr. Herbert. She said: 'Barefoot? You've been running around the city barefoot?'
"'Yeah,' Jenny chuckled back at her.
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"The friend then looked at us and back at Jenny and then said, 'I don't know, Jenny, this program sounds like it might be okay. Maybe you should give it a try.'
"We talked for a while together after that, until her friend had to go. After she left, Jenny turned to us and said, 'Okay then, tell me more about this Camp Moriah.'
"We answered everything she wanted to know. We told her about Yusi and Avi, about the wilderness we go to, and how we live off the land and how fun and interesting it is�how liberat�ing, really. She didn't believe us about the liberating part," Mei Li laughed. "But she kept listening. And after a while of talking about it, you know what she said?"
The group hung on the answer.
"She said, 'Okay. I'll go.' Just that. She wasn't thrilled, cer�tainly. More resigned than anything, I think. But she was will�ing. And then during our ride back here together, just before we pulled into the parking lot, she said, 'I'm sorry for all the things I said to you today. And for your feet.' She was genuinely sorry. I know, because I could see the water in her eyes.
"So, Mr. Herbert, did taking our shoes off have anything to do with Jenny now being safely and willingly out on the trail? I don't know for sure. You'd have to ask Jenny. But I do know one thing for certain: I know what taking my shoes off meant for me. It was a way of joining Jenny in her world, which is something we always try to do here. It's a way we create space for helping people to get out of the box. So, for example, when we go out on the trail and the youth have nothing but a food pack and a poncho, we too have nothing more than the same food pack and poncho."
"Unless," Mike jumped in, "for safety reasons we have to have something else�a radio, for example, or a first-aid kit."
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"Right," Mei Li agreed. "There are those differences. But we keep them to a minimum. Because if the kids had nothing but cornmeal to eat, for example, but I pulled out a candy bar for myself, how would that be treating them? Or if they had to sleep on the hard ground while I had an inflatable mattress, how would that be treating them?"
"As objects," came Miguel's gravelly voice, surprising al�most everyone in the room.
"Right," Mei Li agreed. "I would be seeing myself as better than and more deserving than them. So how do you think that would invite them to see and treat me?"
"Same way," Miguel answered again.
"Exactly," Mei Li answered. "Joining the youth in their hard�ships helps them because it helps us not to invite their hearts to go to war.
"So, Mr. Herbert," Mei Li continued, looking at Lou once more, "did it make a difference to Jenny? I don't know. But it made a difference to me. It helped me keep a heart at peace. And I think that might have made a difference to her. Like Yusuf and Avi always tell us, we can't be agents of peace until our own hearts are at peace."
Lou sat stunned. Here was a twenty-year-old girl, probably less than two years removed from high school, and herself a de�linquent in years past, who seemed to have a command of life that Lou himself knew he had not yet approached.
"Thank you, Mei Li and Mike," Yusuf said.
Turning back to the group, he added, "Do you think your children are in good hands now?"
"I'll say," Gwyn answered, with others adding similar senti�ments.
"Thanks," Lou nodded at Mei Li and then at Mike.
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