{"id":3390,"date":"2011-10-10T11:10:30","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T15:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3390"},"modified":"2011-10-10T12:04:05","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T16:04:05","slug":"liberias-woman-peace-warrior-followed-a-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/liberias-woman-peace-warrior-followed-a-dream.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberia’s woman peace warrior followed a dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Leymah Gbowee, the 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, told NPR that she launched her movement in 2002 when a voice in a dream told her to “gather the women of the churches to pray for peace.”\u00a0 She shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Liberia’s woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist\u00a0Tawakkul Karman.<\/p>\n

Gbowee’s movement, the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, is widely known as the “women in white”. Its members have displayed remarkable courage as well as creativity in trying to end the brutality of Liberia’s long and savage civil war. The story of the women’s campaign is brought to the screen in a powerful documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell<\/em>. It shows how Leymah and other women activists came together in the midst of a bloody civil war to take on the rival warlords and the corrupt regime of Charles Taylor. In 2003, as rebel forces closed in on the capital and peace talks stalled, the women of Liberia –\u00a0Christian and Muslims united -put themselves in between the opposing forces, armed only with their white T-shirts, and successfully demanded an end to the fighting.<\/p>\n

The women’s demonstrations eventually brought the exile of\u00a0Charles Taylor and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female head of state.<\/p>\n

When the fighting was still raging, Leymah Gbowee led protesters through the streets,\u00a0demanding the disarming of fighters accused of raping women and children. The women in white embarked on a\u00a0<\/span>“sex strike” . They agreed to deny sex to their partners unless they joined in the effort to end violence. Gbowee<\/span>\u00a0explained on NPR’s Tell Me More<\/em>: “We<\/span>\u00a0didn’t have the power to go to peace talks, so we just thought, What else do we have to lose?’ “Our bodies are their battlefield. Let’s just put our bodies out there – we need to do something to change the situation if our children must live in this country.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Gbowee found the courage to confront tyrants and hardened killers and call them to account. She recounts her own story in a memoir titled Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex changed a Nation at War. <\/em>She expresses the hope that women will find “a light to follow” in her example.<\/p>\n

It is inspiring to know that, by her account, it all began with a\u00a0big<\/em> dream that infused her with the determination and the exact focus to manifest her cause. I am reminded of the saying of an early bishop of the church, Synesius of Cyrene, who declared that “through dreams, God may infuse us with his own courage.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leymah Gbowee, the 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, told NPR that she launched her movement in 2002 when a voice in a dream told her to “gather the women of the churches to pray for peace.”\u00a0 She shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Liberia’s woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist\u00a0Tawakkul Karman. Gbowee’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,35,5,20,26],"tags":[673,675,674,677,676],"class_list":["post-3390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-living","category-dreaming-in-religion","category-dreams","category-history-of-dreaming","category-life-direction","tag-leymah-gbowee","tag-liberia","tag-nobel-peace-price","tag-peace-movement","tag-womens-movement"],"yoast_head":"\nLiberia's woman peace warrior followed a dream - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/liberias-woman-peace-warrior-followed-a-dream.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberia's woman peace warrior followed a dream - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Leymah Gbowee, the 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, told NPR that she launched her movement in 2002 when a voice in a dream told her to “gather the women of the churches to pray for peace.”\u00a0 She shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Liberia’s woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist\u00a0Tawakkul Karman. Gbowee’s…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/liberias-woman-peace-warrior-followed-a-dream.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-10T15:10:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-10-10T16:04:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/10\/leymah-gbowee-Beast-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Liberia's woman peace warrior followed a dream - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/liberias-woman-peace-warrior-followed-a-dream.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Liberia's woman peace warrior followed a dream - Dream Gates","og_description":"Leymah Gbowee, the 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, told NPR that she launched her movement in 2002 when a voice in a dream told her to “gather the women of the churches to pray for peace.”\u00a0 She shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Liberia’s woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Yemeni democracy activist\u00a0Tawakkul Karman. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3390"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3393,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3390\/revisions\/3393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}