from our original website

Guardians of Peace
...is an idea becoming more real with each movement.

"Peace is conflict done well"

... is being carefully practiced, learned, and modeled in our training. Rather than some fantasy of safety we guard the literal and metaphorical places where this idea lives and thrives.

Through martial non-violence (sm) we work to thaw the cold-hearted and fearful machinations that clutch for Security. Fears about attack, victimization, failure, and dying or often quite reasonable but locating them in any particular "enemy" or "evil" most often results in being less rather than more prepared to respond thoroughly with alacrity and specificity.

There is a fantasy for sale today, possibly more so than ever before, that human beings can have relationships free of conflict by crushing literal enemies, suppressing terror and dissent, and avoiding the frightening friction that fires our fears. The inherent dilemma that then arises is the parallel closure of the door conflict otherwise reliably opens on the specific and necessary creative friction that carries the energy designed to power hope, dreams for the future, and the adaptation necessary for survival.

We will be a training partnership of individuals committed to working well with conflict no matter its root or character.

Working well with conflict can and will lead to mysterious difficulties Often we will lack the expertise to create a useful response. Awareness of this certainty makes us more rather than less able to function. It can and will also lead to:

• building community on purpose,
• learning to tell (speak) the difference (what makes human beings work toward both complimentary and opposed needs and desires and so bump into each other on the road to wherever),
• readiness to make a difference (needed departures from business as usual) to improve the felt quality of life,
• a growing awareness that best practices in all dealings need movement in the directions of sustainability that is relational no less than ecological,
• and much more as the popular imagination takes up the ideas involved...
  

for additional information please call Toll Free: (866) 236-0346, sign in to view our "Tribe" (Tribe.net) or email: brandon at guardiansofpeace dot org

Once and possibly future logos

These are here as an opportunity to reflect on images and identity.
Please comment on your associations with the various images.

The Future

One of two models is likely to shape the next phase of the Guardians of Peace.

A) Nick and Brandon take time together to clarify a vision and directions to immediately enter the world with offerings - at the same time as we begin training regularly together as a larger group.

B) There are two fundamental groups orbiting the Guardians idea (peace is conflict done well). One that is immediately active, works in the world, and engages in strenuous physical training. Another that includes those not able to engage in physical training and focussing primarily on the ideas and words associated with engaging layers of intangible friction between people and cultural systems. These groups would then engage each other in challenging dialogue to develop the movement of the whole.

Please suggest your preferences and ideas.

And to clarify...
No one has to practice Aikido to be included. There is a clear desire for professional Guardians to be able to deal directly with physical conflict in such a way that no one ends up permanently hurt or deceased. Though Aikido was designed from the beginning with that in mind there are other ways to approach this goal and we honor each path. Finding our methods and context-real levels of functioning under conflict circumstances will be a regular part of our work together.

Brandon

Reading and Listening List in progress

By Guardians of Peace:

Groping in the Face of Danger by Brandon D. WilliamsCraig
An Aikido Manifesto by Nick Walker
Ai Nidan Essay by Brandon D. WilliamsCraig (Aikido of Berekeley)

By Area of Approach:

more Aikido:


NVC : "Non-violent Communication" references
- At Bookshelved.org - radio (KPFA) segments showing NVC in action

Negotiation/Mediation: Getting To Yes - Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Please suggest more...

How Jedi?

Profoundly missing the point.
Or are they? What do peace and kicking ass have in common?
Seems the point should be less about being able to kick ass and more about being able to shift into a spot wherein whatever ass kicking was about to happen becomes inexplicably more sustainable for everybody involved.

how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

At the cinema level, the Lucas films certainly became almost entirely about arses and the kicking thereof. What about the ongoing life of the image, however? How many living people are working the consequences of the idea into real life in a provacative way?

Opinions? Reflections?

Guardians of Peace 20050312 P.R.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Who do you know who…

Is strangely drawn to or energized by conflict, and seems able to engage friction creatively?

Has begun a path towards both compassionate action and humility and is determined to be of service to other human beings?

Wants to learn or is now facilitating conflictual interactions at a professional level?

and would like to learn more about Guardians of Peace?

Days after the attacks on the Twin Towers in the United States, several San Francisco Bay Area martial and performing artists gathered to insist on the need for a training fellowship of professional conflict facilitators who would make it their mission to:

1) train together and build community on purpose to create a container for shared understanding of profound conflict

2) nurture that relationship through diverse Councils, sustained internationally and across generations

3) make the fruits of this practice available to those in need of compassionate intervention, facilitation, and cultivated investment in shared dilemmas

4) work in the public sector toward playfully capturing a part of the contemporary imagination, such that the Process Arts™ (practices which cultivate complex relational understanding) become an expectation as universal as the use of technology.

The seeds were planted in a non-profit incubator called Association Building Community and are now flowering into a first training fellowship.

Nick Walker of Aikido Shusekai, and

Kayla Feder and Brandon WilliamsCraig of Aikido of Berkeley are inviting those interested to speak and be heard in the co-creation of this move nearer the active making of Peace.

Our first gathering will be March 12^th, at Aikido of Berkeley reflecting Feder Sensei’s desire to see the dojo become central in peacemaking. Please go to www.aikidoofberkeley.com for directions and reply to this email for additional information. If these options are not convenient, please call ABC’s toll free number (866.236.0346) and leave a voice mail with good times for a phone appointment.

The gathering will follow a Friendship Seminar. This Aikido seminar will run for 3 hours, from 10:30 am until 1:30 pm (Kayla Sensei will teach from 10:30 to 11:55; Nick Sensei will teach from 12:05 to 1:30). Please arrive by 10:00 am, so that everyone can get registered, changed, introduced, and warmed up before the first class starts. The cost for the Seminar is $20. If a sliding scale is needed, please respond to this email with that request. Anyone not inclined to practice Aikido is more than welcome to come and observe a powerful physical metaphor for blending with conflict in action!

Those interested in co-creating the Guardians of Peace fellowship will gather at a local restaurant from

2-3:30pm to meet and discuss the ideas involved, then at

4-5:30 return for our own training at Aikido of Berkeley.

At 5:30 we will begin a potluck nosh (please bring something to share) and deepen into sharing stories.

At 6:30 we will move into a space facilitated by Leon Regelson - from silent meditation into communication and investigate co-creative possibilities in which leadership is shared by every member of our group, ending with a final process time and a check-out.

Please consider coming even if you are uncertain of your response at this time. If you know someone who might want to find out more or join in, please let them know and invite them to come. If you do not wish to train but would like to participate in the discussion you are more than welcome to do so. Martial arts experience is not a pre-requisite – only the conviction that conflict can and must be done well and the desire to participate in discovery.

Early placeholder hosted by onlinepolicygroup - for reference

An Open Letter from the Guardians of Peace

Hopeful greetings,

Put simply, the Guardians of Peace are persons called to engage conflict and seek the most loving responses imaginable. To this end we have made ready and will continue to prepare ourselves in community to receive even the most unclear or distressing needs in such a way that global quality of Life is truthfully described using words like inclusive, dynamic, and sustainable peace. By peace we do not mean the absence of conflict and fear. We work to live in a world in which the universal, bottom-line expectation is that every life is sacred and every voice will be heard deeply in any sphere of influence. Our model is one in which even violence is received not with a "thou shall not" but with an immediate, personal, and specific desire for everyone to live fully and free from harm. In the midst of actual violence this calls for some extremely difficult, multi-layered decisions often fraught with uncertainty and mystery.

We prepare. Together and in solitude we continue training in arts directly applicable to having difficult conversations and making difficult decisions. We understand each practice as a Process Art, developed to include every possible influence with compassion and imagination. We are martial artists, mediators, facilitators, and have individually cultivated our spiritual traditions to seek a deeper connection with the Mystery therein - without insisting that others do the same.

We act and are visited by both success and failure. Practicing what we preach, we receive both as guests and listen while trying to truly understand, releasing the desire to pass judgment. After listening as fully as we are able, we allow ourselves to be influenced, changed by both and holding fast to our specific and individual desire to be loving in a dynamic and truthful way. With almost every transition we discover sparkling possibility where we thought there was only grief, and in every success elements of failure and evidence that no matter our hours of training there will always be a limit to our reach.

We will continue. Experience has shown that though we find both elation and disappointment in this work we will continue to live it. Our perspectives on a given situation are as varied as the number of ways imagination can discover, yet we find our way to consensus and action. We also find our way back to silence and stillness. Above all we are discovering a desire for more: more community, more depth of understanding, and more gifts to share among ourselves and with the world at large. It is our hope that you will hear a Call to participate in this work in some way and that you will follow wherever you are led by the Voice that calls you.

We are Guardians of Peace

Te rogamus audi nos

Please CONTINUE to our invitation and more information (in this case reproduced below)

Space for the work of the Guardians Of Peace

is co-created within and supported by the

Beamish Process Arts community

Toll Free (866)236-0346

images and content all Copyright 2001-2004 © Guardians Of Peace and Beamish Process Arts

RESOURCES:

If you came here seeking the Guardians of Peace Uchi Deshi Handbook pages please click here to download the PDF.

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An Invitation

This message began in the United States as an invitation to lawyers, law enforcement professionals, therapists, military personnel, mediators, teachers, martial artists...all people who regularly deal directly with conflict and with whom I have made some kind of contact. Many have expressed interest in working toward a disciplined and loving alternative to punitive business as usual.

This is about the co-creation of a vision to make peace together and love each other firmly rather than joining the cycle of violence by insisting on winning by creating victims.

Imagine being a part of an active, national (and someday international) peacemaking fellowship as a Guardian of Peace™ . This newborn idea, awaits gifted and Called peacemakers to continue giving it shape.

Te rogamus audi nos

Seeking the loving path and outcome where everyone's voice and interests are honored and represented when conflict arises, beginning with the disempowered or under represented.

Co-creating a process oriented Community, a Council Circle, wherein we can address issues of privilege, rank, and experience but are ungoverned by hierarchy, i.e. various artists of various styles and ranks (see qualifications for Guardian status) but no ranks per se in circle. Everyone leaves their official rank at the door but brings in the entirety of their expertise with humility, humor, and inspiration. Together we train physically, emotionally, spiritually to receive conflict creatively, especially on the street and in our homes.

Guardian status is conferred by acceptance to the council under the following conditions:

1. public and private individual commitment to firmly and lovingly insist that the individual and cultural process shift until everyone in the applicable sphere of influence gets what is needed,
2. demonstrated facility and personal commitment to lifelong, consistent, flexible training to receive physical, verbal, and internal struggles so that they become a co-creative and loving experience,
3. discernment and public declaration of a personal vocation to express the desire for peace by acting as a member of the Guardians of Peace as they are at the time of entrance. This includes a commitment to work within the Council Circle to make our process a loving reality with growing determination and skill.
4. An agreement to share, teach, and model peacemaking, and to be authentically transparent in so far as such is a good gift to the people you touch.
5. To capture the popular imagination and cultivate a public mission to grow the fellowship in service to all life without accepting the loss of individual or shared worth and dignity.
6. Ask and work to share power, leadership, and responsibility everywhere so that our shared story becomes one of dynamic, shared leadership worldwide, access for everyone to food, water, and shelter, and the hope of being heard when there is a need to cry out - and well before.

Organizations, schools, and conflict professionals are already in the process of supporting this work. Please give us feedback and all suggestions that occur to you and ask yourself if you feel moved to help co-create this fellowship, born the twelfth day of September, 2001 after several years of putting down powerful roots.

www.guardiansofpeace.org

Click here to return to our Open Letter (in this case above)

and other resources

Please forward all administrative needs to our partner: Beamish Process Arts
Toll Free (866)236-0346

images and content all Copyright 2002 © Guardians Of Peace/Beamish Process Arts