Sabine Lichtenfels
What is Grace ?
Shaken by the threat of a new war against Iran, Sabine Lichtenfels started her pilgrimage without money in 2005. Walking with the consciousness of being the change we want to see in world, she gave her pilgrimage the name “Grace”. In 2005, she was guided to Israel/Palestine where she led an international pilgrim's group through Israel and the Westbank. Since then, Sabine Lichtenfels has led pilgrimages through the Middle East, Colombia and Europe and the Global Grace Day has been a growing initiative connecting peace workers all over the world.
Sabine Lichtenfels writes in her book “Grace – Pilgrimage for a Future without War” about the meaning of Grace:
I practised and learnt to see the Christ in every human being wherever I was 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 tear gas. I look for the core of the human being in all its roles and behind all the masks of alienation. It is often difficult to be in this kind of presence. How often have I been outraged about the views of the world which I had to endure listening to from for instance an extreme rabbi or a fanatical Muslim? And how often did I feel an inner defensiveness or a reaction of disgust when listening to the never ending accusations and stories of suffering from the Palestinians in the West Bank or to the fanatical speeches of the settlers?
In search of a name for the pilgrimage 2005 in Israel 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, charity, consideration, congeniality and also 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 GRACE do not come to accuse. 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 worsen a war but rather to end it wherever it 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 the means by which it can be ended and I place myself in the service of a solution.
You can easily examine just how far you have committed yourself 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. In such situations we are quick to forget our determination to live in peace and readily enter into disputes and wars, large or small.
Here is a small example, perhaps a little humorous but it makes the point: If you hear that the car of a distant acquaintance has been stolen, you will probably take the news very calmly. If you hear that your best friend’s car has been stolen, you will probably get a bit agitated but still stay cool enough just to pass on a few words of commiseration. When, however, your own beloved car has been stolen, inner peace is shattered and perhaps for some time. The setting of the course is far reaching and profound and takes place at a totally different level of consciousness. We can, however, understand more about the correlations on a large scale when, when we have learnt to be come witnesses to ourselves on the smaller scale. GRACE is not man made.
GRACE catapults us to a higher level of order in 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 the yardstick for my actions.
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 country.
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.
Then GRACE happened.
I let myself be touched and I try to touch others. Whenever possible, I enter places with my heart open. This was the case when I met with soldiers and officers, Palestinian peasants or farmers, or Israeli settlers.
GRACE comes from the strength and the connectedness with the source of life.
This must not be confused with a timid attitude where I dare not speak up against injustice when I see it.
I do not condemn anyone or anything when I am in the state of GRACE, rather, I gather up 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, from feeling that only they are in the right and also to avoid worsening even further the war situation. 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. We then are quick to impose our view of the world on either one of them. And most important of all is that our view of the world 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 show some little charity in our lives. This is the way the insidious fascism of our times is bred through indifference.
People shut their good middle-class front doors in the face of reality. They do it until suddenly they themselves are caught by a wave of real life which up till then they have been successfully suppressing. Suppression now hits back and shows its most cruel and violent side. It is not life itself that is cruel. It is through suppression that it appears to be cruel and violent. We see this in marriage crisis, in illness, in growing suicide rates, in psychic sickness, alcoholism and other similar problems. That is 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 an opinion, we tend to forget 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.
Sabine Lichtenfels
Initiator of the Grace-Movement
Sabine Lichtenfels was born in 1954 to a middle class family in Germany. Although she is raised in a free-thinking environment, an early Christian soul dwells in her. Already as a small child she refuses to eat meat when she learns where meat comes from. "I was always intimately connected with the issue of the existence of God. I discussed my hopes, my questions about my purpose in life, about the future, friendship and love quietly with God. When doing this, the Bible was not important to me, only life itself." At the age of 16, together with her friends, she dreams of establishing a village where all their friends and lovers live together. For in addition to seeking God, love is always the second important path in her life.
"I was practically always in love, as far back as I can remember. And my love situation always strongly coloured all my other decisions." She thus follows the turbulent paths that love leads her on. She experiences the happiness of great love, motherhood, marriage, her partner’s unbearable jealousy, divorce – all the "normal" things that women go through in this world. She studies theology, whereby she is repeatedly confronted with the prejudices of society. Her examiner asks her: "What is a single woman with a child doing in the pulpit?" Her life in a communal residence is seen as incompatible with the profession of a priest. She finally decides to leave the profession that she has been pursuing to dedicate her life to a future without war.
"Already early on I was confronted with the feeling that everything that I do is a drop in the bucket. While you are helping out at one place, someone is being tortured and killed some where else. Early on, I had the thought that we must develop a new system of living together, where one can learn to live in peace in an elementary way. My longing was great and it would not let me adapt to the usual system of normality."
Meeting her partner, Dieter Duhm
In 1978 she meets the sociologist Dieter Duhm. This is the beginning of one of those unusual love relationships, where two strong people are inspired by the same goal: a future without war and a culture of peace that is based on love and reconciliation between the genders. Sabine Lichtenfels participates in the interdisciplinary research initiative, which Dieter Duhm had established. Their many years of cooperation result in the "Plan of the Healing Biotopes", which makes the following statement: If, at a few locations on earth, the ecological, technological and social prerequisites for peace are researched, realized and tested in a decentralized way, then a pool of knowledge and experience is produced, which makes the global paradigm shift toward peace more probable.
They soon realize that the plan can only succeed on the basis of a functioning human community. No matter how good their intentions, peace projects keep failing due to conflicts and competition that remain hidden under the surface. Human know-how is needed. For this they spend three years in a social experiment with 40 women and men dealing with the human core issues that until now were the reasons why communities failed: competition, jealousy, authority, power and especially love. In their life together they study the historic and cultural background of war with the help of art and theatre and seek a way of living together where "the loving attention of one person to another does not elicit fear and hatred in a third person."
During this time Sabine Lichtenfels develops ideas for a deepened emancipation of women: "In order to achieve planetary peace, we need a new relationship between the genders. There can be no peace on earth as long as there is war in love. Communities of the future are based on the development of a balance between male and female forces."
Spiritual Research
She deepens her commitment to peace through her spiritual research. She undertakes study trips to prehistoric sites and uses her abilities as a medium to explore advanced archaic cultures. These historic sources become sources of inspiration for her in her work in building community.
In 1995, together with Dieter Duhm and with the support of a large circle of friends, she buys a suitable property in southern Portugal. Here, the results of the social, ecological, spiritual and technical research are to be integrated. The place is called Tamera and is located in the southern Portuguese province of Alentejo.
Thus, after almost 20 years, the "Plan of the Healing Biotopes" reaches a new level of realization. The result is the establishment of international, preferably self-sufficient communities, within which the life conditions for a non-violent future can be researched and realized in an exemplary way. These are social ecological pilot models, in which human beings can live together with all fellow creatures in a non-violent way that has been thought through and developed.
After establishing the first Healing Biotope or Grace Village, the creation of further models can be supported. The next ones are planned in Colombia and the Middle East. Today, about 200 people live in Tamera, among them students of the Peace Education Monte Cerro. There are research and educational tasks within networking, ecology, love and living together, art, healing and spirituality.
In the name of GRACE – pilgrimages through Europe, India, Colombia, Israel and Palestine
Sabine Lichtenfels increasingly uses her abilities and her role as a social and community-creating focal point for the education of youths and for the creation of a political network. Together with students and youth she undertakes peace actions, pilgrimages and street retreats, and visits conflict areas, indigenous peoples such as the Todas in India, the peace village San José de Apartadó in Colombia and future-oriented projects such as Auroville, in order to help and to study other ways of life.
In 2005 she led the first GRACE pilgrimage – for weeks by foot through Israel and the Westbank, from the Golan heights, to the Kinnereth, Nazareth, Baqqa al Garbyye, Tulkarm, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Neve Shalom to Jerusalem. 50 people from many countries including Israel and Palestine accompanied her. It was an extreme and deep experience where people from all sides could perceive and overcome their fear and their anger. A film maker produced the film „We refuse to be enemies“ about this adventure. Sabine Lichtenfels wrote the book "Grace - pilgrimage for a future without war".
Her next pilgrimage from Eilat to Jerusalem through the desert and through the Westbank brought together 170 people – and created a healing atmosphere for participants and places visited: Kibbutzim, military bases, refugee camps, Israeli settlements and Bedouine villages.
The pilgrims walk in the name of "GRACE", which means: solidarity with all life, not judging, but looking for the healing perspective in every situation.
In these years the plan became very concrete to found a Grace Village in the Middle East. Many friends and co-operation partners in the region support the idea: Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi, Sami Awad, the director of the Holylandtrust, Samuel Shaul, the geomantic and nature researcher, and many others. Some of them – Israelis and Palestinians – are studying presently in Tamera.
The main carriers of the Grace Village are Sabine Lichtenfels´ daughter Vera Kleinhammes and Benjamin von Mendelssohn. The two of them have been trained and educated in Tamera.
Sabine Lichtenfels: "Grace Village – this means getting to know what it needs for human beings from all cultural backgrounds to live in peace – which each other and with nature. How will they produce energy, how will they produce food, in which houses do they live? We are in contact with technical, ecological and scientific institutes in the country. And we do very concrete research work on that in Tamera where we are developing a Solarvillage as an applicable model. Our main focus however is the aspect of community building: How do people communicate, how do they live in order to achieve peace?" Sabine´s latest adventure was leading a seminar and a pilgrimage in San José de Apartadó with approximately 400 participants. San José is a peace village which is heavily threatened by the parties of the civil war in Colombia. The inhabitants live peacefully and try to resist to be expelled or killed – in the ten years of their existence 170 of their inhabitants were murdered by guerrilla, soldiers or paramilitaries.
Sabine Lichtenfels: "The inhabitants of San Josecito stayed faithful to their decision to remain a Peace Community despite the unbearable pain. It is the only answer and alternative they see and that gives them the power and the courage to live. Meanwhile, this community has become a carrier of hope for all the suppressed ones in the country. Despite the risk of life more and more people dare to raise their voice. The power of San Josecito encourages other displaced people to raise their voices. Having become an eye-witness, I don’t see any other way than helping these people with all means and with that effectively thinking about models with which this or similar help will be possible also for other suppressed and peoples." For the actions in the name of Grace, for building international peace training sites ("Global Campus") and for helping places like San José, Sabine founded the GRACE foundation – for the humanisation of money.
Community building
During her 30 years of community research, Sabine had learnt to create a community space of deepening understanding, and this proved to be invaluable in the most painful situations and conflicts. She leads peace camps – in Colombia, in Israel, in Palestine and in Tamera – with gentle empathy, but at the same time she takes an uncompromising stand for truth, as the participants encounter deeper and deeper layers of pain and disappointments and find healing. Having a sense of humour and presenting one’s own problems artistically makes it easier to deal with these difficult issues. The community of Tamera provides a framework that illustrates that trust and truth among human beings is truly possible. Sabine Lichtenfels says: "Conflicts between peoples can only be reconciled by looking to the future, by taking on a joint task, by together caring for the common land, its ecology, its water, its future. The establishment of Grace Villages can become such a task for many people. We will support it with all our power."