It was about halfway through Bertha Nibigira’s recent poetry show where it felt like someone opened a window for us.

A window

into a peacebuilder’s heart.

Bertha had just received a difficult phone call that the next poet up had just experienced a tragic loss in her family. Bertha’s response was of course to tell this person to please return home and be with her family.

But what happened next was “normal for her” but not for the rest of us. Bertha asked us all to have a moment of silence and prayer for this poet.

Then she read the poet’s entire bio in front of us all to make sure we knew who she was and how special her talent is…so together we could honor her even in her physical absence.

So we could make her feel seen even if she wasn’t in the room.

Most of us after including me said we would have just shared the news, and it wouldn’t have occurred to us to read the bio. But not Bertha, her simple yet profound act brought something to the room we all didn’t know we needed.

A dose of healing…a chance to feel something…and most importantly…

Peace.

It felt so peaceful to have a brief chance to heal in a time of loss with a person many of us had never met. It was in this moment and many others that she gave us

a window

into her heart.

Getting to know her story is a front row seat into understanding how God turns someone into a peacebuilder. While she hails from Burundi, she was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and spent her formative years in Tanzania as a refugee. She then relocated to the U.S. as a teenager.

To be a peacebuilder, I believe a person first has to not know peace. To endure and live through deep pain, suffering, violence and oppression. In Bertha’s case I believe she developed an ability to know how to keep us from taking the side of violence, hurt or oppression. Because she has felt the immense costs of what it is like on this side.

Watching Bertha’s leadership grow, you can start to see that people that build peace must hold tension. They hold people close so don’t just pick solution 1 or 2 but we get to 3rd answers. If there is any “side” they are on it is on the side of justice, honor, listening and are relentless in seeing people no matter what position they have.

They are honest with harmony.

They are firm but fair.

They are careful yet courageous.

Bertha poignantly shared with us yesterday, “you can’t build peace unless you have peace in the heart.”

One more time to let that sink in…“you can’t build peace unless you have peace in the heart.”

I don’t think Bertha is fully at peace unless she is living out her calling to bring people together in our world. It showed up so beautifully as her show featured a piano player from Rwanda, poets from Gaza, Afghanistan and Burundi and an author from Sudan.

And even me. A man who grew up in the U.S. who wasn’t sure I belonged in a poetry event about refugee youth and peacebuilding even though I was so excited to participate. But Bertha understands and sees the inner workings of the human heart in each persons she meets. That is why people want to show up so big for her.

She saw my heart and how much I feel for people and want to build a world where there are no borders in our hearts. Where all people feel at home and that it takes work on all sides to build peace. Just by participating this past weekend and getting to share my work on the topic and perspective…it brought me so much

peace.

I also saw this in the moment the Mohammed from Gaza shared a poem about the pains his mother endures and everyone in his family through this horrific war.

How Naomi was given the chance to alternate her voice and language through multiple dialects and languages that honored her Burundian roots and her amazing talents as a creator and healer.

Or watching the joy on Victor’s face as he sensed and played such gentle piano to words and emotions being shared.

For me the best kind of peace is when the soul is still. When the soul is still it overwhelms us with joy and gratefulness for all we are given. And even if for a few moments wherever we are…a feeling and sensation of home washes over us. A sense of safety overtakes us.

It is all just so beautiful.

Her actions throughout the day just stretched our hearts. She invited us to look inside ourselves on where we might have separation or tendencies towards strife or conflict in our hearts. She does because she is always doing it herself.

Bertha, I know you have been pushed and pulled in so many different directions, seasons and challenges lately. But I believe God is just further stretching your heart like he has done your whole life. He is building your capacity to stretch our hearts.

And achieve the dream we all seek and yearn for. The rest and ease the comes from feeling at home.

As Bertha wrote in one her poems:

“Peace is not a destination,

but rather a journey,

A journey meant for all humanity,

but became an abandoned creed;

A journey misinterpreted by the mind and heart,

but very well understood by the soul and spirit”

Peace is a journey that for her never stops…

It was later in the evening at dinner when a woman from Uganda that none of us had met before asked if she could sit at the extra seat at our table when she heard our conversation and us celebrating the event.

Bertha treated this woman with such kindness and respect even though she had many strong opinions and differences in the conversation we were having about social change. Within two hours this woman invited us to her favorite rooftop restaurant as she just wanted to show us something she loved.

Many of us were tired and didn’t want to go but Bertha was quick to take her up on this. And just like she did in sharing the poet’s bio earlier in the day, she made someone feel seen and feel peace without know what she was doing.

We all danced together and made new friends in such an unexpected way.

This is why I believe peace starts when someone holds out a hand…it requires one to extend. And with no promise of what will be returned.

That evening it was Bertha who first extended her heart. I couldn’t help but notice that our table did have an extra seat. For peacebuilders there is always room at the table because their hearts have no borders or boundaries.

Sometimes it is in extending an actual physical table.

Other times it is inspiring us to extend the limits in our hearts.

It is in the extending where we experience these beautiful

moments of peace that change us

or just the simple moments like now

of having

a window

into a peacebuilder’s heart.