My Personal Story

Dear Friends:

I am an ordinary woman with extraordinary experiences. In 1979, I heard a prompting in my heart that I couldn't ignore — a call to wholeness, balance, peace, marriage and vocation. Through this process, I found my work, a new marriage, reconciliation with friends and family, a perspective on what death is, and a sense of my own worth and contribution to society and the world.

My work is about linking personal peace to global peace — and the hope, love and compassion I found that led to reconciliation at all levels of my life. I offer a perspective on what one person can do to address the globalization of the economy. I began a microenterprise that had different values from what I had been taught in business. Now I work to educate Reconciliation Leaders who have a vocational calling to address the cycle of violence from a larger framework than victim or perpetrator — in community, institutional and global settings. I have begun a global mediation and reconciliation service based on ten years of service in the United Nations, bringing my vocational and professional
skills together.

Up to 1979, I was an overworked corporate executive who felt fairly stable and consistent in my upward mobility up the career ladder. A series of tragic events, including a decision not to see my brother on what turned out to be the eve of his death, caused my consciousness to evolve in a very different and beautiful way. Because of these events and my response to them, over time I heard a prompting to a new kind of leadership — reconciliation leadership for 21st century challenges — to implement visions from the resources of my business experience.

These visions began on a mountain in Northern California — Mt. Tamalpais — where I received a vision of a new way of doing business which I have been implementing in my private consulting practice since 1987. A second vision, a global mediation and reconciliation service, a new way of building political will and global community, began as a response to the Persian Gulf Resolution in 1991 when I vowed I would work for a world
where armed force is replaced as a way to make peace.

This work is the fruit of the past twenty-year period from 1979-2000, from the moment of my first personal tragedy, when my brother Bobby died, to the present, when I offer Reconciliation Leadership and a global mediation and reconciliation service to the international community. Reconciliation Leadership brings closure to historic protracted community, institutional and international conflicts to commemorate the UN Decade of Nonviolence for the Worlds Children that began on January 1, 2000 and ends in 2010. The Nobel Peace Laureates began this initiative and influenced the UN General Assembly to adopt it.

I never dreamed of the vocation for peace in 1979 when my life was in turmoil. Interwoven in the story is how I learned to listen and trust God's voice inside of me that knew, but I did not heed in 1979 when my brother called to have lunch with me. Gradually, over time, not only did I learn to trust the voice, but actively to seek its advice! My brother's death and other tragedies helped me to live my life very differently. My inner voice led me to work for peace in myself, my relationships, my family, my organizations, my country and my world.

In 1982, I went on my first silent retreat. During that day-long meeting, I had a waking vision of Christ, handing me a mantle of roses, beautiful, cascading roses, fragrant and abundant. He handed me the roses, saying, "You are given this mantle of roses to take into the church." Six years after Bobby's death, in 1986, alone in my apartment, huddled in a favorite rocker, frightening thunderstorms kept me up into the night. I saw the face of God that summer. I met God, terrified. Inexplicably, in the midst of one terrifying storm, I felt a sense of great peace. The words that came to me then come back often when I'm quiet. Be still and know I am God.

Not until recently have I been able to interpret the meaning of those and other words given to me during the twenty years. The mantle of roses has given me a new lens through which I see and act in the world. I explored ordination in the church as an Episcopal priest, thinking that was what He meant. After much discernment, I have concluded that church means the world as church. That understanding led me to work in the United Nations since 1991.

With my book, I hope to encourage the reader whose life may have been like mine — overbooked, non-reflective, and out of balance. I offer hope to people in the workplace who might be encouraged to slow down after they hear what happened to me when I didn't slow down. The work I do today for individual, community, organizational, nation state and global reconciliation has as it's fundamental tenet a willingness to serve the people who want to make a difference in themselves, in their workplaces, and the systems in which they work by helping them slow down and reflect on the attitudes and behaviors that stop them from being effective in their life and vocation.

For the past twenty years, I have used self-examination, meditation and prayer to discover what new behaviors I could integrate in my life to achieve a just, equitable and living livelihood, in right relationship to the earth and to all of creation. I am moved by Article 1 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: All people have a right to be treated with dignity and respect and to live in brotherhood (and sisterhood). I have asked myself, where is God in my behavior? I have wanted to make a difference in de-escalating the level of violence in my country and the world from a frightening level to one where we put closure on the past and live with a felt experience of brotherhood and sisterhood.

My work offers a spiral perspective on my life where I ask and answer questions from "Who am I?" to "How I can become we for world peace?" I have found now that as I look back on the painful and growthful experiences, I can bring a new understanding of why I and others are disconnected from ourselves and each other as well as offer suggestions on how we might be more connected. In the book I go through a process of personal and corporate discernment on my role to enjoin others to resolve human participation in abolishing war in ourselves and in our world. Power is redefined from the politics of self aggrandizement to the politics of spiritual evolution and enlightened leadership. I am a leader who has no investment in the status quo. I help myself and others develop accountability systems for unconscious behavior for the common good.

My work can help make sense of and define authentic spiritual experiences as a way to amendment of life practices. The work I do offers an experience of living in a sacred container in my life, while living in harmony, responsibility and healing. It tells how I developed a personal relationship with God as a way to heal my own woundedness and disconnectedness from others. It tells how I found out who I am and why I'm here.

I use a monograph of a colleague, Dr. Patricia Mische, on Global Spirituality as a guide, to show how I went inward (the contemplative life to find my inner voice and learn how much I've loved), how I went outward (the way of compassion to be with others) and found the way forward (to offer a hopeful framework for a systemic and participative approach to global injustice and human rights). I also offer samples of how my inner voice guided me.

There are many people like me getting wake-up calls. I hope my story will help ease my clients surprise at their wakeup calls as a way to support them through theirs.

Sincerely,

Virginia Swain
Director