Peacemaking tips from Nic Cable

• Gather people around food. There's something about sharing a meal that opens people to conversation and even vulnerability. When you're eating together, you can't respond too quickly — you have a moment to think before you speak. A potluck or pitch-in meal is one of the most reliable ways to open real dialogue.

• Celebrate difference; don't try to erase it. The goal of peacemaking isn't sameness. It's finding common ground and appreciating the differences we sometimes fear. We're enriched when we learn from one another — difference is a value to appreciate, not to smooth away.

• Replace stereotypes with relationships. When you catch yourself filling in the blanks about a group, get to know a real person from it.

It's All About the Food

Ask Rev. Nic Cable how you bring people of very different beliefs together, and his answer is disarmingly simple. (also find information about Rev. Cable here: https://www.revcable.org)

"I personally believe it's all about the food."

He's half joking, and completely serious. Because when people eat together, something shifts. "You're more open to that vulnerability. At the very least, you have food in your mouth, so you can't immediately disagree." A shared meal buys you a few seconds to think before you respond — and in a world where we're all trained to react instantly, those few seconds are where peacemaking begins.

Nic has served as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus, Indiana since 2017. He holds degrees from DePaul University and Chicago Theological Seminary, and his academic roots are in peace, justice, and conflict resolution studies. His ministry is built on building bridges — bringing people together and finding the shared values that can lead to common action. We sat down with him to talk about what years of interfaith work have taught him about making peace across real difference.

Where the calling came from

Nic points to two experiences that set him on this path.

The first was a study-abroad trip as an undergraduate to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with his religious studies professor, Yuki Miyamoto — who was born in Hiroshima and has spent her career studying the ethical and religious implications of nuclear weapons. Standing in those places broadened his whole sense of the world.

The second was a mentor: Eboo Patel, the founder of the organization now called Interfaith America, which builds the infrastructure for interfaith cooperation and empowers young people to become interfaith leaders. For seventeen years, Patel and that work have shaped how Nic understands peacemaking — not as a lofty ideal, but as something you build, person by person, across lines of difference.

Progress moves at the speed of trust

Columbus is home to something remarkable: a shared interfaith campus, where communities of different faiths — Christian, Hindu, Zen Buddhist, Jewish, pagan, and more — hold space together. On paper, it's beautiful. In practice, Nic is honest that it's hard.

"Progress moves at the speed of trust," he told us. And trust — even among people who assume good intentions and genuinely value peace and pluralism — isn't quick. It gets harder when money, risk, and shared physical space enter the picture. This is real work, not a photo opportunity, and Nic doesn't pretend otherwise.

But the difficulty is the point. The goal isn't a frictionless sameness. It's the slower, sturdier thing you build when different people keep showing up for each other anyway.

Celebrate the difference — don't erase it

Here's the distinction at the heart of Nic's approach: peacemaking isn't about smoothing everyone into agreement.

When we respond to the world on autopilot, he says, we tend toward sameness — we gravitate to what's familiar and comfortable. Real bridge-building asks something harder: to look at difference "as a value to appreciate, not to erase."

Janet put it beautifully in the conversation: it's important to find common ground to help us get along, but also to celebrate our differences, because we learn from one another and grow. We're often scared of difference. Nic's invitation is to move toward it instead — to recognize it, seek to understand it, and let it enrich us. Finding common ground and honoring difference aren't opposites. Peacemaking needs both.

Small tables, shared meals, next generations

So how does an ordinary person actually do this? Nic keeps it grounded.

He's found two things work again and again. The first is food — a potluck, a "pitch-in" meal, any table where people gather and linger. The second is work with children and youth across faith traditions, because "the next generation can do better than we did." When you pour love and appreciation for difference into kids early, it takes root in a way that's hard to undo later.

Notably, Nic refuses to take credit for any of it. He's quick to point to the wide community of leaders, staff, and volunteers whose ideas drive the work — including an intern minister whose experience with a peace-walk movement inspired regular peace walks in Columbus. Peacemaking, in his telling, is never the work of one person. It's a chorus.

Peacemaking you can walk into

The work in Columbus isn't abstract. Two efforts in particular give people real, tangible ways to practice peace together.

The first is a set of peace walks. Inspired by a group of Buddhist monks who walked as a movement for peace, an intern minister proposed a regular practice of walking for peace right in Columbus. What grew from it is a weekly one-mile Friday walk — from the courthouse up Washington to 10th Street and back — done largely in silence. It's a meditative walk, a chance to notice what's happening in your own body and ask how you can be a practitioner of peace. Simple, embodied, and open to anyone. (The Republic has even written it up.)

The second is bigger: the Columbus Interfaith Peace Camp. The Unitarian Universalist community has run some version of it for nearly twenty years. After the pandemic, as their interfaith relationships deepened, they reframed it — bringing in Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Muslim partners so children could learn about peace from many different traditions and lived experiences. Campers are five to twelve years old (about fifty of them), with teenagers serving as counselors and counselors-in-training, developing their own leadership along the way. It runs one week each June, and Nic says the kids walk away "trying on the identity of a peacemaker" — and the ones who return year after year, or grow into counselors, visibly carry that confidence with them. It takes a village of staff and volunteers to make it happen, and they'd love more partners to help it grow.

How to start, wherever you are

For listeners who want to build more of this in their own lives, Nic offered simple, doable steps.

Surround yourself with people who already do this well, and be willing to ask them how — how do you find the courage to speak up, to reach across? Then look for the everyday spaces that quietly change the social norm: farmers markets, community concerts, school events, places where it feels natural to turn to a stranger and say, "Boy, these tomatoes look good." Those tiny moments are how you micro-practice connection until it becomes a habit. And when you're ready, seek out the communities different from your own — a temple down the road where you might simply sit and be present.

None of it is grand. All of it is within reach.

Not derailed

We asked Nic what gives him hope. His answer was quietly perfect.

He believes we're drawn to difference — that beneath our fears, human beings are genuinely curious about one another, and long for connection. He has confidence in his community's steady, imperfect effort to embrace difference not by melting it away, but by celebrating the richness of many cultures held together.

And he holds a long view. "After long seasons of tending and growth," he said, "the harvest can come." When people ask how the interfaith campus is going, nine years in, he tells them: "It's right on track. I don't know where the track is leading. I just know we're not derailed."

That might be the truest thing anyone can say about peacemaking. You keep tending. You keep moving forward. You try not to turn back in fear. And you trust that the harvest, in its own time, will come.

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