Politico 02/03/2012
By Michael Shank

Most people have a very classic notion of what it takes to be a peacemaker. If surveyed, what likely comes to most people’s minds is someone on the front lines of violent conflict, poverty or extreme injustice, sparing no effort while enduring every trial and tribulation with the utmost resilience, tenacity and grace. At least that’s what the history books and Hollywood tend to tell us.

Ask a random stranger on the street to name a peacemaker and you may hear mentioned the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, or Nelson Mandela. Beyond the notables, however, there is still a tier of types that are often revered for their peacebuilding on the front lines – be it the oft-forgotten and low-income inner city, the uninhabitable prison, or the war-ridden, unstable state.

These are the stories of which books are made. They are gripping and gut-wrenching and give us pause. For some, they inspire. For others, they give context and meaning. For others, they undermine the reader’s agency because the implicit peacemaking bar is set unattainably high.

Don’t get me wrong, this level of work is no doubt extraordinary, laudable, and worth every ounce of peacebuilding praise. I’ve been there, I think it’s necessary and I know good people doing good work in these environments.

We miss an opportunity, however, when the parameters of peacemaking are so narrowly defined. It precludes the possibility of others considering themselves peacemakers and it sells short the myriad not-insignificant moments in one’s day, one’s profession, and one’s life to build, make and create peace.

One example of a peacemaker who does not quickly consider herself such is my mother, Lois Shank Gerber. A professional counselor for nearly two decades, my mother wouldn’t readily rank her work in the realm of peacemaking. Nor does she look back on her life’s work and think she necessarily left a substantial and noteworthy mark on the world.

Unsurprisingly, I beg to differ. Perhaps I’m biased. I think not. Having raised three of us children as a single mother, after my dad’s untimely death from heart failure, she set off to find financial sustainability, pursuing her Masters degree in counseling, and throwing herself into the hard work of helping heal one person at a time – whether it was with persons with severe mental disabilities, kids with behavioral disorders in extended stays at a children’s home, or Amish and Plain People in eastern Pennsylvania.

In all of these environments, the need for peacemaking seems self-evident – whether among clients who experienced physical and sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts and low self-esteem, or the moral maze of religion, replete with overtones of guilt, fear and self-loathing.

If “peace begins with me”, as the saying goes, then helping people come to peace with, and ultimately heal, from the hurt they experienced internally seems a likely first step in enabling them to see, build, and make peace externally. And this is exactly what mom does.

When I interviewed my mother for this article I asked her what skills aided most in assisting the counseling process – and ultimately the healing process. A common theme throughout our conversation landed, quite simply, on the dual arts of listening and caring. (It is a shame, really, that these two gifts are so hard to come by in normal society that professionals are required in their stead.) For many of her clients, they simply needed a safe space to sound out their thoughts and have someone compassionately walk them through the transformation of their own pain.

On the skills front, however, it is more than merely listening and caring. As my mom recounts the early days in her counseling career, and recalls going to random lengths – like riding roller coasters at amusement parks with kid clients from the children’s home and heeding 2 a.m. calls for help when a storm took out the power at the children’s home – it is clear that this peacemaker was willing to go outside her comfort zone to make someone else feel safe.

Add courage, then, to the characteristics of a good counselor. For the Amish, and even the Mennonites (the community from which mom and I hail), counseling remains a relatively new form of therapy. In recent past, particularly for the Amish and more conservative Mennonites, the strength of one’s faith was the barometer by which one measured psychological health. Weakness in mental health equated to a weakness in faith. Fix the latter and you remedy the former.

Integrating the counseling practice into this paradigm, then, is no small feat and requires a willingness to push boundaries and pioneer a process that still suffers a stigma in both religious and nonreligious societies. For Amish and Plain People, this reality is evolving slowly and mom’s experience as a counselor with many of them gives testament to their increasing willingness to walk down this uncharted path.

What else besides the qualities of good listening, caring, counsel and courage comprise a counselor-cum-peacemaker? Much, but one other thing worth mentioning here: The ability to walk the talk. For peacemakers, the pressure to be consistent in word and deed is particularly apparent, as critics are quick to queue in opposition.

For counselors like my mom, the parallels of helping female clients learn self-love and self-esteem in a world awash with negative media images and obstacles, while simultaneously applying these lessons in her own life, are not lost on her.

The fact that my mom still struggles to see the substantial positive impact she has made on society, often downgrading her contributions in comparison to others, shows how powerful and pervasive this perspective can become. That is why I am writing this article now, to attempt to give tribute to the peacemaker that is my mother.

In our interview, she noted that as a middle child out of seven siblings, the impulse to be an interlocutor between friction and faction came naturally. Back then it was all about keeping the peace. Now, after training and technique, it is about listening to another’s burden but not absorbing as one’s own, empowering them to feel capable of finding their own answers, focusing on strengths not weaknesses, and not being afraid to countenance the contrasts or contradictions.

Sounds simple? Hardly. Helping a hurt heart heal may be one of the less glamorous but more difficult of peacemaking efforts, and it comes with profound and positive implications for it is the root of all that individual will later inspire, initiate and innovate.

Humans have a tendency to play out their pain and unresolved past on the world stage, externalizing a conflict that ultimately lies within. Counseling, then, is one-part personal therapy on the individual level, and another part conflict prevention on the community level – the remedies of which will be recognized later as the ripples of one’s actions expand outward into society.

How my mom could ever underestimate the extensiveness of her work’s reach or the impact of her intervention’s advice is beyond me. She is making peace long before a client’s hurt manifests in a prison or an urban warfront. She is building peace long before a weapon is wielded or a relationship severed. She is a peacemaker every day she is on the job.