Sisters of the Earth

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What is our safe place, our sanctuary? Which memories of this place offer us a sense of peace and solace? Can we carry this place within our hearts when our world is fraught with conflict and uncertainty? Can we create a sanctuary for each other with our words?
 
The young women sat writing around a table at the Barbara Harris Center in Greenfield, NH, finding their memories of safety in a treasured place. This July, five Palestinian citizens of Israel and five Jewish teens from Israel and the Creating Friendships for Peace (CFP) program spent two weeks at the Harris Center, learning about peacebuilding, leadership, conflict resolution, and communication before joining host families in mixed pairs for a week-long homestay. Readings and discussions with the New Hampshire Humanities (NHH) Connections program, and teens from Souhegan High School, presented these young women with opportunities for deeper reflection, for looking at our place in the world and finding common ground in stories.  
 
In one of these stories, “Beginning with a Place,” from the book Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose & Poetry About Nature, author Valerie Andrews describes a grove of birch trees that she returned to as a child to feel “the steady rhythmic heartbeat of the earth.” Later in life she reflects on how she continued to carry that early connection: “The whole earth lives within us, and in every moment, we are both its creators and discoverers. We only need to reawaken all these early memories.” The young women were subdued as they read and talked about Andrews’ place of peace. Could they relate to her reflections in this time of war? What was their own special place? They wrote quietly. 
 
Founded during The Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1981, CFP has “evolved into a month-long U.S. residency program… in combination with a robust teen program in the divided communities. CFP begins with friendship to create an experience of tolerance, leadership development, and discovery of self and community responsibility.” The NHH Connections - CFP partnership enriches the teens’ understanding of their new friends and offers New Hampshire participants insight into the complexities of crafting peace in conflict zones. Says CFP director, Betsy Small, “Connections provides safe community space where the teens can lift words off a page, play with their meaning, and convey a sense of the worlds they live in and their place in it.”
 
The young women stirred in their seats, there were quiet conversations in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, some light laughter. Then, instructed to “write your piece in wherever it seems to fit,” each stood and added a line or two to our group poem on large sticky newsprint:  
 

That certain smell I will never forget, it will

     always be stuck in my head 

With the sound of nothing but the wind 

Gold is my hideaway. 

 

There was a big glass window, I could see

     Queen’s Park full of life, 

It is my special place that I would go to when I

     am confused, sad and happy 

It was very colorful, there was green, yellow

     and brown 

 

My house is the place I run away to when I feel

     stress and sad 

The small garden next to my house where all

     the neighbors would meet  

The smell of all the Friday cooking from the

     houses in the street 

 

My paradise, where I could drift and dream

     and just be 

My school because I have fun with my friends

     there and a lot of good memories 

Grapes grow in the front yard 

 

Allowing myself to be at peace with joy. 

 
Literature invites us to cultivate our higher humanity, to see ourselves in the other, the other in ourselves, and to join the timeless community of the written word. “Gold is my hideaway.”  What is yours? 
 
To learn more, please visit www.nhhumanities.org/Connections.
 

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