Daniel Berrigan – Engaging Peace

CHIMES OF FREEDOM

Posted on May 28, 2020May 28, 2020 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

William James, Mark Twain, I. F. Stone. Emma Goldman, Helen Keller, Molly Ivins. Jim Hightower, John Pilger, William Blum. Lewis Lapham, Michael Parenti, Victor Wallis. Vandana Shiva, Joan Baez, Naomi Klein. Ami Goodman, Abby Martin, Daniel Berrigan.

David Talbot, James Douglass, Thich Nhat Hanh. Oscar Romero, the Dalai Lama, Dan Ellsberg. And, of course, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. These are just a few of the torch-bearers of the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and John Lennon.

Peace is possible. Progress has been made. Meanwhile, the struggle continues.

A crisis can be ongoing and deepening for a very long time. This has been the case with the USA for forty years at least. 1968 might well be seen as the pivot point. The full and fatal swerve toward economic apartheid and the rollback of FDR’s New Deal began in earnest in 1981 with Reaganomics. The hammer-blows against social enlightenment have kept the war machine in full throttle and kept too many Americans in thrall to sloganeering and sophistry.

The earth groans, bees disappear, and in 2020 the wasteland grows.

But danger is also opportunity. Breakdown is often breakthrough.

Behind the news there is a global dance. A collective invitation to give peace a chance.

What is true for the individual is true for the whole. Fate is determined by the choices we make. Let us use our freedom wisely. What Kant said at the end of the 18^th century is true now: “We live in an age of enlightenment; but we do not yet live in an enlightened age.”

Perhaps the essence of life really is learning and service. Siddhartha Gautama, Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton thought so. I believe it too.

Keep the faith, my friend. We may yet be on the verge of something great. A turning of the civilizational wheel toward the wisdom of James and Twain and company. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Blessed are the peacemakers

Posted on July 31, 2018August 1, 2018 by kathiemm

Lewis Randa, Rededication ceremony, Peace Abbey, July 29, 2018

By Kathie MM

They will be called children of God, by whatever name God is known.

Blessed are the peacemakers for confronting violence with nonviolence, for speaking truth to power, for persisting with limited resources against the forces of greed and destruction, for joining hands in sister and brotherhood when so many others spew hatred and harm, for being brave beacons of peace while cutthroat cowards promote war for profit, for honoring and preserving life on earth while all around them lives are being destroyed with arrogant disregard.

This past Sunday, the Peace Abbey, in Sherborn, Massachusetts—one of the thousands if not millions of local peace and social justice organizations around the world–had a rededication ceremony at the Peace Memorial. In particular, they honored Muhammad Ali, Howard Zinn, Maya Angelou, Daniel Berrigan, Betsy Sawyer, Jeanette Rankin, Rachel Corrie, Corbett Bishop and Kenneth and Elise Boulding—courageous peacemakers, bless them all.

Please enjoy some photos from the event and the Abbey, and excerpts from the dedication poem by Stefan Schindler, a frequent contributor to engaging peace. If you would like a copy of the whole poem, please submit your request as a comment on this post.

A PRAYER POEM

by Stefan Schindler

I know that freedom is a slippery slope.

I know that children give us hope.

I know that rainbows bless the sky.

I know that Gandhi is the reason why

the bells of freedom ring

in the echoes of the voice of Martin Luther King.

And, yes, the saints and sages of the ages … will long sing praises

to the extraordinary story … of Rachel Corrie.

Hence we now recall that noble soul … whose goal was peace;

she gave her life so that war should cease.

Ah, Rachel, you died too young; just barely beyond

the age of 21; your life’s song … just barely sung.

Long indeed may your story be told; your bravery so bold.

You showed courage of conscience beyond measure.

Your life, and example, we shall always treasure.

Thus we promise to pause, every now and then,

to think of you … alongside Daniel … in the lions den.

With holy courage and conscience you took a stance,

and gave your life … to give peace a chance….

Green fields and forests the fruit of our toil;

nourished we are by earth’s rich soil.

With kindred spirit of animals and friends,

we trek the valleys and round the bends

of the river of time that never ends.

Yes, we too are pilgrims on Abbey Road.

Say, brother, let me carry that load.

United by Buddha’s Dharma-Gate tether, we frolic

in strawberry fields forever; with one who knows a love supreme,

the voice resounding: “I have a dream.”

Final note from KMM: if you want peace, value peace, hope and pray for peace for your children and granschildren, then work for peace and give to peace. Please support local peace organizations like Engaging Peace and the Peace Abbey. Volunteers and activists earn their way to Heaven, but donations help their work on earth.

Conscience and Consciousness

Posted on September 25, 2016September 25, 2016 by kathiemm

Blessed are the Peacemakers by George Bellows. Anti-war cartoon depicting Jesus with a halo in prison stripes alongside a list of his seditious crimes. First published in The Masses in 1917. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or less.

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., September 25, 2016

“Call to Conscience”

The “Call to Conscience” is a noble call, sanctified and consecrated by the sacrifices of peacemakers.

With uncommon courage and conviction, notable peacemakers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott, Glenn Paige, Bell Hooks, Mairead McGuire, Antonio DeRosa, Dalai Lama, Daisaku Ikeda, and scores of others, modeled “conscience” as a way-of-life, accepting the quest for peace must be nurtured and sustained with the totality of one’s being . . . each breath an affirmation of commitment.

When Jesus of Nazareth, in his “Sermon on the Mount,” stated: “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus invited all to assume the role of peacemakers. Those accepting his anointing have refused to be silenced in the face of oppression. From Jesus to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., peacemakers have endured criticism, condemnation, and persecution from those with wealth, power, and position, those benefitting from the outcomes of war.

To the wealthy, powerful, positioned, and war-hawks content with distance from human suffering, indifferent to the pains and sorrows of victims of violence, war, and prejudice, oblivious to the consequences of self-indulgence, I say you risk eternal damnation as your children behold with contempt your lack of conscience, your failure to model peace.

The “Call to Conscience” requires courage amidst abuse. There is, however, no lamentation among peacemakers. This is the paradox! For peacemakers, the rewards of advocacy ensure their legacy will endure because it affirms human dignity. For peacemakers, mockeries of justice, inequalities of opportunity, denials of hope, distortions of truth, and corruptions of law, compel advocacy!

Peacemakers are not idealists; Peacemakers are realists! Peacemakers awaken humanity to “consciousness!” This fact is testimony to the promise: “Peacemakers will inherit the earth.”

Consciousness

“Conscience” cannot be separated from “consciousness,” nor can “consciousness” from “conscience.” What do I mean?

The very act of seeking and making peace releases us from normal states of human existence. The release sanctions a state of “transcendence,” a state of “consciousness,” a new level of being. It is a release from an isolated self pre-occupation to an awareness of connection to each other and to the cosmos in which we live.

“Consciousness” compels exercising responsibilities, duties, and obligations to speak and to act for peace; implicit within “consciousness,” is a moral impulse to advance and benefit the human condition. Inherent within this recognition, is the awareness “life is sacred!”

The splendor and majesty of “consciousness” is the liberation of our being. “Consciousness” brings a new way-of-knowing (i.e., epistemology), and new way of behaving (i.e., praxiology). It unleashes new ways of understanding human nature (i.e., ontology).

Can anything more be asked? “Conscience” and “consciousness” are the keys to awakening the human spirit, too long subdued and contained by comforts of convention. Peacemaking is the path! Discover its virtues! Join the icons of peace, finding in them, and with them, a transcendent vision and experience of the grandeur of life. Accept the “Call to Conscience.”

Author: Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.

A Mom Model for all Moms

Posted on May 10, 2015January 4, 2016 by kathiemm

Activist Frida Berrigan at an anti-war rally in Newark, New Jersey, 2007.
Image by Thomas Good, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

For this Mother’s Day, in addition to honoring my own Mom for over 90 years of loving motherhood, I want to celebrate the work of another model of moral engagement—Frida Berrigan. Frida is a long-term peace activist (and yes, she is related to the famous Philip and Daniel Berrigans, who are themselves long-term anti-war activists). She is a columnist for Waging Nonviolence and serves on the National Committee of the War Resisters League.

For Mother’s Day 2015, Frida has written a poignant and captivating essay “Echoes of the original Mother’s Day Proclamation at home and abroad“, which celebrates women who struggle valiantly for peace and justice in 28 active war zones around the world (including the US).

Her examples include:

Madame Kamouss from the Central Republic of Africa

Froilyn Mendoza from the Philippines, and

Shereen, a Syrian refugee who lives with her daughters in a refugee camp in Kawergosk, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Her list also includes the mothers of Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, and Sean Bell, whose sons were killed in the U.S. by police officers in the last few years; all of these mothers are pushing for non-violent protests against injustice.

Frida is also the author of “It Runs in the Family: On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood,” which includes considerations of how to rear children non-violently—without spanking, hitting, and similar time-worn-out methods, which many mothers of today are gradually replacing with love, kindness, empathy and other non-violent approaches to parenting.