Last week I had a POST about Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee. Yesterday she contributed to The Daily Beast on the Liberian elections which spawned violence and made Leymah worried that her country was once again teetered on the edge of civil war. She said:
I called my friend Abby Disney, whose film Pray the Devil Back to Hell first showed the world how the women of Liberia had come together in our country’s darkest days to demand an end to the war. She, too, told me not to give up. I cried some more. I prayed. I knew I had to continue doing what I do best: building peace. I couldn’t allow hate and anger to destroy what my sisters and I worked so hard for. I couldn’t allow the bitterness that swelled in my throat every time I thought about the previous day’s violence to immobilize me. I had to get a few of my sisters to work with me and engage very angry men from all sides of the conflict. The Daily Beast Nov. 10, 2011
A leader like Gbowee knows that it is helpful to leave us with a quote that we can take away and which we may integrate into our thoughts more and more each day. In yesterday's article she gave us:
“Anger is like water:
The shape it takes comes from
the container you put it in.”
Gbowee is a deeply religious and spiritually grounded person. I am
not religious, except perhaps about not being religious. But, she is my
heroine. Her quote recognizes that we cannot help which emotion we feel in relation to a stimulus but that we choose what action we take in reaction to it. She organized women of different faiths and different traditions into a movement for peace in the same spirit of peace that Gandhi did. And, this week she refused to give up and she refused to allow her anger to overcome her or to allow anger and mendacity to overcome the fragile peace her country has so perilously and recently achieved. Through meetings with the opposition leaders she helped renegotiate the armistice and the first female President of Liberia, and co-laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was re-elected.
Gbowee is the author (with Carol Mithers) of Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
Gbowee is the author (with Carol Mithers) of Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
- Reading level: Ages 16 and up
- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Beast Books (September 13, 2011)
- Kindle Edition: 881 KB
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Yemeni human rights activist and journalist, Tawakkul Karman, shared the
prize with Sirleaf and Gbowee. I don't know much about her so I am
planning to change that and hope to let you know about her in the near
future.
FMI: Africa The Good News
http://www.africagoodnews.com/governance/leadership/2755-african-women-win-nobel-prize.html
FMI: Africa The Good News
http://www.africagoodnews.com/governance/leadership/2755-african-women-win-nobel-prize.html
