Being Radical by Just Being

Jarrod’s post about Brian McLaren reminded me to post up a link to Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. I’ve only read the excerpt from ch5 (3.1mb pdf) but wow! What great stuff.

A few powerful quotes:

Charity wins awards and applause, but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.

and

We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

The chapter is full of anecdotes about living in an urban slum in Philadelphia. The Simple Way community is just trying to keep it simple: love God, love people, follow Jesus. The ‘constructive program’ of nonviolence at work.

Shane and the gang at the Simple Way remind me of a great phrase, I think from Daniel Berrigan, about how we need to start “living as if the truth was really true” – sounds like they do just that.

Carole Powell’s court sentencing statement

Statement given on 2 August 2007

Your honour, before sentencing me I would ask you to take into consideration that I have been working as a nurse for 33 years. A role that helps to heal and save lives. A role where I have seen first hand the devastation reeked on young men who have had their arms and legs blown off by bombs. I have heard them scream in the night at the total horror of it. I have seen the psycho-social and physical effects that war has bought to veterans of WW2, Vietnam and the Gulf War and the impact that has on their families.

I currently work in palliative care where I help people achieve a spiritually and physically pain free death and preserve the dignity of their humanity.

I have friends from Iraq, Sudan and South America who have lost their countries to war.

I am also a catholic Christian – a committed follower of the nonviolent Jesus, a prophet of peace. The same man who on the night of his arrest told the disciples to ‘put away your sword’. The man who said ‘Love your enemies’ and ‘What ever you do unto another you do unto me’. His example of living is an integral part of a Christian life, not an optional extra.

I would ask your honour to bear with me whilst I read a quote form an Italian journal called La Civilta Cattolica written post Persian Gulf War 1991.

War almost never ends war with true peace: it always leaves behind a remnant of hatred and a thirst for revenge, which will explode as soon as the opportunity offers its self. That is why the human story has been a series of unending wars. War initiates a spiral of hatred and violence, which is extremely difficult to stop. War is therefore useless, since it solves no problems, and makes them insoluble. [1]

Bearing that in mind and the fact that I have exhausted all the usual means available to me, writing to politicians – especially the prime minister and the Defence Ministers Robert Hill and Brendan Nelson, participating in street marches, writing letters to newspapers I decided the only way I could now make a difference was to go to the military personnel, human to human, and enter into dialogue with them and invite them into an alternative to being part of war. To use their innumerable skills in more life giving ways.

I would like to ask your honour to consider then that my action was like an ambulance with its sirens on running a red light to save lives. I went there to save lives – which I saw as a moral imperative.

[1] Quoted in John Dear, The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence, Orbis Books,1994

Powerful peace testimonies

The Talisman Sabre wargames sparked some powerful nonviolent protest.

Out of that, two statements testify to the power of faith in nonviolence in a world of near-total war. These could easily be used as opening or closing meditations for Pace e Bene workshops!

1. Imagining Peace – the statement by 5 Christian peace activists about why they walked on to the wargames site.
2. Carole Powell’ s statement to the court on 2/8/07, explaining how she came to be involved in that action.

Avoiding the post-lunch lull

Gill and I facilitated a very rewarding day-long Engage introduction program on the Central Coast on Saturday. The feedback at the end was positive about the mix of standing & sitting, high-energy & personal reflection, etc.

One person commented that the ‘post-lunch lull’ was hard for him. Because of where we were up to in the program, Gill used the first forty minutes or so after lunch for the ‘3 ways of responding to violence’ and the ‘2 hands of nonviolence’ exercises, both done personally and/or as ‘body learning’ exercises. At the time I thought they went very well, but in hindsight I can see that maybe we needed more high-energy exercises at that time.

The problem is, we can’t just mix up the order to suit the energy cycles of the day! So what’s the solution?

King and Jesus

I came across a great article today about Martin Luther King Jr and Jesus as prophets of nonviolence. Quoting Rev James Lawson, himself a great hero of the US Civil Rights movement, Ched Myers says “If you want to understand King you must look at Jesus.” But Myers then adds: “… but the converse also applies: if we want to understand Jesus, we would do well to look at King.”

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