In 2018, when I was a member of the Greater Bennington Interfaith Council, I attended a joint meeting with the local Peace and Justice Center and met a Bosnian Peacekeeper. Each year this man comes to teach at Bennington College, unless it is not safe to travel.
In 2019, he scheduled a talk at the college about refugees in his country. It was an emotional presentation. I learned a lot. After his talk, I went over to tell him that I planned to facilitate Peace Circles in Bennington and showed him a flyer for the first circle. After he read it, he told me he would have attended, if he was local. I was very surprised when he said that.
During the COVID pandemic, it was not possible for him to travel. In 2023, a small group planned to meet for lunch at the college. Several of us wanted to spend some time with this man, while he was still in Vermont. During the week before our lunch, I watched the emails float in, as people began to cancel. One person was out of the country, another got COVID and a third person had a scheduling conflict. When I realized that I would be the only one meeting him for lunch, I felt a bit nervous because I didn’t know if I would be able to hold intelligent conversations with him, in light of the fact that I was not up on world events.
This thought still weighed upon my mind as I drove to the college. Fortunately, I came up with a plan, which gave me some inner peace and a little bit of confidence. I decided to be fully present, be who I am and surrender the outcome of the experience.
To my surprise, we talked the whole time. When I told him about the book I was writing about my ancestors, he brightened and wanted to know more about it. He told me that honoring ancestors is an important part of his culture. We shared other things happening in our lives. It wound up being an extremely enjoyable lunch.
Before we got up from the table, this gentle soul looked at me and said ‘next time, let’s get together twice.’ This touched my heart deeply. On my drive home, I thought about how often we drain our energy worrying about something, when there is no need to worry.
In truth, each of us are human beings creating and living our lives on this little blue planet, as it rotates and orbits in the Milky Way, in a vast expanding universe.