Rumi for Mediators

I was just browsing through some blogs, and ran across an entry by London mediator Amanda Bucklow on her beautiful site and blog, The Mediation Times. 

In a couple of blog entries, Bucklow reminds us that storytelling is an integral part of the mediation process. 

In the blog post entitled “A Story is Like Water – Rumi for Mediators, Parties, and Their Lawyers,” Bucklow refers to the following Rumi poem, which I agree bears repeating: 

A story is like water that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire and your skin,

It lets them meet, and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down in the middle of the fire itself

like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

 

Jalāl ad-din Rumi (1207 – 1273)

 

Salamander from The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

Food Justice

Stephen Ritz teaches in a challenging environment.  Many of his kids are homeless, have special education needs, and would be considered unemployable when they graduated, if they graduated.  Ritz has transformed those statistics, improved the odds for those kids, and turned this idea into a project that is feeding hundreds if not thousands of people.