March 30, 2011 \u2013 Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), an Institute of Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), warmly welcomed Piet Meiring back to its campus for three days in March. Meiring presented\u00a0 a workshop , participated in a special \u201cEvening of Story and Song,\u201d also featuring musician Cara Luft, and shared personal reflections of his faith journey, in conversation and a chapel presentation, during his visit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe are blessed to have Piet Meiring to share with us,\u201d said CSOP Co-director Val Smith, introducing Meiring during his March 14 to 16 visit. \u201cPiet has taught, spoken, and advised on reconciliation, restorative justice, and truth in settings worldwide \u2013 in Israel, Palestine, Rwanda, Ireland, Fiji, and Canada.\u00a0 He is a wise and humble person who seems equally at home speaking a prophetic word to government leaders\u2026and telling stories of African elephants to my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0For three decades, Meiring was involved with the church\u2019s struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and he had to challenge his own denomination on this issue.\u00a0 He served with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).\u00a0 Meiring is an emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria and an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHe has lived a life guided by his faith in Christ, a life that is a model of faithful living in difficult circumstances, a life through which God\u2019s face has been allowed to shine,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Participants in the March 14 day-long workshop had an opportunity to engage with Meiring during his session, titled, \u201cThe\u00a0Perennial Quest for Truth and\u00a0Reconciliation: Learning from one another\u2019s experiences.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0The \u201cEvening of Song and Story\u201d on March 15 featured a time of sharing with Meiring, and performances by renowned singer, songwriter, and guitarist Cara Luft, who <\/strong>shared her music with an appreciative crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0A<\/strong>n artist steeped in folk and traditional roots music, Luft enjoys stretching the boundaries, unafraid to bend genres and styles.\u00a0 Luft is a former founding member of Juno award-winning folk music trio The Wailin\u2019 Jennys.\u00a0 Her sense of honesty, integrity, personality, and spontaneity permeate and resonate in her music and her live performances.<\/p>\n At the March 16 Chapel service, Meiring shared reflections on God\u2019s \u201cwindows of faith, hope, and love\u201d that sustained him during the apartheid period and throughout his TRC work.\u00a0 He describes his time serving on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as \u201cthis painful, wonderful, agonizing journey through South Africa, (to) make sense of the past, and find our way into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cThe Lord opened my eyes in many, many ways \u2013 and made me look through his windows at the reality,\u201d says Meiring.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cThe future of the world, of reconciliation,\u201d says Meiring, \u201c\u2026does not depend in the first instance on better structures, important though they are.\u00a0 It is dependent on people\u2019s hearts, on personal relationships between people.\u00a0 I came to realize that time and time again in South Africa.\u00a0 It was love that reined:\u00a0 the willingness to forgive. People astounded one another.\u00a0 It was a painful but exhilarating experience.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201c\u2026Stand at the window of love,\u201d Meiring says, \u201cand you are astounded at what God has done for us.\u00a0 But you are also from time to time astounded if you see how people are translating their profession of love into action. And when that happens, you will know that swords are beaten into ploughshares and that spears are turned into pruning hooks\u2026 My prayer for you in Winnipeg is that Winnipeg will stand out as a place where a monument is erected for faith and hope and love for the world to see.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Canadian Mennonite University, through Menno Simons College (CMU\u2019s campus at The University of Winnipeg) and through its south Winnipeg Shaftesbury campus, offers one of the most comprehensive undergraduate program in peace and conflict studies in the world. CMU has over 1,700 students at its Shaftesbury Campus, at Menno Simons College in downtown Winnipeg, and enrolled through its Outtatown discipleship program. CMU is a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 30, 2011 \u2013 Canadian School of Peacebuilding (CSOP), an Institute of Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), warmly welcomed Piet Meiring back to its campus for three days in March. Meiring presented\u00a0 a workshop , participated in a special \u201cEvening of Story and Song,\u201d also featuring musician Cara Luft, and shared personal reflections of his faith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,25,5],"tags":[215,213,214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2760,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions\/2760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cmu.ca\/media_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}