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.
One of the most astonishing, creative and powerful acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in recent U.S. history took place on Dec. 17, 2008, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In its last weeks, the George W. Bush administration put 150,000 acres of pristine Eastern Utah public land up for auction for leasing to the oil and natural gas industry. Not only would the land be sold and destroyed, this deal would worsen catastrophic climate change.
“Daily we should take account and ask: What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation?”
So advised Rabbi Abraham Heschel, one of the wisest religious leaders of our time. His writings shine with luminous truth and love. They hold a rare authenticity because he lived his own teachings with an astonishing integrity.
A new collection, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings, has brought together some of that wisdom.
Last week's Supreme Court ruling against California's prison system as "cruel and inhuman punishment" was not a surprise -- except in the sense that it was said publicly. Many of us who have experienced our criminal injustice system first hand know well how horrific it is. The court ruled that 35,000 California prisoners would have to be transferred or released because the system is so unjust.
The case sparked new discussion on overcrowded prisons (156,000 prisoners suffer in California prisons built for half that number), but it started years ago because of the atrocious lack of health care in California's prisons. Many prisoners died needlessly over the years, usually because they were not given their medicine.
Turns out, over the past nine years while I’ve lived and worked in New Mexico church authorities have received hundreds of letters of complaint about me and my stand for peace from Catholics who support war and build nuclear weapons, primarily from the Catholics who work at the Los Alamos National Laboratories.
There is no reason to continue this senseless war in Afghanistan. We should end it immediately. That’s what many people across the country are now saying.
There are only 100 Al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan, Jim Wallis wrote this week, but we still have over 100,000 American soldiers there.
I spent Holy Week serving in the little mission church of San Jose de Picacho along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was hot, nearly 90 degrees, with wind gusts over 50 mph. I took time to walk along the drought-afflicted Rio Grande, and found myself on retreat, with time to consider the events of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
I had just finished a weekend retreat on the Sermon on the Mount in Los Angeles when I heard the news that the U.S. had killed Osama bin Laden. Unlike the president, the U.S. military, and the hundreds who cheered and waved flags, I did not celebrate. I do not support or cheer the killing of anyone. As a Christian, I am not allowed to retaliate, seek revenge or to kill. I’m supposed to love enemies, do good to those who hate, and bless those who persecute. This news only leads me further into grief, prayer and repentance.
Happy Easter everyone! I hope and pray that each one of us can be reenergized this Easter season to welcome the nonviolent Jesus' resurrection gift of peace and go forward in faith, hope and love to do new work for peace with justice.
Resurrection means, among other things, having nothing to do with death. As resurrection people, we non-cooperate with Death and the means and metaphors of death, such as war, racism, sexism, corporate greed and nuclear weapons. That means, as resurrection people, we are people of nonviolence, people of peace, people of universal love.
Mairead Maguire advises those who have doubts about the nonviolence of Jesus to spend a quiet afternoon in their local church looking up at a large crucifix. Steady meditation on Christ’s passion and death reveals his steadfast nonviolence and the spiritual explosion of love and peace that he unleashed, she believes.
Holy Week offers a strange image -- the image of a nonviolent leader who comes to abolish war once and for all and proclaim peace to the whole world. Is this really the kind of messiah we want?
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