Johanna Hammarberg’s “Lost Letter” is an audio play installation based on twelve fictional letters describing the fates of the suspected Reds from Kotka area who were convicted in 1918 civil war prison camps. Scriptwriter, director Johanna Hammarberg (born in Kotka) has studied actual civil war documents, on which she has based the fictional letters on. Read more

Blog post by Mikko Ijäs, retreat organizer We held our first Bearing Witness retreat here in Helsinki in late June 2018. The context of the retreat was set around the prison camps of the Finnish civil war of 1918. One hundred years ago Finland was torn in half by two opposing forces, the Whites and Read more

In 2017 Roshi Frank De Waele asked Mikko Ijäs to organize a Street Retreat in Helsinki, Finland. For four days they were immersed in the Zen Peacemakers’ Three Tenets: Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action; they begged for food and money, slept where they could, and left their ordinary routines. Read more

The Bosnian retreat organized by the Zen Peacemakers Europe was a very different kind of a retreat compared to the previous retreats organized by the Zen Peacemakers International, like the ones in Auschwitz, Rwanda and Black Hills. The Zen Peacemakers always urges us to have the courage to let go of our preconcieved notions and… Read more