Daniel Berrigan at 89

John Dear SJ

On the Road to Peace
National Catholic Reporter, May. 04, 2010

I'm in New York City this week, attending some of the peace events around the opening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference at the United Nations, and staying with Fr. Daniel Berrigan and the Jesuit Community. This past Good Friday, Dan was arrested at the U.S. Intrepid War Museum; he goes to court in June. May 9 is his 89th birthday.

To celebrate this friend and peacemaker, I offer this week excerpts from my long introduction to a great new anthology which I just published with Orbis Books, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings. In honor of Dan, let's keep going, following the nonviolent Jesus, working for justice and disarmament, and trusting the God of peace.

* * * * * *

Daniel Berrigan exemplifies a Christianity that works for peace, speaks for peace, and welcomes Christ's resurrection gift of peace, first of all to the poor and the enemy. Through word and deed, he has spent his life shedding new light on the Gospel of Jesus, pointing us toward a new world of nonviolence, a new future of peace if we but welcome the gift. His life work, he would say, is modest, but the cumulative effect of his writings and actions, I suggest, show us what the church might look like, what a Christian looks like in such times, indeed, what a human response looks like in an inhuman world.

Dan knows by heart that God does not bless war, justify war, or create war. He points to a nonviolent Jesus who blesses peacemakers, not warmakers; who calls us to love enemies, not kill them; who commands us to take up the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire -- not put others on the cross …

To my mind, Dan's writings are best understood as the fruit of his nonviolent actions and resistance, and as such, they stand within the tradition of resistance literature. But more, they join a legacy of spiritual writing that stretches from the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul through the poetry of St. Francis to the sermons of Archbishop Romero and Dr. King. Dan's writings fit in both categories: as resistance literature and spiritual writing. The genius of Daniel Berrigan is that for him, they are one and the same. All spiritual writing is political for it resists the culture of war and injustice by its very nature. All political writing for peace and justice is therefore quintessentially spiritual, for it points us toward the reign of God. This, I suggest, is the mark of a true spiritual master.

* * * * * *

Dan's contemplative rhythm of listening and going public puts him in the tradition of the towering prophets -- Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel -- who notwithstanding the vast distance in time, have become Dan's mentors and models. Like them, he denounces war, weapons, arms races, corrupt regimes, miscarriages of justice, assaults on human rights, and threats to widows and orphans, the unborn and prisoners. What makes Dan's critique so unique, according to one of his biographers, Francine du Plessix Gray, is his ‘startling’ use of language. Even his opponents sit up and take note.

For Dan, the spiritual life demands our encounter with the world, and thus, nonviolent resistance to its violence, in the tradition of the peacemaking Jesus. His early poems were, in his words, ‘sacramental,’ but his later poems took on the world and its wars and suffering, he says, because he himself began to taste some of its suffering. And so, Dan teaches not a comfortable spirituality -- with its private relationship to God -- but an uncomfortable spirituality that finds God in the poor, in the marginalized, and in the enemy and evokes loving action on their behalf.

‘Some people today argue that equanimity achieved through inner spiritual work is a necessary condition for sustaining one's ethical and political commitments,’ Dan writes. ‘But to the prophets of the Bible, this would have been an absolutely foreign language and a foreign view of the human. The notion that one has to achieve peace of mind before stretching out one's hand to one's neighbor is a distortion of our human experience, and ultimately a dodge of our responsibility. Life is a rollercoaster and one had better buckle one's belt and take the trip. This focus on equanimity is actually a narrow-minded, selfish approach to reality dressed up within the language of spirituality.’

‘I know that the prophetic vision is not popular today in some spiritual circles,’ he continues. ‘But our task is not to be popular or to be seen as having an impact, but to speak the deepest truths that we know. We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if doing so does not produce immediate results in the world.’

Dan finds the wherewithal to set his face against the tide of war in large part because of his daily Bible study. Indeed, like his brother Philip, Dan is a rare biblical person, one who wrestles with the Word of God day and night. ‘Open up the book of Jeremiah and you do not find a person looking for inner peace,’ Dan notes. Jeremiah cries out against injustice, then rejoices in the fulfillment of God's justice, he observes. ‘Jeremiah goes through mountains and valleys. That kind of richness I find very appealing, whereas the kind of spirituality that looks for a flat emotional landscape brought on by the endless search for inner peace and equanimity I find disturbing, a quest that goes nowhere.’

‘I draw from the prophets a very strong bias in favor of the victim and a very strong sense of judgment of evil structures and those who run them,’ Dan writes in his latest book, The Kings and Their Gods. The prophets and Christ, he writes, talk ‘about the God who stands at the bottom with the victims and with the ‘widows and orphans' and witnesses with them in the world, from that terrifying vantage point which is like the bottom of the dry well that Jeremiah was thrown in. That vantage point defines the crime and sin; that point of view of the victim indicts the unjust, the oppressor, the killer, the warmaker. And the message is very clear. It's a very clear indictment of every superpower from Babylon to Washington.’

Dan reaches such unlikely conclusions because he is thoroughly immersed in the text. He dares think that God can be taken at God‘s Word, most notably, in the Gospel message of Jesus. ‘I've been maintaining a new discipline,’ he told me casually a few years ago, at the height of Bush's war on Iraq. ‘First, I get as little of the bad news as possible. I only look at The New York Times once a week, if that, and occasionally the BBC. Second, I spend more time than ever with the good news, reading and meditating on the Gospel every morning, to be with Jesus.’

That, to my mind, is the job description of the modern day biblical prophet -- aware of the world, immersed in the Word of God, a kind of Barthian recipe for readying oneself to announce the Gospel in word and deed. Deed especially. It is Dan's nonviolent direct action which gives Dan's words such vigor and power. But it is his words that unpack his deeds and vision and inspire so many others.

‘The Word of God is spoken for the sake of today,’ Dan writes, ‘for ourselves. If not, it lies dead on the page. Lift the Word from the page, then -- take it to heart. Make of it the very beat of the heart. Then the Word comes alive -- it speaks to commonality and praxis. Do it -- do the Word.’ This is the advice of a post-modern spiritual master. And it rings true because its ancient wisdom was first tested by the early saints and martyrs.

His message is a consistent Gospel word -- ‘Do not kill. Do not support the culture of killing. Do all you can to stop the killing.’ He put it succinctly in an influential open letter to the Weathermen: ‘The death of a single human being is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.’

Over the decades, Dan has stayed faithful to the Gospel journey of peace. He keeps on walking the road to peace, one mindful step at a time, whether others do or not. ‘We walk our hope and that's the only way of keeping it going,’ he says. ‘We've got faith, we've got one another, we've got religious discipline and we've got some access that goes beyond the official wall.’

‘Peacemaking is tough, unfinished, blood-ridden,’ he told one interviewer. ‘Everything is worse now than when I started, but I'm at peace. I don't have to prove my life. I just have to live.’ The point for Dan is to be faithful to the God of peace and the Gospel of Jesus.

‘Nobody can sustain him or herself in the struggle for a nonviolent world on the basis of the criterion of immediate success,’ Dan writes. ‘The Bible gives us a long view rather than the expectation of a quick fix. All of us are in grave danger of being infected by this American ethos that good work brings quick change, rather than the older spiritual notion that good work is its own justification and that the outcome is in other hands besides ours.’

‘The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere,’ he says. ‘I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goes, what direction. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go.’

Daniel Berrigan remains faithful to his vocation and the vision of peace, calling us to do the same -- whether we're successful or not. The focus, he teaches, is on the God of peace, and so, ‘the outcome is in better hands than ours.’ With that, he insists, we can live in hope.

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 3 - 28 May 2010 Stay in touch - Join our list by April 29!

Dear ICAN Australia partners and friends

Want to stay in touch with the NPT? Join our list by April 29!


As you know the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will begin in New York at the United Nations in just under a fortnight.

From 3 – 28 May, our government and nearly every other in the world will be working on nuclear weapons disarmament and non-proliferation issues in the United Nations. But civil society has a huge and important role to play both there and back home too.

If you would like to be kept up-to-date about the events, discussion and our Governments behaviour at the NPT this year, please send a return email to this email address and I will add you to the list. Updates will come at least twice weekly (action alerts may be more often depending on what happens there).

ICAN Australia will have unique access to the conference through our project based in New York staffed by Tim Wright. This means we expect to have regular access and meetings with the Australian delegation, and a pair of good eyes on the spot to help us not miss a trick. In addition, we can all access the daily reports and the freshest analysis through the work of our dear friends and colleagues at WILPF’s Reaching Critical Will project. Our updates from the ICAN Australia office will keep you in the loop on what is important to know.

We will also confirm dates for a follow-up/debriefing meeting between NGOs and DFAT following the NPT (mid-late June) in both Sydney and Melbourne through this list.

Please note: ICAN partners will NOT automatically receive these updates if they haven’t signed on to the list! So reply directly to me by April 29 to join this NPT update list for May 2010.

Thanks
Dimity

PS: check out the wonderful ANF petition on our website now! http://icanw.org/node/5138

Dimity Hawkins
Campaign Director
ICAN Australia

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN)
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skype: Dimity_iCAN

Northern Territory intervention

Incarceration rates among Australia’s indigenous people bear comparison with the jailing of blacks in minority-ruled South Africa. Aborigines make up just 2.5% of the country’s population, but they account for nearly a quarter of all prisoners. In the Northern Territory, the ‘outback Australia’ made famous in the Crocodile Dundee films of comedian Paul Hogan, the proportion of those held under lock and key who are Aboriginal is a staggering 83%.

Under the ‘Northern Territory National Emergency Response’ – known to everyone else as ‘the Intervention’ – government ‘business managers’ have assumed draconian powers over Aboriginal communities, and acquired compulsory leases over Aboriginal township land.

Assumptions still run through government policies, imposed from Territory and federal authorities alike, as the wording through a stick of rock, that Aboriginal people need to be assimilated into the way of life, and forms of political organization, brought by westerners.

But a creative resistance movement to the Intervention is now taking shape.

Read more at: http://www.transcend.org/tms/2010/04/apartheid-is-alive-and-well/

And come to the International Peace Research Association conference, in Sydney, July 6-10, to be opened by Patrick Dodson, the ‘father of Aboriginal reconciliation’, and addressed by Professor Larissa Behrendt, the eminent Aboriginal legal scholar.

More details at www.iprasydney2010.org

Register and pay to attend the whole event at http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/peace_conflict/news/ipra2010.shtmlOr pay on the door: $95 daily rate; $50 for students.
--
Jake

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, BA, Dip Journalism Studies, PhD
Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Chair of Organizing Committee, IPRA conference 2010
Executive Member, Sydney Peace Foundation
Room 121 | Mackie Building (K01)
The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006
AUSTRALIA

p 61 2 9351 5440 | f 61 2 9660 0862
w www.arts.usyd.edu.au/cpacs
e jake.lynch@usyd.edu.au

Asylum seekers are not political footballs

© AFP Photo/Roslan RahmanI’ve just heard the most appalling news - the Australian Government has announced a blanket suspension on processing new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals.

Over 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrive here by boat are found to have genuine claims for protection.

The situation remains desperate for many people in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Activists, journalists, women and minority groups among others face real threats to their lives.

We cannot allow our politicians to use men, women and children fleeing persecution as political footballs. Join me and tell our Government to immediately reverse its freeze on applications by Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

As a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, we made a commitment to protect people at risk of torture, persecution and death. It's time to live up to our promises and show leadership on asylum and refugee issues.

Claire Mallinson
National Director
Amnesty International Australia

Tell our government to reverse this appalling policy move

Add your voice to global disarmament

Dear friends,


The US-Russia nuclear pact is a major step -- but experts are pleading with governments that disarmament is the only way to prevent a nuclear nightmare. Sign the petition calling for zero nukes and bring a powerful public voice to the crucial Nuclear Security Summit next week:

Just a few hours ago, President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia signed a new treaty on nuclear arms control.

It's a crucial step, and at just the right time. Next week could see the beginning of the end of all these monstrous weapons at a crucial global disarmament summit in Washington.

Experts are pleading with governments to disarm or risk disaster, but politicians cite the lack of a public movement on this issue. Let's show them where people stand -- sign the petition for "global zero" nuclear weapons -- it will be delivered directly to leaders at the summit!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/together_for_zero/?vl

There are over 23,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and as many as 13 countries are on the edge of building them. Experts say we can’t maintain the status quo -- the risks of regional nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, or catastrophic accidents are rising daily. The only workable solution is for all countries to give these weapons up.

Avaaz is helping to build the Global Zero campaign, backed by hundreds of former heads of state, foreign ministers, national security advisers, and thousands of grassroots activists across the world. Last year we saw that this movement can have influence -- over 115,000 Avaaz members signed a petition and helped secure a historic US-Russian agreement to slash their nuclear arsenals by one third!

But now we need stronger action globally: with fears of a Mideast nuclear arms race mounting, and tensions in the Korean Peninsula and Pakistan far from over, the chance of a military or terrorist nuclear attack remains a chilling threat.

The Presidents of the US and Russia have agreed in principle to Global Zero, but the hard part is getting them to do it in practice. The Washington summit next week is a major chance to hold them to their word. Let's join together and make sure our leaders hear a powerful call for Global Zero. Click below to sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/together_for_zero/?vl

With hope,

Luis, Ricken, Pascal, Ben, Alice, Raluca and the entire Avaaz team.

Reaching Zero, Jonathan Schell (The Nation):
hhttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20100419/schell/2

Huge cut in warheads banishes legacy of the Cold War, The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/huge-cut-in-warheads-banishes-legacy-of-the-cold-war-1928733.html

Obama Limits U.S. Use Of Nuclear Arms, New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/06/world/international-uk-nuclear-usa-review.html

Scrapping nuclear arms is now realpolitik. Six security experts urge America and Russia to act today
http://www.avaaz.org/the_times_nukes

More information about the Global Zero Campaign:
http://www.avaaz.org/the_times_nukes

Full Global Zero Action Plan available at:
http://www.globalzero.org/en/about-campaign

JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE STATEMENT: U.S. SETTLEMENT FUNDERS

As an organization that focuses on the critical role of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish Voice for Peace is deeply concerned by the ongoing activities of U.S. organizations whose 501c3 (non-profit) status enables them to raise money from American donors to support and maintain settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

In the Washington Post last year, David Ignatius noted that from 2004-2007, 28 U.S. tax exempt organizations raised $33.4 million in funding for settlements and related organizations.[1]

The construction of settlements in occupied territory is a violation of international law.

Non-profit settlement funders include New York-based Hebron Fund, which supports the extremist Jewish settlement of 700 settlers in the center of Hebron, making the area inaccessible and unlivable to its 150,000 Palestinian residents. Israeli organizations such as B’tselem describe the settlement in Hebron as a severe violation of the most basic human rights of the Palestinians in the city and an ongoing war crime.[2] The Hebron Fund contributes almost $1 million dollars annually to support this settlement.[3]

An additional example is Friends of Ir David, which raises money to expand Jewish settlement in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. From 2004-2006, Friends of Ir David contributed over $10 million dollars to activities that include fraudulent home purchases and ideological archaeological excavations that are used as a pretext to demolish Palestinian homes. Since 1967, thirty five percent of East Jerusalem has been taken over by the Jerusalem municipality for the sake of housing Jewish citizens—and changing the facts on the ground in anticipation of a final status settlement.[4]

While many of these organizations claim to merely fund “social and educational” activities, the Center Fund, also based in New York, contributed over 100,000 shekels (over $27,000) to the Od Yosef Chai Shechem yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar near Nablus. This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it was permissible to kill gentile babies because of "the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents." [5] The Center Fund also funds settler organized “security” organizations—ie, militias[6]. Indeed the violence from the Yitzhar settlement has been so pronounced that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described it as "pogroms against non-Jews."[7]

The Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities encourages churches and
ministries to connect with "the pioneers of Biblical Israel" through
the "adopt-a-settlement” program. The director of the organization’s Israeli office estimates that more than half the settlements in the West Bank receive direct or indirect support from Christian organizations.[8]

The impact of American dollars on helping settlers deepen and broaden their hold on Palestinian neighborhoods and cities is clear. These are just four examples of how U.S.-based organizations, taking advantage of their tax-exempt status, are contributing to creating “facts on the ground” in flagrant opposition to international law, as well as materially contributing to the ongoing human rights violations and daily misery of Palestinians struggling to survive and remain in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, these settlements, and their U.S. fundraising counterparts, are in no way outside the Jewish mainstream in either Israel or the United States. The Israeli beneficiary of Friends of Ir David, for example, known as Elad, has been in and out of a contractual relationship with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. That relationship gives Elad control over the very archaeological site that itis using to pursue its political goal of increasing Jewish control over Silwan The yeshiva in Yitzar funded by the Central Fund received over a million shekels in funding from Israel’s Education and Welfare ministries in 2007 and 2008. [9]

Even mainstream American non-profit organizations like Nefesh B’Nefesh, which works in partnership with the Jewish Agency to promote North American immigration to Israel, receives one third of its aliyah related funding from the Israeli Absorption Ministry each year. Nefesh B’Nefesh encourages North American Jews to move to settlements in the West Bank, both by promoting those “communities” on their website, without mentioning that they are situated in the West Bank, and by helping new immigrants access increased fiscal benefit packages they receive from the Israeli government for settling in West Bank settlements.[10]

Thus the Israeli settlement enterprise, despite an avowed settlement “freeze,” is a conscious target for expansion, aided and abetted both by the Israeli government and the American organizations that support them.

A STATEMENT FROM THE CONFERENCE OF MAJOR RELIGIOUS SUPERIORS SRI LANKA (CMRS)

We, the members of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Sri Lanka (CMRS) composed of Religious Congregations of priests, brothers and sisters, met on Tuesday 16th February 2010 at the CMRS Secretariat in Mutwal, during which grave concerns about the situation of our country were expressed.

The lamentable erosion of moral values, the lawlessness that prevails, and the impunity with which the wrongdoers are protected, have led to a loss of faith in the democratic process and even just governance. On the whole there is a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
Impacted by the perception of the current events and trends in our society, we as a Religious body cannot but heed the call of God to respond to the signs of the times. Desirous of being faithful to our Prophetic calling as consecrated persons, we call upon the people of our country and especially the political leaders to respect the Rule of Law and basic Human Rights which are inherent part of the democratic process, and uphold the principles of reconciliation, forgiveness, freedom of media, freedom of speech and the right to dissent.


Sr. Bernadette Fernando SCC

Executive Secretary CMRS