Sabine Lichtenfels

The pilgrimage is to lead us to Israel/Palestine to the so called "Holy Land", a region which has been dominated by war, conflict, struggle and separation for a long time. For a pilgrimage to this country to be successful in the sense of inner and outer peace work, a spiritual source is needed to make us pilgrims act in a correct and healing way during difficult situations. In search of a name for the pilgrimage we came across the term GRACE. Grace has many connotations and in English comprises more than the word “Gnade” does in German.
GRACE is mercy, favour, charm, sweetness, readiness and more and stands for the act of Grace itself.

GRACE reminds me of walking in the service of the higher mission, in the service of life and its inherent justice.

Those who are walking in the name of GACE do not come to judge. They do not come to impart a new ideology on a country or on a land and its people - they come in the service of openness, of perception and of support.

GRACE pledges not to aggravate war but to end it where ever one happens to be. In the name of GRACE I am always on the look out for a non-violent solution, a solution which creates justice and healing amongst all concerned. Often clear judgement is necessary to do this, but never condemnation.
GRACE says: I am willing to end the war and to understand by what means it can be ended and I place myself in the service of a solution.

You can easily examine just how deeply you have made the decision to act in this way by the way you react, especially when you feel that someone has tried to hurt you or treated you unjustly. We are quick to forget our determination to live peace and readily enter into smaller or larger haggles and wars in such situations.

Here is a small example, meant to be humorous: If it comes to your ears that the car of a distant acquaintance has been stolen, you will probably take this very calmly. If you hear that the car of your best friend has been stolen, you will probably get a bit agitated but you are probably still cool enough to just pass out a few words of good advice. When, however, your own beloved car has been stolen, inner peace is soon out of the window and this for some time. The far reaching and profound setting of the course takes place at a totally different level of consciousness. However, we can understand more about the correlations on a large scale when, on the smaller scale, we have learnt to become witness of ourselves.

GRACE is not manmade.
GRACE catapults us to a higher level of order of life itself.

It is not me that will judge, but life itself.
No matter where I happen to be and where I am coming from, I put aside all prejudice and judgement.
I do not arrive with preconceived ideas of who the other one might be or might not be and I do not make my opinion to be the yardstick for my actions.
I practised and learnt to see the Christ in every human being where ever we were and during all of the pilgrimage. At first I turn to the human being who happens to be my counterpart and let myself be touched by his or her history. To do this, I anchor myself as far as possible in the present moment. Again and again I imagine that the person sitting in front of me could just as well be me. I could be a woman settler, a Palestinian woman or a young Israeli woman about to enter the military. I could be the soldier that is about to shoot at Palestinian kids with teargas. I look for the core of the human being behind all its roles and masks of alienation. I am not always successful even when I am in this kind of presence and in the moment. How often have I been outraged about the world views which I had to endure hearing from an extreme Rabbi for instance or from a fanatical Moslem? Or, how often did I notice an inner defensiveness or a reaction of disgust when listening to the never ending accusations and stories of suffering from the Palestinians in the Westbank or to the fanatical speeches of the settlers?

GRACE demands self-knowledge. And self-knowledge is not always easy. To discover flaws in others is much more pleasant and easy, than to unmask oneself. Everything within me wants to cry out in anger and outrage when I sit opposite a young officer listening to his excited explanations about the ideological values of his State. All of a sudden it occurs to me that he could just as well be my son and immediately I begin to see in him not only the soldier but the human being behind his role.
This is a first step which creates an opening. Now everything depends on whether I will be able to tell him the truth of what I see without any fear.

When I am out there meeting people in the name of GRACE, I try to let myself be touched by them rather than by the world views they represent.
All was lost whenever our meetings started with a debate about world views. Nobody kept listening and instead the meeting ended in an emotional upheaval. The meetings unfolded totally differently whenever people were touched by each other in a deep and humane way.
Then GRACE happened.
I let myself be touched and I try to touch others. When ever possible, I enter places with my heart open This was the case when I met with soldiers and officers, Palestinian peasants, farmers and settlers.

GRACE comes from within, from being strongly connected to the source of life and in all solidarity. This must not be confused with an attitude of timidity where I dare not speak up about what I see, least of all to call something an injustice. I do not condemn anyone or anything when I am in the state of GRACE, rather, I muster the courage to speak the truth. I want to speak the truth in such a way as to reach out to others and to change them, not to be in the right or aggravate the war even further.

In our everyday reality we shut out both sides, we shut out the truth of the victim as well as the truth of the perpetrator and are then quick to impose on them our own world view on either one of them, most important is that our own world view is the right one! We do this to protect ourselves from being touched. We can only bear to watch the constant and terrible news because we are so closed up. And we are relieved when we are able to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. We carry on living our comfortable every day lives and believe that we are good people when we manage to include some charitable actions in our lives. This is the way the insidious fascism of our times is bread - through indifference!

People shut their good middle-class front doors in the face of reality. They do it until suddenly they are caught by a wave of real life themselves which up till now they have been suppressing quite successfully. Suppression is now hitting back and shows itself from its most cruel, violent and ugly side. It is not life itself that is cruel. It is through the suppression that it appears to be cruel and violent. We see this in marriage problems, in growing suicide rates, in psychic illnesses, alcoholism or similar forms of appearance. Until we wake up.

GRACE reminds us of another truth and reality at work behind the terrible dimensions of a culture which will soon have exhausted its last resources. The truth is simple and the same everywhere.

When forming of opinion, we tend to forge that we do this mainly from a level of interpretation. The truth lies beyond all opinions. The truth is distinct from ideology in as much as truth is both simple and true. I was shocked to realize how conflicts more often than not are kindled and rekindled by the ideologies and the convictions which people continually fire at each other. As a result of our fear of the truth of life we consider our opinions and views to be true and defend them until the bitter end. This is psychological war fare that finally discharges in real war. We hold to be true what has nothing to do with truth. This is the story of our socialisation with which we identify. All of a sudden you look into the distorted mirror of mankind which has separated itself from its roots. You look at the same patterns of fear, anger, powerlessness and trauma which are everywhere and at the resulting war with its destructive acts of revenge. It is the suppressed life itself that chooses revenge in order to survive. At this point moral appeals are useless. Just imagine, your child is killed in front of your own eyes. Is it not revenge that is your foremost and strongest impulse?

You see it everywhere in lesser or worse forms, but the basic pattern remains identical anywhere. It can be found behind every ideology, behind all religions, behind world views. We have, in equal measure, all become victims of an imperialistic culture. Behind this avalanche that rolls across the regions of war of this planet and writes a painful history of victims and perpetrators, behind all this, you come across the same hunger everywhere – a hunger for life, a hunger for love, a hunger for trust and belonging, a hunger for acknowledgement and a hunger for wanting to be seen and understood. This hunger is independent of race and creed. He simply exists. He exists in every human being for as long as he or she still deserves this name.

GRACE always reminds you of this. GRACE is like a consciously chosen naivety that helps you not to get lost in the sea of world views and to recognize and protect the elementary and simple truth behind all things. You create an opening for the cry for life. You see the collective body of pain in front of you, this body that has presented the Jews with their terrible fate. You equally recognize the collective delusion of the German people who have not been able to truly look at and heal their past till this day. You see the effects of a patriarchal religion and culture which has taken a wrong turn, and you see how war is an inseparable part of it, just as much as thunder and lightning are part of a stormy night as it has been the way for thousands of years. The history of victims and perpetrators and our identification with either one of them has to come to an end. At this point world history awaits a big transformation, the final awakening!

GRACE REMINDS YOU ALWAYS THAT THIS CHANGE DOES NOT COME TO PASS BY WAY OF ONES OWN FORCES.
GRACE reminds you of the sacredness of life itself at every moment.
GRACE reminds you that the only way out of the dead end street is for humankind to successfully return to the very basis of life and love, of trust and truth.

GRACE is the power of a long breath that is going to last because it can see a new dawn at the horizon of history, a paradisiacal culture of love and charity, a culture honouring variety while at the same time acknowledging common values.
GRACE is the umbilical cord that connects us to this vision and guides us, already now, to act and behave out of its geist, its freshness, abundance and beauty.