Dublin Quaker Peace

PEACE CONCERNS

From Discourse to Public Witness

Dublin Peace Committee

20th October, 2007 at

Churchtown Meeting House

10.00-4.00pm

Dublin Peace Committee has held 3 seminars during the previous 10 months. These were Fear of the Other, Power and the Other and Religion and the Other. Reports on these are on our website dublinquakerpeace.org

These seminars raised many questions about peace-related concerns.

We were able to consider these matters and build our thinking from each other’s presence together.

During the last number of months, Friends have individually expressed their wish to move foreward from discussion of local and international concerns to public witness.

Through Conferring Together, we as a Peace Committee now seek to facilitate this expressed need.

Conferring Together is a day in which we ask Friends and everyone concerned with peace witness to share their concerns with others.

Conferring Together is a space in which to share concerns and move forward to witness.

Friends and others have expressed many concerns. They are all important. Witness is equally varied.

To help Peace Committee in its facilitation, we ask individuals and Meetings to tell us about concerns which move them.

We offer the time to speak briefly to your concern.

You may wish to prepare a poster.

You may simply wish to write your concern on a sheet of paper, which we will put up.

The Dublin Peace Committee is a small group of individuals. We can provide facilitation to assist in moving peace witness forward. We need to know what your concerns are island-wide. We can then assist further actions. Friends island-wide have moved us to this day. It is now for Friends to build peace witness.

TIMETABLE

10.00-4.00pm

10.00am Coffee

10.30. Time to look at concerns written, or shown through posters. These will be put up on the wall, to give an opportunity to others to see the range of concerns expressed, which are wide. If you feel moved to include your concern then, we hope that you will do so.

10.45. You are invited to speak briefly to your concern, if you feel moved to do so. There will then be a short time for others to consider your concern. Then we will consider another concern. This is an opportunity for participants to become aware of the range of concerns and also to see which concerns relate to their own.

12.30pm Lunch [Please bring your own]. Peace Committee provides tea, coffee and biscuits.

12.45. We break into groups of people with the same or similar concerns. This allows time to discuss and build from concerns expressed during the morning.

12.30. We come together again to hear reports on each group’s thinking and decisions.

We hope that this will provide a forum fro developing discourse to public witness. This is individual, but it is an expressed wish of Friends.

4.00 Worship followed by coffee.

Please contact us for more information.