One of my (Lawrence’s) most memorable conflict experiences took place when I was about thirteen. I made money mowing lawns for neighbors in a small central Ohio town. Once I took my push mower to a customer’s home and found another boy about to mow the lawn. I informed him I’d been hired to do the mowing. He said he’d been hired. The woman wasn’t home.

Since I had mowed the lawn before and was sure I’d been promised the job, I repeated kindly but firmly that the lawn was mine to mow. Before I knew what was happening, the boy drew back his fist. Hitting me squarely on the jaw, he knocked me to the ground.

After a few seconds I stood. I reacted in a manner I thought consistent with the teachings of Christ and true to my Mennonite heritage. Turning my face a bit I said, “Here, do you want to hit this side, too?”

The boy drew back and slugged me again. Falling to the ground a second time, I lay in a state of emotional and theological shock. Turning the other cheek hadn’t generated the results I was hoping for. No one had told me what to do after turning the cheek. I got up, went to my lawn mower, and pushed it home disappointed that I hadn’t gotten my money and confused by the conflict.

Another fifteen years passed before I learned that peacemaking includes practical skills applicable to conflict. I was inspired as I went through the mediation training led by Ron Kraybill and John Paul Lederach of Mennonite Conciliation Service. Peacemaking was more than registering (as I had) as conscientious objector. There was more to be done than the other cheek. It is actually possible to change conflict dynamics so peace can emerge from tension without harm being done.

Subsequent experiences as a social worker, family counselor, mediator, and regular churchgoer—but mostly over twenty years as husband and then father—have led me to conclude that conflict is everywhere. But I have also come to see that conflict is not necessarily bad. Conflict, like anger, can result in good or ill. It can separate people; it can also bring people together. The goal of a peacemaker is not absence of conflict. Rather, the aim is to help people transform conflict from what separates to what unites.

Of course to say something is possible is to not suggest it is easy. During a recent phone call, a colleague in the conflict transformation field and I (Carolyn) discussed the work we have chosen and effects on our lives. He asked, “Have you ever wondered why so many in this field have had so much difficulty in their own relationships?” He was recently divorced.

Having struggled at points in my own marriage and my family of origin, I replied, “Yes, I have wondered. But I have no answers.”

Indeed one would think that those of us immersed in whys and hows of conflict and conflict transformation should at a minimum practice what we know in our own lives. Alas, that doesn’t necessarily follow. I for one regularly struggle with this question: How can I do my work—training, mediating, consulting and developing resources related to conflict—with integrity when I have so much difficulty practicing what I know and preach?

Many times I’ve said to myself, “I’m not the person to do this work.” Occasionally I’ve said this to a few trusted others. One friend, after listening attentively to my lament, responded, “You’re precisely the person to do this work. You know how hard it is.”

Indeed I do. I have my share of conflicts. I have my share of difficulty working through some of them. But I’ve discovered I’m not alone. I’ve also learned that neither the reality of conflicts nor of the intense struggle working through them sometimes involves need to be cause for concern or embarrassment––precisely the opposite. The lack of conflict or struggle amid difficult conflicts is much more cause for concern.

So I began humbly this endeavor of writing and editing about conflict. There is nothing more important than “walking the talk,” and I have far to go in doing so. Yet I took the project on confidently. I brought my experience to this task with the assurance that I am not alone. As an Anabaptist Christian, I join a host of others engaged in open, honest, and sometimes painful exploration of what it means to be a practical peacemaker in all of life.

We are grateful to the many who have been instrumental in bringing this book to fruition. Thanks go first and foremost to Michael A. King, the Pandora Press U.S. editor who was flexible and good-humored through it all. Thanks are also due the other seventeen chapter writers who wrote freely out of their experience and must have wondered if they would ever actually see it in print.

Readers of the manuscript provided us with valuable feedback. We are indebted to Wilma Bailey, Alice Price, Marcus Smucker, Luzdy Stucky, Cheryl Swartley, Velma Swartz, Valerie Weaver-Zercher, Alistair McKay, and the class at Eastern Mennonite University taught by Ron Kraybill. Finally we are deeply grateful to Ed Nyce, who was invaluable during the project’s final stages.

As editors and writers we have prayed for the presence of the Spirit of God during the journey through this book. We pray the same for you as reader. We hope you will engage these ideas and suggestions with good energy, agreeing or disagreeing openly, honestly, and in a constant search for that Truth always greater than our own.
Carolyn Shrock-Shenk
Akron, Pennsylvania and
Lawrence Ressler,
Rochester, New York

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