‘Actions
speak louder than words’‘Actions
speak louder than words’
Janet Griffin
“Preach always. Use words if necessary.”
This saying is attributed to St. Francis, who was a famous preacher. But most of all, he was a doer. He embodied a ministry that remembered Jesus didn’t say, “Repeat after me;” he said, “Follow me.”
There’s a vow in the baptismal covenant of my denomination: “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” Proclaiming the Good News by example is as simple as inviting someone to a meal, or sitting at a bedside, or teaching someone to read, or buying malaria nets, or reducing our carbon footprint. Acts of compassion, forgiveness, sharing and healing all proclaim the Good News that we follow our God who is compassionate, forgiving, generous, and the one who refreshes, renews and ultimately resurrects us.
Acts of proclaiming Good News also can be as dramatic as a scene on the evening news a few years ago when Lebanon was torn by warfare. With isolated civilian populations in dire need of medical help, and the bridges blown to smithereens, members of Doctors Without Borders formed a human bridge across a river. They stood in the swirling waters of human chaos and passed supplies, hand to hand, to bring healing and hope to those in need.
If I lack the courage or strength to stand in those waters, I at least can join in their bringing Good News by curbing my appetite for trivial things and writing a check to support their work.
In the everyday world, there are endless opportunities to show kindness, offer forgiveness, bestow blessing, share resources, give time and care, and nurture hope. These acts of compassion are better understood than sermons!
I don’t need to preach in order to proclaim Good News, because there are so many ways to live as God’s person in the world.
The Persian poet Rumi, a 13th-century Islamic theologian and mystic, wrote: “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Janet Griffin is rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Richland. Her full article appeared in the Tri-City Herald, 17 October 2009 and, edited here, in PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2009.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, articles in this publication are distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Creativity as one antidote to violence
Are creative persons less violent than others?
Generally speaking, yes. Because violence despoils the aesthetic order that creative persons value and, more importantly, because creating beauty of any kind helps mellow the spirit inside the person who is creating it.
We cannot will ourselves into being good people. We can’t just decide that we will be happy, loving and nonviolent any more than we can decide never again to be bitter, spiteful or angry. Willpower alone hasn’t got that kind of power. Only an influx into our spirits of something that is not spite, bitterness or anger can do that for us. Whether we call this grace or peace or something else, it is what transforms and empowers us to live caring lives.
Our own creativity can be a source of what transforms us. The experience of being creative helps instill in us an appreciative consciousness and satisfaction of sharing in the creative power of God.
Creativity is not about public recognition or outstanding achievement. It’s about self-expression, about nurturing something into life, and about the satisfaction this brings with it. Creativity can be as simple as gardening, sewing, raising children, baking bread, keeping a journal, being a teacher, being a scout leader, coaching a team, doing secret dances in the privacy of our own room, fixing old cars, or building a deck on the house. It doesn’t have to be recognized by anyone else. We only have to love doing it.
– edited from a column
by Ron Rolheiser OMI, May 10, 2009
Peacemeal, May/June 2009
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Power of positive thinking
Choose your reality
Lama Chuck Stanford, Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery
Unfortunately it is not always possible to change a situation. There are those who must cope with chronic illness, chronic pain or the death of a loved one. These are situations that can’t be changed, but what we can change is how we relate to those situations, and that can make all the difference because the way that we view our world affects our experience.
There are three universal principles that affect our view of the world: 1) Reality is created in the moment. 2) In each moment there are multiple realities. 3) What we choose to focus upon becomes our reality. The Buddha expressed this concept when he said, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.”
Meditation also can affect how we view the world. A daily meditation practice awakens our compassion and introduces us to a far larger view of reality. When we see the world in a more spacious way, it opens us to new possibilities. His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace. On the other hand, if our mental attitude is more negative ... then even when surrounded by our best friends, in a nice atmosphere and comfortable surroundings, we shall not be happy.”
–
The Kansas City Star, Missouri
PeaceMeal, May/June 2008
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
What the Amish are teaching Americaby Sally Kohn
On October 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up ten young girls from the class and shot each of them at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. Two more girl have since died. According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight; is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts’ family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish don’t automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
Meanwhile, the United States culture from which the Amish are isolated is moving in the other direction — increasingly exacting revenge for crimes and punishing violence with more violence. In 26 states and at the federal level, there are “three strikes” laws in place. Conviction for three felonies in a row now warrants a life sentence, even for the most minor crimes. For instance, Leandro Andrade is serving a life sentence, his final crime involving the theft of nine children’s videos — including “Cinderella” and “Free Willy” — from a Kmart.
Similarly, in many states and at the federal level, possession of even small amounts of drugs trigger mandatory minimum sentences of extreme duration. In New York, Elaine Bartlett was just released from prison, serving a 20-year sentence for possessing only four ounces of cocaine. This is in addition to the 60 people who were executed in the United States in 2005, among the more than a thousand killed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And the President of the United States is still actively seeking authority to torture and abuse alleged terrorists, whom he consistently dehumanizes as rats to be “smoked from their holes,” even without evidence of their guilt.
Our patterns of punishment and revenge are fundamentally at odds with the deeper values of common humanity that the tragic experience of the Amish are helping to reveal. Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done in life. Someone who cheats is not only a cheater. Someone who steals something is not only a thief. And someone who commits a murder is not only a murderer.
The same is true of Charles Carl Roberts. We don’t yet know the details of the episode in his past for which, in his suicide note, he said he was seeking revenge. It may be a sad and sympathetic tale. It may not. Either way, there’s no excusing his actions. Whatever happened to Roberts in the past, taking the lives of others is never justified. But nothing Roberts has done changes the fact that he was a human being, like all of us.
We all make mistakes. Roberts’ were considerably and egregiously larger than most. But the Amish in Nickel Mines seem to have been able to see past Roberts’ actions and recognize his humanity, sympathize with his family for their loss, and move forward with compassion — not vengeful hate.
We’ve come to think that “an eye for an eye” is a natural, human reaction to violence. The Amish, who live a truly natural life apart from the influences of our violence-infused culture, are proving otherwise. If, as Gandhi said, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” then the Amish are providing the rest of us with an eye-opening lesson.
Sally Kohn is Director of the Movement Vision Project at the Center for Community Change and author of a forthcoming book on the progressive vision for the future of the United States. Her article was published on CommonDreams.org.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
The Jesus we haven't followed
When will Christians take his teachings seriously?
By Alvin Alexsi Currier
This
article is excerpted from a sermon Alvin Alexsi Currier preached to expatriate Americans
at St. Andrews Anglican Church of Lakeside, Jalisco, Mexico on August 21, 2005. He writes,
“The sermon was very well received by about half of the congregation. Another third
or so remained sort of neutral or didn’t quite understand what was happening. And
about twenty percent exploded. Actually they ended up by shooting themselves in the foot,
in that they forbid that the sermon be posted on the church website or published in
hardcopy. This censorship is stirring up a bit of a storm, with people seeking copies of
this ‘censored sermon’ to see what it is all about.”
Teachings about Jesus are alive and well in our churches. What haunts me is the question: What has happened to the teachings of Jesus?
Is Jesus not the one who warned that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God? Is he not the one who admonished Peter: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword”? Did he not command us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves?
What has happened to these teachings? The answer to this question is disturbing, for the truth seems to be that we Christians have preferred to focus on what Jesus did for us, rather than follow what he preached, taught, and commanded us to do in his name.
The reason for this is clear: The teachings of Jesus are radical. And because his teachings are so radical and challenging, it is much more comfortable to focus on a silent, private, personal relationship with Jesus than it is to follow his teachings that call for a prophetic public witness.
The teachings of Jesus are radical because Jesus took the command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and pushed the definition of who is our neighbor, out, out, and still further out, until it reached to the ends of the earth and included all of God’s children — all of humanity.
We do a fairly commendable job of loving our neighbor in the next pew, and we do a fairly decent job of loving each other of us who live together here in this community. ... But the teachings of Jesus reach out to encircle a world much wider, broader, and deeper than these little concentric circles of our local community.
The good shepherd is not content with the ninety and the nine; he goes out, out, out, until the last of the lost is found. ... The world is awash with the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, and imprisoned, and Christ calls us to go out, out, out, even unto the least of these our brothers and sisters.
What is radical about the teachings of Jesus is that he took the command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and once he had extended that command to cover the whole of the human race, he commanded us to go down, down, down to the least, last, lost, and poorest one of these our brothers and sisters.
Down, down, down to the wounded Samaritan lying unconscious beside the road. Down, down to the woman taken in adultery encircled by the mob yearning to stone her. Down to the thief hanging on the cross. Down to the starving, fear-ridden faces on the scorched earth of Darfur. Down to the destitute hopelessness of those trapped in the sprawling slums of a hundred festering cities. Down to the terrified faces of soldiers and civilians alike caught in the bloodstained carnage of war in Iraq.
Yes, the teachings of Jesus are radical. The simple truth is that the teachings of Jesus pull us inescapably toward confrontation with the explosively loaded and emotional issues of our lives, culture, nation, politics, and the world. ...
It is an undeniable truth that the teachings of Jesus commission us to prophetic ministry. It is an equally undeniable truth that obedience to this prophetic ministry is one of the hardest parts of our Christian calling.
I am not a hero. I confess to wrestling constantly with potent insecurities. But as I was given this text to preach on, and as I came to struggle with what it means to confess Jesus, both as the Son of the Living God, and as my Lord and King, suddenly, but very simply, it became utterly clear to me what I knew I had to do.
All of us live daily with the escalating horror of the war in Iraq. Whether we are citizens of the United States or the United Kingdom who have armed forces that are fighting over there, or whether we are from the countries such as Canada or Mexico that have refused to join in the conflict, none of us can escape from a daily confrontation with that scene of horror, carnage, and death.
I went to Germany as an exchange pastor some 46 years ago. One evening while I was visiting with the young German pastor with whom I was exchanging, he told me about his experience in his home city of Karlsruhe on Kristallnacht, that infamous night in November of 1938 when Nazi thugs and mobs all over Germany smashed and burned Jewish synagogues. He said that when he arrived at his school the next morning, his teacher entered the room and spoke only one sentence. Shaking with emotion he said: “What happened last night is wrong, wrong, wrong!” Then he dismissed the class.
The incident behind that story took place 67 years ago, but throughout my long life it has always been my own personal example of the prophetic stance and personal witness that our Lord might someday call us to. Now my time has come.
As I wrestled with this text and this sermon over the last weeks, I became convinced by both my conscience and my heart that I was called to raise with you this morning, and from this pulpit, the following question: If we confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, then must we not also follow his teachings?
And does not following his teachings mean that we must also question our support for, or our failure to condemn, the horror, carnage, and death of the war in Iraq that was initiated, and is now being prosecuted ... in our name?
And as I wrestled, I also became convinced by both my conscience and my heart that I was called to bear a prophetic witness from this pulpit, this morning, to my own personal conviction that in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and following his teachings, we must now boldly cry out to the world that this war in Iraq is wrong, wrong, wrong!
So help us God.
Amen.
– reprinted from
www.bruderhof.com
PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2005
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
A reflection from the Chaplain of Kadlec Medical Center, Richland, Washington
The “Four Seasons” do not just mark the times of the year, but can refer to a profound passage from Ecclesiastes (3:1-8), a beautiful symphony by Vivaldi, a poignant song from the 60's (“Turn, turn, turn”), a very funny movie from the 70's, a period of time devoted to a particular activity, such as a season of prayer, or even one’s life of faith.
We may indeed find our current situation in life (German: sitzen leben) to be more like one season or another. Like our flora and fauna, our lives of meaning and purpose blossom and develop, produce and rest.
Springtime faith would find us in a rich time of searching, asking, and exploring the deep issues of our life — our life in God and our life in the world. Flowers of faith are exciting but temporary. They hold brief beauty and much promise of fruitfulness in later seasons.
With nurture and challenge, summertime faith is in high gear, growing by leaps and bounds, often taking in new material and taking on new opportunities with reckless abandon. These are the questioning and questing aspects of faith that I call “spirituality.”
After this comes the season of autumnal faith, where we will have grown and harvested some new learnings and convictions which are worth re-committing our life to. Autumn and winter describe the answering and committing aspects of faith that I call “religion.”
In wintertime faith come times of resting in quietness and deep reflection on matters of import without a lot of restless action. Soaking up wisdom, patience, perspective, and hope are the order of the winter season.
All the seasons of faith are essential to health, vitality, relationship and faith. Unlike our turning earth, they do not follow a strict cycle. Yet there is a certain observable life-pattern that seems to evolve over time.
So, welcome to the current season of your faith!
– Peacemeal, Sept/October 2005
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Respecting others' dignity vital to peaceby Janet Griffin
Respecting the dignity of every human being is harder than it might seem.
"Dignity" can mean anything from proper posture and an almost comical air of self-importance to the humble acceptance of all life created by and precious to God.
Robbing people of their God-given dignity can destroy much in them that is creative and beautiful and capable of sustaining life rather than destroying it. Trying to rob people of their dignity can backfire on the robber, as we are finding in situations caused by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Whose dignity is compromised in those pictures, after all?
Memorial Day weekend always brings to mind a story about respect and dignity that I heard from an elderly woman describing an annual family ritual.
Lacey grew up in the South, in a family with deep roots in the community. Every Memorial Day ("Decoration Day" it was called then) her grandmother would get the youngsters up early to gather hundreds of flowers until a wagon was overflowing. With a huge picnic meal to sustain them, the whole family would head for the cemetery.
First, like the other families that day, they decorated the graves of relatives. Many of their neighbors left after decorating family graves. Lacey's grandmother would then send the family to graves of neighbors who had no one to remember them. A few community, members stayed to help. When they had finished with the neighbors, they decorated the neglected graves of strangers. Very few outside her family stayed to do this.
Under her grandmother's firm direction, Lacey's folks next went to the part of the cemetery set aside for Africa Americans. Some of them had no family and had not been attended to by others in the black community Their graves were decorated too.
And last, despite protests from some family members, Lacey's grandmother moved the decorating operation to the most neglected part of the cemetery: the graves of Union soldiers who had died there in Civil War battles.
"These men had mothers too," she would say, "and they died for a cause they believed in."
They were not allowed to leave until every Union soldier, dead and buried far from his home, was shown respect by the flowers left on each grave.
Respecting the dignity of every human being is part of the baptismal covenant in my church, and I hope in all other Christian churches. It is part of the path to God in many other faiths, as well.
The act of treating others with dignity — whether or not we want to at the time, whether or not we think they deserve it strengthens the faith and discipline of the one acting, regardless of any effect it has upon the other person.
"Do it to the least and you do it to me," says Jesus Christ. That challenge may be easy to imagine with the poor and neglected, but what about the mortal enemy, the one who desires to defeat us?
We are most defeated when we become less than ourselves, when we give up our better nature, and become, in our thoughts and deeds, no better than the thoughts and deeds of the people we oppose.
Lacey learned a lifelong lesson about respect and dignity as she decorated the graves of the Union soldiers. It strengthened her character in Christ as it opened her heart to strangers and even enemies.
Perhaps when we practice more respect, when we strive to preserve the dignity of all people, there will be fewer graves to decorate with flowers and with tears.
Janet Griffin is rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Richland, Washington. Her inspirational article was published in the Tri-City Herald, May 28, 2005.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
On Christmas 1941, just weeks after the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the weekly Pasco Herald published a front-page editorial titled "Through Faith Alone Can Hope Survive." Following is the concluding half of the editorial.
Decent men in their hearts are sick of kindliness and charity just at Christmastime and greed and suspicion the rest of the year. They are weary of a world that has produced telephones and printing presses but has forgotten honesty and the Ten Commandments. They are tired of being told it is "necessary" to oppose working people if they are employers, to hate the "employing class" if they are workers. They are tired of free governments that have so forgotten Jefferson and Lincoln that they encourage class hate in the name of progress.
Decent men want to think of other men as fellow human beings.
It is high time for free America to find again the ideals of its founders. To take pride in mothering the oppressed. To reach out for the meaning of mercy, sympathy and love. To share in proud humility a simple belief in God.
For greater far than all the questions of defense that now face America are the problems of the years to come, the enormous, challenging problems that we shall have to solve as the great free people of the post-war world. We shall have to solve them in the spirit of helpfulness and brotherhood. We shall have to dedicate our strength and free our ideals and wisdom to bring about the lasting peace that will find no nation a pawn, no man a scapegoat, but all peoples neighbors and friends. We tried the other way once. And it did not work.
Perhaps, even now, unnoticed, the groundswell is beginning. We like to think that, quietly, out of these racking times there may stem a new dignity, never yet attained, for all mankind; rooted in Faith and flowering not in mere tolerance or respect, but in kindliness and sympathy, in a real wish to understand our fellow men.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
by Diane Pendola
After viewing the PBS FRONTLINE documentary entitled "Vision Iraq" about America’s decision to start the ongoing war, one image particularly stood out. You may remember the event. "Intelligence" sources had located Saddam Hussein in a restaurant in Baghdad. Pilots were instructed to hit two sites: the restaurant and a private home nearby. We bombed both sites, but Saddam Hussein was not there. The man whose home was bombed and destroyed had left shortly before, after having lunch for the last time with his children — three beautiful young daughters, his wife, and niece.
In an interview after the bombing, the man’s shock and grief were palpable. He spoke of how he dug his entire family out of the rubble with his bare hands. He spoke of how he also buried each of them with his bare hands.
I was left wondering how America thinks we are bringing peace to Iraq? And I am left to search my own heart’s capacity to ever forgive such a deed that destroyed everything that gave meaning to my life. I went to bed thinking of this man and his family. I fell asleep thinking that we could never do enough penance to make amends to this man. This one man, this one family could be the subject of meditation for the rest of my life.
The theme of forgiveness keeps recurring in my heart and mind. Philosopher, theologian, and author Raimon Panikkar, known worldwide for his work in intra- and inter-cultural and religious dialogue, writes that forgiveness, reconciliation, and dialogue are the key to peace. (Cultural Disarmament: The Way to Peace, Raimon Panikkar, 1995, Westminster John Knox Press)
Love and forgiveness are also the beginning of the gospel, what Christians call the "good news" of salvation. Some people have called the passion and death of Jesus Christ the greatest love story ever told. Why? Because of Jesus’ last words from the cross: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Forgive what? The weakness, fear, and betrayal of his friends, the inconstancy and dubiousness of his followers, the narrowness of religious authority, the tyranny of political power, the cruelty of torturers, the apathy of the unconcerned.
The crusades, pogroms, wars to end all wars, and now the American quest to spread democracy and free market capitalism to the ends of the earth, may have been and for some continue to be, in the name of Jesus, but they are not in the Spirit of Jesus. I am convinced that the gospel of Jesus is nonviolent through and through. Indeed, a more contemporary rendering of "salvation" (from "salve" meaning "to heal") might be healing or wholeness. Forgiveness, then, can be seen as the beginning of the good news of healing, liberation, and wholeness.
But what does that mean to the Iraqi man who lost his world to American bombs? And what does that mean to me, an American from whose country the bombs came? Where do we go from here, the Iraqi man and we Americans? Who is the one to ask forgiveness? Who is the one to proffer it? Where do we Americans go from here, in shock at the human loss and psychic vulnerability ensuing from the terrorist attacks on our own soil? It would appear we still "know not what we do" as an-eye-for-an-eye makes the whole world blind.
For 30 years, Nelson Mandela had been a prisoner of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. When he became president, he and his country were faced with the challenge of addressing the horrors of racism, kidnaping, torture, murder, and rape that were for decades a part of the fabric of their lives. Mandela’s new, democratic South African government confounded the world with its decision to provide a process, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whereby victims could tell their heartrending stories and express their willingness to forgive, and perpetrators in turn could confess their atrocities and ask for forgiveness. This reconciliation process stunned the world with its success and it offers us a new model for dealing with the aftermath of conflict. It shines a light in our dark times of retributive justice and blind revenge.
Forgiveness and love, love and forgiveness, these are the beginning of healing, liberation, and wholeness. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize wrote, there is "no future without forgiveness." (No Future Without Forgiveness, Desmond Tutu, 1999, Doubleday)
Diane Pendola is a spiritual guide at Skyline Harvest, an eco-contemplative retreat center in Camptonville, California. Her article was condensed and appeared in Peacemeal, Sept/October 2004.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
by Gene Weisskopf
The following is a talk given by WCP member and peace walker, Gene Weisskopf, at a jayanti — a birthday celebration — commemorating the life and work of Mohandas K. Gandhi. The October 5, 2003, event in Richland was sponsored by the Tri-City India Association, Hindu Society, and Bangladeshi community.
"Gandhi and the Prints of Peace" I think best describes the mark that Mohandas Gandhi left on the world. He was not born into greatness; I've not heard that his birth was marked by trumpets, shooting stars, or other heavenly announcements. It took a long lifetime of experiences, study, hard work, diligence, and resolve to bring forth The Mahatma, The Great Soul, the name that countless millions of people bestowed upon him, in spite of his own dislike of that title.
Gandhi is renowned for bringing the concept of peaceful resolve into the realm of international conflicts. Taking a firm stand based on one's beliefs, with active non-violence and loving, peaceful civil disobedience, what he termed satyagraha, became not just a fleeting vision but a real tool for changing people's minds and hearts. And that's what put his vision into the history books — he actually worked hard to implement his vision in the real world.
He was a man of religion with a great depth of spirit. He was a Hindu, but he eagerly learned from all the religions that crossed his path. If Gandhi seemed able to move mountains and split the seas, his history-making achievements were not the result of superhuman abilities, but came from persistent efforts by him and those he worked with. He named his autobiography Experiments with Truth, which captures his approach to his journey. Although his poetic, loving heart is to be admired and revered, his brain with its probing intellect and his ability to communicate were the tools that brought his spirit to the forefront of world history.
He combined his deeply held spiritual views with his active, curious mind to guide his footsteps. In a sense, his spirit illuminated the way while his mind constructed the path, integrating his spiritual universe into the world we walk on.
His was a 20th century path to peace. He was educated, traveled, and well spoken, and lived in a time of railroads, steamships, newspapers, telephones, and world wars. The issues confronting him were both local and global. He challenged his own countrymen to drop the barriers that kept millions of Indian untouchables in desperate, generational poverty, and fought the same fight with Britain, half a world away, over the servitude and injustices they brought with their empire-hold on India.
Because Gandhi walked through the 20th century, there's a huge volume of published works by and about him. He was a prolific writer whose deeds had the attention of the world's publishers, and he has influenced generations in every country. His own life was shaped by numerous and varied influences as well, including Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry David Thoreau. He once remarked that his famous and wildly effective 200-mile March to the Sea, in violation of Britain's salt monopoly in India, was very much a parallel to the Boston Tea Party 200 years earlier, when the American colonies were also under Britain's imperial grasp. Coincidentally, it was the East India Company that had held the monopoly on tea in the American colonies.
Gandhi left countless lessons for us from his long life. The first time I heard the phrase "nonviolent civil disobedience" was five or ten years after his death, coming from our own country and the path being blazed by Martin Luther King. Even today Gandhi's spirit still echoes in the cries and shouts of citizens who take to their computers and pens and papers — and to the sidewalks of cities throughout the world, demanding that a peaceful path be taken in solving international disputes.
Although there is yet no Gandhi at the forefront of society in the 21st century, there are undoubtedly countless Gandhi-inspired individuals who are interested, eager to learn, caring, questioning, and committed in small ways or large to truth and peaceful coexistence.
And that is the great hope and challenge that Gandhi left us — the knowledge that finding a path of truth in the world, based on brotherly love and non-violence, isn't something we can simply wait for. It's not a red carpet that rolls out in front of us. Instead, we must blaze the path ourselves, with opened eyes, hearts, and minds, with our feet on the ground, step-by-step, walking toward a vision we may never actually reach. That can take a lifetime, and Gandhi's lifetime is living proof of the possibilities.
The countless footprints he left on his path through the world, both literally and figuratively, those are the prints of peace that are the lesson for us all.
Thank you, and Happy Birthday Mohandas!
– Peacemeal, Nov/December 2003
by Dave Robinson
In the days since the war in Iraq "ended,"it has become painfully clear that every aspect of social teaching is under full assault. Decades-old environmental protections are being rolled back; civil liberties are being shredded along with the Constitution itself; a commitment to the common good no longer animates our public policy; and the effort to establish some measure of justice for people living in poverty — especially children — has been abandoned by this Administration. ...
Many friends and colleagues in the movement for justice and peace are experiencing a sense of futility, overwhelmed by the breadth and scope of this kind of "compassionate conservatism." This is understandable. Sometimes it seems like no matter what we do, things just get worse. But at the same time, this is a moment in history that cries out for peacemakers and justice seekers.
During the war and the build-up to war, those who espoused a commitment to nonviolence were ridiculed and denounced. And yet, it is precisely in those moments that the voice and witness of nonviolence must be loudest and clearest. Gandhi once said that being a person of nonviolence only between wars is like being a vegetarian only between meals!
But how do we remain hopeful and keep our energies up and focused when it seems that what we do makes no difference? First, I would say that everything we do does indeed make an important — even a crucial — difference, even when evidence of that difference eludes us.
Every one of our efforts to build justice and peace, no matter how inconsequential they may seem given the vast amount of violence and injustice with which we are faced, makes a difference. Often it is the simplest of acts that have the most profound and lasting impact.
And so, dear peacemaker, do not let the sheer volume of injustice deter you in your daily efforts to bring a measure of peace to this violent world. Hope can sustain us, but only when we recognize that hope is not the same as optimism. Vaclav Havel, the former Czech President, has pointed out that hope is not the feeling that something will work out, but rather, the deep conviction that what we are working for is right and important regardless of the outcome.
Dave Robinson is
National Coordinator of Pax Christi USA. Reprinted from Catholic Peace Voice.
– PeaceMeal, Nov/December 2003
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by Diane Pendola
What I have to say is nothing original, although it originates from a longing I perceive to be universal. But if you will permit me to speak personally to this longing, I will tell you for what I long. I long for kindness to fill our dark nights and courage and integrity to fill our days. I long for the time when the lion lies down with the lamb. I long for the time when nation no longer raises sword against nation. I long for the time when we study peace, not war; when our institutions are dedicated to waging peace and deepening peace. I long for the time when my country commits a billion dollars a day to cultivating peace and the works of peace: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, liberating the oppressed. I long for the day when we take the words of Jesus to heart: to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. I long for the time when we honor the words from the Hebrew Scripture: "Go and learn the meaning of this, I require mercy and not sacrifice." At times like these, I fall back like a child on my mother's breast, taking in the nourishment of the sacred words of the tradition into which I was born. But as an adult I am well aware of how this very tradition has been used and abused to serve nationalism, racism, murder and oppression of every kind and hue. And with 9-11, it appears that no religious tradition has been spared a reckoning with its own shadow.
So where am I to go? Psychologically sophisticated, educated to the pitfalls of religious passion, fundamentalism and fanaticism, to what well do I go to drink of the waters of Life? Where are the sacred waters now that our wells have been poisoned and polluted by the very traditions that were meant to carry them forward through time, quenching the thirst of a suffering world?
It seems to me I must go to the waters within myself. It seems there is a maturity being asked of me, of us, in and by the spirit of the very founders of the traditions that we honor: Jesus asks us to transform our own consciousness into the consciousness of Christ; Gautama asks us to awaken to the Buddha within our own nature. The Earth herself asks us to realize the inseparable connection of our bodies with her Body, our lives with her Life. We are asked to become spiritual adults, aware of the choices before us. The Hebrew Scriptures poise the choices succinctly: "I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live."
Will we choose blessing or curse, life or death? It seems that the choices we are facing could be the beginning of the end of life as we know it — and I don't mean simply the end of our civil liberties or our American way of life. I mean the end of life for our descendents. I mean the end of the beautiful magnificence of our common earth.
There is a saying, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." I desire peace, even as I feel the un-peace in my own heart, even as I see my ability to create enemies to project my own un-peace upon. I long for peace, and it is this longing that emboldens me to turn and face the shadow I carry within myself. I choose to face the violence within my own heart and touch it with something bigger than violence. I choose to turn and face the fear in my belly and touch it with something bigger than fear. I choose to touch violence with the tenderness of a Christ heart. I choose to touch fear with the spaciousness of a Buddha belly. I choose to touch the ignorance, the suffering, the madness within myself with the confidence of stardust in my soul and earthlight in my bones. I am convinced that the greatest contribution I can make to peace in the world is to make peace in myself. I know that it is not the quantity of my doing that will make any essential difference in the world but the quality of my being. And for that I am ultimately responsible.
Perhaps this is where the original longing comes from, spilling out from the great "I AM", the Divine Source, God, Allah, Yahweh, the Great Mystery whose name is beyond all names, but whose attributes we all tend to agree upon: Peace. Light. Blessing. Life.
We have studied war for thousands of years. We have practiced war. We have experienced the curse, the death and the devastating consequences of war. I long for the time we pound our swords into ploughshares, our spears into sickles. I long for the time Christ returns to earth. I long for the time the Buddha awakens. The time is now. Now is the only time there is.
– Diane Pendola is a spiritual guide at Skyline Harvest, a retreat
center in Camptonville, California.
PeaceMeal, July/August 2003