Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Fetzer Institute

"In this essay, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela draws from her experience and observations as a member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She discusses the relationship between empathy and the victims' capacity to forgive perpetrators and argues that empathy toward others is the essence of our ethical responsibility." --p. 30

An African Ethics of Interconnectedness

Forgiveness and the Maternal Body

Ocean Robbins

We all inherit a legacy that includes the love and the pain, the prayers and the prejudices of countless generations before us. We grow out of soil that has been at one time or another soaked in blood and tilled by slave labor, as well as tended by loving hands. The work to build on the blessings and gifts of our ancestral history, while challenging and transforming the bigotry, fear, and disconnection that we also inherit, is at once collective and deeply personal. One of my dearest friends is Coumba Toure of Senegal. She is the West African director of Ashoka and founded a printing press for children's books. At a key moment in a gathering of young leaders, I heard her say something that strikes me as deeply true: All violence begins with disconnection. At the moment we disconnect ourselves from one another, it's all gradients of violence--from not listening to people fully to speaking ill of them to spitting on them to torturing them to killing them. So the process of reconnection is among the most vital acts of healing that any of us can undertake. In these painful and beautiful times, there may be nothing more important than the journey from isolation to connection. For as we find the power of our diverse communities, and as we come to know ourselves more deeply in relationship to our unique gifts and needs, we not only become more whole but also take steps toward giving our essential gifts in this world. We begin to learn how we can unleash all that we have, and all that we are, on behalf of all that we love. -Ocean Robbins, from The Power of Partnership: Building Healing Bridges Across Historic Divides The Fetzer Institute's project on Deepening the American Dream began in 1999 to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service. Through commissioned essays and in dialogue with such writers as Huston Smith, Jacob Needleman, Gerald May, Charles Gibbs, Robert Inchausti, Carolyn Brown, Elaine Pagels, and others, the project is beginning to sow the seeds of a national conversation. With the publication of these essays, the thinking and writing coming from these gatherings is being offered in a series of publications sponsored by The Fetzer Institute in partnership with Jossey-Bass. In an effort to surface the psychological and spiritual roots at the heart of the critical issues that face the world today, we are extending this inquiry by creating a parallel series focused on Exploring a Global Dream. The essays and individual volumes and anthologies published in both series will explore and describe the many ways, as individuals and communities and nations, that we can illuminate and inhabit the essential qualities of the global citizen who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times.

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