The centuries wrap round us

The centuries wrap round us emerges from John Paul Lederach's lived experience as a conciliator, mediator, and social change activist. He writes from a lifetime of vocational accompaniment alongside communities who find extraordinary ways to engage, transform, and transcend repeating patterns of violence. In this wisdom-full text, Lederach offers a much-needed message for the practices of hope and dignity in the midst of today's fragmented and too often fear-driven world.

By way of personal story, poetry, and contemplative writing, Lederach illustrates the brilliance of local communities and inspirational leaders whose lives shaped innovative pathways that both address harm and rebuild frayed social fabric. The unfolding of these chapters is guided by a search for healing in a fragile world, reflected in the question: How do we find wholeness while walking wounded?

The centuries wrap round us follows the contemplative writing tradition of the desert fathers and mothers. The text is composed in a Century structure that permits the author and reader to move fluidly between poetry and prose, prone to paradox and expressions of essence. Numbered one to one hundred, each Century-chapter offers a path to ponder the deeper challenges that lie below and beyond the technical practices of policy making, problem-solving, and the equations of power politics more typically explored in professional writing. The path that opens to those challenges holds fearlessly to both the inner and outer worlds, and the space in between. This simple yet profound form encourages the participation of an adventuresome reader and asks for openness to a pause of generative curiosity, the quality of presence needed to nurture the human spirit in the face of dehumanization.

Through earth-born metaphors and vignettes from geographies that span the globe, Lederach explores lessons from seeds, trees, and conversations with artists of healing who defy the vice-grips of violence. Threaded across these teachings is the core conviction that dignity and justice, creativity and peace rise from the quality of our relationship and a quality of presence that fosters the courage to embrace and nourish aliveness, even when faced with deep difference and harm. Exemplifying a quality of vulnerable and timeless listening—to self, to others, and to the earth—this book offers a glimpse into what is possible and most needed to address the crises our world faces this century.

The centuries wrap round us is an invitation to remember and explore healing pathways illuminated in the lives of artists of creative change who persevered before and persist alongside us as we learn how to human together better and human ourselves whole.