In recent weeks, more than two thousand people have crossed the threshold of Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland, to join in celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Moral Re-Armament's international conference center there. This is where many informal alliances are cemented between people who want to find out what to do about the needs that confront them and their communities. "Joint responsibility in action" is how a South African delegate described it.

This year's jubilee conference is still in session in this beautiful gathering place overlooking Lake Geneva. Its theme is "Healing the Past, Forging the Future."

WIDE, DEEP CHOICES

A jubilee brochure on the history and the achievements of the conference center sets the scene. "Today's world is brimming with promise," says the preface. "But contradictions abound. Everywhere people are crying out for an end to mindless violence ... for reconciliation, compassion, equality. We search for the soil in which such qualities can take root."

It continues: "Too easily we assume that nothing will grow anyway. Yet seeds sprout in the most unlikely places. And creative dialogue can take place between the bitterest enemies. ... In every human heart there is also the ability to cherish, to sacrifice, to reach for what is creative and nourishing. We do not have to submit to the worst in the world or in ourselves. The choices are wider, deeper, and simpler than we think."

French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, in his book Fresh Hope for the World,¹ observed the meetings between many people at Caux and called them "decisive encounters ... or to put it more precisely, the act by which one person's consciousness can open up in the presence of another person's consciousness." Writing in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, M. Marcel said of Caux: "I know of no other place where you come into such clear touch with the only freedom which is worthwhile, the freedom of the children of God. ... It is a seed. Those in whom the seed has been sown are changed from within. That is to say, they have seen evidence of the light of the absolute and, moved by this evidence, they become capable of overthrowing the barriers which separate them from themselves and from each other."

SOWING THE SEED

This idea of spiritual growth featured in an address given in French by Pastor Jean Piguet at the jubilee church service held in Montreux. In translation, he said: "In this century we cannot possibly number all the servants of God—planters, cultivators, gardeners, and workmates, collaborating with God. But there must be no sense of rivalry or jealousy among us. It is not in them that we place our pride ... but in God who gives growth. And we are just the garden which he cultivates.

"We need to open our eyes," Pastor Piguet continued, "look at things differently, open our hearts wider to notice the first green shoots of spring, sometimes in our garden, sometimes in our neighbor's field. So, out with the watering cans and garden tools! The fruits of the harvest are already within sight. ... The tiny seed, the smallest of all seeds, which is that of the kingdom, extends its great branches in so many directions, to the delight of all the birds nesting there.

"Let us learn to open our hands to receive everything, but also to share everything. To open our hands in welcome, but above all in worship; to rejoice together and allow ourselves to be filled. ... We can then persevere in God's plan, going into the desert places or living among the fiercest conflicts. ... Step by step we can discover God's plan for us and the world, knowing that the achievement will be his."

1 Fresh Hope for the World: Moral Re-Armament in Action (English edition, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960, no longer in print).