Article by bell hooks

Prior to the Writing for Reconciliation Conference, the Shambala Sun contacted the conference planners, saying, "It is an auspicious coincidence that bell hooks graces the cover of the July 2006 issue of Shambhala Sun magazine, with a feature interview and an article by bell entitled Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love." They had hoped to provide copies of the article to conference participants, but the logistics of getting the article to Berea in time prohibited that. However, we are able to give you this article electronically.

As with many of our plenary speaker's writings, Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love is autobiographical to some extent. It traces thirty years of meditations on love, power, and Buddhism, and concludes it is only love that transforms our personal relationships and heals the wounds of oppression.

"The practice of love," says bell hooks, "is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination."

Click Here or on the image or title above to read the article. Right click and choose Save Target As to download the article to your computer.

Evaluation Sheets

All Conference Attendees:

Please fill out this evaluation sheet and send it back to Libby Jones at Berea College. Right click the link and select Save Target As. Save it to your local machine.

Thanks very much.

Post Conference Party

Thanks to Libby Jones for hosting the conference folks at her home after the final plenary session.

Closing Plenary Session

Closing Plenary Session


Open Mic/Author's Chair: participants read their writing, display their art


Visit the comments section below to read the words of the poem hidden in this beautiful shell created by Wilma Romatz.

Taking Our Learning Home: Reconciliation in Academic Settings, presented by Bruce Novak, Northern Illinois University

Reconciliation within Our Teaching Lives

Reconciliation within Our Teaching Lives: Lessons from the Mystics presented by Gina Briefs-Elgin, New Mexico Highlands University

Using writings of the mystics, we'll explore the reconciliation we must make in our teaching lives: our reconciliation with ourselves for the times we've failed

Writing to Make Whole

Writing to Make Whole: Reconciliation of Sorrows and Joys presented by Nan Phifer, University of Oregon

With words, we'll weave together the grim and the glorious parts of our lives. After we identify our fortunate and unfortunate experiences, we'll explore their interconnectedness in writing that will reveal our strength and wholeness.

PROfessing Ourselves

PROfessing Ourselves presented by Judith Hakola, University of Maine

This workshop consists of a series of writing exercises exploring what it means to be a PROfessor or PROfessional--a person who speaks out for something. In this context, PROfessing examines the congruence between what we do and what we are.

Collaborative Sculpture

Collaborative Sculpture: Expanding Our Students' Writing Toward Beauty and Truth presented by Helen Walker, Messiah College

Students need to be hooked on language's capability to expand into beauty and even truth. Participants will be led through an inner journey toward beauty by working with an artistic medium--clay. We will discover how the physicality of the process can resonate within the body and leave its experiential impression there. We'll explore writing assignments that flow from this experience.

Exploring Ethnicity and its Implications for Teaching

Exploring Ethnicity and its Implications for Teaching through Collage and Writing presented by Lisa Satanovsky, Washington University, St. Louis

Drawing on popular images as well as words, phrases, and questions about ethnicity, we will write and create collages to explore ethnicity in our lives. We will examine how our projects serve to reconcile ethnic life in education.

Our 'Hidden Wholeness'

Our 'Hidden Wholeness': A Journey of Creative Expression with Thomas Merton presented by Ellyn Crutcher, Louisville Visual Arts Association

To explore our own paths to creativity, we will share stories of gelassenheit (letting go), inspiring images/works of art, and connections to significant/sacred places.

Soft Rain...Heals Pain

Soft Rain...Heals Pain: Creating Language and Visual Art for Spiritual Healing presented by Maria Winfield, University of Georgia

Participants will write poetry and create a collage as a way to encourage healing and spiritual renewal.



Click here to view the PowerPoint. Right click and choose save target as to download the PowerPoint.

Cultural Sculpture

Cultural Sculpture: Exploring Mind/Body/Spirit Connections in the Labodytory presented by Sara Schneider, National-Louis University, Chicago

This workshop introduces participants to body-mind-spirit reconciliation and to the thoughtful encounters with cultural others embodied by the Cultural Sculpture Project, a professional development model that helps Chicago Public School teachers draw on their own body-based critical intelligence in their classrooms to teach their students experientially about global cultures. Together we'll engage in bodily awareness exercises; critical kinesthetic simulation and analysis, on our feet, of cross-cultural experiences of otherness; and reflective writing inspired by these movement experiences.

Writing for Reconciliation Using 21st Century Technologies

Writing for Reconciliation Using 21st Century Technologies: Blogs, ePortfolios, Online Journals presented by Betsy DeGeorge, University of Tennessee

This workshop describes and explains the world and underground life of online publishing. Examples will be from writing communities that express concern for issues of spiritual understanding and development of dialogue that encourages respect, trust, and the pursuit of socio-political healing.

To see the PowerPoint presentation from this session click here:

Reconciling the Heart to its Feast of Losses

Reconciling the Heart to its Feast of Losses: Poetry as a Means of Grace Presented by Stan Scott, University of Maine

Each of us struggles with being a divided self. As seen in some monastic and spiritual traditions, reading, study (lectio divina), and writing can work to reconcile the conflicting elements of the self.

Awakening the Power from Within

Awakening the Power from Within: Reflective Writing Workshop presented by Barbara Wade, Berea College

Drawing upon ideas from anthropologist Angeles Arrien and women's spirituality writer Starhawk, this workshop will engage participants in writing exercises to explore their inner resources.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry: A Leadership Style for Reconciliation presented by Sheryl Mylan, College of Du Page

Academic departments should be places of collegiality, respect and appreciation for others' points of view. Unfortunately, they are often sites of contention, where deep-seated hostilities and resentments poison the mind and spirit. These tensions may exist between colleagues or between faculty and administration and impede the ability to create a positive and productive department. Appreciative inquiry is a narrative-based method of leadership, based on strengths not deficits, which uses the imagination to heal past wounds and move into a positive future.

Journal to the Self

Journal to the Self presented by Normandi Ellis, Berea College

Life-based writing creates a bridge between the past and future. Participants learn 18 basic techniques to explore issues of personal transformation, psychological healing, and spiritual discovery.

Seeking Reconciliation

Seeking Reconciliation: the Possibilities of the Consciously-Empathic Memoir presented by Brandy Foster, Andrea Harris, Tessa Evans, Wright State University

Consciously-empathic memoirs can help reconcile the space between us and others, including those who hurt us, those we have lost, and even our former selves.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time: How (Re)Telling Your Story Changes Your Life presented Leatha Kendrick, Carnegie Center, Lexington

We will use autobiography, poetry, and a fairy tale paradigm to re-imagine our life stories to heal divisions within and with others.

The Post 9/11 Classroom

The Post 9/11 Classroom: Public Talk about Sin, Injustice, and Pain Vicki Phillips, West Virginia Wesleyan College

The critical study of religion requires students to learn to talk in an appropriate public way about sin, injustice, and pain. I will share assignments asking students to reflect on their experience of 9/11 in my introductory Bible classes when we treat the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 586 BCE.

Guilty Stasis, Angry Defiance, and the Good Girl in Me

Guilty Stasis, Angry Defiance, and the Good Girl in Me: Shame's Role in my Teaching and Learning Irene Papoulis, Trinity College

Writing creative non-fiction about teachers and my own teaching and learning experiences has enabled me to explore the role of shame in personal and theoretical ways.

Failure of Feminism

Failure of Feminism: Exploring Independence v. Nesting at the Grassroots Level presented by Nancy Thomas, Tusculum College

One way composition professors can invigorate what Phyllis Chesler calls "failing feminism" is to invite our young, female students to discuss whether and/or how it is possible to reconcile their urge for independence with a culture-driven desire to nest.

Public Discussions of Love

Public Discussions of Love: Moving Toward Critical Consciousness in the (Middle School) Writing Classroom presented by Jessica Blanchard, New Mexico State University

Following a reading of vignettes and a snapshot rendering of bell hooks' notion of Love, participants will engage in journal writing and discussion activities designed to facilitate critical consciousness-raising encounters. This portion of the panel discussion is interactive. As such, personal disclosure in the group, though voluntary, is highly encouraged.

The Pedagogical Language of Freire's Pedagogy of Hope

The Pedagogical Language of Freire's Pedagogy of Hope presented by Molly Swick, Northern Illinois University

This presentation will discuss a pedagogical language that is necessary to confront the so-called "limit-situations" or obstacles and barriers that we face throughout our lives both socially and professionally.

Daring to Speak to our Darker Side

Daring to Speak to our Darker Side: Reconciliation Through Native American Literature presented by Elizabeth Latosi-Sawin, Missouri Western State University

As American Indian literature shows, when we reconcile ourselves to others, we acknowledge our complicity in harm, let go of anger, act constructively, and enter into a new relationship.

Reading the Self Through the Other

Reading the Self Through the Other: Elizabeth Bishop's 'Crusoe in England' presented by Caroline Malone of South College

Poetry is unique in its ability to admit duality, ambivalence, and contradiction into its form and still remain whole. For both poet and reader the act of creating and reading Bishop's poem allows the self a chance for inner reconciliation.

Literatures of Reconciliation: Through the Back Door: Melungeon Literacies

Literatures of Reconciliation: Through the Back Door: Melungeon Literacies and 21st Century Technologies presented by Katie Vande Brake, King College

Appalachia's Melungeons, a marginalized multi-ethnic group, are writing to reconcile themselves to their true identity. They are publishing on websites and public email discussions.

Handout for Workshop

















PowerPoint from Workshop

Plenary Workshop

Praise Poems, Blessings and Joyful Noise presented by Marilyn Kallet, University of Tennessee

We will read contemporary praise poems and write together, exploring common objects as "dippers" into the spirtual. Models include poems by Robert Bly, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, and Adam Zagaweski (Try to Praise the Mutilated World).

Plenary Dialogue/Discussion

Words: Creating Compassion, Making Connections presented by bell hooks, Berea College and Marilyn Kallet, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Opening Plenary by bell hooks

Reconciliation: A Reflection presented by bell hooks, Distinguished Visiting Writer, Berea College