grief Posts

There's some interesting follow-up on the Cindy Sheehan "resignation" (see yesterday's post). One fellow I corresponded with years ago gave a donation then sent an email urging us not to fall into despair. It's hard.

Go beyond Democratic Party fronts like MoveOne and you'll find the most of the peace movement is a ridiculously shoestring operation. Nonviolence.org's four month "ChipIn" fundraising campaign raised $50 per month but the sacrifice isn't just short-term--just try applying for a mainstream job with a resume chock full of social change work!

Michael Westmoreland-White over on the Levellers blog talks about keeping going through the despair:

This is a cautionary tale for the rest of us, including myself. Outrage, righteous indignation, anger, public grief, are all valid reactions to war and human rights abuses, but they will get us only so far. They may strain marriages and family life. They may lead to speech and action that is not in the spirit of nonviolence and active peacemaking. And, since imperialist militarism is a system (biblically speaking, a Power), it will resist change for the good. Work for justice and peace over the long haul requires spiritual discipline, requires deep roots in a spirituality of nonviolence, including cultivating the virtue of patience.

Michael's answer is specifically Christian but I think his advice to step back and attend to the roots of our activism is wise despite one's motivations.

Sheehan's retirement didn't stop her from talking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now this morning. She talks about cash-starved peace activists and contrasts them with the tens of millions presidential candidates are raising, most of which will go to big media TV networks for ads. Sheehan says we need more than just an antiwar movement:

Like, ending the Vietnam War was major, but people left the movement. It was an antiwar movement. They didn’t stay committed to true and lasting peace. And that’s what we really have to do.

More Cindy Sheehan reading across the blogosphere available via Google and Technorati.

And for those looking for a little good news check out the brand new site for the Global Network for Nonviolence. I designed it for them as part of my freelance design work but it's been a joy and a lot of fun to be working more closely with a good group of international activists again. Their nonviolence links page includes sites for some really committed grassroots peacemakers. This long-term peace work may not give us headlines in the New York Times but it's touched millions over the years. If humanity is ever going to grow into the kind of culture of peace Sheehan dreams of then we'll need a lot more wonderful projects like these.

Sad news coming over the internet: after 100 days of captivity, Christian peacemaker Tom Fox was found dead yesterday in iraq, the status of his three companions unknown.

The Christian peacemaker Teams issued an elegant and heartfelt statement beginning "In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion." Fox knew the risk he was taking going to iraq unarmed. But he also knew that this witness  would mean more to the iraqi people than a hundred tanks. He knew the war we peacemakers wage is the Lamb's War, a war won not through strength but through meekness, our only weapon our humilty before God and our love of neighbor. Our prayers are with his family and friends, may God's comfort continue to hold them through these aching times.

More history and resources on our Christian peacemaker Team Watch

Sad news coming over the internet: after 100 days of captivity, Christian Peacemaker Tom Fox was found dead yesterday in Iraq, the status of his three companions unknown.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams issued an elegant and heartfelt statement beginning "In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion." Fox knew the risk he was taking going to Iraq unarmed. But he also knew that this witness  would mean more to the Iraqi people than a hundred tanks. He knew the war we Friends wage is the Lamb's War, a war won not through strength but through meekness, our only weapon our humilty before God and our love of neighbor. My prayers are with his family and friends, may Christ's comfort continue to hold them through these aching times.

More history and resources on my Christian Peacemaker Team Watch

Our grief goes out to the ever-higher number of known victims of the earthquake and tsuamis in southern Asia. Nonviolence isn't just protesting politicians, it's also about supporting our brothers and sisters in time of need. As of this writing, the death tool from the earthquake and tsuami has climbed over 140,000. That's many times the 3000 who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That's more than the estimate of 100,000 iraq civilians that have died in the two years since the U.S. led invasion. We humans seem to do a good job of creating mass misery for ourselves but nature can strike harder, faster. Who can truly imagine such instant, unexpected mass death?

Please consider a generous donation to a relief organization like the American Red Cross or American Friends Service Committee. Please also write letters to your respective governments: more can be done.

Update: reader Ric Moore says "Helping in Tsunami is good, but donors should be aware that donations to the American Red Cross go to a general response fund, whereas the International Red Cross has Tsunami relief separated (Thanks for the tip Ric!)

http://donate.ifrc.org/

Nonviolence.org readers may not be aware that my personal site has been the talk of the political internet for the last few days. Since posting an account of getting a phone call from a CBS News publicist, I've been linked to by a Who's Who of blogging gliteratti: Wonkette, Instapundit, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased, etc. For a short time yesterday, the story was a part of the second-ranked article on Technorati's Politics Attention index.

A hack from CBS News called me to say they were doing a program on an issue that's central to Nonviolence.org's mandate: conscientious resistance to military service. After looking over the material, I thought the interviews of resisters who have fled to Canada would be interesting to my readers and so wrote a short entry on it. Thinking it all a little funny that a publicist would care about Nonviolence.org, I mentioned the incident in the "Stories of Nonviolence.org" section of my personal site. One by one the leading political sites of the blogosphere have run the story as further proof of the vast left-wing mainstream media conspiracy. It's rather funny actually.

I have to wonder is who's kidding who with all this feigned outrage? For those missing the irony gene: the Nonviolence.org PayPal account currently has a balance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last donation--$5.00 back on November 20th. My corner of the left wing conspiracy is funded by the vast personal wealth I accumulate as a bookstore clerk.

Wonkette's pages advertise "sponsorship opportunities," she's a recent cover girl on New York Times Magazine, her husband is an editor at New York magazine and in October she cashed out her blogging fame for a $275,000 advance for her first novel ("It's not Bridget Jones does Washington, it's Nick Hornby does politics": good grief). Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for Sandra Day O'Connor), teaches law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the Times. Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds teaches law at the University of Tennessee, has served on White House advisory panels, and is a paid correspondent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the others, calls a two minute phone call "recruiting"?

I'm beginning to think the real interest comes from the fact that this top tier of bloggers is totally in bed (literally) with the MSM. Their income comes from their connections with media and political power. Their carefully-crafted fascade of snarkish independence would crumble if their phone logs were made public. They're not really blogging in their pajamas, folks.

By mentioning the existance of blog publicists, I've threatened to blow their cover. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtains: my social gaffe was in publicly admitting that the mainstream media courts political blogs. Kudos to journalist Derek Rose on admitting the practice:

But why shouldn't a news organization's publicity department court bloggers? As a MSM member, I get emails from TV flacks all the time promoting their scoops. From ABC, for example, I've received emails regarding a tape they got of the Beltway sniper's call to the Rockville police; Barbara Walters' Hillary Clinton interview; and their 'Azzam the American' video ... as well as a Rush Limbaugh drug laundering story that never panned out. I even got attention from publicists when I was working for a newspaper that didn't have a 20th of the circulation of Instapundit...

Rose aside, there's incredible distortion in the "reporting," a term I have to use very loosely. Wonkette says "Kelley claims that a CBS minion put the screws to him to post something about a '60 Minutes' package on conscientious objectors" yet all readers have to do is follow the link to see I never said anything like that. Why do the cream of bloggers feel like a posse of self-absorbed seventh graders? When I started Nonviolence.org back in 1995, I thought the brave new political world of the internet might be All the President's Men. Boy was I wrong: it turns it's just Heathers. God help us.

There's that famous scene in the 1968 movie "Planet of the Apes" when our astronaut protagonist Charlton Heston realizes that the spaceship that brought him to the land where apes rule didn't travel in space but in time. He's escaping the primate theocracy, heading north along the coast, when he rounds a corner to see the charred ruin remains of the Statue of Liberty lying in the sand. He falls to his knees and screams out "YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!" He realizes that it was his own people who had destroyed everything they loved with their inattention and pettiness.

Yesterday my old friend Chris Parker posted a comment to "The Lost Quaker Generation" essay where he wondered if "the Quaker community has lost its vitality" (scroll down to third entry). I first met Chris at a 1997 conference in Burlington NJ for "Quaker Volunteer Service, Training, & Witness". I had been excited by the prospect of a group of people deepening and exploring the roots of Quaker witness and wasn't disappointed with the conversations and new friendships. Chris a recent MDiv from the Earlham School of Religion now now working at the AFSC; he left the conference passionate about helping to create something new. While working with the AFSC, he started pulling together a national Quaker network of volunteer opportunities. This was a ministry, pure and simple, from one of the more active, visionary and hardworking twenty-something Friends I've known. But frustrations mounted, support evaporated. As I remember even his monthly meeting couldn't unify around supporting this ministry. The project eventually fell apart as our email correspondence grew sketchy.

A month or so ago I got an email from Chris with his new address, a yoga retreat center in New England. I responded back with personal news but also with regrets that Quakerism had apparently lost him. Part of his comments from yesterday:

Well, I'm one of these thirty somethings that has drifted away. I'm sure each of us has our own story. I did try to help organize, but that turned out to be a bitter and unsuccessful experience. A long story for another time. But the spirit flows in many directions and if the Quaker community has lost it's vitality or doesn't work for some people, there are other places there. Holding on too tightly to Quakerism is to hold on to a human creation.

I am now living and working at Kripalu yoga center, a place that many call a spiritual home. We have 60,000 people on our mailing list, of whom about 68% have come here as a guest. There are about 30,000 unprogrammed Quakers.

He's right of course: Kripalu undoubtedly touches more spiritual lives than unprogrammed Quakerism. But the real lesson is that Kripalu knows what a gem they have in Chris: they've given him the kind of responsibilities and encouragement that Quakers didn't.

Chris was one of those involved Friends I had hoped to grow old with. I had imagined us running into each other in half a dozen committees over the next fifty years. We could have gone on backpacking trips together, invited each other to our kids' weddings, had catch-up lunches at Quaker conferences, consoled each other through grief, thought about how to "transmit our faith" to the next generation of Friends. Chris Parker was worth more to Quakerism than any number of outreach initiatives or peace networks. Chris was the real deal: a committed, impassioned Friend. And now he's one of Quakerism's scarred and rusted statues, tributes to what could have been.

He put his story up on a website way back when. I'm just going to extensively quote it here:

I feel an urgency about this project because it has come to me that Quakers are about to be needed by the larger culture. Underneath the ills we face as a nation is a spiritual problem of violence and dominance over other people and life. Friends have a tradition that presents an alternative. The essential gem of Quakerism is the knowledge that each person is part of the divine, that we need to treat everybody as equal and sacred. While I am comfortable with more witness than Friends usually muster, I do believe that faith is more easily caught than taught. Service has been an experience where many are exposed to Quakers, with the opportunity to inspire and bring transformations.

But the Society of Friends is not in great shape. Friends are unfocused and tired. Often young adult Friends are missing. I have listened jealously to an ear-lier generation tell how AFSC workcamps formed them and taught them how to be leaders. While Quakerism is very good for seekers, my generation seems to need an experience given to them, which is a different energy. My friends from Brethren Volunteer Service were inspired and equipped for a life of commitment they probably wouldn't have otherwise choosen.

My inspirations have assembled slowly over the last six years. I went to Earlham School of Religion to prepare to be of service. There I was inspired by friends who had participated in Brethern Volunteer Service. At the same time I worked as Assistant Director of a peer counseling program where I watched the teens blossom and transform when trusted with the opportunity to help others and have a real impact.

Can Quakerism survive if we can't keep Friends like this?