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Caren Stelson

author

PEACE

for all

Searching for Peace

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Following a Path with Heart

Recently I read a blog writ­ten by George Dow (May 2020), a good friend and busi­ness con­sul­tant for exec­u­tive tran­si­tion and trans­for­ma­tion, about fol­low­ing a path with heart. George’s quote from Carlos Castaneda from The Teaching of Don Juan, struck a chord in me. “Anything is one of a mil­lion paths. Therefore, you must always keep

Peace bowl and cranes

A Bowl Full of Peace

For two hours on a Saturday morn­ing, I sat at a kitchen table with a pot­ter whose ini­tials are K.M. Together, we stared at Sachiko’s grandmother’s bowl. The real bowl. The one that belonged to Sachiko’s grand­moth­er. The one that had sur­vived the Nagasaki atom­ic bomb. The same one Sachiko had giv­en me as a

A Bowl Full of Peace

A Bowl Full of Peace

I always knew Grandmother’s bowl had its own sto­ry to tell. When edi­tor Carol Hinz sug­gest­ed a pic­ture book about Sachiko Yasui’s Nagasaki sur­vival sto­ry for a younger audi­ence, I was grate­ful for the invi­ta­tion. I knew imme­di­ate­ly the focus would be Sachiko’s grandmother’s bowl.   In Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story, Grandmother’s bowl was

Wabi Sabi

That Wabi Sabi Feeling

Recently I came upon the extra­or­di­nary pic­ture book, Wabi Sabi, by Mark Reibstein and Ed Young. I had heard of the Japanese phrase “wabi sabi,” but I nev­er real­ly under­stood what it meant until I read this sto­ry. Author Mark Reibstein explains “wabi sabi” this way: Wabi sabi is a way of see­ing the world that is

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Make Way for Peace

I’ve been on the look­out for peace sto­ries, and they’re every­where, some­times in the most unlike­ly places. I found one sur­pris­ing peace sto­ry in the heart of Boston, in the city’s his­toric Public Garden. Anyone famil­iar with children’s lit­er­a­ture knows of the 1941 clas­sic Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. You may remem­ber Mr.

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Sachiko in Belize

writ­ten by Lonni Skrentner with Ayoni Esquilano Caren: I’ve always admired my friend and col­league Lonni Skrenter and have relied on her exper­tise as an exem­plar high school his­to­ry teacher. Lonni has wide edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence, but most­ly I know Lonni from her teach­ing days at Edina High School in Edina, Minnesota, an upper-middle class com­mu­ni­ty with

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Creating a School Culture of Peace: How to …

Last month, I had the plea­sure of vis­it­ing Scenic Heights Elementary School in Minnetonka, Minnesota to speak to their fifth grade stu­dents about Sachiko. There was some­thing unusu­al about how the kids respond­ed to my pre­sen­ta­tion describ­ing Sachiko’s life as a sur­vivor of the Nagasaki atom­ic bomb and her path­way to peace. Only ten and

Caren Stelson Diary Page

Finding Your One True Story

“Finding Your One True Story.” That was the title of author Meg Medina’s lec­ture at Hamline University’s MFAC res­i­den­cy this January. I was in the audi­ence, pon­der­ing her words. Finding your “one true sto­ry” implies that we all have one true sto­ry. What was mine? Last year, 2017, was a big year for Sachiko. I had