Everyday Peacemaking

Finding the Way in Ohio

by Madeleine Trichel

I do my everyday peacemaking in Central Ohio, in and around Columbus. These days I work mostly in schools and prisons. I find myself in places I never thought to go.

Since school started in August, I have regularly visited an elementary school, to assist second grade students in class meetings. We spend 20 to 30 minutes several times each week working together to build a peaceable community and learn to resolve conflict. It hasn’t been easy. Six little boys are struggling, not only with academic success, but also with successful relationships with their teacher and classmates.

Not long after I started holding class meetings, the teacher asked if I could help with these 6 boys. As a result, I have spent a good deal of time with Antonio,“drawing his big bag of troubles”; with Damon, helping him learn to take turns; with Amir, Jacob, Lawrence, and Dejuan, planning for ways to have good days. Our activities vary with the day and with whoever needs a little extra attention. Each of these children brings a backpack full of trouble with him every single day. Some of them live in poverty, some of them have learning disabilities, two have physical disabilities; all of them are known to their classmates as “the bad kids.” We are working to change that.

I also work with an interfaith dorm of 48 inmates in a men’s prison. In September I asked for their prayers as I attempted to help the second grade. I described the children’s struggles and said I needed prayers for more wisdom and skill. The next week, when I began our regular program, one of the men asked me, “How are the children?” So I gave them an update.

Each week since then, the men in the Monday night program ask for a report. They have heard that Damon has learned to wait his turn in class meeting, that Antonio was suspended for a week, that Dejuan took his “good days chart” home to his mom, that Amir flopped like a fish in the middle of the class meeting, that Jacob stole money from the teacher’s purse, and that Lawrence got compliments from his classmates. Some of the men recognize their own stories in the stories of the second grade. They all continue to pray for the children and for me. Their prayers sustain me. I believe their prayers help the second graders as they make slow progress toward more good days and better friendships. Their prayers have given the men a link to the outside world, a way toward restitution and healing, a way to participate in the work of everyday peacemaking.

Everyday peacemaking can take us in unexpected directions and into unfamiliar places where we feel unequal to the challenges we meet. Still, we can find the way and create wider circles of story, prayer, and action. The adults in this circle pray that our action will lead the second graders on a path toward peace and away from a prison gate.