On the Road to Peace is a column on nonviolence from Jesuit Fr. John Dear, a peace activist and the author of more than 20 books.
"Tonight's theme is the momentum from a gathering storm for hope which I believe will one day bear fruit in abolishing all nuclear weapons." That's how Bishop Gabino Zavala, President of Pax Christi USA, launched our two-day observance last weekend of the 65th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The year has turned again, and friends and I are busy completing plans for our annual Hiroshima Day events in Santa Fe and Los Alamos. Our theme this time around: “Sixty Five Years Is Enough! Retire the Bomb! We Want a Nuclear Free World!”
It's been a hot summer across the country, but withering heat comes with the territory for those of us who live in the Southwest. I've lived in the high desert of northern New Mexico for eight years now, and despite the heat, the desert has proven itself a source of inspiration, healing and hope.
Often when I ponder the violence of our times, the apocalyptic words of Jesus flood my mind. Here is Jesus, not talking in parable, but about sobering historical reality. He is warning his disciples about Jerusalem’s coming destruction at the hands of the juggernaut Roman army.
I shouldn’t be surprised; we’re often hit with bizarre news. But doings around Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday takes grotesquery to a new level. Seems there’s a political ruckus in New York City about how to honor her Aug. 26. Anyone with a little sense knows the appropriate thing: reassign funds for war and military recruitment to house the homeless and feed the poor.
This would be especially fitting in Manhattan, because by lifting rent control, the borough has been systematically evicting the poor for years and catering to its growing number of millionaires.
The event last week -- an uncommon apology -- did not attract much notice in the U.S. media. And that is not hard to understand why. Our news agencies make their livings dishing up vengeance, retaliation, gossip and violence. They stir up fear and division, peddle half-truths and ruin reputations, and stir the fires of war. And it makes them millions.
Like many of you, I long for peace but feel stuck in our warlike culture, like a Gulf pelican mired in BP’s oil spill. A timely image that touched a nerve when I said it last weekend in Washington, D.C. It was at the conference for the Network for Spiritual Progressives sponsored by my friend Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine. We are all of us pelicans gummed up and weighed down in the oil, I said, all of us victims of our culture of violence, greed and war.
On June 1, Fr. Louie Vitale celebrated his 78th birthday in Lompoc Federal Prison, near Vandenberg Air Force base, north of Los Angeles. A Franciscan priest and one of our great voices for peace and disarmament, he is currently serving six months for crossing the line last November at the gates of Fort Benning, Ga., to call for the closing of the notorious “School of Americas.” Louie has spent many years in prison for peace. His life has become one long prayer for peace, like his teacher St. Francis. Last year, he visited Iran, Hiroshima and Egypt with me, in the hopes of getting into Gaza. He expects to be freed July 24.
When my mind turns to Israel and Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, the hatred and the bullets, the dead children -- and now the assault on the Peace Flottilla -- I can't quite keep down the question: Where is God?
I was in Toronto this past weekend, speaking at a church conference with my friend Fr. Roy Bourgeois, leader of the campaign to close the “School of Americas,” where the U.S. army trains soldiers of oligarchies in southern hemisphere to repress the indigenous people. And also Bishop Alvero Ramazzini of San Marcos, Guatemala, a bold champion for social justice who is under constant death threat. Two rare species.
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