Seeking the Obverse

Today I had the great pleasure of sitting and presenting an idea for a program in Nonviolence training for prisoners in Costa Rica to the Minister of Justice, Cecilia Sanchez Romero. The conversation was interesting and results are forthcoming. But, on returning to think about what is the cause of all of this violence that is getting everyone thrown in prison, I began to sketch a graph about how structural violence is linked directly to direct violence and how both are found at the individual and community level. It was so easy to think of the hundreds of causes of violence, both structural and direct. And I was thinking to build a case to support a holistic approach to transforming violence when it occurred to me that I was falling into a trap of wrong attention. I was focusing on the thing I wanted to eliminate. I was not focusing on the obverse, the other side of the coin. The new graphic display that shows the mechanisms, behaviors, and outcomes of peace and nonviolence. Looking at the society and discovering where they already exist. Seeking the obverse and delving into a new societal structure based only on the increasing of these things. And that by turning our attention away from violence and towards peace, we will get there much easier and with much less confusion about what to do. So, here is my poem for today:

Seeking the Obverse
Holding the coin in our hand we think
we know it so well
the faces and the sides
the edges and the grooves
Holding the coin in our hand we can
only look at one side
at a time the other side is there
waiting to be discovered
Flip to the obverse
Be the other side.