Bucks County Herald – March 20, 2008

Andre Salz Compassionate Listening

Dear Friends,

Good morning. A few weeks ago, Andre Salz told me that he and 19 others will head for the Middle East, not to preach but to listen. Andre is a member of Richland Meeting (Quaker) and an artist from the Quakertown area. I was fascinated with the brochure he gave me.

“On March 24, twenty local interfaith clergy and lay leaders will travel to Tel Aviv and begin an adventure in learning and a mission of understanding and peacemaking,” the Compassionate Listening Project says. “This group which includes, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, will spend nine days on a pilgrimage as members of a very special compassionate listening delegation, hearing the stories of Israeli and Palestinian politicians, peacemakers, settlers, refugees, religious and secular leaders.”

Andre is a Quaker but his family’s tradition is Jewish. His father emigrated from Poland. Andre’s grandfather and aunts died in the Holocaust.

“Compassionate Listening Project teaches skills for peace building and reconciliation in our families, communities, workplaces and in our world,” the brochure continued.

Leah Green is the Director of the Compassionate Listening Project. “Compassionate Listening is based on a simple yet profound formula for resolution of conflict: adversaries giving the gift of listening,” she wrote. “To help reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of all sides.”

Four of the group, which leaves March 24, are Black Muslim imams from Philadelphia. Several are protestant pastors; there’s a nun; a Newtown Township supervisor; a rabbi; and a few from central and lower Bucks County. One is fluent in Arabic and one in Hebrew.

I asked Andre about his safety in the Middle East? With religious zealots willing to kill themselves and innocents in order to make political statements, what are his odds of coming home alive? Andre laughed with this response.

“My Philadelphia neighborhood is more dangerous than the Middle East, one of the imams told me,” Andre said.

The nine-day trip is less expensive than I imagined…airfare, lodging and meals cost $3267. You can find out more about compassionate living by accessing this website: www.compassionatelistening.org

Larry Snider is the project coordinator and lives in Bensalem Township. “We can never make peace until we can listen to both sides, no matter who is the enemy,” Snyder wrote in an email. “That is really the point of our mission…to stop simply demonizing those who aren’t like us. We will come back and continue to talk about this. We’ll share with anyone who wants to listen.

“We always are asking, ‘what can an individual do,’” Snider continued. “Well, here is something we can do. Go together, show our diversity, and listen.”

Snider quotes Gene Hoffman, an American Quaker who’s been promoting Middle East negotiations for decades. “If I go into the world to win, to control, to make peace through coercion, or to prove the righteousness of my position, there is no way I can come to reconciliation,” Hoffman wrote. “For reconciliation to occur, I need to have a respect for the divine in the opposition and enough humility to know that I don’t have all the truth on my side.”

“The Abrahamic traditions (Christian, Hebrew, and Moslem) are very common but also very different,” Andre Salz told me. “Even though the three faiths are separate, we can learn from each other. It’s a very emotional trip for me.”

When he returns on April 1, Andre expects to tell local school students about his experiences. “I’m not interested in preaching to the converted,” he smiled. How difficult will it be to listen without giving opinions, I wondered?

“I’m Quaker,” Andre quipped, “It’s easy for me to be quiet.”

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith