Prayer Of Nonviolence - (June, 2005)

BY JOHN DEAR

God of Nonviolence,
Thank you for the gift of your love and your peace.
Give me the grace to live the life of Gospel nonviolence
that I might be a faithful follower of the nonviolent Jesus.

Send the Holy Spirit of nonviolence upon me that I will love everyone,
from my neighbor to my enemies,
that I may see you in everyone, and know everyone as my sister and brother,
and never hurt or fear anyone again.

Make me an instrument of your peace,
that I might give my life in the struggle for justice and disarmament;
that I may work for the abolition of war, poverty and nuclear weapons;
that I may always respond with love and never retaliate with violence;
that I may accept suffering in the struggle of justice and never inflict suffering or death on others;
that I my live more simply, in solidarity with the world's poor,
that I may defend the poor and resist systemic injustice and institutionalized violence,
that I may always choose life and resist the forces of death.

Guide me on the Way of nonviolence.
Help me to speak the truth of peace, to practice boundless compassion, to radiate unconditional love, to forgive everyone who ever hurt me, to embody your nonviolence, to walk with you in contemplative peace, to be your beloved servant and friend.

Disarm my heart, and I shall be your instrument to disarm other hearts and the world. Lead me, God of nonviolence, with the whole human family, into your nonviolent reign of justice and peace where there is no more war, no more injustice, no more poverty, no more nuclear weapons, no more violence.
I ask this in the name of the nonviolent Jesus, our brother and our peace.

Amen.


Rev. John Dear S.J. is a Jesuit Priest, Peace Activist, Organizer, Lecturer, Retreat leader, and author/editor of 20 books on peace and nonviolence, including Living Peace, published by Doubleday.

Fr. Dear's story can be found on his web site on the link below his picture. He's the real deal, a peace activist, a man who takes the Gospel to heart and moves on to action.

Fr. John Dear's work for peace has taken him to El Salvador, where he lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985; to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Middle East, and the Philipines; to Northern Ireland where he lived and worked at a human rights center for a year; and to Iraq, where he led a delegation of Nobel Peace Prize winners to witness the effects of the deadly sanctions on Iraqi children. He has run a shelter for the homeless in Washington, DC; and served as Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, a community center for disenfranchized women and children in Richmond, Virginia.

A native of North Carolina, John Dear was arrested on December 7, 1993 at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina for hammering on an F15 nuclear fighter bomber in an effort to "beat swords in plowshares," according to the biblical vision of the prophet Isaiah. Along with activist Philip Berrigan, he spent eight months in North Carolina county jails. Dear has been arrested over seventy-five times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience for peace, and has organized hundreds of demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons at military bases across the country, as well as worked with Mother Theresa and others to stop the death penalty.

As you see, he walks the walk and pays the penalty. I wish I had his courage.

The National Catholic Reporter has a longer article on Fr. Dear.

His latest book is titled Transfiguration, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Here is the link to his prayer.

UPDATE: Jan at Yearning For God has posted the trailer for the video on Fr. John titled "The Narrow Path", which can be purchased at his site the San Damiano Foundation.

Responsible? Who me?

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today he felt terrible about the military’s flawed handling of the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former football star who was killed in Afghanistan. But he and other former Pentagon leaders insisted that there had been no attempt to cover up the way it happened.

....

“I do not recall when I first learned that Corporal Tillman’s death was fratricide,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding that it was probably after May 20, 2004, when he was told by a colonel about the possibility of a “friendly fire” incident.

Ah, the convenient memory lapse which comes at the time that one testifies under oath.

“I know that I would not engage in a cover-up,” Mr. Rumsfeld told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today. “I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me.”

Never in a million years would any of the upstanding public servants in the Bush maladministration suggest a cover-up. Never ever. We all know that.

Critics of the Bush administration have asserted that the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death may have been distorted, to exploit the soldier’s patriotic image and perhaps distract attention from an unfolding scandal over abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

That suggestion was raised again today by Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee. Mr. Waxman said the reports of the death were deliberately manipulated to counter bad news about battlefield casualties as well as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, near Baghdad.

Surely not, Rep. Waxman. Whatever would make you say that? How long would it have taken for the abuses at Abu Ghraib to come to light but for the pictures? What's going on right now in the prisons?

Tillman volunteered to serve and was killed by US troops. His family deserved more accurate and prompter information about the circumstances of his death from their government.

As an aside, I've often wondered that we accept the "friendly fire" euphemism. Is the term intended to provide consolation to the family of the deceased? Are their loved ones any less dead from "friendly fire"?

But retired Gen. Richard B. Myers, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, also rejected those assertions. And in sparring with Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, he opened a window on the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Yes, General Myers agreed, the Tillman family should have been notified at once that there was the possibility of a “friendly fire” tragedy.

“According to the Army regulations as I understand them, that’s correct,” said General Myers, who served in the Air Force. “By the way,” he continued, “the Marine regulations don’t. They don’t notify until they’re sure, as I understand.”

You see, no one in the very highest offices is ever responsible in this maladministration.

But Mr. [Thomas M. Davis, III of Virginia,] Davis, whose northern Virginia district includes many military families, tried to walk a tightrope, noting that “nothing in our inquiry thus far demonstrates that either the defense secretary or the White House were aware this was a friendly fire incident before late May.”

He said that presumptions that high-ranking officials must have been involved should not “color or cloud what our investigation is actually finding.”

God forbid!

Absent from the hearing was former Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger, Jr., who was censured on Tuesday for his role in the Tillman case and could be demoted to two-star rank.

....

Mr. Waxman said that General Kensinger’s lawyer told the committee he would not testify voluntarily, and that he would seek to avoid being served with a subpoena. He apparently succeeded.

Apparently, the buck stops with Gen. Kensinger. He does not seem particularly enthusiastic about falling on his sword for the maladministration.

Over all, Mr. Rumsfeld and the retired generals depicted themselves as busy men at the time of Corporal Tillman’s death who left the details of the investigation to subordinates.

When Mr. Waxman asked General Myers if he thought there might have been a cover-up “somewhere along the line,” the general said he had no way of knowing, although he emphasized that he himself had not engaged in one.

The Congressman then put the same question to Generals Abizaid and Brown — “yes or no on this question.”

Both general[s] said they thought there had been no cover-up. “I think people tried to do the right thing,” General Abizaid said, “and the right thing didn’t happen.”

"...and the right thing didn't happen." There's the oh-so-useful passive voice to defend the indefensible. It's not as though real people could have effected a different outcome. It just "didn't happen".

I'm tearing my hair out as I read and write this. I can hardly bear to finish. How can Rumsfeld, Myers, and Abizaid get away with these answers?

My admiration for Rep. Henry Waxman, who has been tireless in his attempts to shed light on the dark corners in the Bush maladministration, is boundless. He is one of my heroes.

There now, I'm done, and I'm about to blow.

God help us all!

The Book Quiz

You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!

by Lewis Carroll

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind
opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser,
you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming
to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that
it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to[o] much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I don't know quite what to make of this. I feel rather as if I'm living in the upside down world of Through The Looking Glass. I wonder what the wrong turn was. Maybe it was my post about the red hat and the purple dress.

From PJ's Pointless Blog. PJ got the link from others whom I'm too lazy to mention.

Feast Day Of St. Ignatius of Loyola

St Ignatius Loyola by Peter Paul Rubens

From James Kiefer at the The Lectionary:

Iñigo de Recalde de Loyola, youngest of thirteen (one of my sources says eleven) children of Don Beltran Ya'ñez de Loyola and Maria Sa'enz de Licona y Balda, was born in 1491 in the family castle in the Basque province of Gu'ipozcoa, in northeastern Spain, near the French border. As befitted a boy from an aristocratic family, he spent some time as a page at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain. Here, by his later testimony, he was involved in gambling, wenching, and duelling.

He became a soldier and was wounded in the leg in his first battle. During his convalescence, [h]e asked for tales of knightly adventure, but instead was given a "Life of Christ", written by a Carthusian monk. He read it, and his life was transformed. He went on pilgrimage to Montserrat (near Barcelona), where he hung up his sword over the altar, and then spent about a year at Manresa near Montserrat first working as a nurse and orderly in a hospital there, and then retiring to a cave to live as a hermit and study "The Imitation of Christ", by Thomas a Kempis, a book urging the Christian to take Christ as example, and seek daily to follow in His footsteps. It is probably during this year that he wrote his Spiritual Exercises, a manual of Christian prayer and meditation.

He became a preacher, but was told that in order to preach, he needed an education.

Back in Spain, he spent ten years (1524-1534) getting an education at Barcelona, Alcala', Salamanca, and Paris, beginning by going to elementary school to learn Latin grammar, and ending with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Paris.

He founded the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, beginning with ten men, including Francis Xavier.

In 1537 the Jesuits (now ten in number) gathered in Venice and (having found that renewed war in Palestine made journeying there impossible) offered their services to Pope Paul III. Ignatius and some of the others were ordained to the priesthood, and they were assigned various tasks. In 1540 they became a formal organization, with the usual monastic vows, plus a fourth vow of personal obedience to the Pope.

Hmmm. The Jesuits seemed a bit free-wheeling, even back in ancient days when I was a student at my Jesuit University. Perhaps, even then, they allowed themselves a bit of leeway in the personal obedience to the pope vow.

I owe the Jesuits a huge debt, because they put me on the way toward ending my racist ways. Racism was all I knew before my university days, because that's what I was taught. The Jesuits taught me differently.

Also, we were required to take a number of theology and philosophy courses, which I did not take too seriously back then, but, in spite of my bad attitude, a little learning rubbed off as I was studying for the tests, even as I forget the great bulk of the material once the test was over.

I really liked the courses in logic and ontology, so I absorbed and retained more of what was taught in those classes. I do believe that I learned a bit about how to think and reason, and I am appalled by the absence of logical reasoning that abounds today. Geometry was the only math I ever liked, and I think it's because it's based on logic, rather than numbers.

On a personal note, my family was poor when I attended the university, but even as I thought my clothes were few and not really good enough, I was somehow voted one of the ten best-dressed co-eds while I was there. How that happened is still a mystery to me. After that, how could I complain at home that I did not have nice enough clothes? One old philosophy professor, who was a brilliant teacher in his prime, but during my time should have been retired, never called me by my name after that, but called me Miss Best Dressed. As I write this, he reminds me of someone else I know.

A prayer of Ignatius Loyola:

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest;
to give, and not to count the cost,
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labor, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will.

PRAYER

O God, by whose grace your servant Ignatius, enkindled with the fire of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

READINGS

Psalm 34:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:31 - 11:1
Luke 9:57-62

Image from Wikipedia.

An Immoral Philosophy

From Paul Krugman, behind the wall at The New York Times:

When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.

....

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem — “After all, you just go to an emergency room” — and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.

On philosophical grounds?

Strange to say, however, the administration, although determined to prevent any expansion of children’s health care, is also dead set against any cut in Medicare Advantage payments.

So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

I ask you.

Well, here’s what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: “They’re going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a — I wouldn’t call it a plot, just a strategy — to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care.”

Or as certain Republican congressmen are already saying, it could lead to the dreaded "socialized medicine".

And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

Isn't Krugman wonderful? He has a way of getting right to the nub of it, doesn't he? This is life in the Bizarro World of Bush.

Krugman's title for this column is well-chosen - "An Immoral Philosophy".

Ingmar Bergman Died Today

May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

His movies made me think about serious things, life and death, God, when I was still young. "The Seventh Seal" was unforgettable. "The Wild Strawberries" was unforgettably beautiful. Even when I didn't understand fully all the symbolism in his movies, they left a deep impression.

Kris Rasmussen, at Beliefnet has an appreciation, in which he gives us his favorite quote from Bergman:

"It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God... Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation."

Oh, I like that.

Link from Jim Naughton at the Episcopal Café.

Not Very Smart

On Countdown James Moore, author of Bush's Brain, says:

"You can have an advanced degree from Harvard and not be very smart.". (Perhaps not an exact quote, but close) To whom is he referring? Surely not George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

One commentator on the show, Jonathan Alter, speculated that Gonzales may be gone within a week. James Moore says it could take a lot longer. I agree with Moore. As I said before, Gonzales is the boy with his finger in the dike. If he goes, the entire edifice could begin to erode.

UPDATE: If Gonzales goes, will Bush be successful in finding another loyal lackey to risk everything to be his Attorney General?

Going To Church

For the two Sundays before yesterday, I missed going to church, one Sunday because I had a sleepover for five grandchildren, and the next because I was out of town visiting family, who are not churchgoers. Yesterday, I had only two grandchildren, and I managed to get it together and get myself there. It was good to be back. I miss the Sunday service, especially the Eucharist. I miss the music and the singing.

We have a new songbook of non-traditional hymns called "To The Glory Of God". In the schedule for the service, it is referred to as NSB for New Song Book. Since our organist was on vacation, and we had guitars and a wonderful old banjo for accompaniment, we used the NSB, even though we don't yet have enough of them to go around the congregation. My pew was one of those without the NSB, therefore I could only sing the hymns which I knew, or the choruses as I picked them up.

Our rector has a very soft voice, and I miss some of the words of the sermon each Sunday. Other members of the congregation have told me that they don't hear all of his words either. Once we have our parish web site up and running, I hope to persuade our priest to let me to type up his sermons and post them on the web site.

Our youth Sunday school will kick off in August with "A Cajun Man Swamp Tour". Only in Louisiana.

In the adult class, we will be using Simply Christian; Why Christianity Makes Sense, by N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, UK.

UPDATE: I'd say this is one of the most boring posts I've ever done. It looks as though the well has run dry.

This Is Rich, From Frank Rich

From Frank Rich, at the New York Times, behind the wall (sorry about that - but the NYT should be sorry, not me):

THERE was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!

....

And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.

....

Though General Petraeus wrote his 1987 Princeton doctoral dissertation on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,” he has an unshakable penchant for seeing light at the end of tunnels. It has been three Julys since he posed for the cover of Newsweek under the headline “Can This Man Save Iraq?” The magazine noted that the general’s pacification of Mosul was “a textbook case of doing counterinsurgency the right way.” Four months later, the police chief installed by General Petraeus defected to the insurgents, along with most of the Sunni members of the police force. Mosul, population 1.7 million, is now an insurgent stronghold, according to the Pentagon’s own June report.

....

Well, anyone can make a mistake. And when General Petraeus cited soccer games as an example of “the astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad last month, he could not have anticipated that car bombs would kill at least 50 Iraqis after the Iraqi team’s poignant victory in the Asian Cup semifinals last week. This general may well be, as many say, the brightest and bravest we have. But that doesn’t account for why he has been invested by the White House and its last-ditch apologists with such singular power over the war.

I hope that I have not gone beyond "fair use" in my quotes. If I have, I'll hear about it, if anyone takes note of my wee blog. If anyone finds a link to the whole article that is not behind the wall, let me know, and I will post it.

Just yesterday, I read this from the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - A key aide says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's relations with Gen. David Petraeus are so poor the Iraqi leader may ask Washington to withdraw the overall U.S. commander from his Baghdad post.

But then we will lose our "surrogate president".

Iraq's foreign minister calls the relationship "difficult." Petraeus, who says their ties are "very good," acknowledges expressing his "full range of emotions" at times with al-Maliki. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who meets with both at least weekly, concedes "sometimes there are sporty exchanges."

It seems less a clash of personality than of policy. The Shiite Muslim prime minister has reacted most sharply to the American general's tactic of enlisting Sunni militants, presumably including past killers of Iraqi Shiites, as allies in the fight against al-Qaida here.

An associate said al-Maliki once, in discussion with President Bush, even threatened to counter this by arming Shiite militias.

So. According to Maliki the relationship is "difficult", Petraeus says it's "very good", and Ambassador Crocker says they're only having "sporty exchanges". What are we to make of this?

I'm struck nearly dumb, but I'm glad Frank Rich can still speak.

I Know Not

As I was walking the other night, after saying my prayers (I find that my solitary walk is a wonderful time to pray), I thought about whether I would be with my grandchildren to see them grow up, and whether I would ever cross the ocean again to visit places I love, and which of us (Grandpère or me) would leave the other behind, and I realized that I didn't have the answer to any of the questions, and these few little words came to me:

I Know Not

What is my life to be?
I know not. I know not.
And will I cross the sea?
I know not. I know not.
And will you stay with me?
I know not. I know not.
Alas, I see! I see!
I know not what my life shall be.

June Butler - 7-27-07

The nightly walk seems to be the place where my muse (if I can call her that) and I meet up.

I hope this post does not seem morbid, because neither my thoughts nor the poem saddened me. It's the reality of human life. We are born. We die. The time between the two is what differs for each of us.

At least Oscar, the cat, hasn't curled up beside either Grandpère or me - yet.