How does one characterize a person who unites so many abilities? Sabine Lichtenfels is a freelance theologian and an author gifted with medium skills, a director of political theatre, a peace pilgrim and researcher of female and peaceful history. What traits can summarize all these aspects?
When a participant of a pilgrimage told her that she is the most courageous woman that he had ever met, she thought for a while and then answered: "I know what you mean, but it does not feel like courage. It feels like the power of trust." This power is felt in the presence of the fifty-three year old mother of two adult daughters. One likes to gather around women like her, one feels accepted, puts an old fight aside and buries an old argument. This quality, which she uses when putting together action groups or when establishing model peace villages and global networks, is her most effective gift of peace.
Story of life
Sabine Lichtenfels was born in 1954 to a middle class family in Germany. Although she is raised in a free-thinking environment, an early Christian soul dwells in her. Already as a small child she refuses to eat meat when she learns where meat comes from. "I was always intimately connected with the issue of the existence of God. I discussed my hopes, my questions about my purpose in life, about the future, friendship and love quietly with God. When doing this, the Bible was not important to me, only life itself." At the age of 16, together with her friends, she dreams of establishing a village where all their friends and lovers live together. For in addition to seeking God, love is always the second important path in her life.
"I was practically always in love, as far back as I can remember. And my love situation always strongly coloured all my other decisions." She thus follows the turbulent paths that love leads her on. She experiences the happiness of great love, motherhood, marriage, her partner’s unbearable jealousy, divorce – all the "normal" things that women go through in this world. She studies theology, whereby she is repeatedly confronted with the prejudices of society. Her examiner asks her: "What is a single woman with a child doing in the pulpit?" Her life in a communal residence is seen as incompatible with the profession of a priest. She finally decides to leave the profession that she has been pursuing to dedicate her life to a future without war.
"Already early on I was confronted with the feeling that everything that I do is a drop in the bucket. While you are helping out at one place, someone is being tortured and killed some where else. Early on, I had the thought that we must develop a new system of living together, where one can learn to live in peace in an elementary way. My longing was great and it would not let me adapt to the usual system of normality."
Meeting her partner, Dieter Duhm
In 1978 she meets the sociologist Dieter Duhm. This is the beginning of one of those unusual love relationships, where two strong people are inspired by the same goal: a future without war and a culture of peace that is based on love and reconciliation between the genders. Sabine Lichtenfels participates in the interdisciplinary research initiative, which Dieter Duhm had established. Their many years of cooperation result in the "Plan of the Healing Biotopes", which makes the following statement: If, at a few locations on earth, the ecological, technological and social prerequisites for peace are researched, realized and tested in a decentralized way, then a pool of knowledge and experience is produced, which makes the global paradigm shift toward peace more probable.
They soon realize that the plan can only succeed on the basis of a functioning human community. No matter how good their intentions, peace projects keep failing due to conflicts and competition that remain hidden under the surface. Human know-how is needed. For this they spend three years in a social experiment with 40 women and men dealing with the human core issues that until now were the reasons why communities failed: competition, jealousy, authority, power and especially love. In their life together they study the historic and cultural background of war with the help of art and theatre and seek a way of living together where "the loving attention of one person to another does not elicit fear and hatred in a third person."
During this time Sabine Lichtenfels develops ideas for a deepened emancipation of women: "In order to achieve planetary peace, we need a new relationship between the genders. There can be no peace on earth as long as there is war in love. Communities of the future are based on the development of a balance between male and female forces."
Spiritual Research
She deepens her commitment to peace through her spiritual research. She undertakes study trips to prehistoric sites and uses her abilities as a medium to explore advanced archaic cultures. These historic sources become sources of inspiration for her in her work in building community.
In 1995, together with Dieter Duhm and with the support of a large circle of friends, she buys a suitable property in southern Portugal. Here, the results of the social, ecological, spiritual and technical research are to be integrated. The place is called Tamera and is located in the southern Portuguese province of Alentejo.
Thus, after almost 20 years, the "Plan of the Healing Biotopes" reaches a new level of realization. The result is the establishment of international, preferably self-sufficient communities, within which the life conditions for a non-violent future can be researched and realized in an exemplary way. These are social ecological pilot models, in which human beings can live together with all fellow creatures in a non-violent way that has been thought through and developed.
After establishing the first Healing Biotope or Grace Village, the creation of further models can be supported. The next ones are planned in Colombia and the Middle East. Today, about 200 people live in Tamera, among them students of the Peace Education Monte Cerro. There are research and educational tasks within networking, ecology, love and living together, art, healing and spirituality.
In the name of GRACE – pilgrimages through Europe, India, Colombia, Israel and Palestine
Sabine Lichtenfels increasingly uses her abilities and her role as a social and community-creating focal point for the education of youths and for the creation of a political network. Together with students and youth she undertakes peace actions, pilgrimages and street retreats, and visits conflict areas, indigenous peoples such as the Todas in India, the peace village San José de Apartadó in Colombia and future-oriented projects such as Auroville, in order to help and to study other ways of life.
In 2005 she led the first GRACE pilgrimage – for weeks by foot through Israel and the Westbank, from the Golan heights, to the Kinnereth, Nazareth, Baqqa al Garbyye, Tulkarm, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Neve Shalom to Jerusalem. 50 people from many countries including Israel and Palestine accompanied her. It was an extreme and deep experience where people from all sides could perceive and overcome their fear and their anger. A film maker produced the film „We refuse to be enemies“ about this adventure. Sabine Lichtenfels wrote the book "Grace - pilgrimage for a future without war".
Her next pilgrimage from Eilat to Jerusalem through the desert and through the Westbank brought together 170 people – and created a healing atmosphere for participants and places visited: Kibbutzim, military bases, refugee camps, Israeli settlements and Bedouine villages.
The pilgrims walk in the name of "GRACE", which means: solidarity with all life, not judging, but looking for the healing perspective in every situation.
In these years the plan became very concrete to found a Grace Village in the Middle East. Many friends and co-operation partners in the region support the idea: Rabbi Ohad Ezrahi, Sami Awad, the director of the Holylandtrust, Samuel Shaul, the geomantic and nature researcher, and many others. Some of them – Israelis and Palestinians – are studying presently in Tamera.
The main carriers of the Grace Village are Sabine Lichtenfels´ daughter Vera Kleinhammes and Benjamin von Mendelssohn. The two of them have been trained and educated in Tamera.
Sabine Lichtenfels: "Grace Village – this means getting to know what it needs for human beings from all cultural backgrounds to live in peace – which each other and with nature. How will they produce energy, how will they produce food, in which houses do they live? We are in contact with technical, ecological and scientific institutes in the country. And we do very concrete research work on that in Tamera where we are developing a Solarvillage as an applicable model. Our main focus however is the aspect of community building: How do people communicate, how do they live in order to achieve peace?"
Sabine´s latest adventure was leading a seminar and a pilgrimage in San José de Apartadó with approximately 400 participants. San José is a peace village which is heavily threatened by the parties of the civil war in Colombia. The inhabitants live peacefully and try to resist to be expelled or killed – in the ten years of their existence 170 of their inhabitants were murdered by guerrilla, soldiers or paramilitaries.
Sabine Lichtenfels: "The inhabitants of San Josecito stayed faithful to their decision to remain a Peace Community despite the unbearable pain. It is the only answer and alternative they see and that gives them the power and the courage to live. Meanwhile, this community has become a carrier of hope for all the suppressed ones in the country. Despite the risk of life more and more people dare to raise their voice. The power of San Josecito encourages other displaced people to raise their voices. Having become an eye-witness, I don’t see any other way than helping these people with all means and with that effectively thinking about models with which this or similar help will be possible also for other suppressed and peoples."
For the actions in the name of Grace, for building international peace training sites ("Global Campus") and for helping places like San José, Sabine founded the GRACE foundation – for the humanisation of money.
Community building
During her 30 years of community research, Sabine had learnt to create a community space of deepening understanding, and this proved to be invaluable in the most painful situations and conflicts. She leads peace camps – in Colombia, in Israel, in Palestine and in Tamera – with gentle empathy, but at the same time she takes an uncompromising stand for truth, as the participants encounter deeper and deeper layers of pain and disappointments and find healing. Having a sense of humour and presenting one’s own problems artistically makes it easier to deal with these difficult issues. The community of Tamera provides a framework that illustrates that trust and truth among human beings is truly possible.
Sabine Lichtenfels says: "Conflicts between peoples can only be reconciled by looking to the future, by taking on a joint task, by together caring for the common land, its ecology, its water, its future. The establishment of Grave Villages can become such a task for many people. We will support it with all our power."