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On the Road to Peace
The school of prophets
by John Dear SJ on Nov. 17, 2009Last weekend in Adelaide, Australia, seventy of us gathered for a retreat entitled “The School of Prophets.” The idea was dreamed up by my friend Tim Deslandes as a time for contemplative prayer which would lead us toward prophetic speaking and action.
Tim says the time has become ripe to raise a new generation of “prophetic people,” given churchly scandals and failures and worldly horrors and wars.
Remembering the Jesuit Martyrs
by John Dear SJ on Nov. 10, 2009Twenty years ago, on November 16, 1989, I was studying theology at the Jesuit community in Berkeley, Calif., when my friend Steve Kelly knocked on the door and asked if I had heard the news. I hadn’t. He broke down telling me of the brutal deaths early that morning of six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America, the Jesuit university in San Salvador. I had known those Jesuits from my time in El Salvador in 1985, when I lived and worked in a refugee camp. I was shocked and grief-stricken.
New Zealand diary
by John Dear SJ on Nov. 03, 2009Wednesday, Oct. 28
I left Honolulu Monday evening and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand this morning. Somewhere over the Pacific, I lost a day, a disconcerting experience. But it was a thrill to land in one of the world’s remotest corners to meet some of the world’s friendliest people in the perhaps the most anti-nuclear nation on earth.
If you want to know God, prepare for an ordeal
by John Dear SJ on Oct. 27, 2009Anthony de Mello's Jesuit spirituality
This week has taken me across the world. I was in Santa Fe, N.M., Saturday at the Pax Christi conference featuring Franciscan peacemaker Fr. Louie Vitale. Then in New York City on Sunday to preside at Mass and speak at the celebration for my old friend, Dr. Paul Farmer, along with Bill Clinton, Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth, and Bill and Melinda Gates. Then in Hawaii to speak in Kona on the big island before embarking on speaking tours of New Zealand and Australia. It’s a bit much, but a great blessing to meet people everywhere I go who care passionately about the world’s poor, about the possibilities of peace and nonviolence, and about the God of love and peace.
A visit to the Peace Abbey
by John Dear SJ on Oct. 20, 2009With many others, the news last week that President Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize left me dismayed. Out he stepped from the Oval Office to accept the prize, then back in he went to continue his preparations to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan. There, under his orders, they’ll drop bombs, follow their drones, make sweeps through villages and terrorize children. Not my idea of a peacemaker.
The car and the pine cone
by John Dear SJ on Oct. 13, 2009There are many facets of nonviolence. We’re just beginning to plumb the mystery, the possibility, the hope of becoming a nonviolent people. But there is, I think, one basic straightforward and practical measure of our nonviolence -- how we drive.
Pushing Obama's vision: A nuclear free world
by John Dear SJ on Oct. 06, 2009[Editor's note: Fr. Dear posted this column Tuesday, days before President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.]
When President Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council recently to endorse a resolution to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, we saw a rare sight -- a sign of global leadership pointing humanity toward a new future of peace. But while his words inspired, and hope springs from his symbolic stand, nothing has changed.
St. Thérèse's Little Way of Nonviolence
by John Dear SJ on Sep. 29, 2009"When I sit in jail thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom," Dorothy Day once wrote, "of jails, drug addiction, prostitution and the apathy of great masses of people who believe that nothing can be done--when I thought of these things I was all the more confirmed in my faith in the little way of St. Thérèse. We do the things that come to hand, we pray our prayers and beg also for an increase of faith--and God will do the rest."
Ambassadors of reconciliation
by John Dear SJ on Sep. 22, 2009Ched Myers and Elaine Enns have just published a two volume work, Ambassadors of Reconciliation (Orbis Books), a great new resource for peacemakers and justice-workers interested in the latest insights for our struggle. Volume One provides an excellent overview of restorative justice and its connection to Gospel peacemaking. Volume Two profiles nine extraordinary, contemporary Christians from across the spectrum who practice restorative justice and peacemaking full-time, and make a huge difference in the lives of many. Together, these scholarly and readable books offer a new, ground-breaking theology and practice for Christians seeking to understand and live Jesus’ way of nonviolence and its application for today.
Edwina Gateley's Big God
by John Dear SJ on Sep. 15, 2009I've known and admired Edwina Gateley for years, and even had the privilege of speaking at various church events with her, most memorably, a week-long teach-in together in Olympia, Washington, seven years ago. She's a spell-binding speaker, heroic church woman, devoted mother, great writer, amazing story teller, brilliant organizer and good friend. I cherish her wit and wisdom; most of all, she cheers me up and gives me new energy to carry on our work of peace and justice.
