I had long wanted to visit Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam/Oasis of Peace, a cooperative Israeli and Palestinian town in the heart of Israel. Created in 1970 by Father Bruno Hussar, a Jewish-born Roman Catholic priest, it is a living exercise in Israeli-Arab co-existence. The community is home to over one hundred families who live together, raise their children together, and work for peace in the conflict-ridden region. I knew that visiting this place would be important for me, but I had no idea how one brief visit would change my life.

The town houses the renowned School for Peace, which serves as a laboratory, educational center, and think tank for peace-builders from around the region and around the world. The school's signature program is a three-day residential encounter for high school juniors from Jewish and Palestinian schools within Israel. This may sound unremarkable until one realizes that the school systems in Israel are almost completely separate, so that the group of approximately one hundred 16-year olds, half of them Jewish Israelis and half Israeli Palestinians, who attend each workshop have virtually never before had the opportunity to meet "the other."

During their three days together, the young people do far more than discover the commonalities in their language and culture, or even uncover one another's common humanity. At the School for Peace, the participants actively engage the dynamics of the conflict that defines all of their lives. Highly trained facilitators apply a sophisticated educational methodology that pays rigorous attention to power dynamics within the group that mirror those outside the sheltered environment of the school. Thus, Hebrew is not privileged over Arabic, every activity is run with the full and equal collaboration of Jewish and Palestinian educators, and the facilitators are quick to point out ways in which the Jewish kids begin to occupy more air time or assume a position of more power and influence in the mixed groups. This is no "humus and pita" or "kumbaya" stereotype of dialogue based on avoidance of real issues. This is inter-group education at its finest.

My husband and I watched from behind a one-way mirror as the young people settled into their groups, learned one another's names, and worked to choose a name they would give to their group. In any other circumstance, this would have been a simple set of icebreaker activities at the beginning of a youth group conference. But there was nothing simple or ordinary about this encounter. Each exchange among the kids seemed fraught with meaning, their being together at all full of promise.

Far too soon, the person who had brought us told us that it was time for us to go. For my part, I was riveted to the floor, gripped by a powerful instinct to roll up my sleeves. In fact, as I began to tell the story of what had happened to me that day, I always reached for my sleeves. Although the God I believe in does not literally send messages to individuals nor communicate like a human being, I felt a visceral sense of having been called by God to roll up my sleeves and find some way to help.

I returned to my home in Minnesota, clear that I needed to reorient my life to respond to the call that I had received to serve the cause of peace. My life had been changed, and I am grateful.