Michael T. McRay - I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World

Peace is a troubling tension: reconciliation is nothing without justice; reparations call for action; and things have happened that can never be undone. Michael McRay amplifies stories of people trying to live truthfully in the aftermath of horror. These are not neutral stories: they are stories of opinions, hopes, needs, demands, and anxieties. To read them is to be brought into the complication of enmity, restoration, and true living. This book is a muscle, an ache, a practice of asking the troubling questions at the heart of peace.

PDRAIG TUAMA , poet, theologian, and host of Poetry Unbound with the On Being Project

Not many people get argued into thinking differently, but lots of people get storied into thinking differently. Sometimes our hearts move first and our heads follow. Michael McRay is a caretaker of stories, and hes a master at it. He handles some of the most delicate stories in the world with the care they deserve and offers them to us as a holy sacrament. Let these stories move you, disturb you, shape you, and challenge you to change the world so that the generations to come read history as a love story.

SHANE CLAIBORNE, author, speaker, activist, and cofounder of Red Letter Christians

Michael McRay gets poignantly to the heart of the matter. This is a book about the varied faces of grief, love, and reconciliation. It is incisive, smart, and acutely necessary for our times.

COLUM MCCANN, author of Apeirogon and winner of the National Book Award

Michael McRay offers us the collective testimony of people across the world whose stories rebuke cheap reconciliation and challenge us to aim for more. In I Am Not Your Enemy , I hear the yearning for hope grounded in truth. McRays truth-telling makes room for us to see ourselvesand to see beyond ourselves. Truth-telling and hopefulness work together in these stories, igniting power in the least likely people to stretch for a world they havent seen but know is possible.

EMMA JORDAN-SIMPSON, executive director of Fellowship of Reconciliation USA

This timely book is driven by goodwill and belief in human dignity. Michael McRay brilliantly weaves together stories of people involved in different conflicts. With a great inquiring spirit, he wrestles with difficult questions that are significant to all those working for justice. Read this book and be moved to tears, yet also inspired by hope.

RAJA SHEHADEH , lawyer and author of Going Home and Palestinian Walks

A stunning book of compelling stories from divided societies, each endowed with a powerful message of hope. Michael McRay finds meaning within chaos and helps us get our bearings when feeling lost or overwhelmed by the work we need to do in the world. His powerful writing allows us the privilege of feeling compassion instead of fear, inspiration in the midst of despair, and harmony in the midst of division. Seekers of justice can use these stories like a map of love.

BECCA STEVENS, founder of Thistle Farms and author of Love Heals

Michael McRay invites us to peer into the challenges of social healing and reconciliation in tough places and tough times. To read this book is to arrive quickly at the realization that these stories are about us, about the places we live, and the neighbors we have. They are about how we choose to show up in the midst of fear and division, espousing the fundamental belief that we are called to love our enemies. A more timely set of stories can hardly be imagined.

JOHN PAUL LEDERACH, international peacebuilder and professor emeritus at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame

Michael McRay finds hope where most people have given up long ago. He reminds us that there is love and humanity everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. As a peacebuilder and citizen of the deeply divided country of Bosnia-Herzegovina, I know firsthand the necessity of McRays stories and wisdom. There are ways out of the old logic of enemies. This book, at its best, shows us how.

ZANA MARJANOVI, actress, filmmaker, and former member of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

In our era of fake news, hate speech, xenophobia, and racism, Michael McRay offers a compelling way back to dignity and self-respectby choosing to listen carefully to the stories of so-called enemies instead of showering them with fear and prejudice. Through the process of storytelling, McRay shows that our enemies may be transformed into partners for a better world. This is a book that should be taken very seriously indeed.

FANIE DU TOIT, senior advisor of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa

Michael McRay understands the power of story to transform how we envision and relate to the world. With grace and humility, his book seeks a new narrative to stitch together a world that seems increasingly divided even as it becomes smaller, more interrelated, and more accessible than ever.

PAMELA OLSON, author of Fast Times in Palestine

Michael McRay has a sharp ability to immerse himself in areas of conflict and then bring the experience to life in writing. McRay does this not only by describing historical events in detail, but by reflecting deeply on the feelings, thoughts, and insights of the people living within intense intractable conflict.

SALIM MUNAYER, director of Musalaha ministry of reconciliation in Jerusalem

In this important book, Michael McRay says he did not write to make a living off other peoples stories. This makes the book already a rare thingthe author respects and shares in the suffering of those about which the stories are told. For readers, he weaves a framework in which we find more life for ourselves. McRay is a truthful, caring, and inspirational guide to rethinking the stories that imprison us and reimagining ones that could set us free.

GARETH HIGGINS, founder of The Porch Magazine and Movies & Meaning and cofounder of the Wild Goose Festival and New Story Festival

These are stories that have traveled continents, written in the tears of others, inviting us to listen. When heard, they return us to listening in the places we now call home to the pain we must articulate and answer if we too are to take part in the great work of healing-justice.

JARROD MCKENNA, founding director of the First Home Project and cohost of InVerse Podcast

Michael McRay walks directly into areas where fierce enmities have been nurtured for decades or even centuries and shares stories of healing, reconciliation, and hope. His work can help you see your enemies in a humane new light and learn how to resist the push to create enemies in the first place. These stories of rehumanization, justice, and reconciliation are perfect for our times.

KARLA MCLAREN, author of The Art of Empathy and The Language of Emotions

This book is a timely illustration of the human spirit craving liberation, justice, dignity, and equality. Michael McRay brings to life the reasons that dialogue should be used as a tool to drive tremendous change to improve the world, and takes us on an unforgettable journey through the Holy Land, Ireland, and South Africa.

SAMAR ALI, founding president of Millions of Conversations

Also by Michael T. McRay

Keep Watch with Me , with Claire Brown
Where the River Bends
Letters from Apartheid Street