Categories
Resources

Dancing with Elephants: Mindfulness Training For Those Living With Dementia, Chronic Illness or an Aging Brain

By Jarem Sawatsky

Want to enjoy the life you are living, even as you face major life challenges? Is your mind succumbing to age? Is your body failing you? Can you ever find joy, peace, or fulfillment in these challenging conditions? The answer is a resounding YES.
Jarem Sawatsky saw the countless guides out there for those caring for the ill and healing the curable, but when he was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease he found there was nothing for those living with incurable illness. He quit his job as a professor and devoted his life to exploring the possibilities of living with chronic conditions. Now he's bringing his findings and insights to you.

In Dancing With Elephants you'll discover:

  • Simple practices to bring healing to your heart and life to your new outlook
  • Humorous (and occasionally heart-wrenching) stories of Sawatsky's own journey
  • Multiple ways to build confidence in yourself, even when you've been shaken to the core
  • A new perspective to transform your pain and renew your spirit
  • Practical tools to face your seemingly inescapable fears, and much, much more!

Based on the popular blog of the same name, Dancing With Elephants includes insightful interviews with chronic disease experts Jon Kabat-Zinn, Lucy Kalanithi, and Patch Adams. Sawatsky's landmark book provides support that only a fellow traveler down this road can offer.

https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Elephants-Mindfulness-Training-Dementia/dp/0995324204

Categories
News Resources

Download your free copy of Voices of Harmony and Dissent

Last June we launched our book, Voices of Harmony and Dissent: How Peacebuilders are Transforming Their Worlds.  Each chapter, authored by a different CSOP instructor, explores three dimensions of peacebuilding:

  • stories of inspiring peace work
  • tools and strategies for peacebuilding in a variety of settings
  • resources that have helped shape the author's views

Now we are making the e-book version of this book available for free.  We think this book captures the spirit of the CSOP and we hope that it will give you a taste of what the CSOP has to offer, particularly for those of you who are unable to join us for one of our five-day courses. 

You can download your free copy of this book at at CommonWord, Amazon, Kobo, Nook, or Apple. If you wish to purchase a print version of the book, you can do that on any of the above sites or through the CSOP website. We hope you will enjoy reading this book and that it will equip and inspire you in your work as a peacebuilder.

Please feel free to let your friends, communities and social media networks know about this free offer.  

What others have said about Voices of Harmony & Dissent:

“This book is an empowering patchwork of rich voices of harmony and dissent… It is a book you can dip into here and there on a plane or before bed. This is because it is a compilation that lets the journey be your own in connecting up the many strands of wisdom it contains. All of us can be much better peacebuilders if we take that journey of the connections with this sumptuous volume.”

– John Braithwaite, author of Crime, Shame and Reintegration

"This book stands out because it reflects and charts the creativity, energy and relevance of the field for global peacemaking. ”

– Tom Woodhouse, author Contemporary Conflict Resolution 

"This is a book of wisdom… Even the experience of reading these essays can prompt a greater peace .”

– John Borrows Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School

"These stories and essays intimately and powerfully convey two fundamental truths. The first is that history changes only through the actions of people who decide it has to change… The second truth is that the human spirit is worth struggling for, day after day, year after year, no matter whether we are successful or not. In this work, which joins us at the heart, we will always find joy, even in the harshest of external circumstances."

– Margaret J. Wheatley, bestselling author Leadership and the New Science

"Voices of Harmony and Dissent holds the heart of how social change happens–people who believe deeply, develop significant relationships, and have the courage to engage together. Each and every chapter provides lessons and inspiration and, most importantly, has a deep resonance that rises from these voices of hard-won experience and reflective practice, an authenticity that touches the reader and points us toward the kind of learning that really makes a difference in our world."

– John Paul Lederach, author The Moral Imagination

 

Categories
Resources

Voices of Harmony and Dissent: How Peacebuilders are Changing Their Worlds

By Richard McCutcheon (editor), Jarem Sawatsky (editor) and Valerie Smith (editor)

Harmony and Dissent: How Peacebuilders are Transforming their Worlds is a resource book and sampling of the CSOP designed to engaged, equip and inspire peace and justice practitioners around the world. Formerly this was only accessible by attending the annual June School in Winnipeg, Canada. Each chapter of the book is authored by these peace leaders. It tells stories of inspiring peacework, offers case studies into communities embodying these lessons and offers the key resources of have helps shape these peace leaders. Authors include: Ovide Mercredi, Mubarak Awad, Stuart Clark, David Dyck, Martin Entz, Harry Huebner, Ouyporn Khuankaew, George Lakey, Ivo Markovic, Maxine Matilpi, Stan McKay, Piet Meiring, Sophia Murphy , Kay Pranis, and Karen Ridd.

http://csop.cmu.ca/peacebook/

Categories
Resources

The Ethic of Traditional Communities and the Spirit of Healing Justice: Studies from Hollow Water, the Iona Community, and Plum Village

by Jarem Sawatsky

What is healing justice? Who practices it? What does it look like? In this international study on healing justice, Jarem Sawatsky examines traditional communities including Hollow Water — an Aboriginal and Metis community in Canada renowned for their healing work in the face of 80% sexual abuse rates; the Iona Community — a dispersed Christian ecumenical community in Scotland known for their work towards peace, healing, and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship; and Plum Village — a Vietnamese initiated Buddhist community in southern France — and home to the Nobel Peace Prize nominated author — Thich Nhat Hahn. These case studies record a search for the kind of social, structural, and spiritual relationships necessary to sustain a healing view of justice. Through comparing cases, Sawatsky identifies the common patterns, themes and imagination which these communities share. The commonalities among those that practice healing justice are then examined for their implications for wider society, particularly for restorative justice and criminal justice.

http://www.amazon.ca/Traditional-Communities-Spirit-Healing-Justice/dp/1843106876

 

 

Categories
Resources

Justpeace Ethics: A Guide to Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding

By Jarem Sawatsky

Drawing on the imaginations of some leading peace and restorative justice practitioners, Justpeace Ethics identifies components of a justpeace imagination—the basis of an alternative ethics, where the end is touched with each step. In this simple companion to justpeace ethics, Jarem Sawatsky helps those struggling with how to respond to conflict and violence in both just and peaceful ways.

http://wipfandstock.com/store/Justpeace_Ethics_A_Guide_to_Restorative_Justice_and_Peacebuilding