A Fire That Lights Other Fires

Essay On Belonging

2012-02-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord raises a question of belonging. For when Jesus was brought to the temple in accord with the law and custom of his times, he became united culturally with the Jewish people. “Since the children share in blood and flesh,
Jesus likewise shared in them,” Heb 2:14

Kairos is a community of people who like those who awaited the Messiah, long for Shalom. As the song says, we are a people who look east. We will never surrender to the answer of war, but have said reluctantly the metaphor that we will be one with God’s soldiers. We want peace so like Simeon and Anna we speak the words we have in public spaces. We take ourselves into places of wide belonging, crossroads, entrances, spaces of celebration, prayer, worship, honest labor. And in step with a people with whom we share these times we display the consolation of our faith. And how do we do so, if without a sense of the truth? Perceived in faith, we recognize that privileged place is ours in which to stand and make known the bounty of God’s love.

Sentiments of recognition and consolation were spoken by the prophetess Anna: “she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” (Lk 2:38). The vision of Jerusalem that Anna beheld was one held in Kairos. It existed for her to belong there. And the redemption of Jerusalem meant the reification of all things to their intended purpose in Providence. But I suppose the prophetess thinks as I do. She spoke the words of a nationalistic cause, after all, exploiting an ambiguity now divisible into paradigms of church and state. Today America the Beautiful might be sung.

We glance at the question of faithful citizenship. In Latin we can see the significance of faith and belonging fused together in the Latin word fide. It means faithful and is used by U.S. marines in their slogan Semper Fi, forever faithful. In contrast, the film High Fidelity staring John Cusack humored commitment. Professionalism is mocked by some anarchists, and it is this attitude that was formulated by the philosopher Marcuse in The One Dimensional Man which expresses aversion of the technocratic class. Closer to home, when I would profess to dismantle the myopic self-interest of nationalism, still I cry wolf. Why have I made appeal to the Constitution of the United States in my activism? The problem of radical commitment was first posed to me in a class with Sr. Peggy, a liberation theologian of El Salvador, who once spoke of ecofeminism and began from the beginning to raise our consciousness with the question: to whom do you belong? The ploy was disorienting but ancient: the philosopher Diogenes of Athens said, “I am a citizen of the world.” And to this day, if I am less impartial then Diogenes, at least by faith the borders of my political identity expand far beyond the narrow confines of the U.S. The community I belong to is Christian. And we are many. We live through out the world yet I belong to more than these.

My bond with the living includes my neighbor—of whatever faith. The commandment to love one’s neighbor means that a Christian must love every human being. In the ‘New World’ where inhabitants were said by society to be barbarians, the Good Samaritan argument had been applied by Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas, Luis de Molina and Domingo De Soto. It would offend this teaching of Christ to have nothing to do with non-Christians. A protestant reformer, Hugo Grotius, inherited the wisdom of Catholic critics of the Spanish conquest saying: ‘the protection of infidels from injury (even from injury by Christians) is never unjust.” Today humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, as it would have been in the Darfur, finds a source of moral authority in Maimonides in Mishneh Torah XI, a glossing of Leviticus 19:16 “It one person is able to save another and does not save him, he transgresses the commandment, Neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor.”

It is common for scholarship to speak of belonging in terms of rights. The theory of rights one applies will mean belonging to a particular group, for instance by rights of citizenship, or more broadly based on the idea of a totality, rights will refer back to ones own humanity. So argues Mervyn Frost, a professor of international relations at King’s College London: “Having these rights does not depend on the largesse of the state within which one finds oneself.” The significance is telling: it means that belonging to a group is not necessary for the defense of human rights. Hillel Steiner is a theorist who argues in An Essay on Rights (1994) that human beings possess human rights and that they support claims against others beyond the boundaries of the state:

“Should a historical theory of distributive justice recognize state (or any other political) boundaries as having basic significance? It seems not. If the initial rights belong to all human beings and apply to all natural resources, it is hard to see why political boundaries should affect the validity or strength of a person’s claims.”

According to Steiner, the defense of human rights does not require belonging to a nation-state. In theory, belonging to a state is superfluous to the actual possession of rights and therefore unnecessary for one to make appeal to a state’s own contract to uphold said rights.

In this brief sketch of belonging, the notion of place has so far been central. Even more crucial a dimension than space is time. As the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “Technical civilization is man’s [sic] conquest of space…. But time is the heart of existence.” And Martin Luther King referred American’s to the place they had known in a common past, the “Land where my father’s died, land of the pilgrim’s pride.” Thus I belong not only to the land of the living but of the dead and gone. Perhaps in part this is the significance of the Catholic credo; it states a shared belief held among Catholics in all provinces, territories, nations and states. “I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible.” The faithful perspective of time does not stop short of a static present. With the metaphor of a wave rising and just as surely will crash on the shore, so a duty on present peoples is imposed by peoples of the past writes Pope Paul VI in his papal encyclical Popularum Progressio, On the Development of Peoples:

“Civilizations are born, develop and die. But humanity is advancing along the path of history like the waves of a rising tide encroaching gradually on the shore. We have inherited from past generations, and we have benefited from the work of our contemporaries: for this reason we have obligations toward all, and we cannot refuse to interest ourselves in those who will come after us to enlarge the human family. The reality of human solidarity, which is a benefit for us, also imposes a duty.” §17.

Thus, in Catholic Social Teaching one way a sense of immediacy is found is through the sense of community with those who have born out advances for human good. My faith is dynamic not only in belonging to a people of this present moment, but in belonging to “the reality of human solidarity.”

Because the complexity of one’s character as a being in time is frowned upon by many today, a faithful individual will likely confront a contradictory message. One frequently espoused is that of a realist who supposes we are all aspirants of wealth. It was this assumption that as “profit-maximizing individualism” that was condemned by Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous sermon February 4, 1968 titled The Drum Major Instinct. His virulent critique suggested that to distinguish oneself in such a consumerist way was the opposite path taken by those who forge their human personality; it meant belonging to a herd. We do not belong to a people by way of assumption; we are not consumption animals. The antidote proposed by King to remedy the drum major instinct meant that in the facts of faith, Christ alone could forge one’s dignity as a person. Similarly, our readings for the Presentation of the Lord recall the Malachi prophesy of the coming Messiah:

Yes, he is coming…
But who will endure the day of his coming?

He will sit refining and purifying silver,
and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver

Thus a person of faith holds a vision not only of a past but of a present transformed one day to come. It is this future of possible worlds that Pope Paul VI said has gathered us in “history like the waves of a rising tide.” It is his allusion of a powerful surge among people for the common good.

Berenice A. Carroll has added to peace research a complement to the realist literature of international relations (IR). Her study of kinds of power left out by mainstream IR includes most obvious “innovative power” or the power to adopt new foundations for social arrangements. This is the faculty of imagining crucial to gaining the shores of collective human dignity. Three further powers cited by IR structuralists Roger Tooze and Craig Murphy suggest the ways in which every individual belongs to that commonly valued history:

1) Disintegrative power…the power that large masses of people always have, by undirected but convergent individual action, to break down social organizations, economic institutions, and political structures.

2) Inertial power…the power of resistance that takes no organized or politically conscious form, but which confronts topdogs in all their efforts to organize societies according to their will and design…

3) Explosive power: the power of the ‘powerless’ to express their discontent or even rage by behavior and demands which exceed…the moral norms which ordinary bind most members of society.

Tooze and Murphy argue that it is precisely the invisibility of such powers that is constructed by prevailing powerholders. Much noise is made so as to tune-out modes of collective power that would displace them. Much like King’s critique of the Drum Major, Tooze and Murphy argue that we have further ways of knowing, realizing, constructing the future we want. Their project primarily is one of epistemology citing Steve Smith “Epistemology matters because it determines of what we can have knowledge.” Included in their analysis of international relations is also the knowledge of subjects commonly ignored, i.e. the oppressed. Thus, the question becomes, am I knowledgeable of ‘the poor’ and do I realize that in my belonging “to the least of these” I am powerful?

To sum up, belonging involves both place and time dimensions. Belonging may ultimately be about ending up somewhere. This end, we could call our purpose. Life without purpose is described in Margaret Atwood’s disutopia The Handmaid’s tale when the apparent achievement of a women’s culture comes with the peril of ignorance for what life once was. The narrator remembers that ‘the Commander’ had said that women can’t count: “What the Commander said is true. One and one and one and one doesn’t equal four. Each one remains unique, there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for another. They cannot replace each other. Nick for Luke or Luke for Nick. Should does not apply.” Her past and current loves stand apart from her and out of reach; she cannot have them, she can not call them “hers.” Without a sense of belonging she feels utterly isolate. And in the patriotic religiosity of her society, it was called a sacrifice. “That’s one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself.”

One failing of this essay is the unremarked upon necessity to forgive ourselves for what we have done and also failed to do. To speak as a Catholic, for instance, is also to have responsibility for the slaughters of innocent during the crusades. To speak as an American citizen is also to be guilty for the trail of tears, and of the many My Lai’s and Fallouja’s. As a friend who advocated for women priests once pointed out, I have no excuse. It was something of an apology that Rawls made in his essay Two Concepts of Rules. It “necessarily involves the abdication of full liberty to act on utilitarian or prudential grounds.” Does this mean that every act of religious conviction is hopelessly tainted? Indeed, the participation in any practice may be flawed. The sociologist and political scientist Max Weber wrote that ‘all knowledge of cultural reality…is always knowledge from particular points of view.” More simply, Fr. Daniel Berrigan has said that faith is where your ass is at. Confession: I chose not to attend Mass today at the Chapel of La Strada but have instead written—from the viewpoint along Devon where the White Rose currently resides (although members were today considering the move to a new home). But tonight I will say Deo Gratias in the vernacular of Kairos.

It is our common purpose to recognize hope and then spread it, to be a fire that lights other fires. We will agree that we need to ask about where we have been, as well as to ask about where we are going, (including among the ‘we’ all who are most needy).So once more I suggest that we remember from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus blessed the poor, the meek, the merciful and from among other frail humans he also vaulted the peacemakers “for they shall be children of God”. In marking the presentation of the Lord, the Church emphasizes a common innocence: “Since the children share in blood and flesh, Jesus likewise shared in them,” (Heb 2:14) What is indicative of the Church’s identification of Jesus, the child, is that in his exposed human innocence the Lord was made to belong. Our celebration of the Presentation of the Lord can mean nothing short of this vindication of the human person in relation to the public. On the one hand this public persona can be said to be “profit-maximizing” in the sense of a renewal of human worth. On the other this public identity means for us a duty to likewise incarnate ourselves more fully in relationship with ‘the poor’. More expansive, George Washington Carver, African-American scientist (1864-1943) said, “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong.” Dorothy Day called such belonging “the duty of delight.” Finally, in the lesson of the Christ figured as a child the Church shows us how God’s reality—true belonging—is both burden and gift.

Gandhi, Jesus, and Fr. Martin Newell

2012-02-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

John Dear tells us in Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and our World … that Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount every day. I don’t. I rarely do. Hearing that Gandhi read the Sermon daily influences me to believe it had influence on Gandhi’s activity in the world. I wonder if he interiorized the Sermon in such a way that without consciously referring to it at all times, Gandhi’s activity became a referent back to the Sermon. Dear writes: “Gandhi knew it better than anyone.” Then, for his times, the activity of Gandhi must have been the best reference to the Sermon available.

We admit some limitations of looking at Gandhi’s activity as a reference for understanding the Sermon on the Mount. How could a Hindu, a man, someone long deceased, still speak to us today? The blessings of time raise doubt whether some of the Sermon’s meaning might be lost in translation. Little has been gained in the province of interrelgious dialogue; even now Christians doubt the authority of Hindus to interpret biblical meaning. Much has advanced in understanding of sex and gender roles; his particular viewpoint of a Gospel will be bound to reflect less of the understanding. Thus, will his activity be limited to a place and context inhibited by ignorance of advances? Long since dead, what can Gandhi know of the present day? Practically the whole of international relations has sprung up since Gandhi’s death. Astronauts walk on the moon; we survive cancer, heart transplants, AIDS. Gandhi knew a world before the Korean, the Vietnam, the Rwanda, the Congo; he knew of war in a pre-nuclear world but had no notion of fundamental difference between the cold war and the War on Terror. Arguably, his meaning of the Sermon on the Mount is a relic of the past. But following this logic leads to the implication that would rule out the wisdom of history and confine the message of Jesus himself to the dustbin of time.

Critics will try to marginalize the import of Gandhian activity for our times. Will we declare the Gandhian way relevant, even at the expense of popularity? Below we read of someone who brings to life the Sermon on the Mount the Gandhian way.

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Jesus said to them,
"A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house."
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith. Mk 6:5-6

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Ripped from LCW :

Father Martin Newell of the London Catholic Worker community was sentenced to 24 days imprisonment Friday Dec 9th 2011 at Highbury Magistrates Court. Martin was brought before the court for refusing to pay a fine arising from cutting into the Northwood Headquarters, London in December 2008. The anti-war direct action was timed for the "Feast of the Holy Innocents" on the Catholic liturgical calendar. The feast day follows Christmas and commemorates the massacre of children in a search and destroy mission by King Herod who saw the birth of Christ as a threat to his power.

From the dock Fr. Newell stated

I work with refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan at the Catholic Worker. I am opposed to the wars we have been waging on these countries. I have nonviolently resisted these wars since they began. I'm refusing to pay this fine as a form of further non-cooperation with these wars.

Northwood Headquarters is the command centre for British forces deployed overseas. The base has been the location of a number of nonviolent direct actions by the pacifist Catholic Worker community over the past decade of war on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Martin is in HMP Pentonville. Solidarity messages can be sent to

Martin Newell, c/- Giuseppe Conlon House, 49 Mattison Rd, Harringay, London, N4 1BG.

Dorothy's Underground Love

2012-01-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

Because God is good. Yes. I’ve decided that life is simple after all. And what else can explain the deeply satisfying sense of love. No. Not so Howard, Dostoevski’s underground man who writes in his Letters from the Underworld (1913),

"As a matter of fact, if ever there shall be discovered a formula which shall exactly express our wills and whims; if ever there shall be discovered a formula which shall make it absolutely clear what those wills depend upon, and what laws they are governed by, and what means of diffusion they possess, and what tendencies they follow under given circumstances; if ever there shall be discovered a formula which shall be mathematical in its precision, well, gentlemen, whenever such a formula shall be found, man will have ceased to have a will of his own—he will have ceased even to exist. Who would care to exercise his willpower according to a table of logarithms? In such a case man would become, not a human being at all, but an organ-handle, or something of the kind." (p. 32)

Boiled down, the thickness of life is love. Formulaic yet so beautiful and hard. To receive. God spoke just now to me, here, with a curious song title: “For a Pessimist, I’m pretty optimist”. All I had wanted was some way to let out of my body what had to get out, this over abundance of the word love. Yes, I’ve experimented reading through a volume of Dorothy Day’s collected writings, marking the margin at every line she uses the word love [1]. What a task! The word is ubiquitous. She’ll say it plainly, piously, and profoundly. Her work is a profuse exclamation of love! “How I loved that statue!” she says about the Blessed Mother likeness. Of Peter Maurin: “He loved people, he saw in them what God meant them to be. He saw the world as God meant it to be, and he loved it.” “We love what is presented to us to love, and God is not much presented” and for days like today: “…a heavy fog. The trees on the Drive were beautiful standing out so alone, the only things of beauty in a gray, dark world. I love such days; so much is hidden, and only single things like a tree or bush stand out.” Meanwhile, as I write my spirit soars and as the lyrics underscore it, the power chords of Paramour “just feel so good”.

You might try such an experiment if you were a Behaviorist. I read of B.F. Skinner who led a school of thought explaining all behavior to be hedonistic. Avoid the pain you’ve had this past weeks from digesting the evil of Guantanamo. Seek pleasure stimuli, sweet, spice, salient foods that you’ve fasted from. Turn to the pages of Moral Disorder and other stories by Margaret Atwood or try Shelley’s Frankenstein. The stimulus-response relationship of the words on a page to the faculties of soul may not be so miraculous as I seem to think after reading Dorothy. I could be wrong about the turns of conditioning that seem to clean me out like flaxseed oil. Her effusions of love may be nothing more than a fiction. Before we can dismiss her though, she prophesies: “Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it”. And Dorothy can empathize with the strain of bearing the load of love:

“And now I pick up Thomas Merton’s last book, Contemplative Prayer…He quotes William Blake: ‘We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.’ And he goes on to say that to escape these beams, to protect ourselves from these beams, even devout men hasten to devise protective clothing. We do not want to be irradiated by love.”

Proponents of Just World Theory hold that defense mechanisms protect one’s psyche. When an incident disturbs our sense of an ordered world the psychologist Melvin Learner proposes that we simply do not want to realize the implications—that perhaps the world is unjust, random, even malevolent. A belief must be protected: “All it requires is an intelligent selection of the information to which one is exposed,” he wrote. “And it has the added advantage of requiring no direct distortion of reality.”[2] I knew that something must be suspect about my desire to chase after the word love, something indirectly distorted. I feel bashful saying this, declaring my love for the word love. It’s embarrassing to admit.

Dorothy admits to her knowledge of God this way: “He is indeed a jealous lover. He wants all.” Of human love she accounts in The Long Way Home: “…With the chill November, he held me close to him in silence. I loved him in every way, as a wife, as a mother even. I loved him for all he knew and pitied him for all he didn’t know. I loved him for the odds and ends I had to fish out of his sweater pockets and for the sand and shells he brought in with his fishing. I loved his lean cold body as he got into bed smelling of the sea, and I loved his integrity and stubborn pride.” And from Union Square to Rome she swells with child: “No matter how much one is loved or one loves, that love is lonely without a child. It is incomplete. And now I know that I am going to have a baby.” Her meditations move forth into the abstract but possibly missing Forster On Pilgrimage (1948) “The soul complains that it wishes a particular love, a love for itself alone. And God replies fondly that, after all, since no two people are alike in this world, He has indeed a particular fondness of reach one of us, an exclusive love to satisfy each one alone.” Perhaps she was missing Forster and realizing that with him she could never have so touched the world except to have begun the Catholic Worker. A God who invites so much taking of responsibility is almost veiling a threat. She continues, “It is hard to believe in this love, it is so tremendous. If we do once catch a glimpse of it we are afraid.”

It is not for everyone to love God as Dorothy did. The man who wrote from the underground lived in a time of terror and he could not realize himself in an openly loving community. He might have never known that it were possible in some place to practice dissent openly as Dorothy could. And so he concluded that the formula of life must be at cross purposes with love and goodness. In a suppressed world Howard could not imagine a public faith that hated the sin but loved the sinner. He could not fathom himself as an instrument of God: "Who would care to exercise his willpower according to a table of logarithms? In such a case man would become, not a human being at all, but an organ-handle, or something of the kind." (p. 32) Unfortunately, something in Howard's life experience had poisoned the well of his faith.

[1] Day, Dorothy. "Selected Writings" Ed. Robert Ellsberg. Orbis Books: New York, 2003.

[2] Tirman, John. “The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars” Oxford University Press: New York, 2011. 355.

The Handmaid's Tale

2012-01-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

[Mk 4:21-25]

If Mark has a way of concealing the messianic identity of Jesus, his parable of the lamp is ironic. He characterizes the disciples at turns clueless, and others dupes to the powerful presence of Jesus the Christ in their midst. Now beginning one of the most sought after of Margaret Atwood's novels, The Handmaid's Tale, I was helpfully advised "You might have to read it twice." For a book that opens without a trace of time or place, the charm of Atwood's storytelling is her ability to make the reader come at odds with the story, gripping it to discern the context and identity of the narrator. So far I have found a few clues:

“Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.” (17)

“Rita sees me…. But the frown isn’t personal: it’s the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for.” (19)

The Commander’s Wife smokes. “I looked at the cigarette with longing. For me, like liquor and coffee, cigarettes are forbidden.” (24)

“’She inhaled, blew out the smoke. I’ve read your file. As far as I’m concerned, this is like a business transaction. But if I get trouble, I’ll give trouble back. You understand?” (25)

“They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent.”(26)

The Guardians think “…of being allotted a Handmaid of their own” (32)

“There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes; only me” (32)

That the evidence suggests a world where a woman is made to do a man's bidding is not all that unfamiliar. And unfortunately, neither is it so strange to find the feature of a Madame whose business lucre is her contract of other women. Just the same, it is no stretch of the imagination to source Scripture for the legitimacy of physical abuse.

But what is less depressing than the familiarity of the context is the consciousness of the narrator. She has the self-awareness to name that there are "no more substitutes; only me". At first she gives less value judgment than stark observations. But by the close of chapter five her understanding of power is evident as she perceives the thoughts of Guards--men who are too young to touch women dream "of being allotted a Handmaid of their own."

The question almost becomes a matter of unhinging the powerstructure. Whether she knows the thoughts of the guardians indicates that she may have authority. She may not be in authority, but she may be an authority. Margaret Atwood would suggest that the reader not only accept the credibility of her narrator but also become aware of why we believe her. We might choose to believe the narrator only for the pursuit of pleasure. We could read the novel to escape from our reality. If so, we voyeurists would be no different than the Commander taking advantage of the handmaid. On the other hand, the narrator could be worth believing because we want to recognize the woman for who she really is. The opaque beginnings of Atwood's tale provide the reader with the choice early on whether to commit further, knowingly, seeking clarification. The focus of the character's identity will eventually become clear should we have faith. If we believe that the woman is more than the object of appeasement, we will find a portrait of truth worth gazing upon.

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He said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or a under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light. Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.”

He also said to them, “Take care what you hear. The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

The Clearness Committee

2012-01-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

The following article seems fitting with the feast of St. Paul's conversion.

A Communal Approach To Discernment

By Parker J. Palmer

Many of us face a dilemma when trying to deal with a personal problem, question, or decision. One the one hand, we know that the issue is ours alone to resolve and that we have the inner resources to resolve it, but access to our own resources is often blocked by layers of inner “stuff”—confusion, habitual thinking, fear, despair. On the other hand, we know that friends might help us uncover our inner resources and find our way, but by exposing our problem to others, we run the risk of being invaded and overwhelmed by their assumptions, judgments, and advice—a common and alienating experience. As a result, we often privatize these vital questions in our lives: at the very moment when we need all the help we can get, we find ourselves cut off from both our inner resources and the support of a community.

For people who have experienced this dilemma, I want to describe a method invented by the Quakers, a method that protects individual identity and integrity while drawing on the wisdom of other people. It is called a “Clearness Committee.” If that name sounds like it is from the sixties, it is—the 1660’s! From their beginnings over three hundred years ago, Quakers needed a way to draw on both inner and communal resources to deal with personal problems because they had no clerical leaders to “solve” their problems for them. The Clearness Committee is testimony to the fact that there are no external authorities on life’s deepest issues, not clergy or therapists or scholars; there is only the authority that lies within each of us waiting to be heard.

Behind the Clearness Committee is a simple but crucial conviction: each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out. If we do not believe in the reality of inner wisdom, the Clearness Committee can become an opportunity for manipulation. But if we respect the power of the inner teacher, the Clearness Committee can be a remarkable way to help someone name and claim his or her deepest truth.

The Clearness Committee’s work is guided by some simple but crucial rules and understandings. Among them, of course, is the rule that the process is confidential. When it is over, committee members will not speak with others about what was said and, equally important, will not speak with the focus person about the problem unless he or she requests a conversation.

Normally, the person who seeks clearness (the “focus person”) chooses his or her committee, with five or six trusted people who embrace as much diversity among them as possible in age, background, gender, and so on.
The focus person writes up his or her issue in three to five pages and sends this document to members of the committee in advance of the meeting. There are three sections to this write-up: a concise statement of the problem, a recounting of relevant background factors that may bear on the problem, and an exploration of any hunches the focus person may have about what’s on the horizon regarding the problem. Most people find that by writing a statement of this sort, they are taking their first step toward inner clarity.
The committee meets for three hours—with the understanding that there may be a need for a second and even third meeting at a later date. A clerk (facilitator) and a recording clerk (secretary) should be named, though taping the meeting is a good alternative to the latter. The clerk opens the meeting with a reminder of the rules, closes the meeting on time, and serves as a monitor all along the way, making sure that the rules are followed with care. The recording clerk gives his or her notes to the focus person when the meeting is over.
The meeting begins with the clerk calling for a time of centering silence and inviting the focus person to break the silence, when ready, with a brief summary of the issue at hand. Then the committee members may speak—but everything they say is governed by one rule, a simple rule and yet one that most people find difficult and demanding: members are forbidden to speak to the focus person in any way except to ask honest, open questions. This means absolutely no advice and no amateur psychoanalysis. It means no “Why don’t you…?” It means no “That happened to me one time, and here’s what I did…” It means no “There’s a book/therapist/exercise/diet that would help you a lot.” Nothing is allowed except real questions, honest and open questions, questions that will help the focus person remove the blocks to his or her inner truth without becoming burdened by the personal agendas of committee members. I may think I know the answer to your problem, and on rare occasions I may be right. But my answer is absolutely no value to you. The only answer that counts is one that arises from your own inner truth. The discipline of the Clearness Committee is to give you greater access to that truth—and to keep the rest of us from defiling or trying to define it.
What is an honest, open question? It is important to reflect on this, since we are so skilled at asking questions that are advice or analysis in disguise: “Have you ever thought that it might be your mother’s fault?” The best single mark of an honest, open question is that the questioner could not possibly anticipate the answer to it. “Did you ever feel like this before?” There are other guidelines for good questioning. Ask questions aimed at helping the focus person rather than at satisfying your curiosity. Ask questions that are brief and to the point rather than larding them with background considerations and rationale—which make the question into a speech. Ask questions that go to the person as well as the problem—for example, questions about feelings as well as about facts. Trust your intuition in asking questions, even if your instinct seems off the wall: “What color is your present job, and what color is the one you have been offered?”
Normally, the focus person responds to the questions as they are asked, in the presence of the group, and those responses generate more, and deeper, questions. Though the responses should be full, they should not be terribly long—resist the temptation to tell your life story in response to every question! It is important that there be time for more and more questions and responses, thus deepening the process for everyone. The more often a focus person is willing to answer aloud, the more material the person—and the committee—will have to work with. But this should never happen at the expense of the focus person’s need to protect vulnerable feelings or to maintain privacy. It is vital that the focus person assume total power to set the limits of the process. So everyone must understand that the focus person at all times has the right not to answer a question. The unanswered question is not necessarily lost—indeed, it may be the question that is so important that it keeps working on the focus person long after the Clearness Committee has ended.
The Clearness Committee must not become a grilling or cross-examination. The pace of the questioning is crucial—it should be relaxed, gentle, humane. A machine-gun volley of questions makes reflection impossible and leaves the focus person feeling attacked rather than evoked. Do not be afraid of silence in the group—trust it and treasure it. If silence falls, it does not mean that nothing is happening or that the process has broken down. It may well mean that the most important thing of all is happening: new insights are emerging from within people, from their deepest sources of guidance.
From beginning to end of the Clearness Committee, it is important that everyone work hard to remain totally attentive to the focus person and his or her needs. This means suspending the normal rules of social gathering—no chitchat, no responding to other people’s questions or to the focus person’s answers, no joking to break the tension, no noisy and nervous laughter. We are simply to surround the focus person with quiet, loving space, resisting even the temptation to comfort or reassure or encourage this person, but simply being present with our attention and our questions and our care. If a committee member damages this ambiance with advice, leading questions, or rapid-fire inquisition, other members, including the focus person, should remind the offender of the rules—and the offender is not at liberty to mount a defense or argue the point. The Clearness Committee is for the sake of the focus person, and the rest of us need to tell our egos to recede.
The Clearness Committee should run for the full time allotted. Don’t end early for fear that the group has “run out of questions”—patient waiting will be rewarded with deeper questions than have yet been asked. About twenty minutes before the end of the meeting, the clerk should ask the focus person if he or she wants to suspend the “questions only” rule and invite committee members to mirror back what they have heard the focus person saying. If the focus person says no, the questions continue, but if he or she says yes, mirroring can begin, along with more questions. Mirroring does not provide an excuse to give advice or fix the person—that sort of invasiveness is still prohibited. Mirroring simply means reflecting the focus person’s language—and body language—to see if he or she should have a chance to say, “Yes, that’s me” or “No, that’s not.” In the final five minutes of the meeting, the clerk should invite members to celebrate and affirm the focus person and his or her strengths. This is an important time, since the focus person has just spent a couple of hours being very vulnerable. And there is always much to celebrate, for in the course of a Clearness Committee, people reveal the gifts and graces that characterize human beings at their deepest and best.
Remember, the Clearness Committee is not intended to fix the focus person, so there should be no sense of letdown if the person does not have his or her problems “solved” when the process ends. A good clearness process does not end—it keeps working within the focus person long after the meeting is over. The rest of us need simply to keep holding that person in the light, trusting the wisdom of his or her inner teacher.

The Clearness Committee is not a cure-all. It is not for extremely fragile people or for extremely delicate problems. But for the right person, with the right issue, it is a powerful way to rally the strength of community around a struggling soul, to draw deeply from the wisdom within all of us. It teaches us to abandon the pretense that we know what is best for another person and instead to ask those honest and open questions that can help that person find his or her own answers. It teaches us to give up the arrogant assumption that we are obliged to “save” each other and learn, through simple listening, to create the conditions that allow a person to find his or her wholeness within. If the spiritual discipline behind the Clearness Committee is understood and practiced, the process can become a way to renew community in our individualist times, a way to free people from their isolation without threatening their integrity, a way to counteract the excesses of technique in caring, a way to create space for the spirit to move among us with healing and with power.

On a personal note: I was lucky to experience the method outlined here while in a major life transition. In particular I remember several comments made from what Palmer describes as the "mirroring" that takes place near the end. As a result of experiencing its formative impact, I can't help but imagine the community around Saul. I now find it curious how little is suggested of Saul's communal discernment to transition into the life led by disciples of Jesus. Were there not at least some who gathered with him some evening before a journey? Could it be to the credit of this invisible committee Saul would later adopt a new identity? I suppose that a reasonable man like Saul would consult with others likewise open minded and intellectually curious. Perhaps it was from this very community around him that nurtured Saul so that he needed less from the few Apostles, and thus it was among such intimates that his courageous metanoia would be safely considered at a distance. It was they who gently questioned the dilemma he faced in his encounter with the Jesus community. And finally, couldn't an event of communal discernment have prefigured the epiphany dramatized in Acts? If that were so, one implication to consider is a theology of the Holy Spirit that de-centers the Christ encounter in personal histories of grace.

8th Day Asks Kairos to Lead Station Good Friday

2012-01-23T08:05:00.000-08:00

[Jonah 3:1-5,10]

In what may be the biblical version of a mass strike, the people of Nineveh—“everyone, great and small”—proclaimed a fast and robed in mourning. Should Chicago hear Jonah’s cry today it would sound, “Four months more and NATO-G8 is shut down!”

I could be wrong. In fact I’m curious how the Kairos community understands the message of Jonah today. Looking at the recent request from the 8^th Day Center I propose an urgent reflection based on the need for organizing the Walk for Justice. For the past three years Kairos has organized one presentation during the Good Friday ecumenical action.

This Wednesday concludes the International Week for Christian Unity. Does the Kairos community have members willing to organize for Christian Unity on this Walk for Justice? Good Friday may be a long way off, yet the reading from this past Sunday from the book of Jonah reminds of the call to take sackcloth. In the Chicago community we are a group whose activism is appreciated and in this years invitation we are again honored. Will individuals among us step forward today?

I may be getting ahead of myself by proposing that one station focus on a public mourning for the NATO-G8. Can you imagine its burial ceremony with me? Should be a time when Chicagoans need a faithful interpretation of the Gospels in anticipation of the NATO-G8…

Let me back up to the theme of unity. I believe that Kairos has found its note. When we come together each year at Good Friday with Chicagoans we have sung a note of solemnity. I believe we are part of the harmony Chicago wishes to hear, that our manifestation of human dignity and our subdued outcry for an end to indefinite detention, the utterance of silence, the statue of Guantánamo phantasms, these are the sounds and sights Chicago has come to us for.

Jonah is for us one emblematic.We may not want to respond to the call from 8^th Day; it may seem too much to host not one station but two, as they have invited. We could choose anonymity this Good Friday as Jonah did in disguise on the ship he had hoped to escape his destiny. We might prefer an ordinary role in our community, the diligent citizen, the mindful reformer, the agent for change. Prophecy, however, has for three years been the role of Kairos in Chicago’s Walk for Justice. I tender you this gentle prayer to ‘re-think’ or even to ‘think it over’, to repent, the time is near!

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So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, that great city, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. [10] When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Hideous Love

2012-01-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

Mk 3:7-19

A familiar tale has a new meaning today. I am reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and was gripped by the travail of the doctor who having discovered the secret of creation is wracked with guilt for the trail of murders his creation leaves behind. He unwittingly incriminates himself before the Magistrate when brought before the body of a victim: “I gasped for breath; and, throwing myself on the body, I exclaimed, ‘Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny: but you Clerval, my friend, my benefactor—‘ The reasonable Magistrate rules that Victor Frankenstein is guilty of murder.

I do not care much for the fictitious tale that is designed to defend the doctor’s innocence. I am supposed to suspend my judgment and affirm that the doctor’s own monstrous creation is guilty of the crimes. The defense is summarized with a crude analogy: Is Ford to blame for a robbery simply because one of Ford’s products, a Mustang, is used for getaway in a bank robbery? In this case, a bank robbery and a series of murders are said to be the crime that the Ford company or the doctor are supposed guilty. As the analogy suggests, if the product of invention is used in criminal activity it no more implicates the guilt of the doctor than would the use of a Mustang implicate the Ford Automobile company.

Serial murder is the hideous truth obscured by the fiction. I think of the mendacity of political leaders who will forever contend that they are not responsible for the deaths of others. Their “murderous machinations” are said to be excusable because of the love of American freedoms. But in fact the war on terror was an assault on a mythical frontier, pursued for the prospects of plundering oil. If my life could despoil such fiction, I could be happier. If I could make love more evident, make God’s will more convincing, maybe fewer would die in vain.

Today’s reading of the Gospel of Mark summarizes the missionary activity of Jesus. I imagine myself as Victor Frankenstein hearing of the cures of Jesus and news reaches me that I can find him where people have gathered on the Mount. After weaving my way up the mountain, sweating, my mind now tired from the upset visions of warmongering, I am stupefied by the hideous sight I see. Others around all listen to the ugly figure. He is as frightfully disfigured as when I last saw him. I am revolted and make my way to the edge of the crowd and there I sit with my head in my hands disbelieving it could be him. This is the memory that crowds my mind:

“The shutters had been thrown back, and, with a sensation of hideous and abhorred. A grin was one face of the monster, he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife.” 145

Yes, it had to be him. That man in the crowd was no less mean in appearance. How he sneered when he said, “Blessed are the persecuted.” He had the same thick forearms, the vice-like hands that had throttled her. I remember, “The murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips.” 144 They call him a murderer but I know his true identity; his carpentry is a lie too.

I make my way back amidst the crowd fuming. The crowd seems to disperse before me. It occurs to me that I am yelling, but by the calm look on the man’s face I must not be loud enough. He recognizes me for sure. And now there is that wicked smile on his face.

What happened I am told only later. My whole body was wet with sweat. I shivered. A blue hole of the sky was above me where there was not a crowd standing over me. Someone hoisted me from the ground and took me to the edge of the crowd and gave me to drink.

The possessed man told me later that he had thought Jesus was a monster. He recounted a strange tale of murder. He had clearly become deranged after the loss of his wife and then the news of the boy William’s death. I couldn’t tell him that he had lost his mind yet. He wanted me to know so many details. He had been returning to his home country for the boy’s funeral when a storm came and he saw Jesus. He said,

“I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me, I stood fixed, gazing intently; I could not be mistaken; A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child. He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact.” 50

In her lifetime Dorothy Day met such possessed men and women. She is the one listening to the Sermon on the Mount when a figure comes along with hatred. She recognizes his need and hears his story. She reflected on her method of loving saying, “To love with understanding, and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is lovable.” She explained, “When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them.”

Very often the message of Jesus is distorted. A politician speaks of his Christian faith but it is a fiction masking a murderous intent. I hasten to add that I condemn the monstrous actions, but uphold the faith itself. Christ cannot be blamed for the misuse of his teaching. I only pray that I can likewise be forgiven for misunderstanding their true meaning and ask to be led in the direction “to love with understanding.” Meanwhile, the repercussions of the war on terror have made a monstrosity out of ideals of due process. In the eyes of the military, a freshman interrogator at Kandahar, fearful of the slightest mistake, hungry for promotion, instantly assumes that just because a man is in Afghanistan he must be an enemy combatant; or if he was ever living in the same house of hospitality where Abu Zubayda found refuge, than he too must be Al-Qaeda. Suspicion legitimates 67 days of solitary confinement for the West Point graduate, chaplain James Yee, because he spoke “their” language, he promoted “their” faith. It follows that the Muslim man must be held indefinitely because “The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact.” And the D.C. appeals court accepts whatever evidence the government provides without question??

We have a common problem in that the work of our hands is never enough. The Washington Post reports the 92-hour vigil of a protester in front of the White House costumed as a Guantánamo detainee confining himself in a cage. After all the work we must round up our numbers, to 1000, who turned out for the tenth anniversary of Guantánamo Bay’s use as an interrogation detention center. We plead with all we can to show themselves as the silent majority of conscientious objectors, to sign the petition of grievances at www.closeguantanamo.org We wage peace and it does not seem to ever be enough. Glimpses of insight come in community when we recognize in our monstrous brother as the person of Christ. Something compels us to believe again. We remember that violence has always failed, that our only means of redemption is the path Jesus Christ taught: love, gathering, resisting, casting out daemons, staying execution. We remember his failure on the cross. We take on responsibility for human atrocity making the one true commitment. Sustaining hope, repairing the brokenness, laying our lives down for the innocent, we commit ourselves to the only failure that redeems the world. Pretend. For a moment. To believe in the collective resurrection of human dignity.

Essay on Friendship

2012-01-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

1 Sm 18:6-9, 19:1-7; Mk 3:7-12

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.—Anais Nin

Friendship is one theme that rises out of today’s readings. We remember the story in the book of Samuel that tells of Saul’s jealous hatred of David. Jonathon assuages his father’s ego and assures Saul of David’s respect. Without such a friend, David might have been executed.

Just what do we expect of friendship? Good manners, levity, encouragement, a listening ear, someone to play with and escape, someone to confide in, someone to make believe with. And if friendship like this is rarefied, how do we tend the flame of our few close friendships? Always complications arise, obscuring the possibility that a new acquaintance could become a friend. Once beyond the passage of the first tests of parity and good times, convenience aside, one begins to wonder: would I go out of my way to hold fast to this friendship? And then come along the motives for friendship, the subtle evils of attraction and purpose that draw people together for a course. Up surface ulterior motives, insidious affairs of the dark side of our heart, maybe an unspoken longing is aroused with selfishness, greed. Purity will prevail, when sometimes an affinity for action one day blossoms into something more. Or else the innocence is lost; the crush of a first frost between differences kills the growth of human love and imperils the intimate harvest. Wiser commentators have warned us already. Nora Ephron says, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” But then, “Great friendship is never peaceful,” says Marie de Rabutin-Chantal.

Somewhat stagnant in my relationship with God lately, I’ve had to ask myself a reorientation question. How is my friend Jesus? With the help of some spiritual reading by William Barry, S.J. I’ve noticed Jesus at work. He’s been very busy, happily. I’m struck with how close he is to me, showing himself in relationship with people I care about. A few of them I’ll tell you of, beginning with Andy Worthington and Deborah Sweet. I met them both in Washington D.C. at a screening of Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo. Four days later we crossed paths again here in Chicago. Both appeared upbeat but I could see the trip was wearing them down. Andy explained that he had four hours of sleep the night before and awaited the tour’s end, thinking of his fourteen year old son at home. In the meantime, it was evident that Jesus was fueling him with purpose and passion to share the stories of the men detained wrongfully at Guantánamo. When I asked him how he continued on, he recalled the inspiration from fellow advocate and Habeas attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, who said, “What gets me up in the morning every day is the satisfaction of spreading the truth.” Meanwhile, another breath to his flame was obviously Deborah Sweet, director of World Can’t Wait, sponsor of Andy’s U.S. tour. She explained that between the time I last saw them they had already visited San Francisco. Jesus had given her the steadfast assurance of meaning. Her promotion of the messenger was faith-filled, trumpeting Andy as “the man who knows more about the men in Guantánamo than anyone in the world.” True, Andy has dedicated himself to overturning the spurious lie told by President Bush that Guantánamo Bay held only “the worst of the worst.”

In the film Outside the Law Moazzam Begg speaks of his confinement in Guantánamo. Considered a member of Al-Qaeda, he had in fact been a devout Muslim. He put his beliefs into action by opening a school in Kabul, Afghanistan, leaving the comfort of his home in England and resettling his whole family. He acted with the zeal of a missionary committed to sustainable development. He also acted with the assurances of his friend Shakur Aamer, who likewise transplanted his whole family. Today Shakur Aamer remains in Guantanamo having never seen his ten year old son.

Those held without charge or trial have needed intercessors like Jonathan. Some have seen their special place in relation to the jealous warrior-king, including journalists like Andy Worthington and organizers like Deborah Sweet. The analogy is worth probing. To what extent is the Saul of yesterday today’s holder of the office of President?

It was at Busboys and Poets Café after talking with Deborah and Andy that I met Todd. He excited easily when I asked whether it was appropriate to use the flammable rhetoric of “treason” in reference to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). He gave me a three-page document he had been holding in his hand saying, “This will be published tomorrow in a law journal. I think you should have it.”

Major JAG Todd E. Pierce writes: “…as a member of the military, I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I did not take an oath of allegiance to the ‘Leader,’ or to the ‘State,’ as required in some other nations. Thus, it came as something of a shock to me when Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, and Robert Delahunty began issuing legal opinions that the Geneva Conventions, a treaty incorporated into our law, were quaint, did not apply, or that the President could, at his or her sole discretion, suspend them.”

He concludes with a note of grave concern. After an ample discussion comparing the above mentioned opinions to the legal theories expounded by Carl Schmitt, the Nazi Crown Jurist of the 1930’s, Pierce surveys the threat to individual liberties:

“We have used the vague and overbroad charge of Material Support for Terrorism as cause to investigate anti-war groups in Chicago and Minneapolis, predictably chilling speech and dissent. Critics have suggested that recent legislation passed would now require the military to detain such dissidents. Or what about gun store owners, gun manufacturers, and the NRA, all of whom could be accused of having a hand directly or with propaganda in providing firearms downstream to drug cartels in Mexico, alleged to have ties with Mideast terrorist groups. Military detention for them?”

While not obvious, we might come to identify some political leaders with the imperious Saul. Our government worries over the power of the Occupy movement. Hearsay spread on D.C. radio tells us that “President Obama is scared to shit of Occupy.” Closer to home Obama’s hatchet man Mayor Rahm Emanuel managed to pass what organizers are calling the “Sit Down and Shut Up Ordinance” allowing the ceiling for fines levied on protesters to reach $1000, up from $250. A vague standard of “resisting a police officer” could amount to a fine of over $2000. When Occupiers reflected after being kicked out of the Council Meeting yesterday, angry not to have their voices heard, and distraught with the news that all fifty aldermen voted to pass the ordinance, some spoke of this as evidence of their allegiance to the 1%. One said, “It is because they do not fear us. They still fear Rahm more than they fear us.” Another saw reason to reject current government and supply government among ourselves: “Some will tell you to respect the vote. They will assure you that we can try again, that we can vote these aldermen out and replace them with those who will represent us. But the vote has never accomplished anything… We have cause to make government ourselves.”

As I understand it, the reflection of occupiers was something like the internal dialogue that Jonathon might have had as he considered the position of Saul. Jonathan might have said, “What is my father saying; he wants to kill David! How can I obey him! Is my father a murderer? This cannot be; I love my friend David. He is a hero. Look at what God helped him to do in his victory over the Philistine. God must be with David. I would rather serve David than my own father, what is happening? I must reason with my father and bring him to his senses. I know that he is a good man, but he grows old and is envious of the glory David now has that he tasted in his former days. I will not abandon my father to his self-deception.”

We are fortunate as Chicagoans not to be alone. Many accompany us in our shock at such an ordinance. Earlier this week organizers of protest against the coming NATO-G8 meeting received an open letter addressed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel from Germany, affixed below. The letter calls the Mayor back to his senses, urging him that he must put off his obstinacy and welcome protest rather than stifle it. The citizens of the free world are many; we are united; we can never be defeated.

From Dorothy Day:

“We cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves. It is the only way we have of showing our love.”

-May 1952

“We repeat, there is nothing that we can do but love, and dear God—please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.”

-June 1946

Barry, William A. Paying Attention to God: Discernment in Prayer

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An Open Letter From Germany to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The Honorable Rahm Emanuel

Mayor of Chicago

City Hall

121 N La Salle St # 507

Chicago, IL 60602-1208

Dear Mayor Emanuel:

You agreed that Chicago will host the G8 and NATO summits next May. The G8 and NATO represent the core of the very forces that people around the world have come to despise during the current economic meltdown: NATO’s ballooning military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of austerity that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.

During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many people, with good reason, will want to exercise their rights to protest against NATO’s wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society, not only in the US, but around the world.

We, the members of the Berlin Peace Coordination ( Berliner Friedenskoordination), have long

Opposed NATO. Some of our members plan to come to Chicago in May, and we will also voice our opposition to NATO/G8 in other ways here in Europe.

Your representatives have stonewalled repeated attempts by Chicago community organizers to meet with the City to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters” rights. Our demands are simple:

1) That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court-sanctioned standard for such protests—that we be “within sight and sound” of the summits; and

2) That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.

Chicago has a disgraceful history of repression and police brutality, from the attacks on protesters and journalists at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to the widespread torture of Black Chicagoans by former police commander Jon Burge and other officers. Chicago should not reinforce that reputation by denying us our legitimate right to gather and protest next May against NATO/G8 policies that are detrimental to people not only in the US, but also in Europe.

We demand that, in accordance with internationally accepted principles, you grant the requested

permits.

Sincerely,

Signed

Laura von Wimmersperg, Chair

Berliner Friedenskoordination

Resist Mayor Emanuel's "Sit Down and Shut Up" Ordinance

2012-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Why should I believe that what I have to say is worthwhile. I am bred in a world that disavows my greater instincts of compassion for the least. Consider one authority, the Chicago Mayor. He wants a moratorium on free speech. Wednesday at the City Council will determine a future with or without further restriction on free speech. Call your Alderman. Cal our Mayor. Join the City Council Meeting.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 8:00 am

121 N. LaSalle St., 2nd Floor

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." --Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

SOA Sentencing Statement by Theresa Cusimano

2012-01-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

[SOA Watch:]Theresa Cusimano wrote the following statement to Judge Stephen Hyles before her sentencing, telling him that his complicity goes on record today as obstructing international justice and U.S. Rule of Law, and that she wished that he had the courage of Father Roy and the honor of being a subversive.:

"22 years ago, Father Roy Bourgeois played a recording of Bishop Romero's final homily from the day before he was assassinated by School of the America graduates. Romero was labeled a subversive for identifying with the poor. Roy was so sure that once Romero's community heard this homily, their hearts would be changed. So he climbed a tree with his friends, replaying Romero's words to Salvadoran soldiers who were being trained at the School of the Americas to kill their brothers and sisters. Roy wore a Navy uniform representative of his military service in Viet Nam. Because of this action, Roy and his friends joined this circle of "subversives" by shining light on the truth of how the U.S. was spending our tax dollars on its gambling game known as U.S. foreign policy. In this dirty war business "subversives" become fair game for U.S. trained and financed militias while the U.S. continues to profit, sitting back and watching the body count grow, with mass graves filled with hundreds of thousands of mutilated children, raped women and countless, faceless corpses of unknowing communities. Who are we?

Columbus is a proud community that does not deserve the stain that the Schools of the Americas brings. The Fort's barbed wire fence was not built to aid and abet the U.S. from international accountability for the human rights crimes facilitated by the SOA, violating U.S. statutes requiring transparency, not to mention military ethics. Yet you handcuff, videotape and fingerprint me as a criminal.

It seems we are in a bit of a stalemate. Our prisons are over filled, and our courts underfunded. Yet, you, Stephen Hyles, allow this expensive stalemate to continue. You pretend we are here for trespass, wasting precious resources, ignoring talent and idealism that could be put to better use. Because the Columbus magistrates do not recuse themselves despite their conflicts of interest, because you continue to deny defenses that would allow this debate to come to light. Since international law experts are not granted admission to this hearing, you and I are here today on Friday the 13th... you forced to listen and me sentenced to your prison, as a peaceful protestor. Nowhere else but in Georgia can such extreme sentencing be found to protect a base with a tagline, Maneuvers in Excellence. Is this what you call excellence? I want my tax dollars back. I suppose I should be grateful to make use of my tax dollars in another boondoggle economy that lacks accountability, the U.S. prison system.

I beg your pardon while you make a mockery of justice and we pay the price. General Eisenhower warned us of this stalemate as he left the White House. He warned that the military complex would suck all of the resources our country needed for its people, our schools, our hospitals to fuel its addiction to war. Nobel Peace Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu begs Americans to, "Stop exporting U.S. warfare." My witness today Judge Hyles, is to hold you accountable, for the schools that will close this year, the veteran benefits that will be too expensive to make good on, the national service programs like AmeriCorps that will be threatened because you sat silent as precious resources fund the renamed School of the Americas in its latest Honduran coup. You may not hold a machete, or ask children to detonate the landmines used in U.S. financed coups with the protections of a soldier trained here, but your complicity goes on record today as obstructing international justice and U.S. Rule of Law. You have other choices. I only wish you had the courage of Father Roy and the honor of being a subversive.

With employment at an all-time low, who are we to challenge Georgia's largest employer? We are 300 prisoners of our conscience who have served more than 100 years in prison, collectively. We are supported by hundreds of thousands of protestors. Our legislative campaign with no real funding comes within ten votes of inviting accountability. Today you could choose justice, Judge Hyles... it's well within your reach."

WAT Sentencing Statement by Judith Kelly

2012-01-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2012

“OUR LIVES BEGIN TO END THE DAY WE BECOME SILENT
ABOUT THINGS THAT MATTER. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Judge Fisher, thank you very much for conducting a fair and orderly trial. I personally feel honored to be here, despite family circumstances that prevented me from participating fully. Between the June 23 nonviolent direct action in the House Gallery and this trial, my mother passed, quite suddenly, on Oct. 20. I did not have the necessary energy for trial preparation, but I agreed to stay on as a silent co-defendant. I thank the original co-defendants and our attorney advisors for their patience and understanding. I believe any of the co-defendants could be standing here and would do justice to this important opportunity. [Co-defendants, please stand]

My solidarity with the Guantanamo prisoners dates from August of 2005 when I signed a petition developed by Fr. Joseph Mulligan, a Jesuit priest in Managua, Nicaragua, that called for international religious leaders and people of faith to fast in support of the Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike. The prisoners were using their own bodies as their sole means of resistance. I did a liquids-only fast from August 10-20. Since then I have tried to maintain a Friday fast. There are many in the room fasting in solidarity with the Guantanamo prisoners who are on hunger strike right now. [Fasters, please stand]

When the core group of 25 Catholic activists went to Cuba in December 2005, I followed their activities carefully and joined Witness Against Torture in 2006, participating in actions every year since. Despite all my best efforts –with arrests at the Supreme Court, the White House and the Capitol steps –this is the first time I have been before a court and found guilty. That I am in court at the tenth year since the creation of the Guantanamo concentration camp is important to me as I am now officially on the record for resisting this shameful stain on our country.

On June 23, 2011, I felt a real sense of urgency to participate, given the disturbing language on Guantanamo in the Defense Appropriations Bill. I felt our action would be timely, relevant and, in a sense, necessary to prevent a greater crime. I believed our statement had to be read to Congress and those with strong voices tried to do so. I chose to say something else, just once: “We walk in shame and grief and anger.” I did speak out to the many representatives, staffers and visitors on the House floor, but with all the noise in that cavernous hall, I don’t believe my voice carried very far. The jeers and boos I heard coming from the House floor drowned out the message I tried to deliver. Before being escorted out of the gallery, I also called out: Please, close Guantanamo!

I especially wanted to be part of this action in June in response to my travel with a peace delegation to Afghanistan in March with Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Several of my co-defendants and friends also traveled there and we established strong bonds with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, who seek an end to the war through nonviolence.

My experience in Afghanistan motivated me to attend a series in Maryland on Christian/Muslim matters in June. Imam Johari Abdul-Malik of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church spoke on June 20, and I raised a difficult question with him about his predecessor, Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, who had spoken at an interfaith panel I attended in Oct. 2001. I remember that I agreed with his critique of US policies in the Middle East. How had he become so radicalized that the US had him on its “target list?” Imam Johari told us that he truly believed that his friend Al-Awlaki, a US citizen of Yemeni heritage, was a moderate in 2001, but that his arrest and torture in Yemen (that he believed to be at the bidding of the US government) changed him into a radical anti-American. Anwar Al-Awlaki was on my mind when I spoke up in the House Gallery on June 23.

As we now know, Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed, with several others, in a US drone strike in Yemen in late September. The death of this US citizen and the lack of any due process must be condemned. The recent approval by Congress of the National Defense Authorization Act that permits the indefinite detention of US citizens and that keeps the remaining 171 prisoners in Guantanamo indefinitely must also be condemned.

I appreciate very much being able to speak about these, as King would say, “things that matter.” I cannot be silent. My heritage is Polish, and Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, once said, “I just keep doing the same things, and some days they lock me up and some days they give me the Nobel Prize.” I trust that someday our persistent actions with Witness Against Torture will be recognized.

Judge Fisher, I believe that you are very fair, and perhaps even supportive of our efforts. You praised the jury for completing their civic responsibilities, and rightly so. I suggest you consider our efforts as part of our civic duty as concerned and committed US citizens. As to my case, I respectfully ask that you sentence me to time served. If you must impose a fine, I hope that I can support a worthy cause that we can agree on.

I wish you and our prosecutors well in the pursuit of justice. May we each take our piece of the truth and grow it into something we can all be proud of. I’ll close with
Corinthians II, verse 6:3-10.

We take pains to avoid giving offense to anyone, for we don’t want our ministry to be blamed. Instead, in all that we do we try to present ourselves as ministers of God, acting with patient endurance amid trials, difficulties, distresses, beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. We conduct ourselves with innocence, knowledge, patience and kindness in the Holy Spirit, in sincere love, with the message of truth and the power of God, wielding the weapons of justice with both right hand and left –regardless of whether we are honored or dishonored, spoken of favorably or unfavorably. We are called impostors, yet we are truthful; we are called unknowns, yet we are famous; we are said to be dying, yet we are alive; punished, but not put to death; sorrowful, though we are always rejoicing; poor, yet we enrich many. We seem to have nothing yet we possess everything!

A Loose Transcript from Roundtable on Hope

2012-01-15T12:22:00.000-08:00

Glimpses of Hope in a Tortured World

Read Mabilde's poem, overview of torture
--Marie: lot more people willing to engage in conversation, more opportunity to provide facts--why is the world more interested in the issue of torture?

--Patrick: The vacuum from fasting allows other things to come in--awareness of others fasting, the men in Gitmo, learn more about the issue. Imagine what it's like to be in community in D.C.--helped to counteract solitary fast. Imagine relationship that grows with men at Gitmo--actions they're taking--what does our presence contribute--it is enough--shared dignity--this gives me hope, knowing men at Gitmo dedicated to 3 day hunger strike--efforts of those after being released to help those still in. Spent a lot of time reading articles and posting on facebook seemed like everyone was talking about it--hopeful that there is response, small changes at Gitmo, feels like there is a newness, even tho it's not enough--imagining that continuing.

Marie-580 articles re: Gitmo written during ten day fast.

Frank--snowball effect in unpredictable ways--Gitmo week for Occupy, maybe people more willing to engage--historical moment--ready to give voice and respond to stuff that's not right. Making juice, tho I was not fasting--neat to think about people across country and different parts doing things in different shades of orange.

Regina--unexpected moments: security man in park, Ray, vet against war, convo with man at exhibit who had so many disagreements and then said "thanks for good work you do". 2. Persevering human spirit--men in Gitmo fasting and resisting after years being held unjustly--not hopeful because it will necessarily end torture, but hopeful because human spirit can do that.

Kat--people who were closed seem more open--feel something in the Earth opening up.

Tim--echo dramatization and Ray--also people working on issues just blocks way from each other--different spirit, but so much energy! (Occupy Rahm protest vs WAT)

Annie--watching news about man who protested in spite of police violence. Hopeful that people act in spite of fear for standing up for human rights. Thinking of all those who do that--act despite fear--those tortured in El Salvador etc. Just those 20 seconds watching man with scar gave me hope--thinking of all these movements around the world.

Frank--can feel disconnected, how unaccountable--NDAA-- is anyone listening, does anyone care?--have distinct feeling that most irrelevant sector is belt of D.C.-we are accountable to one another--advanced form of democracy--not apathy but ready for interconnected sense with each other. Go from expecting action from politicians to expecting it from each other--it doesn't matter if political leaders give it to us--revitalization of public dissent in US--because we've seen Obama's lazy administration--we're not putting X in him anymore--care less about what he does.

Patrick--thinking since last Thurs. reflection- John N. working with torture survivor's--vicarious trauma AND vicarious resilience. I've held onto that--resilience of men at Gitmo after ten years of detention and God knows what else and still doing H.S. and how people act in face of so much bad--in so many ways.

Gus--to me there is no hope, but I believe in a just God, so I gotta say what would you have me do that doesn't have to do with the ends--the world is not available. To set myself up with expectations not logical-set up for despair. But if I recognize I must be just and ask for justice, doesn't matter what results are--I believe in a just God. Therefore I will attempt to be just.My hope comes from God, not in the world.

Patrick: Isn't that hope?

Gus: I can bring my mind and my body a little closer when I think about it that way--it brings me peace. It's insane to have expectations of this world. Faith, hope and love sums it up.

Patrick: Hope is absurdity

Marie: made me think of quote from planners I wrote over and over--must have faith in God AND faith in humans--that's what hope is. Teach-in: 3 torture survivors came and talked to us--how they survived, how they loved again. One of them , Gregory, for the first time shared publicly about personal experience of solitary confinement and shared his poems. One of the things I tried to work on during the fast was the hope in humans part.

Chris (walked in the door back from D.C.!): thought more about Gitmo than I ever have, read 7 books--it was dark. Discipline to act in context of community--could risk at whatever level I wanted to --37 arrested yesterday at gates--decided that instead of risking arrest to put my energy into the 92 hour cage vigil--very unseen at night, and at the same time, a good practice to be one of the forgotten people in isolation--a very powerful witness. But then I did get arrested, so I kind of ruined that (laughs). Encouraged by all of you from afar.

To Go On

2012-01-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

"Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path. I have sworn and have made up my mind to obey your decrees." --Ps 119

Witness Against Torture held my attention. I walked beneath the eaves of the grand buildings lining Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. “You are now passing the Department of Justice” explained Paulina, one of the guides of our procession. Since those of us performing the role of Guantánamo detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, our vision was shrouded. It was a somber march from the White House to the Supreme Court building. Walking in single file along the roadside we stretched further than I could see, two blocks ahead. “One mile to go.” The march was daunting, considering my strength after nine days of fasting. Forty of us gathered that first day to once again take up the tactic used by Guantánamo detainees themselves, when the one instrument of God’s creation left to their command was their own bodies. In solidarity we fasted to hasten an end of all that Guantánamo symbolizes: terror, torture, and indefinite detention. The day had arrived for our march, Jan 11, when our walk linking each government branch meant that we had no patience for another anniversary of Guantánamo Bay Interrogation Center. Like the mood of the march it was overcast and drizzling. Our numbers remained anemic even with buses organized by Amnesty International. Still we had a motley six hundred protesters, 171 wearing jumpsuits and hoods representing the remaining Guantánamo detainees. I had forgotten the hill of capitol hill and my legs burned. “You have led a disciplined march” Carmen said “Just up the hill and to the right now.” I thought of the man whom I represented. When would his detention come to an end? On my back a white stenciled message on black cloth read “ABDUL RAZZAK CLEARED FOR RELEASE”. At the rally I recognized a woman on the stage holding a sign with a similar name. ‘He’s my client.” She said. “Yes, it’s the same man but it’s a name the government gave him. His real name is Bacuch.” An applause was coming from up ahead. It was perplexing: here at the Senate office building staff members clapped as if, what, Witness against torture had reached the finish line? In front of the Supreme Court building we became an imposing assembly filing for a redress of grievance. Then a speaker turned and pointed above my head at the hallowed words “EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL”. With the protest over, I wandered, ultimately headed to an interfaith service. I found myself at one of D.C.’s many sites of public mourning, in particular the memorial of internment camps during WWII for Japanese-Americans. President Reagan is quoted “Here we admit a wrong; here we recommit ourselves to Equal Justice for All.” I arrived too late for all the prayers of the interfaith service. Mingling anyway, I met a woman who can only have been said to have been inspired after hearing from Sr. Diana Ortiz, founder of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC). It could explain her comment, “You Catholics are so progressive!”

The day following the march I was arrested at the White House motivated by words Sr. Diana had written in “The Blindfold’s Eyes” her precious memoire:

“…as a rule, members of Congress were more interested in supporting the Torture Victims Relief Act than they were in holding more hearings. The bill would allot funds to torture treatment centers.... Congress liked the idea of treatment centers. Sympathizing with victims was easy. Turning the spotlight on the abusers, especially when it involved looking at our own role in the abuse, our own complicity, was another matter. It didn’t involve feeling virtuous. It involved contention, conflict, and possibly making enemies. And Congress just wasn’t going there.” P308

Congress had just passed into law the narcotic remedy of National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It enables the Executive branch further power to hold without charge or trial suspected terrorists. Worse, under this law suspected U.S. citizens could be held without due process, indefinitely. As Senator Lindsay Graham put it, “The United States is the new battleground.” Thus, rather than admit the wrong of Guantánamo Bay and recommit to equal justice for all, Congress had just legitimized previous violations of Geneva Conventions III and IV, regarding the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians, respectively. To elude these conventions, the Bush Administration accepted the legal opinion of Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty that stipulated a newfangled category they called “Enemy Combatants”. Despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions ruled out any further categories besides POWs and Civilians, the authors believed the War on Terror dealt with unforeseen enemy affiliations. Yet the human faces of Guantánamo reveal the harsh truth. Congress is discriminating against Muslim men.

John Tirman suggests that the War on Terror is in fact a foil for U.S. exceptionalism. The real strains of war have a pattern detectible throughout U.S. war profiteering. And like in past conflicts tributes to U.S. democracy offer a thin veneer over the conceit of racism, the myth of the frontier and psychological aversion to the deaths of others. In The Death of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (2011) he writes: “Some scholars have described how broad indifference to violence against racial minorities is ‘socially authorized,’ and, in fact, that ‘productions of societal indifference are related to the occurrence of violence’—that is, the lack of caring is ‘produced’ in order to allow violence to proceed unimpeded.”

The passage of the NDAA is the just the product that the current Obama Administration needs in order for it to proceed in negotiations at NATO-G8 conferences in Chicago this May. Now Obama can reassure the world powers that he is endowed with extraordinary powers to lead the War on Terror. He can even purport to uphold the rule of law so subject to question in light of human rights abuses at Guantánamo, Bagram, and other CIA black sites. Through such unrepentant social authorization, a law like this further obscures the truth that Guantanamo is a legal black hole. The War on Terror is now business as usual, requiring offshore sites where U.S. jurisdiction need not apply habeas corpus protections. This suits an Administration not wanting its hypocrisy to be held accountable. Tirman continues, “Violence can be more easily allowed or even initiated in such places where there are no eyes for ‘normal’ society to see. This is literal distancing that reinforces or permits mental and moral distancing from acts of instrumental violence by the state that are often rooted in racial domination.” What the NDAA has done then, is not to provide for the common defense but instead, using denial and distancing, has allowed for further impunity and moral transgression. In what amounts to self-denial, the integrity of the Constitution has again been flouted to imperil citizens and jeopardize the American dream. The NDAA gives no check to the executive branch; it offers no corrective balance to the unconscionable indefinite detainment of men like Abdul Razzak. I therefore, mourned before the White House in public, lamenting the sinful direction taken by Congress. I used my citizenship to be a thorn in the side of this nation I care for, urging for a conscientious review of the NDAA by the Supreme Court. Thirty-seven of us stood, blocking the postcard picture view of that noble façade, placing before the American public in full view the sight of Guantánamo detainees. May their humanity be remembered and their freedom restored.

Lord,

Free us from the dark night of death.

Let the light of resurrection

Dawn within our hearts

To bring us to the radiance of eternal life.

--From Saturday, Week 1, Breviary

Satire this: NDAA

2012-01-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

“Ensnared within this steel quagmire,

Our view holds little to admire,

So to the darkness we retire

Amidst the chime of the razor wire”

With these words Moazzam Begg transforms his surroundings in Guantanamo Bay Prison into poetry. Could I do the same? Today, thanks to the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, even as a citizen I could find myself held captive in Guantanamo. I now have the opportunity to dwell “amidst the chime of the razor wire”. The possibility is legal. The same conditions of confinement afforded to Moazzam Begg now extend legally to U.S. citizens. Finally, the exclusive setting of Guantanamo Bay is now available to one and all. Although the screening process for applicants is said to be severely restricted to the ‘worst of the worst’, the barrier to entry has proven easy to surmount. Potato farmers, taxi drivers, the schizophrenic and lobotomized, fourteen or 89 years old, previous detainees prove the trends by facility administration striving toward equal detainment opportunity.With luck I'll meet the terrorist threshold and win an all expenses paid, one-way ticket. But I better hurry to apply before this offer ends soon. It won't last long.

Hopefully this act is something akin to having a mandatory draft. When enlistment in the armed services was forced, the universal peril gave impetus to the peace movement. Maybe the NDAA is exactly what we've been waiting for. Some epiphany.

Releasing "Enemy"; Taking Hold of Love

2011-12-02T11:08:00.001-08:00

My mind races in a myriad of directions as I consider the readings from Session Two of the JustFaith module on torture; as I look back over my notes, contemplate the words, the people behind the words, all that remains unspoken and unbearable. In an attempt to organize my thoughts, I will begin with the end – the stories – and work back to the start – the encyclicals, etc.

In, “Argentine Mothers of the Disappeared,” the author concludes writing, “There is no doubt that today many families…who have had their loved ones disappeared into clandestine detention through the extraordinary rendition processes in the post 9/11 war on terrorism must be looking at the example and struggle of the Argentine Madres. Their legacy therefore is vibrant and may have even more global relevance today than in Argentina 30 years ago.”

After so much reading about torture and disappearances occurring in other areas of the world, South and Central America, Asia, etc., I was grateful for (albeit saddened by) these words that offer a reminder that torture and disappearances are not an “out there in the world” issue. The U.S. not only covers for or sideways supports governments that do these things but is also directly responsible for disappearances, for torture. So what does this mean for us, as supposed agents of this “democratic-republic” (not to mention “agents of nonviolent change”)? How do we respond?

Penny Lernoux, in Cry of the People, recounts the words an interrogator spoke to Fr. Patrick Rice – who had been abused by electric shock, and by accounts of how his friend Fatima, whose screams he could hear, was being tortured all the more because of him – “I am also against violence and for that reason I won’t kill you.” How absurd and sickening those words sound in the context of this account. But it begs the question, what are we talking about when we talk about violence? How do we articulate the depth and breadth of it? When are we letting little things escalate; accommodating, adapting, until we don’t recognize our own culpability, our own evil. I know that Marie has already written of her, but I cannot help drawing on the clarity of Etty Hillesum’s reflections written during Nazi raids:

“We human beings cause monstrous conditions, but precisely because we cause them, we soon learn to adapt ourselves to them. Only if we become such that we can no longer adapt ourselves, only if, deep inside, we rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it...while everything in us does not yet scream out in protest, so long will we find ways of adapting ourselves, and the horrors will continue.” (From An Interrupted Life.)

And this brings me to the readings from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These documents that summarize an abundance of theories and experiences of God and humanity and attempt to constrict them to almost comically, constrained words; words that will always be inadequate, but are nevertheless necessary tools to unite and direct our thoughts:

“The deepest element of God’s commandment to protect human life is the requirement to show reverence and love for every person and the life of every person.”

“All of society should ‘respect, defend and promote the dignity of every human person, at every moment and in every condition of that person’s life.”

“[We must endeavor] to rediscover the ability to revere and honor ever person.”

And it is this reverence, this respect, and above all this love that ought to always catch us in the moment; that ought to always beg the question of us, am I acting out as I would desire to be acted toward? Am I loving as I would desire to be loved? What does love require? “We are guided and sustained by the law of love.” John Paul II writes. He goes on to say, “[the height of love] is to pray for one’s enemy.” Is prayer the height? I can’t help but believe that it is more than words, more than prayer. Unless it is a prayer that infects and propels our bodies and minds and hearts toward healing, reconciliation, resistance; a prayer that directs our attention to our neighbor and teaches us to shy away even from the mentality of enemy (enemy of who? enemy why?) and to see not only Christ but oneself, one’s most beloved, in everyone.

Forgive me for ending with another Etty quote, I can’t help myself:

“All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbor. Because I and my neighbor and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live…In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.”

May we always forgive, but never excuse ourselves when we fail to love our neighbors as ourselves. And with that, remembering always the lesson of the “good Samaritan,” that is, that it is not for us to decide who is and isn’t a neighbor, but to be a neighbor to whomever we may encounter.

Kai-ros, what is that again?

2011-11-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

L’Odyssēe d’Astērix is a child’s tale, an adventure story and a graphic novel that portrays in one character, Obélix, a simple-minded man of superhuman strength. His gift to his companion Astērix is this strength, useful in their odyssey especially when they must quell strife in Egypt and escape with their well-being intact. The quick thinking and superior speed of Astērix combines with the power of Obélix to carry away the day, so to speak—these are the heroes after all.

A tale like this reminds us of the virtues of teamwork even when we possess as individuals gifts of extraordinary measure. It serves us during Advent as a further reminder. We might forget during the ordinary calendar year of the true measure of our lives, for instance. As opposed to chronos, when we turn our attention to the lessons of Advent and our mind expects kairos, this means we look forward to the inbreaking presence of God in our lives. The extraordinary measure of our lives as Christians ultimately is the sacred, that which we most treasure: Christ. So Advent means looking up from our lives to the Christ, that measure of God we do know. It means considering the extraordinary gift that God has offered us and it means to acknowledge how, like in L’Odyssēe d’Astērix, we could only have arrived in this present moment through the mysterious and powerful effort of Christ.

Visualization: A Start for an Advent Meditation

2011-11-28T15:33:00.000-08:00

Let’s imagine that we’re seated in a comfortable room and the atmosphere given by dim lights and candles have subdued our hurried minds, our breath has slowed, softened, and each of us with our pose settled, relaxed, has begun to consider an imaginary landscape. We have closed our eyes. Cold sand massages our feet and a lake’s wave reaches up to our toes. Our inner eyes spread upon the lake’s horizon along the front of dark green pines on the lake’s far shore. The distant panorama of green stretches up to our left into a peak until past the timber line the brittle earth emerges to point at the sun. It floats above in a cloudless sky. The suns rays warm us through our t-shirt and jeans. The mildest breeze softly brushes our hair. We feel safe and calm at the water’s edge. As we look toward the sky with our eyes closed, we can feel its warmth almost inviting us upward off our feet, but the invitation is unexpected: really? Could we really float upward and into the sky? Oh, but we want to. We wish the sun could envelop us in its safe round rays. We would even like to dissolve into the light, and just be totally radiant for awhile.

I would like to imagine now that we have a shawl wrapped around us. It is ragged from age and smells of mothballs. It hangs heavily on our shoulders. It feels a little moist, damp at one corner where it must have accidentally dragged in the water as we waded along the shore. As we contemplate the sun, we could almost feel ourselves lifted; but for the weight of the shawl we would have. Something about this shawl is holding us back. What is it? How can we name it and let it loose, just let it go? Then we could be free! We could float!

Why continue this meditation? Because our loved ones are waiting for us to let go. In Advent we might recognize what holds us back from catching up with our Sunlight, our loved ones. If we are the Christ the world needs now, and our witness remains to be seen, then what is the obstacle, the weighty shawl, that we burden ourselves with?

The Lights

2011-11-26T19:13:00.000-08:00

Each of the bodies was solemn beneath the light. Two lay on the foot wide benches curled on their sides, a third lay on the cell floor and on this prisoner the light reflected least. The features of this newcomer held on to the light they received from overhead. His eyelids were unconcerned by time and his involuntary posture was limp and his mouth paused ajar. His jaw met squarely at the chin. His voice lay dormant in the darkness of that cave but the pink tongue lacquered the edge of one lip and liberated a streak of saliva. His eyelids fidgeted first, then his tongue retracted. Finally from somewhere deep within him the bow of his abdomen expanded.

He had said, “It’s jail. There’s nothing to do but sleep.”

A sound stirred from the deep; it could have been a vacuum. Dry air rushed over the tongue and past the tonsils, the larynx, and into the furthest pockets of his lungs. It was held there, the air separated from itself, unaware of a movement outside itself, self-absorbed, and it seemed like seventy seven hours of unforgiveness. It became surreal, this subdivision of itself, for inside the sacks that had pocketed the air, it seemed as if little arms reached from the surrounding dark arresting the breath and demanding that it relinquish the luggage it carried, the oxygen had to be given over. These little red Gestapo cells were already ferrying away the boldest of the breath along crammed little flotillas or little train carts destined into the farthest corners of darkness. Few oxygen escaped this scrutiny or the fate within these detention centers.

To all appearances these bodies were inert and still they held hostage the gases invisible about them. Their tongues grew dry from the depleted, stale air, and yet in oblivion they knew nothing of the ongoing deportation that they were complicit in. If they would have any suspicions of guilt later it would come in the faintest flicker of conscience, for they would notice the parched roof of their mouths and want to wet their voices before they could talk again. However, before they could be aware of this even, the strangeness of their bodies would question their sleepiness in the face of the light. When they awoke this would override all other anomalies, the steadfastness of the walls, the ceiling, the cement all around them. Such was long ago decided, made permanent. But more obvious would be the unnaturalness of the lights, forever unblinking false daylight at them, soaking the irises of their eyes and bleaching out their unconsciouness.

Hens in mass egg production get treated this way. In the wild a hen will only begin to lay eggs in spring but agribusiness solved the nature dilemma by imitating the seasons to trick the hens to lay more eggs. First the caged, warehoused hens are fed large quantities of protein. Then, in emulation of winter, the lights of the warehouse are dimmed and the hens are fed nothing for two weeks. Next, the hens resumed regular feeding and the lights are now on twenty-four hours a day. Its biological process manipulated, the hen now begins to produce eggs.

Be the Magi you wish for

2011-11-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

“We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings.” Malcom X spoke these words in New York City on April 8^th, 1964 and I hear him speaking to me today. Only a few days ago on my way home from Georgia I stopped in Nashville during a four hour Greyhound layover. I wandered up capitol hill where I stood perched on the high ground overlooking the occupy movement in Legislative Plaza. The stone marker before me bore a plaque in memoriam to the horrors of the middle passage. It recounted the woe of a hundred million captured Africans bound below decks by the hundreds. Half died during the voyage, couped up, flesh rotting in chains, stricken by disease and perishing of famine.

Grounds for Empathy

My vantage point was increased having come up from Tyrell County, Georgia where I was jailed for resisting immigrant detention and deportation, held on charges of criminal trespass at Stewart Detention Center, our nation’s largest immigration detention center. Anton Flores, lead organizer for the rally and march on SDC and former prisoner of conscience, bailed me out after three days. On our drive to his home he repeated a radio announcer’s description, saying, “Tyrell County, if you remember, was known during the civil rights era as ‘Terrible Tyrell’ for its flagrant racist hate.”

It struck me there on capitol hill that this monument stood also for the brothers today facing deportation, the mothers and daughters separated, and it stood also for the cause to question all imprisonment. Because peoples imprisoned today remain subjects of sale. Under the 13^th amendment to the Constitution prisoners are property of the government. I personally experienced forced labor earlier this year and couldn’t in conscience tolerate it.

A Flashback

Why are they doing this to us, I asked. We were on “Con Air” making passage from Oklahoma to various parts of the country. I was destined for Seattle, though I didn’t know it, and was separated with others when we landed in Las Vegas. It was a Friday morning. Rather than continue the journey we had stopped and now a party of us were given into the custody of Pahrump County Detention Center run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). On Tuesday the journey resumed, but not after the CCA, a privately owned company with public shares sold on the stock market, had booked us and included us on their list showing the Congress why they should be allocated so many funds a year in contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hallucinagenic really, the bright lights of experience, and I couldn’t believe the trip I was on.

But standing remote now and in possession of my rights of citizen on that prominent ground, I saw the Occupy movement down below with eyes of hope. After all it is the gift of this movement that awakens so many of us to the possibility that comes with our unified and resolute no to the profit schemes subjugating the 99%. NO! to the violation of our positive values, our hopes and dreams for true democracy.

The timing of an insight is sometimes everything.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, of Black Friday and as I write this—Sabbath for the first Sunday of Advent. The plaque before me suggested a revision of my sense of history. If we could all surrender our sense of context once again to re-vision the middle passage’s closing chapter in 1865 to four hundred years man on man profit-making. If this Advent the coming of Christ we look for in and through our stand with the Occupy movement could be another memorial, another closing chapter remembered by future generations. The question is if we will have anything to do with it. Some will make new years resolutions and still be handed a rewards card from the Marriot that reads “Welcome Back Elite Member”. Others will place themselves into the Gospel and renew their understanding of history, and will see the road tread by Jesus to Jerusalem. Given the perspective one will see a capitol hill and another, the mound of Golgotha.

Meanwhile, Advent to Kairos Chicago...

It is a time of preparation for our fast and witness against torture. If we have a task this advent it begins in revisioning ourselves significant, powerful witnesses. I think of us as the journeying Magi bearing gifts for the Christ child. If we preach the cross even now it shouldn’t be surprising, for even Frankincense, used to prepare a corpse for the tomb, was a royal gift. Look to the Frankincense of your experience then, fellow travelers, and renew a commitment to a belief in redemptive suffering.

We must follow the guiding lights of nonviolence, always, though they lead us to Nazareth and all tell us “What good ever came out of Nazareth?” or what good does fasting do, or civil disobedience, or occupying a street corner? As Malcom X came to realize, ordinary human beings would have to act with boldness on behalf of unrecognized dehumanized beings: “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.” New York City, 19 February 1965

the occupation is not leaving

2011-10-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

Last night, I spent some time with the Occupy Chicago movement.

Why did I join them?

... I think this movement is a concrete step to re-assert the voice of the common good in the discourse of our country

... I hope that the 10/22 action: "creating a space... where real democracy is possible," marks a transition from outrage to creativity

... I want to be a part of that journey

I thought I would take a few minutes to post some observations as an eyewitness to history last night. I will include some links to stories and media provided by others, to add perspective, but like any movement, the occupation is to be experienced, not observed. Nevertheless, as activists, we need to claim our story, so here is some of it:

7pm, 10/22

Crowd gathers @ Jackson & LaSalle, estimated by CPD to be as many as 3,000 people. Biggest crowd I have seen in 29 days of occupation. Spirit of anticipation and courage among the crowd.

7:15pm

Protestors swarm Jackson heading east, once we take the street there is no hurry. People as far as eye can see in front of me and behind me, climbing on barricades and light posts to get pictures, police cars block traffic and all intersections. As we cross Wabash, an EL train is pulling out of Adams/Wabash station, driver slows train over Jackson, waves and thumbs up to the crowd.

7:45pm

CPD horses meet us at Jackson & Michigan, crowd enters Grant Park, confined to sidewalk, and thousand converge on the plaza where we intend to “set up a permanent community, in the hope of creating a space where constructive debate and real democracy is possible.” The intersection of Michigan & Congress, “Liberation Square,” is Occupy Chicago’s intended location for an ongoing presence, which has been denied by the city. Must-see video from one of the most remarkable moments of the night: http://youtu.be/5yKyICPJOKc Keep in mind, this began as 7 people sitting in front of the Federal Reserve!?

8:00pm

Occupiers flock to the Bowman Statue chanting “take the horse!” (see previous video, chant begins at 2:22) conjuring images of 1968: http://youtu.be/DqdM87_Lmv4 CPD wagons already parked ominously on the south and west side of the plaza.

8:15pm

Open mic begins for representatives of unions, students, and other groups/individuals with the coalition. Most moving were a Hyatt hotel employee seeking living wage and a mental health patient denouncing cut backs in services.

9:00pm

People begin to pitch a tent, way in the front of the crowd out of sight from the street (or so we thought), almost immediately, 25 police dart through the crowd for what feels like a premature and unwarranted confrontation. Movement is momentarily confused, tense showdown, mic is silent, then calling for legal help. Some begin to chant. People take down the tent, Police eventually leave, situation diffused. Ten minutes later, they re-assembled the tent, and I helped pitch another one.

11:05pm

I had left for a bite to eat and a bathroom break, my friends headed home. Out of curiosity, I return to the plaza where only a couple hundred people remain. Situation seems very tense and uncertain… police show up with bike racks, pushing folks towards the sidewalk, organizers form into a picket line. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I notice a crowd now across the street on the west side of Michigan Ave. I assume that an arrest warning has been issued. Turns out, park curfew is 11pm. I’m in the arrest zone! I fled out the north side of the park, asking cops what’s going on, “there have already been plenty of warnings.”

11:22pm

Cook County sheriff buses arrive and park on Michigan Ave both curbside lanes and median shut down, but two-lanes of traffic open each way, obstructing views and sounds from across the street. Picket line 200 strong still holding down the west sidewalk of the plaza, over 100 remain within barricade. Over 100 cops onsite, a dozen secure the perimeter with bike racks. Cops are responding differently to the situation, some tapping their feet to music, others bickering with the crowd on both sides of street, mostly just standing around.

11:33pm

Final police warning, all tents have been destroyed/removed except First Aid Tent with 2 nurses inside. Police tell picket line that sidewalk is subject to 11pm curfew. Since sidewalk is not park property, this was basically a lie, but it was repeated over a megaphone, and picketers concede part of the sidewalk to police, allowing more direct path for arrests. Picketers need to keep moving to avoid arrest for blocking sidewalk, even outside of barricade, on west and south side. Cops march into position and enter plaza from the north with zip ties.

midnight, 10/23

Some confusion among the crowd. Some want to move to Thompson Center, others want to stay in solidarity with arrests, some want to start a drum circle and dance, others want to remain solemn with chants… compromise: we stayed and we danced.

12:41am

I cross Mich Ave to potential arrest zone where picket line has held the perimeter now almost 2 hours. 300 strong on the sidewalk as the arrests begin: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/10/23/occupy-chicago-arrests-in-grant-park/

12:45am

Pizza delivered to southwest corner of plaza, cops will not allow it past the barricade… we chant “let them eat!” until cops allow pizza to be given to the folks inside. Nurses in tent warned of arrest… we chant “healthcare is a right!” As it turned out, the volunteer nurses were the final 2 arrests, after their tent was taken down by police. Nurses nationwide are calling for a march on Mayor’s Office Monday morning: http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/95152/index.php

1:00am

One activist asks to cross the barricade voluntarily joining the others. After the police question him crowd chants “let him in!” Activist is informed by police that inciting the crowd would be a felony, he turns to quiet the crowd and diffuse the situation. I did not see if he made it in after all.

1:15am

Arrests continue. One of the loudest chants of the night: “Why would you arrest us? We’re fighting for your pension!” followed by “YOU are the 99%”

1:30am

Moment of silence for the death of free speech in Congress Plaza. As arrests continue, this was incredibly surreal… the only quiet moment of the night.

2:45am

Nurses arrested. I’m home, asleep.

12:45pm

I bike from church to Jackson & LaSalle, where occupiers are holding the sidewalk for Day 30. They tell me nobody has been released from prison yet.

1:00pm

At the CPD District #1 station @ 18th & State, I find a couple dozen activists on the sidewalk with a bunch of snack food and 4 news crews. As I watched roughly 20 protesters were released in small groups over 2 hours. There was major concerns that the desk sergeant was not accepting bail payments for at least 2 activists who had now been arrested for the second night, claiming they would have to spend a second night in jail, and see a judge on Monday. The social media blitz has been underway all day trying to get attention for the treatment of our friends in jail.

overnight + all-day, reports from prison:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164128/occupyusa-blog-special-weekend-edition

“One of the holding cells with about 30 men had no working sink. Their requests were ignored for 5 to 6 hours....An epileptic girl needed her meds. We yelled for an hour before anyone came and then they ignored for another hour....We yelled for about sixteen hours to make a phonecall before they finally let some of us...This protester asked different police officers 86 times politely to make a phone call. Ignored all night.....

"We were given no food until noon today after yelling for hours they gave us a bologna sandwich.....Most of those of us who were in jail were not even allowed a phone call even though we asked for one repeatedly.....Two of the people who did get a phonecall report that the bondsmen were playing videogames instead of working on our paperwork....None of the men were given toilet paper for the past twenty hours."

Mayor, Rahm Emmanuel 312-744-5000

Governor, Pat Quinn 217-782-0244

CPD District #1 Direct Line: 312-745-4290

A Picnic

2011-08-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

I want my life

To run direct into your embrace,

Not turning aside

Until I am hidden in the safety of your gaze.

--
Augustine, Confessions 13.8.9

One afternoon while I was at a halfway house I received a surprise visit from Frank. Per usual, I had my head in a book when the loudspeaker on my floor blared, “Resident Christopher Spicer, please come to the 105 desk. You have a visitor.” I shook my head out of the rural world of William Faulkner. “Room 408, please come to the 1-0-5, immediately.” As I spun off the bed Light in August flung out of my hands, and was replaced by the doorknob. I turned the corner like I was the emergency exit route bolted on the back of the door and whirled down the red stairs two at a time. I had no idea who had come and it didn’t matter; someone had come to visit me.

At the front desk a stern staff member reminded us that it wasn’t my official visiting day but was resigned to give us fifteen minutes to talk. Frank’s face, for whatever arrangements he had made in sacrifice, showed no sign of disappointment. His sunny disposition brought relief and it lingered with me even as I climbed the stairs back to my hermitage. I looked out my window at Sears Tower anticipating our next meeting Sunday when I had a two-hour, release pass to attend church.

Come time, I stepped out of the Salvation Army residence. Wearing a tan collared shirt embroidered Engineers Without Borders, Frank was waiting for me in the parking lot with the engine running. “Instead of finding some café,” he said checking his watch, “I made breakfast. We can eat in the park before Mass.” The Volvo interior was a contrast to the caged buses of the Bureau of Prisons; I wasn’t handcuffed; and in cup holders within reach, two berry smoothies sweat condensation. “That’s for starters.”

Who does this?

A twinge of guilt suspended my delight. I felt bold trespassing the hour fast, custom before communion. On the other hand, his preparation was touching me to the core. He rebutted my thanks with, “I’m a Catholic Worker and visiting the prisoner is in our creed.” Minutes later, sitting with a view of yoga practitioners limbering up on a grassy knoll, I watched as he pulled out from sealed Tupperware homemade pancakes still steaming, real butter and hot syrup, then blueberries and fresh sliced plums. It was the first time in six months I held plates in my hands and real silverware; and only beginning to enjoy sunlight for the fifth time in the fifth month, the picnic scene was like outdoor dining at a four star country club.

Frank consecrated our meal with prayer centering us in the Easter season. Bigger than the both of us, something larger than a visit or even a work of mercy was happening; we were celebrating a resurrection meal. And during seconds, I learned Frank had planned one more surprise: Friends would meet us at Mass.

a traveler's prayer

2011-08-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Spirit on the Move,
Tent of Covenant,
Desert of Faithfulness,

Be with me in the packings and unpackings of my life:
Packing bags with tools for journey
Packing weeks with invitations for love
Packing initiative with dreams of unity
Packing conversations with glimpses of authenticity
Packing prayer with surrender to peace.

Grant that I may never seek so much to be gone as to stay;
To attract attention as to offer presence;
To evade as to abide.

May my life continue to be an unpacking of the mysteries that await in the adventure of inward movement towards outward solidarity alongside the reluctant strangers and holy companions with whom I am graced to exchange hospitality.

Be not far from me, as my travels and trials become chapters of the biography of my homecoming to where I've been -- in You -- all along.

Amen.

Nuclear Resisters-Michael Walli

2011-08-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

This letter comes from Michael Walli, jailed until sentencing after 5/10/11 federal conviction for trespass at Y12 nuclear weapons complex, 7/5/2010.

[Written on Pax Christi Card with Jubilee Pledge and Prayer]

Variety is the Spice of Life/But make sure Jesus is your Spicer…May the Holy Spirit of Jesus Indwell in you!

Jubilee Pledge

As disciples of Jesus in the new millennium,

I/We pledge to:

PRAY regularly for greater justice and peace.

LEARN more about Catholic social teaching and its call to protect human life, stand with the poor, and care for creation.

REACH across boundaries of religion, race, ethnicity, gender and disabling conditions.

LIVE justly in family life, school, work, the market-place, and the political arena.

SERVE those who are poor and vulnerable, sharing more time and talent.

GIVE more generously to those in need at home and abroad.

ADVOCATE for public policies that protect human life, promote human dignity, preserve God’s creation and build peace.

ENCOURAGE others to work for greater charity, justice and peace.

Prayer to Become Jubilee People

Father of Time, Mother of Creation, we thank you for the gift of Jubilee that sanctifies both time and space. During this Great Jubilee at the dawn of the new millennium, teach us the wisdom of Sabbath rest for your earth and for the land of ourselves.

Teach us the wisdom of forgiveness of debts for those who cannot pay and for those we refuse to release. Teach us the wisdom of Jubilee justice to remind us that all we have belongs to you and to ensure that everyone has enough.

Teach us the wisdom of Jubilee liberation that we might free those who are oppressed and languish in captivity.

Strengthen our families, parishes, church and nation that we might truly become Jubilee people.

Amen.

[Handwritten verses are numbered by the author. Margin inserts signaled by ^]

^*New York=Empire State

^*Georgia=Empire State of the South

PATRIOTIC VERSES COME OUT OF BABYLON

Fight school violence
We’re on the $kid$
Careful what you teach our kids
The three Rs are OK and ABC
But Keep out the horror$ of ROTC
King George III thi$?
George Wa$hington that?
A que$tion of changing
An empire hat*
The US had it$ Goerge$ Three
God $ave the people
From crazed monarchy
Tippecanoe and Tyler too?
Antichri$t warmonger$
Bring $orrow to you
Remember the Alamo?
That happened a century
And a half ago
And gave U$ half
Of Mexico
That inspired the Fuhrer
To $hriek “lieben$room”!
And kept the gun$ going
Boom! Boom! Boom!

^”Western democracies as they function today are diluted forms of Nazism or fascism.” –Mohandas Koramchand Gandhi

^Foursquare

Symmetry

Exactitude

Certainty

Orderliness

Predictability

Equity

Regularity

^Motives

I slept and I dreamed

That life is all joy

I woke and I saw

That life is all service

I served and I saw

That service is joy

--by Rabindranath Tagore, Early 20^th Century Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

^”Without sacrifice there is no love” –Saint Maimilian Kolbe OFM

[Page 2]

Refurbi$h Civil War $tatuary?*
Better to have a
Frontal lobotomy
Reenactor$ of Yorktown
Getty$burg and Bull Run
Have a wor$e diploma
Than tho$e who run
Before the bull$ at Pamplona
Remember the Maine?
Give$ all of U$ pain
Guam The Philippine$
The Virgin Island$ Puerto Rico
Guantanamo
Remember Queen Lililukalani?
How the Hawaiian$ lo$t Hawaii?
That wa$ a Fine Aloha
How do ya do ya?
The war to end war$?
Million$ of dead?
The blood in the ground
Make$ the poppie$ $o red
Remember Pearl Harbor?
Take a bath
Let not the $un $ink down
On your wrath

^”Nationalism is the childhood disease of the human race—it is the measles of mankind.”—Albert Einstein

^*Use the resources for the living who need it

^The Northerners call the 2 Civil War Battles in Loudoun County Virginia Bull Run. The Southerners call them Manasses. The ungodly heathens have costly reenactments to help them remember the carnage inspired by Satan. Why go to Pamplona to see the bulls run when you can go to Loudoun County and see 2 legged man asses?

Over 600,000 people died in the US Civil War. The mostly Christ confessing politicians and clergymen of the land did not prevent it. Those who fought the war and died as a result of the war were mostly Christ confessing and yet they did not resolve their differences according to Jesus’ New Testament.

^”Blessed are those who block their ears about the ‘news’ of evil communicated for profit.”

[Page 3]

Land$lide Lyndon
$tretched the truth a bit
Hi$ Tonkin Gulf attack two
Wa$ a crock of poo poo*
Neither rhyme or rea$on
Wa$ ever hi$ $ea$on
Lady Bird Airline$ Flew the Troup$
Thru all $ort$ of conflict
Of Intere$t legal hoop$
Pu$hing $mart bomb button$
I$ $o unromantic
The warrior$ fly away
Leaving horror$ gigantic
Body bag and war memorial
Growth indu$try
Future$ are up
And will $tay $o until
You find the Holy Grail Cup
We mu$t now pur$ue
The Doctor Kingian Way
Guided mi$$iles and mi$guided men?
They Ju$t do not pay
Remembering $atan Keep$ you blue
Jesus Christ makes all things new
Beware of the pen$ion plan patriot$
With flag$ unfurled
Our citizen$hip is not
of thi$ world

^Store your treasures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupt or corrode it.

^*As proven by existent US Government telephone recordings in national archives custody.

^Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon an Ernest Gruening of Alaska opposed the Tonkin Gulf resolution which illegally “enabled” President Johnson to expand the war in Vietnam/Indo-China. Senator Morse said at the time that the US would come to regret the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

^”We have guided missiles and misguided men.”—Dr. M.L. King Jr.

^”Suffering willingly endured is redemptive”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

^”Christ will come again, to undo the Antichrist, free the world, the Fatherland of Paradise.” –Saint Peter Chrysologous (450 AD) Doctor of the Church

[Page 3]

Get off the highway
Kingpin commander$ in chief
Jesus is coming
He come$ a$ a thief
Patrioti$m i$ the refuge of a $coundrel*
Don’t buy it! Don’t buy it!
Purcha$er$ can expect their refund$ in hell
For a Christmas tat every tot enjoys
Eradicate all of tho$e helli$h war toy$
Capitali$t$ Communi$t$ militari$ts nationalist$
$atan $upplie$ their good$
Evict the$e na$ty element$
From all earth’$ neighborhood$
From the tomb$ of the unknown
Come a unifying voice
Make obedience to God
Your full armory of choice
When you ring out your freedom
As God’s children quite well
The belfry$ altogether
Will truly $ound Nobel

99. $atan with thy arm$ contract

100. Mammon be $purned

101. $tay wrapped up in Jesus

And you won’t be burned
Budgetary billion$ militarizing $pac
Expo$e$ to the public
$atan’$ ugly Face

^”Property owned communally is holy.” –Saint Gertrude the Great

^*Saying attributed to Samuel Johnson

^”Blessed are the peace makers for they are the ones who shall be called Children of God.”

^”I have unequivocally declared my opposition to this most colossal of all evils” Dr. King referring to antichrist nuclear weapons

[Page 4]

Jesus Cross of Life
I4 the Path well taken
Leave all other$ totally For$aken
Gandhi had a lot of
Worthy thing$ to $ay
Li$ten to hi$ coun$el$
Or you have hell to pay
(See*insert) The Warlord$ war by war
Rake n multibillion$
Ho hum $ay thee $cum
They’re ma$$acreing civilian$
There is Freedom to choo$e
And it is our lo$$
Until we elect
The Way of the Cross

*THE THING$ THAT WILL DE$TROY U$ ARE:

1. Politic$ without principle

2. Plea$ure without con$cience

3. Wealth without work

4. Knowledge without character

5. Bu$ine$$ without morality

6. $cience without humanity

7. Wor$hip without $acrifice

--Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

^The Sheep at Jesus Judgment are at His Right Hand. The goats at his Left Hand. Goats ilk is the richest Kind of dairy milk.

^Jesus is the Father of the world that is to come.

^Woe to you rich/You have had your reward

^The State of New York is nicknamed “The Empire State”/ The State of Georgia is called “The Empire State of the South”

^Judas betrayed Jesus the Prince of Peace into the hands of the militarists for money while giving Him lip service.

^The US has the hogs share of the many billions of dollars “worth” of military weapons sold each year on the antichrist international military weapons market sowing Satan’s harvest of death.

from Susan Crane

2011-08-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

This letter comes from Susan Crane, serving 15 months beginning in 3/28/11 one of the Disarm Now Plowshares group convicted of felony damage to government property, conspiracy and trespass for cutting the fence and entering the nuclear weapons storage area at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, 11/2009. Susan mentions her prayer for the health of Nuclear Resister Jackie Hudson. Jackie died Aug. 3rd. See photo tribute here and Disarm Now Plowshares website for more information.

[Side 1 handwritten]

Hi Chris—Thanks for writing—glad you are out. Steve and Bix made sure I saw you there in the SeaTac visiting room. Thanks for your smiles!

...Have you had a chance to read Archbishop Chullikat’s talk on nuclear disarmament? It’s on the Disarm Now Plowshare website (or a link to it)—if you read it, you’ll want to join us out at Bangor!

Peace,

Susan

[Side 2 typed]

July 25

Thanks for writing to me. I’ve been noticing that several letters arrive weeks after the postmark. Letters from Oakland that should take a day or two are given to me more than two weeks later. Apparently the mail room is a bit behind.

A couple of conversations have stayed in my mind recently. One was with the staff person in the laundry room. I had to go there to get my pants sewed up. The staff person recognized me as having been [t]here before, and asked why I was here. I said that I had been part of a peace action, and she said, in a discouraged voice, “there is no peace.”

Always looking for common ground I agreed. She continued: There won’t be any peace until there aren’t any starving people.

Had to agree again…we know that without justice, which includes some sort of fair distribution of resources, there won’t be peace.

Then I was talking with a young woman here who is just starting work at UNICOR. She has a job in telemarketing. They are selling magazine subscriptions—actually the magazine subscriptions are free, all the person has o do is give email, phone and physical address and they can get these trade magazines.

The woman said that she would do anything for money. She needs money, owes restitution and fines. I was interested in finding the line that she wouldn’t cross in the prusuit [sic] of money. Was there something she’d refuse to do? She was clear that there were no limits on what she would do for money. She would scam older people. Even your grandparents? No (finally, something she wouldn’t do), but other older people were fair game, as she didn’t know them.

Wow. Discouragement and a feeling of hopelessness about the world situation n on the part of some, and a lack of compassion on the part of some others.

I was talking to the Chaplain about how moral dilemmas can be used to teach moral reasoning and build compassion. He suggested that perhaps the Jesuits who come here for Mass could teach a course in ethics.

Right now there are some men in California prisons on hunger strike for better conditions in the SHU [Solitary Housing Unit]. Some have been in solitary for decades.

Everyday when I go outside, feel the breeze, get warmth from the sun, I think about Steve Kelly, SJ and Lynne Greenwald, who are both at SeaTac, and never get to go outside or see the green of a tree or a blade of grass. And I think of the y-12 resisters in the jail, in harsh conditions, and I think of Jackie, struggling for her health.

And of course, I think of the hard work that all of you are doing Keeping communities going, challenging the powers that continue to oppress us all.

I am doing well, still teaching ESL, still staying under the radar, being a good compliant prisoner. Makes me really search my conscience.

As I watch the owls, swallows and hawks fly in and out of the prison, and see the squirrels go through the razor wire and through the double fence, it shouldn’t surprise me that the Spirit moves through the fence and the walls and cement, and brings love and warmth to my heart. Makes me feel very small and humble.

I continue to try to listen to others, find what is good, and find lots to be thankful for.

Thanks,

Peace

Susan Crane Reg: 87783-011

Federal Correctional Institution Dublin

5101 8^th St. Camp Parks

Dublin, CA 014568

from Lynne Greenwald

2011-08-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

This letter comes from Lynne Greenwald, serving six months beginning 3/28/11 one of the Disarm Now Plowshares group convicted of felony damage to government property, conspiracy and trespass for cutting the fence and entering the nuclear weapons storage area at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, 11/2009

31 July 2011

Sunday

Dear Chris,

What a nice gift, receiving your card this past week! I’m guessing your transition back into the community went well. I understand you’ve been to Central America and are familiar with transitions (did I read this in Nuclear Resister?). Anyway—thank you for your action and willingness to give up your “freedom” for awhile.

Seeing you in the visitation room was also a pleasant surprise, and kept me open to the unexpected here at SeaTac FDC.

I’ve been able to speak to Bix after his release, and to hear frequent updates. Last week a friend sent a photo of him back at Guadalupe House for Tues. night liturgy and dinner. I’m hoping he’s still free when I return home Sept. 9. Regardless, I’m grateful he had a safe journey home.

You may know that Jackie Hudson returned home to WA and is now in the hospital, very ill. She’s now off the respirator and will be starting cancer treatment soon. Although I’m able to keep in touch with Sue Abloo, Ground Zero, and Jackie’s long-time partner, I’m not able to be with them during this difficult time. I’m on the prayer vigil detail now.

I had a wonderful visit yesterday with my daughter, Alissa, her husband and their son. Jack is 1 year now—I’m o happy to have seen his growth over these past months. My oldest daughter will be here in a few weeks and will visit from San Fran. And my son visited the end of May before he started firefighting job with Dept. of Natural Resources.

Knowing how much I have, and how little time I have to serve, keeps me humble. I still receive much more than I could ever give.

Looking forward o returning to the Tacoma Catholic Worker, and my life at the Irma Gary House. I was living at and managing a small transitional house for women getting out of prison. I was under federal probation for a previous trespass charge when I lived there, and I’ll be under “house arrest” at the house for 2 weeks when I get out of FDC. No monitor, just have to check-in at nearby ½ -way house.

One thing about this brief experience, I’m enjoying sending and receiving letters. It’s especially exciting to hear stories of what others are doing to create a peaceful world. Hoping to learn more about your work too. I heard the perfect poem as I walked around the triangle of the upper tier, here in DA. Garrison Keeler on Writers’ Almanac, reading William Blake’s poem “Don’t Believe.” (I think). What sticks with me is the word from Jesus, “Believe.” My day is now filled with the hope and belief that peace is possible and I’m thinking of all those gathering to witness for a world without nuclear weapons this August.

Gabby letter—I guess I’ll slip back into the quicker e-mail habit soon, but hopefully not exclusively.

Take care and Shalom!

Lynne

Federal Detention Center

Lynne Greenwald

Reg: 40672-086 Unit: DA

P.O. Box 13900

Seattle, WA. 98198-1090

As of Sept. 9:

Lynne Greenwald

Tacoma Catholic Worker

1417 South G. St.

Tacoma, WA 98405

What Comes-A letter from prison

2011-08-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

What Comes? What Gives?

How can we mark the period of Aug. 6-9 in mourning for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuclear weapons programming? To begin with, let us remember what is at stake: “One of the great temptations of our age is to view the world and its people and problems as complicated abstractions, remote from our lived daily experiences.”

Patrick McCarthy in “Sharing the Burdens” The Roundtable, Winter 1998

If abstraction requires the anecdote of daily kindnesses and deliberate sacrifices, so the rebuke of temptation requires mindfulness of our friends waging peace. I have received several letters from prisoners of conscience that I will share in the coming days. Maybe one way to mark this period in vigil is to sit with the words of these peacemakers and in our prayer keep them in view. As we feel moved, our community can offer observations of hope in response. For:

“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread…” Dorothy Day.

This first is from Mark Kenney, serving six months beginning 4/27/11 found guilty of trespass at Offutt AFB, home of the Strategic Command, 8/9/10.

7/28

Dear Chris,

Thanks so much for writing and sending the beautiful card. It is almost a year since our action in Omaha last august 9^th.

I have plenty of time to pray and fast here. I certainly will be praying for folks gathering at OFFUTT Aug (6-9). I am more than happy to include you in those prayers.

As far as feeling like having “Diseased attachments” and having a heart divided, well, that is truly all of our situation as followers of Christ on earth.

Amazingly enough, Jesus has such confidence in us, to be “wheat among the weeds”; to be non-materialistic among capitalists; to be non-violent among militarists; to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven amidst secular patriotism.

We/I fail over and over in our attempts to live up to the wonderful expectations our Lord has for us.

Fortunately, God is merciful, as we are to be merciful to each other. Jesus knew how incredibly difficult this would be. I beli[e]ve we have to be incredibly forgiving and much more greatful to each other in our weaknesses. For it is the meek who truly inherit the earth. It is truly the poor in spirit who have access to the kingdom of Heaven, we must be forgiving of others over and over. We must allow God to forgive us as we forgive others.

As Pope Benedict XVI express in his book Jesus of Nazareth; “the presence of Christ makes all the difference”. (I may be paraphrasing a bit here).

Peter Maurin always held, that the social teaching of the Church needed to be unleashed. Dorothy Day showed us how to express the heart of the Church through u[n]relenting hospitality.

Maybe you, Chris, can help the Church, the body of Christ; us, bear it’s very soul, by showing us how to be more merciful to each other amidst this terrible canondrum of choices life presents to us.

Sorry, I get a little preachy sometimes. Prison is a wonderful place to pray, reflect, and try to practice what we like to preach.

I wish you and all the folks at the White Rose Catholic Worker all the best. Enjoy the farm. I like to visit the Strangers and Guest Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, IA.

In Christ’s Peace

In Christ’s Solidarity,

Mark

Mark Kenney Reg #: 14018-047

Federal Prison Camp

P.O. Box 1000

Duluth, Minnesota 55814

Moses the Migrant

2011-07-18T09:19:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, long ago, in a place far from here, a familiar story unfolded. In this place there was a Ruler and this Ruler’s land was inhabited by people of varying ethnicity. There were those who named themselves “the People” and there were those named “the Others.” The Others were a strong-bodied people who worked hard, bore children and established themselves in the land. In fact, they became so abundant, that the People began to fear they would be overrun by the Others. The fear was so great that the Ruler began to look at the Others as invaders, though they had lived amongst the people for generations. They had, in fact, lived amongst the People so long that the Ruler—who was not a diligent student of history—had forgotten, or perhaps never learned that the Others had actually been invited to the land by a ruler from the past. They had helped sustain the land during a time of need. Now, they were not perceived as an asset but a threat.

In one version of this story, the Ruler is called Pharaoh; the People, Egyptians; the Others, Hebrew. Pharaoh responded to the Hebrew threat by summoning their midwives. “When you are preparing to deliver the babies of Hebrew women,” he commanded them, “you must abort them as they are being born.” The women did not argue. They also did not obey. Noticing that Hebrew babies continued to be born, Pharaoh summoned the midwives once again, “how is it that I continue to see my land overrun by newborn Hebrews?” he demanded. The clever women played helpless, “These Hebrew women, they are so hardy and energetic, they give birth before we even arrive in their homes!” Though the midwives civil disobedience delayed deaths, it did not prevent them. In his desperation, Pharaoh ordered that all male children be killed, even after being born.

Perhaps there were many families whose love and ingenuity compelled them to find ways to preserve the lives of their children. Ancient texts direct our attention to one particular family. And isn’t it often the way that our best education about broad truths comes through a narrow focus, from an individual encounter? The family was of the Levite clan. Though she already had two children, the mother of this family was struck by the beauty of her new child, a son, and she could not bear to see him lose his life even if that meant she could not share in that life with him. This child’s mother and father and brother and sister conspired together. They crafted a basket, carefully waterproofed and padded it. They placed within it this child, one of many born in the land but to them a unique marvel and mystery of creation to whom their hearts were bound. Reverently, with prayers and petitions, they placed the baby-filled basket in the river and hoped for salvation. His sister, Miriam, followed the flow of the river from the bank.

Almost of another world, another daughter ventured along the river bank. Pharaoh’s daughter, she shared the same land with Miriam and the other Hebrew daughters and sons, but knew little of their life. She lived life in a bubble of security. Even now, as she ventured to cool herself in the water of the Nile, a band of attendants followed around her; their presence both an irritation and an expectation, for she knew no life but a sheltered one. Immersing herself in the water this daughter heard a cry. She saw the unusual craft and could guess at its cargo—but how could this be? “Go fetch that basket,” she commanded an attendant. And her attendant obeyed. Opening the lid of the basket, Pharaoh’s daughter caught the spell of wonder that had been laid in the basket with this baby. She recognized love in him and wanted to share it. “I’m going to adopt him,” she said. And she named him Moses.

I imagine this encounter affecting the daughter of Pharaoh not only with compassion, but with curiosity. How did it come to be that this child was set afloat? Perhaps she learned more about the policies directed toward the people inhabiting the land she lived within. I noticed that when Moses grew to adulthood, there were still Hebrew people of his generation—they were not destroyed. Can it be that Pharaoh’s commandment was rescinded? I wonder if that had anything to do with his daughter finding her heart captivated by one Hebrew that led her to advocate, if even in only one small way, for the lives of his people. I wonder if the thought of each Hebrew baby’s death tore at her as though it were the murder of her own child?

The timelessness of this story occurred to me in a new way as I revisited it this week. Experience has a way of tinting the lens through which we look at the world. Where I stand in my interior landscape effects the perspective I have of the exterior, even when I am unaware. This time I was aware that I was reading with a mind toward the immigrants that share the land where I live. Aware that whatever people group we come from, we were all sojourners once. “My people” were primarily Dutch and Irish, welcomed when extra hands were needed, rejected when we became too many and were no longer seen as a resource but as burden on resources that were limited. A threat to familiar ways of being and looking and sounding. I thought of the South and Central American migrants who I’d never given much mind to until I encountered their belongings, abandoned during their troubled sojourn in the Sonoran Desert; until I met them, broken on the border.

Now they people my thoughts and influence my reflections. I have been reading Steinbeck’s account of his journey across America with his dog Charley. There I found that his reflection on the Bad Lands stirred in me reflections similar to those that had been awakened by a tale from ancient Egypt. Once upon a time, not long ago, very close to home…Steinbeck’s experience of the Bad Lands brought back my memories of the contradictory nature of the desert in Arizona that divides the United States and Mexico. Such a monster in the day, so majestic in the evenings. Though I tried to describe it, he says it better:

…the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled…the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost their burned and dreadful look and glowed with yellow and rich brown and a hundred variations of red and silver gray, all picked out by streaks of coal black…once stopped I was caught, trapped in color and dazzled by the clarity of the light. Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited light poured slantwise, the strange landscape shouted with color. And the night, far from being frightful, was lovely beyond thought, for the stars were close, and although there was no moon the starlight made a silver glow in the sky. The air cut the nostrils with dry frost…this is one of the few place I have ever seen where the night was friendlier than the day (Travels with Charley, pg. 120).

I found it confounding, trying to reconcile the splendor of the evenings with the treacherous conditions of the day. Similarly, I find it confounding trying to reconcile the juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty in people when we choose, sometimes so arbitrarily who will be bequeathed with our favor, and who will be subject to our wrath. Unlike Moses, the rulers of this land don’t directly threaten migrants with death, but with deportation. Though, considering the hundreds of deaths that occur each year in the desert by those restricted, or returning after being sent back—considering how separation of mothers from children and husbands from wives causes life to leak out from rent hearts—the difference between death and deportation becomes blurry at best.

Who will be the fairytale-type princess in this version of the story? Who will be the unlikely one that bridges the gap between the outcast people and the obstinate ruler? “Encounter” seems to me to be the magic word that breaks the spell of blindness. I think of my own life’s experience; I began to care when my senses and feelings were engaged. I cared about the migrants because I walked their trails and heard their stories. I cared about men in Guantanamo who I’d barely given a second thought to because I saw their picture and heard their stories and read their poems. I was touched by our common humanity. Their pain hurt me. If those of us who are sheltered by the rulers of the land could learn the stories of those who are persecuted, if we would take a few steps beyond our comfort zone, perhaps their cries could stir our heart like the cries of a baby in a basket. Perhaps, if we wade in the water, God will trouble us toward compassion and we will learn the abundance of an interwoven life.

Afterglow from the farm

2011-07-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Today I am dizzy and seem to have done nothing. Do you ever have the empty distracted feeling that comes after some experience of total clarity or connection? Yesterday was that day for me when the very sunshine meant utterance direct from God, and the light was everywhere bringing depth and color to all things. I could lay in the catch and swing of the hammock and serenely stare into the green oak leaves and the breeze was my companion soft and caressing.

Today I am checked out in the background as present as I can be. But I wish it were yesterday on the farm again and I were again walking the perimeter for the first time. I would sit down and seem floating on the landscape watching the white shirts bend over the vegetable crop. Or amazed I would want to see the bees in slow motion to track where each buzzes off or back from and I would again want to shrink and squeeze into that hive in curiosity to meet the queen.

My senses seem dull today, off like a faucet, but while there on the land every pore was open wide. I pruned the tomato like a feisty toddler and I mulched the green onion like she were my grandmother. The hay I held crept into my body and possessed me and now I am dry. And wanting.

Ordinary

2011-07-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

On a stroll down F street I tasted flat doctor pepper. I said to myself, Isn’t it interesting? I looked at my thumb hooked into a Burger King paper pint cup and saw no fizz but could complain to no one because this seemed my lot. I had discovered this idle cup five sixths full on a cement ledge of a University Museum and after holding it with my inserted retractable thumb for half a block I determined that sugar water could be invigorating. Though flat it had purpose. I wondered about a mentor soccer coach who used to always shake out the carbonation from a can of pop before he gave it to his kid. This sugar water would be practical, if not unhealthy.

How do we gain trauma mastery? One way seems to be by developing our self-awareness to the degree that we see ourselves without judgment. One practice recommended by Laura Lipsky in Trauma Stewardship: A Guide to Caring for Ourselves as we care for Others is to develop the habit of asking ourselves one simple question: Isn’t it interesting? Meanwhile the Catholic Church marks ordinary time tomorrow with a passage from the Gospel of Matthew: “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.” Hmm. Oh!

And William Hazlitt penned an essay in 1823. Didn’t know that myself until today. I appreciate Norton Anthology so much more now for informing me of this important datum. This Hazlitt fellow was big stuff in his day when he wrote this essay called

My First Acquaintance with Poets. He went on a long walk with Cooleridge twenty-five years earlier, in January 1798, and wrote this by no means pedestrian account in reflection, actually, about how Cooleridge had backslid from his former radicalism.

Isn’t great what you can learn by picking up an abandoned Starbucks cup and following it from whence it came. Lying to the barista in his face, I gained entry into the café for a $0.54 cent refill. I sat down with the Norton uncritically, just noticing my lie: Isn’t it interesting?

Hazlitt also wrote a sublime piece of piled quotations called On Gusto. If I had never seen a Titian painting in Madrid I doubt it could have been so flattering. Sad, I just remembered how the pixel versions taken by my buddy Bernie were one night robbed when we slept out in a Barcelona park despite his having clutched it like a teddy. Gypsy theft in them parks is mighty usual, the Catalan cop seemed to say.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote "Wherever God is, there is Heaven." In The Saints Guide to Happiness Robert Ellsberg suggests that her spirit sought out from the ordinary the memento dei, an awareness of God cultivated at all times and all circumstances. Isn't it...?

I posed as a curious George to ask the Indian couple where little India was. The lady started walking away and said “What you want we don’t know.” Hmm. Oh! Maybe she was Pakistani. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to ask why the man took a picture of her there at the corner of Ridge and Devon. Was the gas station exceptional?

The rain hasn’t fallen since Friday, eight times twenty four hours ago, and still in the street along Devon a binge of water hasn’t drained. Between two cars floats an article from the Metropolis paper featuring summer films at the park; a subtitle calls out a few goodies from among the rest, or "the pedestrian". There was a familiar photo too. Like an image come together in a dark room, the Spielberg frame most endearing to me as a kid had not yet dissolved: there E.T. still rose into the moon, peddled higher and higher.

And isn’t it interesting, I thought, seeing a sticker saying “This meter remains as a courtesy to bikers.”

Why I write for this blog.

2011-07-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

Because I know you and you know me.

Because here is a space where we collect hope.

Because here an ugly body is beautiful.

Because we can speak of God as she, and as Uighur.

Because I cannot be silent.

Because on the 4^th of July brothers are indefinitely detained.

Because…

Something has to be done to correct history. Our friendship ought to mean something real enough to one day become common sense. Don’t you agree that if we can begin to invest in each other emotionally, or have the courage to think with each other boldly, out loud, that we can become founders of the future?

No, a plague has not fallen on our two houses-God and Creation. One day, history will absolve the crisis of despair and ecological devastation. I am more convinced of this having finished Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Tolstoy elevates the role of writer into the chair of historian in his account of the Franco-Russian wars of the 19^th century. Only the great writer, he argues convincingly, is the one who can convey the most of an event without speaking about it. To do this, he employs three aristocratic families and fourteen hundred pages full of perspectives.

He may be turgid in his philosophical sections, but the repetition does have an awakening affect on the reader as he weaves in the further strands of narrative. For instance, as I relived the invasion of Moscow, I could grasp better the view of an Iraqi in the midst of Operation Freedom. Tolstoy’s account of Pierre’s rescue of a girl from a fire brought back how the Baghdad archives were ransacked, the purity of truth pillaged. His subsequent capture and witnessing of an execution by fire squad has triggered my conscientious objection to extrajudicial killings by drone warfare. A novelist does have the power to produce such awakenings as no mere scientist of history can.

Tolstoy aims to bring the reader into not the experience but into the reality of God. To do so, he repairs on the notion of a history of consequences made by a hero. All the masses must consent for the will of the hero to be made plain, and all the circumstances and all the relationships must align with the purpose of all the people. He gives a stencil analogy of how God only allows to be the purposeful:

…just as in stencil-work one figure or another is sketched, not because the colours are laid on this side or in that way, but because on the figure cut out in stencil, colours are laid on all sides.1365

By God’s design we have hero’s and heroine’s of history. I agree that Tolstoy should be considered a hero because he contributes hope to my world view. His character Natasha suffers a painful loss after nursing a dying fiancé for several weeks. All has gone numb within her when the family receives news of her young brother’s death. Her mother is stricken with heartbreak and Natasha finds a way to console her:

“A spiritual wound that comes from a rending of the spirit is like a physical wound, and after it has healed externally, and the torn edges are scarred over, yet, strange to say, like a deep physical injury, it only heals inwardly by the force of life pushing up from within.

“So Natasha’s wound healed. She believed that her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of her life—love—was still alive within her. Love was awakened, and life waked with it.” 1230, War and Peace

Natasha could be said to be in recovery from vicarious trauma, a topic we will address Friday at the White Rose Roundtable. Her wound may be invisible but the suffering is deeply real, all but eclipsing her ability to love. I know that I personally am indebted to the compassion of this Kairos community for supporting me through my imprisonment. Even as I adjust back into life at the White Rose I have hope of being present to each of you. Realistically, becoming fully present to you will take some time and I count on your patience with me. Finally, I write for this blog because I feel safe to share, and because when I am out of character you correct me with love.

War and Peace increases my conviction that our two houses—God and Creation—do not suffer the fate of a plague. For Tolstoy reminds us that love will wake within us. Though I see about me ecological devastation and beg forgiveness for despairing, the essence of my life pulses with longing for the wholeness meant to be. Tolstoy corrects the idea that history itself is the active agent of change, instead widening the aperture of our outlook to include understanding of God at work. In history, the pattern of God’s will does become apparent. If sometimes it is to much for me to imagine that we masses co-create the destined Ecosystem of God, then sensing beyond what I can see affords me hope. When I see Rehema and Bethany playing in our backyard, I buy into the prophet Jeremiah’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth. Rehema celebrates her birthday Saturday, allelujah!

For reflection:

1) The book Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others presents a test applicable for the kairos community:

“Identify the members of your microculture. To what degree do they nurture hopefulness, accountability, and integrity? Think about whether you could use stronger role models in any of these areas.” 187 Trauma Stewardship

2) How do you consume hope on a daily basis?

“All the lives this place

has had, I have. I eat

my history day by day.”

--From History by Wendell Berry

ugly body

2011-06-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

orange over me

upon still solemn sidewalk

silent under black

My breathing quickens.

the truth is too tight:

innocent men are confined

tortured to death

human-inflected trauma

in the name of national security

The cells of my eyes water what my heart holds.

my love, Jesus, tortured by thorns, nails, cross

laments stab while questions weigh on a helpless body

centuries later the crowds still scream crucify

My bones grind and stiffness sets into sore feet and knees.

prayers are uttered into Mary’s ear, as she knows

secrets of torture techniques told

“feels like drowning two hundred times.”

“hanging by wrists for hours, no sleep.”

“humiliation.”

“dogs.”

“darkness.”

“orders.”

My body shudders with shame.

trying to yell NO the over-used too-old sign bares challenge:

let it close, it needs to end.

sorrow looks through cloth pores

there, no dignity

here, fashions rush by wasting fast food, texting into cellular phones

ignoring the pain of the ugly orange body

I don’t understand.

This is the poem that floated through me when I wore a orange jumpsuit and black hood for the first time. I wore the ugly outfit at a vigil in Chicago on June 23rd as an act of solidarity.

Conversations with Thomas Merton

2011-06-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Written by Chris Spicer, with quotes from Thomas Merton provided courtesy of Mike Brennen:

Dear Mike:

How about a dialogue through some of his quotes:

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
Thomas Merton
Tom, I like that…the most heroic labor…the most difficult sacrifice. Of course peace takes labor and of course it takes sacrifice, but we all know that peace itself does not labor or sacrifice. Peace itself is GOD and in GOD’s time peace reigns. But fine, we have time and thank God we have Jesus Christ, who of course did labor and did sacrifice.

So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom.
Thomas Merton
Ha, that’s cute Tom. Confined but unconfined, it reminds me of a sermon of paradoxes by the great preacher Augustine who, reflecting on the birth of Christ issued a litany of them such as “He who was wise, was wisely silent.” The image of the gate behind and the freedom ahead, and the riddle of four walls with assumed floor and ceiling—calls to mind a style of knowing by koans, used in formation by some Buddhists in training. Early Christians sought by way of the teaching of paradox to open the mind of the neophyte to imagine a God who died, Jesus Christ.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
Thomas Merton

Said well, Tom. Except, in what ways does the deepening manifest? If as you say solitude is not something…future? So if solitude is as infinite as you suggest, then, gosh, solitude is something more than experience. Not personal, not mine to know. Tom, are you suggesting that solitude is, what, an icon of GOD? Like looking at an icon disposes oneself to receive God’s revelation, so then may God, in one before solitude, reveal God-self. Fortunately, solitude is different than lonliness isn’t it? In solitude we are accompanied by God.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton

Said another, the beginning of love is forgiveness. Tom, let’s say I let another be—as they are. Oh! But I want to reach out and touch, influence, and God help me, because if I’m so desperate I’ll seek to impose my will emotionally or otherwise. Who reminds us of the desperate act most—the lust after woman had by the human. Down a rib, he craved it back—to fit. I agree Tom, that in making another to fit our own image, we play as God.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
Thomas Merton

Now Tom, you’re beginning to sound a bit mythopoetic. Over and against dramatic being stands the rational self-conscious being. For being is real and in proportion to being we get bigger than our britches not by settling for too little, but by presuming we created too little. It’s our self-disgust that becomes the obversion of pride, when we think of ourselves inadequate images of God—that’s settling to the soil, dust to dust.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.
Thomas Merton

Tom, absolutely. To recognize one false belief, just one! This will aid one to persuade ones will. And as the will reverts from a counterposition toward the true position, a process has begun, one of willingness to take into account reason, to expand one’s horizon and eventually to decide to believe and one day to consummate true belief in action!

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
Thomas Merton

One formula puts it thusly: be, act, have. And is God close fisted? Even Job, in prayer, remained steadfast with his grip of God’s hand, and in his doubt he preserved enough faith to credit God another chance, to recommit, to extend himself once more in a covenantal grasp.

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
Thomas Merton

Mercy. Mercy! Uncle!! Remember the codeword to get out of a headlock? When we can’t go on, what better prayer to show faith.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
Thomas Merton

Tom, I’m not interested in the idea of compassion. Talk to me. You speak of basis. Now, I totally get—estoy de acuerdo mi hermano—that bit of interdependence. I’m an authority of belief, not an authority of knowledge. I am reliant on the heritage of those who have discovered God in their midst, loving, acting with compassion, recognizing the stranger as Jesus Christ. The heritage of their discoveries of the unrestricted presence of God has formed the basis of my belief. And then, by a miracle of physics—it’s my turn. Who is my neighbor? Tom, he’s a federal inmate sitting beside me in this halfway house and he’s searching on Bing web “Chicago café rental rates”. He’s left to take an incoming call. From whom? To whom does he belong?

There was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister. He rides my shoulders I cannot lose him.
Thomas Merton

Doppleganger, the Holy Ghost, divine muse, inspired Steppenwolf.
Keep connected brother!

We do not exist for ourselves.
Thomas Merton

We do. We exist for ourselves. Who? Listen closer. We listen to our-selves. We are many.

We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.
Thomas Merton

Irrational? It’s to be expected. It’s common sense that we will be hated, despised, persecuted. Our mania is just fine with being condemned.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
Thomas Merton

I couldn’t understand what you mean Tom. All the time in the world, all the resources in the world, and I still don’t get it. I have a harem of hundreds. I am Solomon and I still don’t get it.

On the Smallness of Green Energy

2011-06-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of chutzpah to quote E.F. Schumacher in an editorial that claims nuclear and fossil fuels have “smaller footprints” than renewable energy. Yet, Robert Bryce apparently thought he get away with it by referencing “small is beautiful” as a central theme in his June 7, 2011 op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Gas is Greener.”

A little background: Schumacher was among the first economists to make the argument for an economy based on renewable resources. In his book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973), chapter 4 (part 2) is titled "Nuclear Energy-- Salvation or Damnation?" If Mr. Bryce had read the book, he would know that Mr. Schumacher emphatically concludes the latter, by referring to a nuclear economy as "a transgression against life itself."

This abuse of Schumacher, and its implications are embarrassingly irresponsible. It would be like quoting Gandhi in an article applauding the merits of sweatshop labor for poverty alleviation.

The California Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) does not require “energy sprawl.” California’s largest utilities get roughly 18% of their energy from renewable sources already. In order to get 33% renewable sources, one approach would be to start by reducing consumption by focusing on energy efficiency without building any new power plants. Californians could also add small-scale distributed de-centralized wind and solar on rooftops and in backyards (Schumacher would approve) without even touching the desert habitat that Mr. Bryce is so concerned about. In fact, Californians have connected more than 3,000 MW of rooftop solar panels since 2006.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bryce’s estimates for the land impact of wind farms ignores the fact that individual turbines occupy less than an acre, and that 95% of land in a wind farm can continue under its present use after the project is constructed, unlike land dedicated to conventional energy technologies.

Speaking of "energy sprawl," Mr. Bryce doesn't seem concerned with the Appalachian wasteland desecrated by mountaintop removal coal mining, the extraterrestrial landscape of Northern Alberta's Althabasca tar sands, Wyoming's coal strip mines, the Marcellus shale watershed in New York and Pennsylvania where tap water is now flammable due to irresponsible drilling for natural gas, or the Pacific coast of (you guessed it) CALIFORNIA where dairy cows now contain trace elements of nuclear radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown.

The concern of "energy sprawl" may lead Mr. Bryce to ask what it might be like to live next door to another kind of power plant... he could start by asking our neighbors in Pilsen, 42 of whom died prematurely in 2010 due to the emissions of ComEd's Fisk and Crawford power plants.

This editorial should be seen for what it is: a shameless defense of status quo energy consumption and short-sighted economics in direct opposition to the overwhelming majority of public opinion which favors renewable energy development, especially wind and solar.

For what it's worth, I'd be happy to send Mr. Bryce my copy of Small is Beautiful so he can understand how Schumacher actually feels about comparing fossil fuels to renewable energy:

“The essential difference between non-renewable fuels like coal and oil on the one hand, and renewable fuels like wood and water-power on the other cannot be simply overlooked. Non-renewable goods must be used only if they are indispensable, and then only with the greatest care and the most meticulous concern for conservation. To use them heedlessly or extravagantly is an act of violence…”

Perhaps Mr. Bryce actually believes that all American power plants are indeed “indispensable” and the USA’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is not “extravagant.” Nevertheless, in an economy that runs on 92% fossil fuels and nuclear power Mr. Bryce has the audacity to claim that these energy sources are somehow smaller and therefore “greener” than the wind and the sun.

A Post via Chris Spicer

2011-06-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Red Eye reports a sensational event this Saturday. So what? Does it take us to the next level of comprehension? I admit I’m curious to know more about what these protesters have to say.

The Saturday protesters may, like those in a Melbourne demonstration pictured on the Red Eye site, carry signs saying “Stop Victim Blaming.” They may have other signage as well, instrumentally speaking with their bodies, baring flesh, and questioning the assumption of—scare quotes required—“dressing like a slut”.

Okay then, let’s question the assumption. Where do we begin? I’ll lay out a couple routes and let others add and subtract.

1. Within the sentence. Slut seems the operative word, assumption being: that’s bad.

2. Within the proposition. Dressing may or may not be good. It depends on the context.

3. Within the judgment. Is an ethics possible where someone’s dress in any way ameliorates the consequence that a society imposes on a perpetrator of rape?

Etcetera.

Further questioning of the assumption isn’t necessary to prove the fundamental point. That is, we’re grown up enough not to be so crude as to take it for granted that all expression lies on a level. Psychological, literary, scientific, or philosophic levels could be recognized to exist in an act of expression according to the interpreter, and their critics.

Assuming you’ve linked to the article, you read of the reported assault and rape. A 22 year-old woman, according to prosecutors, accepted a ride to her Roger Park’s home in a police SUV from two on-duty cops. The report contends other facts, but for the moment lets’ break down two points. First of all, rape is a word I don’t like to throw around. But I have used it to make a point along with other words such as Jesus, and the Holocaust. Rape and the Holocaust are wrongs. They denote violence and connote soul devastation. They are evil but not of a level and therefore do not mean the same thing as words used metaphorically to denounce the violence of aggressors. Even as acts of coercion they differ as interpersonal direct violence in contrast to structural violence of a government aiming to exterminate a vilified people.

To go further with a Socratic maieutic art defining rape would mean for me to reveal some personal experience, of which I have none. However, I dealt with the threat of rape. Prison is statistically described as a place with an inordinate amount of rape. Some cited the statistic to me while I had the luxury of contemplating prison. I suppose they wanted me to know what I was getting myself into. Indeed, one of my celly’s told me straight up that in a world of predator and prey, I was prey. (Another inmate told me his worst fear was rape, not death: “What could be worse than losing your manhood” he said.) My reaction was “Why? What did I do to deserve that distinction? I have a slender build.

Second, it should be obvious to assume the innocence of the suspects until they are found guilty. But, and this is the strange truth of a condition, these suspects are Chicago police officers. I have to say I’m surprised. Again rape is an act of power. Not to belittle the disrepute of a Chicago police officer, I won’t; It wouldn’t be the first time a person in a position of authority became corrupt or went on a power trip. Cops use coercive power, generally, and that is the choice that gives me the most sadness. The choice, after all, is a choice, not a need; I believe the use of coercion is never needed. The so-called need to use coercive power is so unnecessary—and then, perhaps because of this same instability, it readily gives way to access.

Finally, I want to see the Saturday protesters. Not literally. I don’t have that choice right now, so, no pontificating here, I am choosing to see them spiritually. What could it look like to see the group as God sees them? Maybe not as a subjected group but as a crowd of self-realizing individuals who empower all to share beauty with confidence.

In a world where we had more integrative power our news could continually reinforce a world view of trust so that beloved community’s found affirmation and free publicity. Then a positive multiplier-effect triggered by the vulnerable self-offering of one to another or the multiple hands required to build a bridge would reproduce creativity, not disintegration.

To that end, here’s a brief anecdote for the weekend. A week ago I spoke at the White Rose in response to a statistic fatigue about the prison system. In brief I said hope derives from a practiced way of seeing the prisoner, as well as from a discipline of decoding for your neighbors the news reports of crime. To that end I have written today. Then at lunch as the conversation reached a moral, my neighbor turned the topic back to the root problem of blame. He said, “I used to blame but I stopped that. I wanted to keep that power for myself, you know what I’m saying? When I blame I give someone else power over me.”

For further reflection, recall the various avenues to question the assumption that blames the victim. When we say someone “dresses like a slut,” haven’t we some work to do on ourselves? Personally, since I read Colum McCann’s Let the World Spin I’ve developed imagination into the life of, well, realistic sluts. The prostitutes portrayed in relation to a pivotal character in the novel who is a priest, these women remain in my mind, alive! Not as objects of affection, nor even objects of compassion. I wonder if, when I next attend a funeral, I will think of one of McCann’s character’s named Tilly who knew no other way to raise her daughter but in her own trade and then, after taking a guilty plea to cover her daughter’s illicit prostitution, learns in jail that her just freed daughter, driven home by the priest who attended the courtroom proceeding, so tragically died in an accident, flung through the window of the van, her body crumpled against the shoulder railing, a yellow heel left under the passenger seat.

Biases are hard to iron out. I discovered my own while considering the context for “dressing like a slut”. Letting alone someone scantily clad to go out and paint the town red, what about the example of dressing “skanky” given by demonstrators? But wait, is a protest a context in and of itself, meaning that I attribute to its participants a moral character and endow them with a benefit of the doubt—assuming that the attire “of a slut” itself is not necessarily condoned? No, larger contexts subsume the context of a protest and therefore I believe the outward behavior is still morally reprehensible. I hope the demonstrators do not condone of the style of dress. I hope the underlying message is that some people are willing to risk solidarity with victims of rape, meaning they are willing to sacrifice the consequence of a voyeuristic and misogynistic male-majority. I hope the demonstration is about taking up the unjust burden placed on women in this society where a double standard of behavior structurally protects suspects of rape-crime.

To those for whom the risk-taking lacks right-intention, being with a mixed motive of wanting the thrill of “liberation”, I recommend the Catholic Saint of the day: St. Clotilda. Wooed by men of all the neighboring kingdoms, and demanded as a bride by the King of the Franks, Clovis the Great, this beautiful, witty, modest and pious woman sweetened the temper of her warlike husband. Then she won him over to God.

"El desierto es feo"

2011-04-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, below is a reflection from a good friend of many of us in the Kairos community, Kat B. She recently made her third trip to the U.S./Mexico border volunteering with No More Deaths. I was moved by her reflection and wanted to share it with you all:

I am having trouble concentrating. I am currently watching lectures on the pathophysiology involved in the Gastrointestinal system. As I read over causes of liver failure and symptoms of jaundice, I picture the Guatemalans that my friend Rafael* told me about. The ones he had run into while attempting to cross the desert. The ones who had not had food or clean drinking water in 10 days and were so jaundiced that he could see the yellowed tint of their skin and eyes. Saddened, desperate, starving faces with bloodshot yellow eyes fill my mental space as I try to read what causes jaundice and the intricacies of a liver failing to do its intended job.

These images are replaced by the body of a man under a scorching sun, fallen in the dirt, being eaten by birds... another horror that my friend Rafael witnessed. "El desierto es feo." The desert is ugly. "Es muy peligroso!" It is very dangerous! "Yo no trataré de cruzar otra vez." I will not try to cross again. Rafael is only nineteen. He limped into the clinic in Nogales, Sonora that Thursday morning. He tells me he was in the desert for 4 days, was picked up by his ride in the US, a tire blew, and the 60 people crammed into the vehicle ran as the border patrol chased them. They were separated. He was apprehended by BP. They choked him with his shirt and shook him, demanding to know where the others were. The BP who did this was a tall man, very big ("con musculos?" with muscles? I ask, "No!" he laughs, "Fue muy gordo!" He was very fat!), brown hair, brown eyes with a Latino partner who did nothing to stop the abuse.

As we treat his blistered feet and wrap his ankles and knees (bruised and swollen from a difficult fall in the desert), Rafael and I become friends. He shares that he likes The Doors, showing me a shirt in his hand, and we start to sing a couple of the songs together. He talks of his home and the hot springs and the beauty of the place. He stands up and comments on how much better he feels. I call someone else over, who is fluent in Spanish, and ask her to translate some of the more complex instructions for taking care of himself. When she is finished, they are talking some more and he looks pointedly at her and asks her to ask me a question. "¿Piensa que es malo que nosotros los mexicanos tratemos de venir a EEUU?" She turns to me "He wants to know if you think that it is bad for Mexicans try to get into the US" I am completely taken off guard. "No!" I say. And stop. There is so much more I want to convey. Of course I don't think it is bad. I am mortified beyond explanation of the way our government treats human beings, of the unethical treatment of a people whose land we stole in the name of war and claimed as our own. I am ashamed at our complete lack of hospitality. Although those who know me would not mistake me for a patriot, the words "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" often run through my mind at times like these. Rafael explains that he thought all "Americans" (a term I use loosely as all those living in North and South America are Americans, something that was pointed out to me by friends while I was in Guatemala) were ojetes (assholes) but he was glad to meet us because it meant that we did not all hate Mexicans and that some of us were cool.

Earlier that week, a group of us were returning from Josseline's shrine (in honor of a 14 year old girl who died while trying to cross the desert -- whose body was found by a No More Deaths volunteer, her feet submerged in a pool of water, her green shoes placed carefully beside her) and standing in the middle of the dirt road was a man. I leaned out the window as we got closer. "Hola! Buenas tardes. Como esta?" Hello! Good afternoon. How are you?
He indicated "so, so" with a wave of his hand. We stop and get out of the car. We saw that he was with another man. Alonso* and Gabriel* both appeared very tired. They explained that they had been in the desert for 5 days with a guide that was going too fast and not allowing them to rest (we were only about a 2 day hike from the border, which indicates to me that the guide was rather lost). They couldn't keep up and so left the group about 2 hours before. We took vitals and checked feet for blisters. They said they wanted to go back to Mexico. As we talked, we discovered that 7 years ago Alonso had come to the US and lived in Chicago for 5 years. About 2 years ago, he returned to Mexico with his wife and two children because he wanted to go home. He was returning to Chicago to make some money to finish his house. I asked where in Chicago he had lived. He was my neighbor, literally a few blocks away from my current home. He is my age. Had he lived in the US a little longer, we might have crossed paths that were more mutual, paths that were not made of dirt and desperation where one of us was in danger of severe dehydration and the other one in danger of being completely unaware of her own privilege.

My time with No More Deaths felt different this time. I am still processing why, but one thing that I can name is that it felt more mutual. As much as I like to believe I am aware of my privilege and biases and racism, the fact that this time felt more mutual tells me that I have not been as aware, am still not as aware. If it felt more mutual now, it goes to reason that I felt some superiority during my last few times with NMD. Superiority of which I was unaware, am still unaware. In the past I felt sorry for the people we ran into, I felt great sorrow for their situation. This time, I felt something more like kinship with them. We are in this together. This affects me not just because it affects you and I have met you, it affects me because we are interdependent. Suffering by any one human affects all human beings. We should all carry this burden. I do not believe I do this well and I am just beginning to name it... to realize it and what it means... but it is a beginning.

I also came back with hope this time, rather than the overwhelming despair I usually feel after returning from the border. I returned to Chicago motivated to get more involved in immigration issues here. In returning after past experiences with NMD, I have wallowed in my own sadness, feeling like the only thing for me to do was to move to Arizona and do the work full time. The border, however, is everywhere. There is much work to be done here, in Chicago. There are people in our community here, in my neighborhood, that live in fear of deportation. They may have even considered whether or not they would try to cross back into the US if they were deported and ripped from their family, their home, our community. I am sadly uninformed about immigration issues in my own backyard, in my own community. I am shamefully unaware of how it affects the communities here. Yet another sign of the privilege I hold, to be able to chose whether or not an issue is worth my noticing it. I am motivated to change that. To become more aware. To become an ally to my neighbors. To become more interdependent. Please join me.

Peace,
Kat

*names were changed

A letter from CWer Steve Baggarly

2011-03-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share this short, poignant assessment of US attacks on Libya from Steve that came across the CW listserv this morning.

http://articles.dailypress.com/2011-03-21/news/dp-nws-edt-letstue-0322-20110321_1_civilians-modern-war-tax-dollars

To the editor,

A rationale often used to justify our going to war with Libyan Col.
Muammar Gaddafi is that he must be stopped from killing civilians.
Would that we were that concerned. For almost ten years in
Afghanistan, eight in Iraq, and several in Pakistan, US forces have
been ceaselessly killing civilians. The very decision to engage in
modern warfare means we've made our peace with the large scale killing
of civilians. Invading and occupying countries with unseen and unknown
enemies means our troops are permanently in atrocity producing
situations, with every civilian a target. War from the air or via
cruise missile means adopting "acceptable" civilian death rates in
pursuit of high value targets. Not only have we killed 10's or 100's
of thousands of civilians (we purposely don't keep count), but have
maimed, tortured, driven mad, made into refugees, or traumatized with
midnight home invasions, millions more.

Now at war in a fourth Middle Eastern country, and with Special
Operations troops in secret wars around the globe, the words of Martin
Luther King, Jr. are still true, that "the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world is my own government." The alternative to the
massacre of innocents that is modern war is to study and practice the
relentless nonviolent resistance that King, Jesus, and Gandhi gave
their lives for; to disarm and organize ourselves instead to lead the
world in overcoming evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred
with love; refusing to kill, no matter the cost.

Steve Baggarly
NORFOLK CATHOLIC WORKER
1321 W 38TH ST, Norfolk VA 23508
Ph: 757-423-5420 I

Fast for Justice

2011-01-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

As we enter the 10^th year of Guantanamo's existence, the likelihood of its closing becomes more and more remote despite the Obama Administration's promise to close the prison two year ago. The Executive Branch is poised to formalize the practice of indefinite detention for 48 of the 173 men remaining at Guantanamo and the Legislature has barred the transfer of prisoners to the U.S. for criminal trials. Habeas Corpus – the notion that one cannot be arbitrarily arrested and held without formal charge or trial – is, too many, the philosophical bedrock for modern democracy and the United States' blatant disregard for it threatens the very liberty and freedom it seeks to uphold in the “War on Terror.”

So why does Witness Against Torture return to Washington, D.C. to fast and vigil for two weeks? Where is the hope? Are not our actions pointless, full of folly? Our detractors will definitely say so. Over and over the politicos and the generals tell us the political climate is not right for the closing of Guantanamo. Yet we still show up. We witness. We fast. We protest. We vigil and leaflet and lobby. We will resist and keep showing up – getting in the way – until that prison, and all other prisons like it, are closed. We show up because it gives us hope that another way is possible. That we can, indeed, live in a world without torture. We show up because it gives a small semblance of hope to the men in Guantanamo that they have not been forgotten; that justice has not yet been totally shirked, even in spite of all the grisly appearances of Decision Points and juridical opinions.

I hope, that in this small act of solidarity and sacrifice, that my fast may be a prayer and witness to the end of torture and the restoration of human rights, dignity and common good. The groaning hunger pains and a tired body is a small price to pay when communities of faith and conscience come together to resist the evils of imperial torture. May our fast give hope to our own meager hopelessness and bear witness to the covenant that calls us to love our enemies and "to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness" (Is 42:7).

Guantanamo Poem

2011-01-21T08:44:00.001-08:00

I was reading, and remembering, the men of Guantanamo and their amazing poetry and was prompted to write this.

The Fear and the Poets
----------------------

As poets we are dangerous people,
living in a land that views all truth as metaphor
and all our griefs as codes
for destruction from the inside,

so that when you say
"i miss my mother"
we assume the bombs will go off
any second.

and when you say
"the tyrants are corrupted with power"
we point our finger back at you
and your strange metaphorical tongue.

and when you say
"they have beaten, are beating, will beat me"
we look around, and scratch our heads,
and wonder at your strange choice of words.
we can't allow that it's true.
we aren't those kinds of people.

but we are.
and we are afraid of more than just metaphors.
we're afraid that our unshakeable faith
in life and in liberty
will come tumbling down
with the poetic quakes
sent from Guantanamo
from Bagram
from Chicago
from the font of our own imagination.

yesterday, a man laughed
in a courtroom
when confronted
by all that he had done.
his unshakeable faith in his own righteousness
is not metaphor.
nor was the question posed to him,
("why did you do this to me? you were supposed to be the law")
a metaphor. or a joke.
but he laughed, all the same.

in the end,
it is not words we should fear.
it is our unshakeable faith
in things that, in the end,
are just terrible metaphors
written by people afraid of poetry.

hard of heart

2011-01-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

A Northwoods Reflection on the Fast to End Torture

This morning, as I put another log on the fire, I gleefully grabbed a huge piece of wood from our wood-box. I was gleeful because the wood was dry, and hard, and would last longer than other options. As I picked up the piece of wood, I realized the heart of the piece of wood was completely attached.

Suddenly, childhood memories rushed in and I was ten and standing with my dad in the middle of our 40 acre forest cutting wood. My dad would cut down a dead tree, while I adventured and explored, safely distant. After it fell, he would cut it into segments with a chainsaw, and then split it with an ax. By this time, I was close by to help stack pieces or set them up for him to split. He had a special fight with the heartwood of the tree, and I can clearly remember him explaining it to me. "You see it, Punk? The circle in the middle, the different color? That's the heart of the tree! It's the hardest wood, stronger than the rest.. You see how it won't break up?"

As I put the log on the fire this morning, and as I hauled wood this morning, I paid special attention to the heartwood in each split piece of wood. The different colors, the strength that somehow allows the heart to remain together despite the splitter...

And I wondered if I were to be split, if my heart would be as strong? Is my heart the center to my being, that cannot be split despite axes that may come at me? Is it the core of my being, moving me to stand for more and be more?

I pray often for my stony heart to be made flesh. For God to continue to move me more in compassion and love. But rarely do I pray for a strong heart. A courageous heart. A heart that will not split or crumble. And to follow Christ and love as He calls, I think this may be a necessary prayer.

When I pray with the stories of the men in Guantanamo, and when I listen to their stories and watch news clips, I am amazed at their strong hearts. Their wounded hearts, wounded bodies, wounded souls that do not yield to the worst injustices. The strength of my heart is tested during this small period of isolation from community and fast (I'm eating one meal per day and liquids). Their hearts, though pierced, persevere through times of much greater trial.

As our bodies may weaken, I pray that the God of love, mercy and creation will bless our hearts with a strength that cannot be broken. A strength that unites, a strength that creates, a strength that upholds us in a crumbling world and calls us to be more.

Fasting Prayer 2011

2011-01-13T14:51:00.000-08:00

Hey Friends,

I was inspired again this year to write a prayer to describe my intentions and desires in the WAT fast. I thought it might be helpful to others, know you are in my prayers,
peace,
ben

God my Mother,
I come before you, my poor and hungry self.
I am so small in your great work,
but desire to do so much for your people.
As I fast,
let this hunger focus your desires in me.
Let rest my ego and free it to your reign.

Jesus, brother, be with me. Through this hunger
make room for God’s reign in my heart.
May I be able to hear the stories of the imprisoned,
the tortured, and the homeless with your ears and your heart.

Let me pray with you Jesus and all those who fast,
crying out to our God of Justice,
to end the torture and imprisonment
of the men at Guantanamo and Bagram.
We pray that all of our eyes may be opened
to see these men as our brothers.

It is you God, who gave us these desires,
please sustain and give courage
to all who fast with you.
May our actions stir many hearts.
Mold us in freedom so that we may
continue becoming the co-workers in your reign
you invite each of us to be.

Faith-based community begins 12-day Fast for Justice

2011-01-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Luke Hansen reflects on the beginning of Guantanamo's tenth year and Witness Against Torture's Fast for Justice on the "Messy Jesus Business" Blog. Check it out:

http://messyjesusbusiness.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/faith-based-community-begins-12-day-fast-for-justice/

2010-12-31T16:41:00.000-08:00

A poetic reflection on the new year... always imagine, always hope. Blessed 2011 to all!

http://bit.ly/g9Qe5P

"Imagine the Angels of Bread"

by Martín Espada

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,

gazing like admirals from the rail

of the roofdeck

or levitating hands in praise

of steam in the shower;

this is the year

that shawled refugees deport judges

who stare at the floor

and their swollen feet

as files are stamped

with their destination;

this is the year that police revolvers,

stove-hot, blister the fingers

of raging cops,

and nightsticks splinter

in their palms;

this is the year

that darkskinned men

lynched a century ago

return to sip coffee quietly

with the apologizing descendants

of their executioners.

This is the year that those

who swim the border's undertow

and shiver in boxcars

are greeted with trumpets and drums

at the first railroad crossing

on the other side;

this is the year that the hands

pulling tomatoes from the vine

uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,

the hands canning tomatoes

are named in the will

that owns the bedlam of the cannery;

this is the year that the eyes

stinging from the poison that purifies toilets

awaken at last to the sight

of a rooster-loud hillside,

pilgrimage of immigrant birth;

this is the year that cockroaches

become extinct, that no doctor

finds a roach embedded

in the ear of an infant;

this is the year that the food stamps

of adolescent mothers

are auctioned like gold doubloons,

and no coin is given to buy machetes

for the next bouquet of severed heads

in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles

began as a vision of hands without manacles,

then this is the year;

if the shutdown of extermination camps

began as imagination of a land

without barbed wire or the crematorium,

then this is the year;

if every rebellion begins with the idea

that conquerors on horseback

are not many-legged gods, that they too drown

if plunged in the river,

then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,

teeth like desecrated headstones,

fill with the angels of bread.

Oh, Judge

2010-12-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

[I need you Lord.]

Judge, don’t you see that God’s arms extend to us and this unjust system has constrained us with our backs toward the earth, blinding us with human selfishness? Why don’t we turn to look at the real, to turn to turn?

please

can we not see

Can we not feel the love of God!! It is just a dim reflection, please, about-face, here in this courtroom. Behold I tell you that I have left behind al—my homeland, my home. (But I have no home; I could not prove my residence.) I have risked my reputation, my health, and I have but two hundred dollars…no more food stamps…

But I have bemusement: a healthy body, a loving family, and white privilege; a US citizenship, a male sex, a sense of diction, and either insane courage or a maniacal faith. And in this last, I have good company.

For I love God with so much hope in all I see about me, in you, in this emporium of legislative proceeding: all of it just a reflection of the divine love that is God’s for us. [And what is God’s justice in us? It is the longing of the longest night of the year, the yearning for daybreak that envies the moon.]

My frustration, my fury too, is but a pale remote quiver in the roar that shall be God’s vengeance.

So I look at you with pity, my poor Stephen, my poor country_men, myself. We are but failures to live out the ideal, for we cannot adequately represent ourselves. We are hamstrung by incapable representatives, deceased forbearers who fought here and died a martyrs death so that we might know more poetic ends.

We are a sliver from the beam of truth.

Yet every fiber in us is of the same source. And so our conscience in us identifies all that we came from and that which is our true authority.

Will I ever say in this courtroom reasons sufficient to walk away satisfied? Could I tell you a story so compelling to melt your heart, oh neighbor, oh community member, I dare say, my own...

Is rock imperturbable? I cannot grasp the depth of pain my tortured friends have felt. I cannot bear return to El Salvador or Guatemala and say that I have lived a life of solidarity. I can (not) hardly claim that I am a human being... See how I falter with doubt,

but God and not me will carry out the miracle.

Lord, this I pray, that I might not be so fool hardy, so self-aggrandizing [to take myself so seriously!] that it is I who will do justice where none before me have succeeded. I must let go with the hope grounded in what I believe is good and right and true of the legal court.

I know that you, judge, have listened to me. We have become united in thought. God has let my words come to mind and to yours and in this our union has trespassed whatever legality. Whatever judgment that will ensue, you will resume to your rightful role, and I to mine. I will once again take up the international law of self defense until you determine enough is enough. Then you will object and warn me to desist. I will continue, and then I may be denied a further opportunity to speak.

Yet with God as my witness, I will have done right by my conscience in speaking to you as a human being, whom I care for, whom I have directed my words to in a symbolic way. For I know that my words are recorded and will be archived, and that a worldwide audience could choose to find in them some reflection of God’s infinity, in how the words transcend the confines of these walls. Thus, I will not bear the satisfaction myself except

in the hope I will have….

I will not rest my case until I rest in God!!

Global Day of Listening

2010-12-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

As we enter our tenth year of occupation of Afghanistan, our friends over at Voices for Creative Nonviolence have teamed up with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV) to hear what ordinary Afghans want in this seemingly endless war. The AYPV are from Bamiyan, a central province of Afghanistan, and are reaching out to the world to say that violence is not the only option for Afghanistan. Please consider supporting the AYPV by participating in the Global Day of Listening on December 18th and 19th. This live-streaming, international connection between people from all over the planet will allow everyone to listen to stories told by Afghan people about what it is like living in Afghanistan. Please visit http://www.thepeoplesjourney.org/ to join the call.

Please also consider signing the AYPV's petition "We Want You Out", written to the leaders of Afghanistan and the occupying forces.

Thank you

Advent in Disguise: A voice cries out in Fort Benning

2010-12-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

Contemplating the scriptures on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, I can’t help but imagine the smirks on the faces of the Pharisee spies as they swaggered up to John the Baptist doing his thing in the River Jordan. John was connecting with countless spiritual seekers living under the yoke of empire, immersing themselves in repentance, a revival of their individual and collective faith. Pharisees are not seekers, they are know-it-all doctrinaires, and they knew that John’s ministry was a threat to theirs… a threat worth investigating.

You attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, or so the saying goes. But the Baptist (incidentally, a connoisseur of both [wild] honey and flies—or locusts, at least) has no welcome for the well-dressed spectators at the back of the crowd. Instead, he offers them a prophetic rebuke with two startling images in the present tense:

· “the axe lies at the root of the trees” (Matt. 3:10)

This image is more familiar when echoed by Jesus later in Matthew’s gospel, “You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matt. 7:20). John’s not talking about pruning the unproductive trees for the next season—he’s swinging for the root.

· “his winnowing fan is in his hand” (Matt. 3:12)

After the harvest, it’s necessary to separate out the edible wheat from the rest of the grain husk, the chaff. This can be accomplished by winnowing—tossing a mixture of wheat and chaff in the air so the lighter chaff will blow away, but the wheat will land back in its container. The son/daughter of man wields the fan that blows away the waste leaving only the fruit.

In other words, this Pharisaic reconnaissance is a waste of time. This audience is fed up with sanctimonious charades, with religious elites masquerading around under the guise of infallibility. They’re no longer fooled by wolves in sheep’s clothing. This crowd yearns for authenticity, wholeness, and peace—a time when “the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6a).

The season of Advent is no time to hide undercover. It’s too late for false pretenses and superficial disguises. “Not by appearances shall (s)he judge, nor by hearsay shall (s)he decide, but (s)he shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land’s afflicted” (Isaiah 11:3-4).

It is with this profound spirit of solidarity that thousands gather year after year at the gates of the School of the Americas (hiding under the wooly disguise of WHINSEC), and chanting “no más, no more” as a rallying cry. Singing together in one voice to end the institutionalized absurdity of teaching terrorism disguised as democracy, “through the barrel of a gun,” in the words of Fr. Roy Bourgeois.

Those gathered outside the gates are seeking a new way of expressing their faith in non-violence, a way of extravagant simplicity which includes drum circles, stilt-walkers, and all-you-can-share vegan buffets. Those huddled inside the gates are defending abstract boundaries and ideologies, brandishing their chain link, razor wire, and handcuffs while their proudest alumni march in uniformed costumes throughout the halls of power in Latin America.

Why should we be surprised by undercover cops in the midst of such a crowd? Nothing but Pharisees, attracted by the inspirational curiosity of a movement that threatens the security of their easy answers—their fragile right versus wrong, good guys and bad guys. Is it possible to envision that “the leopard shall lie down with the kid” (Isaiah 11:6b) in an empire that aims to perpetuate Guantánomo? Can we, as a society, begin to unmask those hiding behind the joysticks of drones as they prowl the Middle East, shrouded in desert clouds? Who invented the curriculum for this democracy?

And yet, as the days get shorter, in this Advent season of authenticity apart from appearances, we find ourselves looking for a bright star to follow in the dark night sky. The star doesn’t lead us out on a limb of consumer society, not to the far left or the far right, but back to the roots of the Jesse tree. Here, from the stump, “a shoot shall sprout… a bud shall blossom” (Isaiah 11:1) as a sign of revival, repentance, metamorphosis. Breathing into the core of the humus, what we have seen before in our human vulnerability, the Divine makes a home in our feeding trough, in the frailty of a movement worth infiltrating.

Maranatha—

Come Emmanuel, God with US,

Savior betrayed by an undercover disciple,

Heir to a Kingdom beyond the dreams of empire,

Lead us to repentance through authenticity,

Lead us to vulnerability through courage,

Lead us to freedom through peace.

Infiltrate us with your mercy, so that we may climb and topple

The barriers of intimidation that shield our borders,

And unite one family, one people, one Church, one voice:

“Ya basta! Somos América!”

Insider Language That Non-Catholics, Non-Jesuits, Non-Activists Won’t Understand

2010-12-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

We understand one another to the degree we show forbearance. With a friend one can think aloud; yet with an intimate a sole gesture can suffice. If interested in some of the compelling reasons for which I crossed the line, as well as some disclosure of the post-partum, then click here. What follows comes from a letter written to peers in 2008. Although I again discerned not to cross the line that year, it illustrates the intention forming in my conscience.

* * *

My step to cross the line at the School of Americas / WHINSEC marks the passage of counter-intuitive thinking. I go in hope of personal discovery, a search for meaning and sincerity, so that my understanding of God may be authenticated.

Either you will say, “Oh, how gross,” and you will dislike the whole idea, or you may conceal this and ask me “Is that the true calling of your zeal?” And either you will dislike the whole idea, or praise the end but find distaste in the means: saying, “How nice, but why so ornate?” Thus, the practical will surmise it all a misadventure and proof of an erring judgment; the acute analyst will observe that we should have had better foresight—approached the issue pragmatically—schemed for advantage with the renovation of the legislature or else asked with exasperation, “Why now?” Though thirty-odd votes cast against the bill to close the school no longer have authority nor their appendage philosophies represented, the school remains open. That’s why now.

The counter-intuition of faith leads me forward. I too ask the questions, and would spurn the radical subjectivity of my being made in the image and likeness of God. I do not [would not] go in doubt, but in gratitude for the gift of faith, a faith that I plead to be strengthened and made worthy, purified and made truthful. How else but amidst the “examination hall of the poor” may I test my faith in God’s liberation? I believe that Jesus’ teachings of mercy are to gain, yet also to be staked out; they teach me to trust instincts of love and to immunize the hateful, to adhere to authority of conscience. In conscience entitled to me as a baptized follower I now go to seek its formation: to reconcile myself defenselessly before my brethren’s so called justice. Should all that Christ died for be for naught, and that I do nothing for my brothers persecuted, for law bids me to mind my own storefront? If so, then there is no forgiveness for anyone who has fallen even once, and I would have Jesus be crucified all over again (Letter to the Hebrews). [full excerpt here]

Authors note: To these words the context of two years made more acute my awareness of God’s call. I laugh at the wordy seriousness and see in them the plain fear. My intention has now taken meaning that except for the signature of integrity, I could never have guessed with such satisfaction: finally, I am becoming a Christian.

Plowshare Mentors

2010-12-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

Join me in God's time to the trial of our plowshares, Anne, Bix, Steve, and Susan. There's is testimony for our times.

I have come here seeking guidance from these, our Mentors. They point a way to the paradise that would be ours should we choose to transcend our acceptance of this perfect solution, the so-called nuclear deterrence. In the meaning of the real, these mentors instruct us that such threat power is not a deterrence but a concentrated detour into nonexistence. If by their bodies the salvage is but a symbolic witness, still in advent hope I wait to be made clean with the soap that's made of them. From the myth of redemptive violence, wash me, O Lord, and I shall be white as snow.

To follow and learn from their prophetic imagination go to http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/

“You can't claim you're for peace if you're not willing to disturb it.” –Bill Maher

2010-12-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

I cannot claim I am for peace if I am not willing to disturb it. My humanity is clouded and restricted by the systems of injustice in which I participate. My faith is dispensable in the privilege that I hold close. My love is confounded by my fear.

This November I traveled to Columbus, Georgia to call for the closure of the School of the Americas now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. I joined a community of people, thousands of people, outside the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus. I traveled there as a student, to join other students, as a Catholic, to join other faith-filled people, as a United States resident, to join my fellow citizens, as a human, to come together in community. I gathered with that community to withdraw my consent from the practices of the School of the Americas (SOA). As a student, a Catholic, a citizen, and a human, I cannot deny what I have learned in the classroom, in church, from our government and in my heart.

This was not my first journey to Columbus. In the fall of 2006, I was introduced to the SOA. When my friend first mentioned the school, I had never heard of it, never knew the history of the massacres, and knew nothing of the annual vigil in Columbus. What I did have was a desire to learn. My friend invited me to travel with my high school to the vigil; I was eager to learn more. I began to read about the history of the school. I read about the village of El Mozote. On December 11, 1981 in El Salvador, over 700 people were massacred in the village of El Mozote. Over 700 people. No, my sixteen-year-old mind thought, no that could not be. Over 700 people? Women and children? Marta Lilian Claros was only three years old, her father, Domingo Claros, only twenty-nine, when they were both murdered. It then became clear that, yes, Marta was only three years old, and no, El Mozote was not a special case. No, this destruction was in fact systemic. This systemic destruction protects the economic and political power in Latin America, and thus U.S. interests in Latin America, by targeting human rights defenders and their communities. And the source of that system? Our U.S. tax dollars.

In the massacre at El Mozote, ten of the twelve soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion responsible for the murders were cited as graduates of the School of the Americas. That school is on our soil. That U.S. Army training school has trained over 60,000 soldiers from Latin America with funding from our tax dollars. However, I did not understand my complicity until I arrived at the gates outside Fort Benning, where the School of the Americas is located. On the Sunday of my first weekend at the vigil, which has been sponsored by an organization called SOA Watch every year since 1990, I listened to the names of those families, those children, parents and grandparents killed by the graduates of the SOA. Throughout the solemn funeral procession, I listened to those names for over two hours. We marched with crosses and held the names of those victims in our hearts and resurrected their lives with our voices. With each name called, my mind expanded, my heart opened and my complicity sank deeper.

After that first experience at the vigil, each year I have continued to make the journey to the gates of Fort Benning. And each year, my experience has evolved. I traveled first with my high school, then with Veterans for Peace the following year, then with my fellow students at Loyola University Chicago. Each year I have been challenged in a new way. My community has evolved, as well as the faith and love in my heart.

This year, yet again, I was challenged in a new way. In the twentieth year of the vigil, I had to ask myself, how would our voices be heard? Were our refrains becoming comfortable? Was our presence becoming routine? I was invited to consider my participation in the vigil. Would I march in the solemn funeral procession on Sunday? Or would I risk arrest and participate in the opportunity for direct action on Saturday? These were not easy questions. There were not easy answers.

Not only was this the twentieth year of the vigil, but this November it was also undergoing a significant restructuring. Each time I have traveled to Columbus, the events of the weekend have been co-hosted by SOA Watch and the Ignatian Solidarity Network. The two have worked together to gather the masses from Jesuit institutions as well as communities of faith outside of the Jesuit tradition. Personally, my participation in the vigil has been greatly influenced by the Jesuit tradition. The opportunity to gather for mass at the Ignatian Family Teach-In in Columbus connected my faith with social justice. That connection resonated with me for the first time in Georgia, with the Ignatian family. Yet this year, the Ignatian Family Teach-In had moved to Washington D.C. and chose to focus on legislative action to close the SOA. So I too moved to Washington D.C., I too engaged in legislative action. I dialogued with legislative staff about the School of the Americas and immigration reform. I walked away feeling competent and grateful for a new perspective. I now knew more about what it meant to work within the political system. Yet I also walked away with many questions. The legislative staff told me that, while their legislator firmly believed in these issues and shared our passion for reformation, the current “political climate” simply would not allow for the change we sought. Therefore I left Washington D.C. with a new challenge, a new question, how do I contribute to that “political climate”?

The logistics were all set out for me. The vigil would take place for the twentieth year, outside the gates of Fort Benning. The number of people gathered may be significantly less than in years past due to restructuring. The solemn funeral procession would take place on Sunday morning. There would be an opportunity for direct action on Saturday, with the opportunity to risk arrest and partake in civil disobedience. Within all of these details I asked myself, what was in my heart? Where was my faith? Where was God calling me? The questions of the proper “political climate” followed me on my journey as well. How can I live in a “political climate” that allows for injustice to continue? How can I depend upon politicians who don’t have the courage to speak out during an unfavorable “political climate”? And again, how do I contribute to that “political climate”?

I have wrestled for a while with the call to civil disobedience. I have had to confront great fears related to risking arrest. I have had to redefine many deep seeded understandings of what it means to follow rules and do the right thing. Yet, I have also struggled deeply with my consent to injustice. The suffering caused by the policies, positions and power that I hold as a U.S. citizen overwhelms me. I cannot sit forever in my fears and also live with inaction. Traveling to the vigil this year, I was called to confront those fears. When I felt most vulnerable and alone, I turned to my community of friends, family and fellow activists for support. I found strength in that community. I realized that I was not acting alone, but acting with the solidarity of those closest to me. And so I decided to raise my voice to affect that “political climate” in a different way.

I chose to nonviolently disrupt the system that keeps us within our permitted protest area every year, and with it keeps our collective voice and message within a permitted area, a safe distance from the media and the general population. I have utilized opportunities for legislative action. Yet the school has not been closed, in fact, the bill calling for its closure has not yet moved beyond the House of Representatives. For twenty years the movement to close the SOA has gathered at the vigil and for much longer, graduates of the school have perpetrated massacres and assassinations against the innocent civilians in their own countries. So this year, I chose to risk arrest and help hold a banner that read, “Stop: This is the End of the Road for the SOA”, while blocking traffic on Victory Dr., a highway in Columbus near Fort Benning and the location of the annual vigil. I chose to confront my fears in community with fellow activists and friends. I chose to trust in God, and act on my faith knowing that the consequences would not be convenient.

And they were not convenient. I was arrested and held in the Muscogee County jail overnight. Soon after my arrest, I was joined by a group of activists and journalists that had been unlawfully arrested by the police. These individuals had not participated in civil disobedience, but were picked up on the way back to their cars or while taking photos of the event. I received four charges, two city charges and two state charges. I was fined for each of the city charges and my state charges are pending; I was released on bond. In court, an undercover cop testified against me and detailed my involvement in the civil disobedience because she had infiltrated our nonviolent direct action. In retelling these stories, it sounds surreal. But in the cold of the cellblock and the chaos of the court proceedings, which found all but one of those arrested guilty, I felt and now remember how real it is.

In the words of Daniel Berrigan I have found great challenge and great comfort, “…it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost-because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace.” I am challenged to reclaim what is means to be a good woman, and accept the sacrifices and fears that accompany standing for justice. My fears of civil disobedience were not soothed in jail. I was even more afraid when at the mercy of the judge than I was in preparation. However, in that moment, standing in his courtroom, I believe the two of us shared our fear. It was clear that the police in Columbus as well as the judge in the Muscogee County courtroom wanted to send a message through us. They sent a warning to the movement to close the School of the Americas, that we must not step out of line; we must not take our voices and our message outside of the permitted area.

In that warning I felt their fear. I learned that our voices hold power, the power to challenge the systems that perpetuate injustice and violence. The School of the Americas is just one element of the systemic injustices perpetuated by our U.S. military and government power. I felt the power of those systems, in the holding cell, the cellblock, the courtroom; and I was afraid. Then I remembered that I was not acting alone, we had the support of a strong community and a steadfast movement. The police and the government also know our power, our voice, our spirit; and in the warning they sent, they exposed their fear of any challenge to the power of their systems. And from that fear we allowed barriers to be built between us. I withdrew, stayed quiet, looked down. The guards and the judge looked past me, stayed distant, didn’t listen. Our systems, our power, our fear, we shared. And these barriers are as impermeable as we allow them to be. If we fear each other, we sacrifice the strength in our love. That love, however, is more powerful than that fear, much more powerful than our barriers. At the School of the Americas vigil this year, I found hope, knowing that we did not act with fear, but with God, in community, we acted with love.

Transparency in Prayer and Works

2010-12-04T19:48:00.000-08:00

“No longer will your Teacher hide himself, but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher.” Isaiah 30: 23

“At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity” Mt. 9: 36

I. In Prayer

Today’s readings remind us of the value of transparency. We long for clarity, simplicity, precision and intelligibility in our world. Advent especially invites us to value transparency and to have hope in the coming of Christ, when all mystery will become clear. The Church asks us to give thanks for the transparency of God; to do so, I only have to look around at my Kairos community because as Christians, I’m proud that we take our standards into the world to announce love. In action we move to denounce the evil and to clear the threshing floor of all the fallen chaff.

II. Interpolation

Tilth (n.) The degree of fineness of soil particles in the topmost soil layer.

“Rake the surface to create a fine tilth” Regina says, reading from Rodale’s Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. “Why?” I ask, butting into the conversation. “For it to be able to breath for the water to go down, for seeds to be able to germinate.”

III. In Works

Meet Ryan Gallagher, here, a young Scot writing to heaven come about the best thing to hit the internet: Wikileaks. Inboxes around the globe are stuffed full of crappy second and third hand political commentary, but not this week.

On Wednesday, Wikileaks let loose 251,287 documents from US embassies—but if you’ve had inclinations to make time—let me tell you Cinderella, times up. Already two attempts failed to close Wikileaks, but now Amazon and Paypal have dropped it—even US military would prevent troops from access. [At this writing my computer can’t find the server at wikileaks.org.] McCarthyism anyone?

Gallagher: “And an idea is precisely what Wikileaks has become. It is no longer simply a website – it is a pure expression of democratic ideals, a philosophy realised [sic] by the force of technology. The powerful may condemn and attempt to repress Wikileaks and all it represents, but the situation has long since spun far from their control. Facilitated by the internet, a new battleground has been established.”

I’m touched that he quotes one of the heroes subsumed by the iconic Dr. King. “You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea,’ as the civil rights activist Medgar Evers once said.” The irony here of course is that Mr. Evers died in a terrorist bombing.

The Ides of March

Is it treason to release the government documents? Now seriously, have we forgotten our context? The better question is whether the Obama Administration has met its promise to bring transparency to Government (see memo). Contrary to the impression given by the President, Andrew Malcolm reported in the LA Times: “An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies' handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.”

One could argue that the failure to process FOIA requests is due to stalling by federal agencies. Malcolm showed this could be the case: “a study out March 15 [2010] by George Washington University's National Security Archive finds less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures since Obama's 2009 memo.”

In case we needed a wake up this Advent, Gallagher was right to portray the attempt to suppress Wikileaks as a civil rights issue. At our disposal, the internet allows us to better perceive the stakes, interests and decision-making process at work in Government. Unfortunately, Wikileaks exists for a reason, to disclose; it must reveal what has been hidden in secret.

While we give thanks for Wikileaks, I won’t accept it as good enough. We deserve better than disclosure; the Church teaches us to know what we deserve. We want transparency!

Malcolm, Andrew. “A little secret about Obama's transparency” 21 March 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/21/nation/la-na-ticket21-2010mar21

Kairos, Dec 2nd, 30th Anniversary of the death of the Four Church Women: Maura, Ita, Dorothy, Jean

2010-12-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

Tonight at Kairos what would inspire a conversation about the joy of resistance, a communal dance around the meanings of joy v. happiness, and personal reflections of the weekend protest of the School of Americas, all began with the silly suggestion that, in fact, life is meaningful. In practice, we must order our experience if we hope to inspire meaning.

As an experiment, try to reconstruct for yourself a strand of meaning through the quotes that follow. I used them all in this order, yet the meaning is all yours to make. Enjoy!

Aristotle: Physics

Edmund Husserl: The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness

“Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and my Lord has a very noble castle; the Greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.”

Voltaire, Candide, Ch. 1

A lady of honor may be raped once, but it strengthens her virtue.

Voltaire, Candide, Ch. 2

Isaiah 26:1-6

On that day they will sing this song in the land of Judah:

“A strong city have we;

He sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.

Open up the gates to let in a nation that is just,

One that keeps faith.

A nation of firm purpose you keep in peace;

In peace, for its trust in you.”

“Trust in the Lord forever!

For the Lord is an eternal Rock.

He humbles those in high places,

And the lofty city he brings down;

He tumbles it to the ground,

Levels it with dust.

It is trampled underfoot by the needy,

By the footsteps of the poor.”

Matthew 7:21, 24-27

“Jesus said to his disciples: Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them

will be like a wise man

who built his house on rock.”

“Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself, a plaything! Yes, maybe it’s a plaything.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Ch. 1

Excerpt from paper delivered at Loyola University in late fall, 2008

Prisoners of Conscience

Each year protesters enter the base. Generally speaking, they are a small and insignificant number. Secondly, it is undemocratic. Frida Berrigan, who is currently researching Guantanamo in part of a nonviolent campaign, writes: “We write letters, we make phone calls, we change habits and what we buy, and sometimes we march.” She shows that nonviolence duly respects the law, while these protesters illegally trespass onto military reservation property. Doing so denigrates an otherwise peaceful movement. Third, Pope Leo writes, “no man may hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the bloodstained footprints of his Savior” (RN 18). Obviously this is figurative in meaning. There are many effective ways of influencing government and pressing decision makers who control WHINSEC, but going to prison is not one of them.

John XXIII writes: “There can be no peace between mankind unless each one builds up within himself the order wished by God” (PT 165). For my part, I believe the action symbolizes the very foundation of religious practice. The prisoner of conscience (POC) prepares consciously for her act of nonviolent civil disobedience. This process involves gathering of information, prayer, community support, and purification. In other words, only with peace in the person can the action be a sign of peace. Pope John taught that the very basis of honoring God, in private and public forum was derived from the “sincere dictates of his own conscience” (PT 14). Accordingly, the purposefulness of the POC arrives from within. No one can decide for her; this is the first basis. And secondly, the act must come “from a consciousness of [her] obligation” (PT 34). Her grasp of the duty as her own responsibility is the litmus test for the action’s sincerity. She could never be self-justified, even if her authority was “intrinsically related with the authority of God.” Her sense of authority must come from sharing in God’s authority (PT 49). So while she is endowed with reason, the “master of [her] own acts,” she will seem to interpret literally Pope Leo’s use of 2 Tim 2:12[1]. Thus, she will adopt as literal the injunction of St. Paul to suffer with Christ as a way to be with him more fully in this world and to reign with him in the next.

In response, when a small number has significance, as the disciples did, it is not because of their own power. With their faith they understood what their eyes could not, and so a Church was made[2]. Likewise, though it would be misunderstood as disorder since he entered the base in disguise, Fr. Bourgeois’ action brought visibility to the SOA[3]. Secondly, “We do whatever we can,” Frida Berrigan said sarcastically, “to avoid actually putting our bodies in harms way.” She shows that true disorderly conduct is when we let fear deter us from heeding our conscience. St. Augustine said, “God commands the soul; the soul commands the body; and there is nothing more orderly than this.” Though it seems undemocratic to some, our nation’s founders framed the constitution not on the basis of consent but of the opposite, dissent. It is a common saying in the peace movement that breaking the law shows the highest respect for the law. Fittingly, Pope John wrote: “As authority rests chiefly in its moral force,” whatever law is immoral may dutifully be challenged. He cites Acts 5:20, “God has more right to be obeyed than men” (PT 50). Third, the literary interpretation of following Jesus reflects what we all know John Donne said so well[4], that faith exacts a heavy toll. If only we could be justified without risk to ourselves, but what difference would that make? None, for as Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without demand.”

“I did not bow down to you [judge]. I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Ch. 24

[1] “If we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us.” 2 Tim 2:12

[2] “Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds”-Albert Einstein

[3] In his 1984 action he disguised himself as a ranking officer using clothes bought at a local surplus store and entered the base like a wolf in sheep’s clothing

[4] “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” –John Donne

Opening Prayer for Advent

2010-11-29T11:11:00.000-08:00

“In 1993, a cache of 152 papyrus scrolls was found in a room adjacent to the church. They had been carbonized in the fire and that is what preserved them.”

--Inscription of findings in Byzantine church at ancient Petra in modern day Jordan

Throughout the season of Advent,

In the fires of worldly concern,

It will be our communion that preserves hope in the world.

By human bonds of love

That heal,

Will we resist the entanglements

That destroy.

Pathways do exist

In the trails made by saints,

So that even though we appear to wander in deserts,

We trust God leads us

To the everlasting oasis. Amen.

For reflection:

As the Kin_dom nears, what areas of our lives do we yearn to stand "first" in line?

Even in our thirst for justice, where is the Eden we have wandered from and to revisit that place, how can we abnegate our place in line?

We let others drink from our own wells. How will we let God refill them during this season of Advent?

The full reflection is posted here: http://guesthood.blogspot.com/2010/11/advent-and-petra.html

Undoing Violence Against Women

2010-11-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Thursday, besides being a turkey day, was also the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women which was adopted by the UN in 1999.

What are practical actions we can take as a community to eliminate violence against women?

We can watch our assumptions. Years ago I read Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson (see essay). Teresa, a Jesuit volunteer from Ohio, had thrust the book in my hands with her usual vivacity and bubbled about its sensuousness. It was a test of our relationship, in a way, since she had just come out to me with ambivalence, both declaring her attraction to me and at the same time, her bisexuality. She wanted me to read the book and tell her whether I thought the narrator was a man or woman.

We can safeguard our tongues. A housemate of Teresa’s, I’ll call her Victoria, spoke up one night about the violence of words—it was the title of her college thesis. That night we talked of medical labels and cuss words and of the abuser’s heinous “You deserve this.” Having a wake up is troublesome; it surfaces to the conscious mind those buried burns; I recalled the fresh wound I received in an exit interview: “You don’t have professional dispositions.” Those words annihilated a piece of my truth.

Looking back, I wonder, did it cause me to know, by experience, a fraction of the age old suppression of women in a patriarchic workplace?

Fortunately, Victoria’s exposure of the radical subjectivity of the spoken word indirectly revealed the truth of nonviolent communication. Since words reflect values, prejudice, and they harbor the collective unconscious, deliberate exercise of words that reflect my values can create the world I long for. As Jesus says in Today’s Gospel (Lk 21:29-33): “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” We can preserve the Holiest of Holies while revealing eternal meaning in today’s vernacular…And inclusive language dawns little by little, little comfort that it is.

What are other practical actions to eliminate violence against women?

We can vigil outside planned parenthood. A woman I once dated lost her faith in the Church because of this kind of action becoming so militant on her campus. At St. Louis University the vigils against abortion were ubiquitous and until her best friend became pregnant, they seemed benign. Her friend wanted to keep the baby, but had grown fearful of her boyfriend. Muslim, he and his family were adamant that the baby was theirs by inalienable right. I don’t know whether vigils seemed to lack compassion, but as the nightmare unfolded my friend lost her faith.

We can adopt. Isaac is my mother’s Godson. Growing up it amazed me to see mom in the role of godmother. Since Isaac is black, her affection for him helped open my boyish eyes to our brotherhood. His mother Theresa practices medicine in Seattle; a doctor who assists with births, she found a vocation in child rearing as well. The nine siblings Isaac has are African-American, Caucasian and Asian, constituting a family that expands the imagination. But the best symbols of Teresa’s acting to eliminate the violence against women were the birthday parties! Often that big house on the lake crowded up with community; it lifted off the foundations and ran wild in the yard and of course it went swimming.

We can urge better legislation. The 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) opened the threshold to allow women who sought citizenship to leave abusive husbands, whose citizenship was a vise of codependency, enabling these women to independently further their application. Now we can go further with the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA). In both the 110th and 111th Congresses it has been introduced but not brought to a vote. See amnestyusa.org

When it comes to role models we can cultivate a spirituality led by Juana Ines de la Cruz, Joan of Arc, St. Hildegaard, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Gertrude the Great and Sojourner Truth. Robert Ellsberg recounts Truth’s response to an angry heckler who said “Old woman, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea,” to which Truth replied, “The Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”

Lydia Wylie-Kellerman stood throughout the Eucharistic prayer at every Sunday Mass. While the congregation kneeled, she raised the question. I had permission from my Jesuit superior to attend a discussion on the witness...with the caveat that I could not talk.

In keeping that silence I felt the struggle of so many religious who have been silenced. No, this is not so passive a silence as it seems friends. More difficult is the dialogue from one human heart to another than from the heart of a mortal to the Sacred heart of Jesus. Indeed, the activity of silence cloaked in piety also perpetrates institutional violence.

Afterwards, Lydia spoke gentle as ever with me. “There’s no excuse” was all she said. And then, in the cross hairs of her emerald and sky eyes she made me see myself.

Memoria y Resistencia: Nonviolence at the School of the Americas

2010-11-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Memoria y Resistencia: Nonviolence at the School of the Americas

Ave Maria

2010-11-24T19:29:00.000-08:00

As I sat on the ground, leaning against a fence and listening to an announcement telling me not to go past that fence, small white beads slipped through my fingers.

The beads passed by and the repeating, lulling background music of "Hail Mary..." centered and deepened my prayer. Holding Her, I entered more fully into the sanctuary inside myself where God dwells.

Everything rose to the surface. Pain. the Pain of why we gathered, why I was sitting at that fence. The Pain behind that fence. Longing. Intense longing for the whole world to know my love- no, God's love, longing for unity and relationship and justice from that love. Fear-nerves of having to let go those I care about to suffer for justice.

And then I was sitting along the same fence, a different spot. A curb as close to the entrance as possible. Again my fingers clutched the small white beads and my heart grasped for presence and unity of spirit with those I wasn't physically with. Those answering their call-Annemarie, Regina- as I answered mine with those plastic circles linked by metal. Letting go.

The sky burst open with hope and color, and the sun set. Morning came like a mother's whisper and caress and I was back at that fence. Instead of the beads I held pulsing hands. We offered our hearts and wills and beings to the glory of Love, the warmth of the sun surrounding our circle. I felt peace, joy, and hope- but mostly peace.

We walked in the vigil, intensely aware of those not with us. Yet, at the same time, all were Presente and I shoved my small white cross into that fence. No one was forgotten, least of all the 9 month old baby put on a cross.

We sat in our circle, a circle that kept moving and shifting and growing. We prayed for things that didn't make sense, yet were whole in meaning and beauty. And Christ sat among us, and we knew what was next. The cup passed, and we drank.

And suddenly I was kneeling, my hand reaching through a tangle of arms to bless our brother. And the sun of peacemaking shone and ignited our community. And it was right, it was hard, it was reality, it was whole.

Then shaking hands dispersed. Crosses were reverently moved, no one wanted to step on these for justice. And Chris climbed, reached the top, clutched barb wire. Oh! I was shaking, nervous, proud, speechless. Cheers erupted and I wondered about his hands. Were they bleeding? Had he clutched the barbs?

And he was over that fence and it was done. None of us could be with him in any physical way, and he walked toward the next gate without looking back. Jake stood, holding his small brown cross high, turned towards Chris.

Our emotion bubbled from our souls through our eyes. I needed to be present to what was moving in me- I didn't want to pretend this didn't just happen and go back to talking about sunburn and granola bars. I found myself back at my original spot along the fence. Clutching those same smooth beads.

Mary's struggle and pains entered my heart, and I realized her presence among the mourning crowd.

She knew this. She knows this.

The necessary pain of letting go, watching loved ones suffer and sacrifice- left with only an understanding of faith and love and prayer-unity. Her pain- greater than mine- paralleled so many planes within my heart, and unity within the struggle shone as brightly as the ever-present sun.

The Lesser Gravitron

2010-11-23T04:13:00.000-08:00

Gandhi may have been a hero of noncooperation, but I count myself a foolish imitator. When confined by the military police on premises of Ft. Benning, suspected of trespassing, for a brief moment I challenged my adversary. It was hardly heroic. I stood with my back to the bars when Officer Bracey came in, mirth bounding from him as he announced “Fantastic. Time to go Mr.”

I didn’t turn. No, conscientious objector that I was, I would not aboutface. Why should I submit myself to the accursed system? This officer represented the will of the police state, and with what integrity could I describe myself if I readily clipped my heals to his beck and call? My feet remained firmly planted, resolutely splayed apart. There was never a more perfect posture of defiance…

Then again, I was busy pissing in the toilet.

“Sorry officer” I said, “I want to obey, but it’s the call of nature.”

“Hey, I get it. When you gotta go, you gotta go” he said.

What Daniel Berrigan, S.J. called “divine obedience” requires a surrender. But how so, as wholly unmistakable as a free fall in the force of gravity, or as uniform as a pledge of allegiance? Probably the latter, since in ordinary ways God moves most of mankind. The prophet Elijah went to the dramatic vista of the mountaintop seeking the command of the Holiest of Holies. Neither in thunder, nor in lightning, neither in the heat of sunset or the sublime aurora of the night did he encounter the command. A fire brandished in a column led the Israelites forth from Egypt, but none came to Elijah in the darkness. At dawn, when light slowly swept back the curtain of shadow, finally, in the whisper of a gentle breeze, he heard the uncontestable voice.

Then again, what times we find ourselves in? Are we like the styro-foam cup I now see drifting among the fallen leaves, utterly ignorant of what awaits us? Though a feint rush is audible, do we fail to recognize it for the pitfall that tantalizes? If we could read the signs of the times, we could make out the sign that reads “Danger!” and steer clear of the electric dam.

Most of us can not describe ourselves as either holy innocents, or radical refusniks. Still, the call of our divine soul beckons us with the call of nature.

It just so happens that a full moon occurred the evening of the SOA vigil. Could it be so different that in us also, just as the tides adhere to the gravity of the moon, the beckon of God elicits from us great movements of nonviolence. Though the sun is said to be that acting force around which our world swirls, the lesser gravitron sets in motion the oceans of our planet, the winds of circulation, and upon all this, whole ecosystems bless the Lord. Similarly, albeit unconventional to participate in nonviolent protest, we too give life by our surrender to the less attractive magnet of vulnerability and powerlessness.

[Written at dusk, beside the river running through Columbus, upstream from the mill, when first inspired by two kayakers surfing a wave on the wild side of the dam. To me they define the playfulness of a resister: They fight upstream the way Daniel Berrigan went limp, joyfully held aloft in the arms of his muggish FBI captors. May we too search for that irresistible counter-current that is the voice of God.]

Dark Horse Heroes

2010-11-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

(Context by A. Nee): "Our sisters, Annmarie Barret of Metanoia House and Regina Rust of the White Rose Catholic Worker are currently incarcerated with 22 other men and women in the Muscogee County Jail of Columbus, Georgia. A dozen of these protesters, including Annemarie and Regina, were arrested for their part in a planned direct action. The rest were subject to a mass arrest of random individuals."

Never in the twenty-year history of the movement has police behavior resembled such arbitrary and flagrant disregard for civil liberties. As a result, local attorneys never before associated with the movement have volunteered, outraged by what has happened. Their inside expertise of the labyrinthine city and state legal domains has already proven invaluable… Who are these men? The blind, whose scales fall from their eyes, healed by Jesus? The paralytics, whose listlessness turns into dancing beside the pool of Bethesda?

Among lawyers, a strain of fundamentalism runs deep, such that a case that treats a first amendment violation is worthwhile whether or not it means defending bigotry of neo-nazi’s. This fundamentalism looks to the founding father President John Adams as a prophet for our times. Indeed, the nemesis of Thomas Jefferson took the position of a voice in the wilderness when he championed the case of English soldiers in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre. A witness of this kind stands for due process, but some might question the moral relativism of such lawyers. For a contemporary example, consider the first amendment defense of direct actions by Westboro Baptist Church (see the Snyder v. Phelps case analysis by the citizen media law project).

The men who teamed the defense deserve our gratitude, not such rude appraisal as I seem to imply. They have taken risks to do as they have: one, whom the judge never acknowledged, explained that they had previously been close friends. Before we surmise them shysters seeking media attention, we can appreciate their effort and celebrate the momentary close of a gap long divisive in the Columbus legal community. Such a healing, unexpected, reflects the grace of God laboring in our midst! Why should we be spare with love for such men? Knowing that Jesus healed those in households of all classes of men, including the Roman centurion, we too can rejoice in the revelatory faith of these dark horse heroes.