I spent a weekend on retreat from October 6 to 9, training with others from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship for a peace-accompaniment mission in northern Colombia:

The goal of the training is to shape future accompaniers, who as mission volunteers over one month lend their presence and support to those who have known firsthand forced displacement, targeted assassinations, kidnappings, and other intimidations in a decades-long struggle over Colombia’s land and natural wealth. Additionally … future accompaniers learn to cultivate a new way of seeing. This new way acknowledges the borderlands that exist in relation to the systemic domination of the powers at the center. The domination has included, in Colombia’s case, a long history of militarization, drug wars, and exploitation of crops, minerals, and human resources. U.S. involvement in these grabs for riches extends back more than 100 years.