John Paul Lederach's Address:
"Reconciliation: When Values Became Flesh and Lived Among Us"

John Paul Lederach:
AFM Keynote Address
[NOTE:  The following article is reprinted here with permission.]

John Paul Lederach delivered the Keynote Address at the Academy of Family Mediators Conference in Salt Lake City several years ago before the AFM merged with ACR.  The theme of the conference was "Values in Mediation", and his talk was entitled "Reconciliation: When Values Became Flesh and Lived Among Us".  The following are excerpts of that speech. 

He began by speaking of values as more than just words, ideas and concepts, but as a part of one's developing selfhood, the conviction about an orientation in life, and the living fully of who you are.

"Let me start with a blunt statement.  I don't like values.  It is not that I do not like our intention or our meaning when we use the concept of values.  What I don't like is the way we structure our discourse when we refer exclusively to values as a noun, an object, a thing.  I do not believe our understanding is enhanced through the thingification of dynamic, meaning seeking processes as if they are static and definitive".

On the advice of his daughter, Lederach told the following story that summarized the theme of his talk:

"In the late 1980's I was part of a team that mediated in the war between the Sandinista government and the indigenous factions of the East Coast of Nicaragua…Our conciliation team was made up of church leaders, and as part of our task of accompaniment we chose to open each village meeting with the reading of Psalm 85.
"I remember sitting in open village squares, or in burnt out churches listening to the reading of this Psalm first in Kiskito and then in Spanish.  There was one verse that kept itself alive in my mind and heart, to the point where I had difficulty sleeping.  In the Old English of the King James Version which approximated the Spanish that I heard time and again, the psalmist penned these words:  
"Truth and mercy have met together; justice and peace have kissed."
What caught my attention in the context of a negotiation process to end a bloody civil war were two things.
"First, I was suddenly aware that the Psalmist was writing about the core of our process, in fact it seemed the very essence of what mediation at its best would be: a place where Truth can be encountered,  Mercy cultivated, Justice built, and Peace embraced.
"But even more stunning was the simple realization of the Psalmist' creation in the discourse.  He had not talked about Truth as a value, about Justice as a principle or about Peace as an interest.  He had made tem into People!  The concept took flesh and came alive.  These people could meet, talk, bump into each other, and even kiss.  What an extraordinary idea this is: that a value becomes flesh and lives among us".

Lederach went on to talk about values as Process-Structure, and the relationships, or energies, between values.  Using the example of a river that appears dynamic and ever-changing as you stand in it, but viewed from a mountaintop appears only as a shape, form and destination, this subject was explored:
"In mediation, we have too often looked at values, like the river, as if we only can use the lenses of a mountaintop view.  We see the structure but not the process.  If we follow the logic of this view we are easily led to conclude that:
1.      Values are set in stone and static.
2.      Values are non-negotiables.
3.      Value conflicts are therefore the hardest type of conflict to deal with and may not be amenable to negotiation.
"Our technique response then has too often been:
1.      Intuitively avoid values when possible (they are too tough to handle).
2.      Reframe the conflict away from values, make them interests or something.
3.      Assume that when we have degenerated into a value debate we have reached the place wh4ere mediation is no longer possible.
…To enter the river rather than look at it from a distance requires, in my estimation, one critical ingredient: the courage to enter into genuine relationship…I would suggest that in mediation we cannot treat values as if they are issues or interest.  We must go past value-as-thing, past the callous and rigid structure seen from afar, and enter value as verb, process and relationship.
…To see energy you do not look at things themselves.  You look at what links them and watch how different kinds of linkages make different kinds of processes and outcomes.  You see change is embedded in relationship, not the thing.  If I were to boil all our conversation about values and mediation down to a single line of inquiry, it would be this: How do we understand change?  And what change are we up to?'
"When it comes to mediation and values, how really do I think change happens?  I believe it is connected to understanding relationship and process-structure.  So from the deep heart's core, here are five understandings of values, framed as process-structures, that I think support constructive change processes and embody my purpose in the world as a mediator.  (If it helps, think of these values not as things but as people as if they had the names from Indian tradition like Runs-with-the-wind).
1.      She-is-Compassion
She-is-Compassion enters and feels another person's deepest struggle.  She does not take responsibility for the problem and does not try to find answers to the question for the person.
2.      He-Shares-Table
He-Shares-Table accompanies...Mediation brings He-Shares-Table to life in order to create the social space where people can be themselves without pretention, and where they can journey safely in the presence's of differences and even enemies without anxiety.
3.      She-Seeks-Truth
She-Seeks-Truth creates the soil where humility and transparency meet again.
4.      He-Cultivates-Hope
He-Cultivates-Hope acts today based on what is to come, the potential envisioned, the eternal belief in the possible.
5.      She-Forges-Reconciliation
She-Forges-Reconciliation seeks to know by bringing and holding things in relationship.  Her energy moves full-face into complexity rather than away from it.

John Paul concluded with the following:
"When I approach the topic of mediation and values I think the discussion can take us to the heart of the very purpose of the field, if we are able to envision values as social energies rather than as narrow r rigid beliefs.  If we can understand vales as process-structures, we not only shift our understanding of mediation, intuitively we recognize that the mediation process proposes a paradigm shift for the ways in which we think about people and relationships that is relevant to every human endeavor…Mediation represents the wave of the new millennium: It is to social process what quantum and chaos theory are to Newtonian theory.
"…Let us not be afraid to address the deepest questions of values in mediation, but let us do so in a way that penetrates to the heart core and dreams of the profession.  Let us keep our feet grounded in the dusty complexities of the realities we face, but let out hearts and eyes soar to the potential of what could be.  Let us see picture better.