9th letter

Dear

Your letter reduces my restlessness. Could it be that this voice which haunts me here has evil designs? If I am so relieved to meet words like yours, at least that tells me it only summoned me to an irresolute end.

For sometime I felt stalked by it as the cell gradually shrank my imagination. A hunter took aim and fired; the bullet burst through my spleen. The toxins at first released, but with the worst, followed my entrails and they escaped to the open. I had been whiling about beginning to become concerned about my gutlessness; although my courage dragged after me, still my temperature fled before my chasing heart. This was the state your letter found me in—like a deer betrayed by an err bullet. I had missed the fatal aim set upon me by the grace of God.

I kept running

in faith.

Now you bring me the long-awaited rest. If brief, the solace you afford me has restored me to innocence. Your prayers repair my injury and by faith make me a sign of supernatural saving grace, and even my secular setting has its sacramental dimension: In thanksgiving. You preserve me, oh prayer warrior, with shelter in Him,

8th letter

Dear

Thank God for your letter. Earlier I felt so edgy here; it’s embarrassing. I’m sorry to let these walls make me shaky; at least I might learn from them to stand firm.

This cell resounds with so many voices that I envy concrete for remaining unmoved, but then I hold a letter like yours, grateful to consist mainly of water. Mineral, pure, am not. At least in reading such words as yours, my vulnerability seems a blessing. The walls can do nothing with what they receive, not that an architect has not positioned them to uphold…what sound they make, echo, while we humans absorb and transmute.

I read a message in your letter that went all through me. A whale calls from the deep, a dolphin just beneath the surface, yet your soul sent signal at every depth. Not every pitch can I hear, yet the message has not lost its audibility in my ears. Is it my confinement that helps me to hear the signals with comprehension? A wall I could be, deaf to what you say, but I respond, imperfect and heartfelt, a soul in communion.

Please keep transmitting such truth that, one day, the total meaning may at last be hard. The cell here has its voices and you join them, bless them, a word that does more than echo hollowly. Yours is held, enshrined, redeeming us in our captivity for God’s true end.

7th letter

Dear

If I misunderstand your letter today, I trust that my answer will pique a second-coming of your question. The matter of witness does not too much difference make. Nor the difference it make render little sway, in matter. Still, ground for a rebuttal has of authority been revealed.

These lines of answer derive from the swell of the grounds themselves, that unfortunately fester like a malignant cancer issued forth, I fear, from the very inclimate terrain on whose threshold my passage appeared, violate. However immune these grounds presented themselves, my witness was but a laughable prick, yet as my conviction and sentence proved, the puss burst forth.

The alleged criminality of my action only evinces the great need for healing, for it is so slight a penetration is made; by my act, how deep the wound was lanced. Consider revising your question if no impression has been made. I offer you my love and above all things would cherish another moment of equanimity, the very gift of writing you.

Blessed by the letter you wrote, I am aligned with the rightness of that desire which impelled your outreach to me. May every word increase in the faith from which all inspiration springs. With love,

6th letter

Dear

Your letter brings me comfort. Until it pierced my anxiety, I had enjoyed a frightened mind, pacing my cell in consternation, burrowing into myself with the dull spoon of second-guessing.

It was your letter, which I read on the toilet, that came (with great relief:) to extol glad tidings. I flushed the trouble that vexed me and reconsidered all that was before so worrisome.

Your letter reproved that phantom attachment of mine which I share with our enemies, namely, the conceit of a consumptive artist. If among this nation the spirit of envy had not so persuaded us, then I believe your testimony correct. You address the greed our nation pretends to conceal with majestic good neighborliness, and I agree that the symbol the SOA stands for is like the peacock—that vainglorious pursuit of geopolitical dominance. For a nation state to have pernicious citizens is for a body to have endemic weakness, a parasite, yet only the interior constipation can alert the body to consume more balanced meals. Likewise, the conscience inflicts compunction and the nonviolent reject cooperation.

Peaceable dominions arise from the agents who make manifest their conscience. You recall in me no greater purpose than this.

5th letter

Dear

Your letter came when I felt wrung out; the delivery of mail shifted my consciousness from its dip into self-pity into the potent self-awareness of my relationship with you and in other ways reaffirmed the greater order at work in the world.

For weeks I anticipated the opportunity of a setting in which the possible of God’s Kin_dom could be that much easier to pronounce.

I find that here my fellows meet our Maker in the mundane. The rare time comes when a dispiriting mood takes us all at once—but it happens, and the evil grips us like a vice. The horrifying pressure exerted upon us then seems not only man made but demented and diabolical. Then we know hell by the fingertips, out touch desensitized, our imagination a palate of starch, overboiled. Hunger even for mush would suggest our souls animate, but this slackens until we only faintly notice an ache in our bones. At times the walls seem to flux under the heaviness; they lean in as if to smother us but even that, it seems, could be a kindness. No, not all of it goes away when mail is announced, but then the magic of the wizard of oz was nothing preternatural either.

A word from you suffices though to assure that my humanity itself was fashioned in the image and likeness of God. With thanks,

4th letter

Dear

Thank you for your conviction and dedication. The words you write state clearly the task before us: to mince words no longer and in ones action bring glad tidings to the world. The Kin_dom comes!

You wrote a testimony that touches me deeply. I trust the Holy Spirit shines through you to offer these words as seeds of contemplation. I have asked myself similar questions about our call to become Christians and in your writing I find my answer.

You speak of the most essential thing: not courage, per se, but he thinking heart. The core strength of this movement to vigil at Ft. Benning, in my opinion, has this same characteristic. We act to preserve our integrity as human beings in relation, a people endowed with inalienable communal responsibilities, among these solidarity, self-abnegation and the pursuit of planetary eco-consciousness.

The testimony shared in your letter elicits in me a greater desire to participate in the Great task set to us by God: to be Christ’s hands and feet, yes and ears.

I am made more human by you.

3rd letter

Dear

Thank you for writing in support of my cause.

I accept the consequence of my sentence to serve time incarcerated because I respect laws and institutions. My conscience impelled me to act in a symbolic witness of solidarity to demonstrate the call of Christ for our time. With the inevitability of the charge and the sentence, no amount of dissuasion out of concern (for my well being in prison) could deter me from giving voice to the voiceless.

Today you bear the witness. In your letter your words reveal to me the faith that heals. I am grateful for any encouragement since I know it comes from the Holy Spirit. You seem to me a prophet, seeing me and calling out the truth of my deepest conviction. What I read emboldens me to hold fast in truth to my brothers and sisters, the dead and the living, who manifest the beloved community. I find healing in your words for they strengthen my resolve in the faith that truth shall overcome.

Thank you, dear prophet, for calling forth from me all that love requires.

2nd letter

Dear

What a letter! In you all my hopes and dreams thrive; what a miracle to hear them coming true. That is, you write in such clean sweeping boldness that every pinch of dusty discrepancy, every self-impeding fatalism, is swept up and cleared. My soul knows itself in the love-ordered world from which you write. Thank God for you and the desire that impels your epistolary effort. Know that the soulforce that enlivens us both has now enabled me to transcend my surroundings and restore with God my human dignity.

Praise be to God. I never doubted that someone like you could exist out there today. Your work has the ineffable, the indescribably quality of Christ-like compassion. From this ongoing work of yours, even the moments of meditation with which you wrote reveal the habitus so pulsating, so interiorized in you. When my captors tempt me with despair I can laugh with more dramatic irony than ever. We know what this life has in store for us. All we need has in our heart already been stocked; the beloved like you need only display it.

In His way,

1st letter

Dear

Your letter arrived today with an expected grace. I knew the impossible would nevertheless make itself moveable through the efforts of giants like you. Your testimony proves this; the work in which you occupy yourself makes obvious the unseen and unimagined possibility of God’s love.

I glimpse the threshold of God’s designs when reading the sketch of your encouragement to me. All the faith underlying your words brings me such amazement and newfound joy. This treasured letter of yours says more in a few care-packed words than all the bloated legal volumes men ever construed. I swear that in a message like yours you enliven in me the conviction that unceasing prayer shall turn the tide of wanton jurisprudence. Indeed, you write to dispel the darkness of my surroundings. How transparent your love, how blind my captors to the import of your letter. For with such soulforce, no bars can bind, no walls can seal, no monotony nullify—for through words such as yours my zealous love of God awakens.

The angel whispering such inspirations into your ear has, now, appeared to me and hear I am, convinced. I allay my disbelief and trust in the love of God for us all. We shall overcome.

Across the line--Epilogue

Epilogue: We make bold statements and God laughs. Remember the place called Babel? "5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” (Genesis 11: 5-7) I would be lying if I denied the dips of desolation I've experienced since my action. The confusion of the dispersed from Babel corresponds to my own intermittent post-partum funkiness.

I find sympathy with those who disengaged after the French Resistance. It seemed to many of the resistance that the vigor and preciousness of life, having been forced from the ivory tower into the precarious realm of politics, could not so easily be maintained once stability returned to the world. They sunk into a malaise and deplored the banal with declarations like: Watermelon will taste fine or foul depending on whether one's taste has accomodated salt. To put it indirectly in Between Past and Futre, the philosopher of the Holocaust Hannah Arendt cites a tale of Kafka in which the narrator has been asked to umpire two in a fight. The invitation itself was prompted by the narrator's experience struggling between the two adversaries; while one mauled him from behind, the other pummeled him in his face. She took it as an allegory for the dyspepsia of the retired resistance, a condition good for allowing reflection, yet one cursed too by what she calls the 'banality of evil'. Between past and future, when goodness withdraws, evil surges forth to conceal present meaning. In short, they despised their new position as authorities. They resented being sought after to bestow meaning on a time punctured by immorality, that is, while speaking from another time. Meanwhile disintegration itself was rapidly becoming convex per the inflation of dispirited postmoderns.

For a short while this week I disengaged and fasted from the computer for three days just imagining a future of confinement in solidarity with David Omandi and Fr. Louie. As an experiment of the truism that language is your politics, I lifted myself from the pages of Arendt to pen the following. It concludes with my irritation of being labeled a human rights activist...though I could not yet positively proclaim my hope.

Querido Kairos,

He pedido el gran favor de John si se pudiera teclar y publicar este breve reflexion con ustedes hermanas y hermanos.

Primero a Dios pido perdon por haber escrito mis pensamiento en Espanol Castillano, idioma de los oprimadores. Preferiera escribir en mi lenguaje aboriginal de corazon, la Nahuat. Sin embargo, supongo que de esta manera se puede tener mayor acceso a la significa en que la muchadumbre se comunica.

A favor de los circunstancias en que me situan, me puse a reflexionar de manera discursiva para dar luz a los motivos con los cuales cruze la linea.

Doy gracias por tener esta oportunidad, puesto que ya incarcelaron dos por la misma sentencia seis meses bajo la convicion que sobrepasaron illegalmente en la reservacion militar Ft. Benning. Aunque hizo la misma accion, aqui estoy en Chicago. Tenia la intencion hace meses pagar la multa si me arrestararon para que podria reunir con mi familia durante la Navidad. Fue una concession al hech de mi falta de experiencia encarcelada, y ademas ya fue una practica rutina que los presos de consciente se entregaron bajo su propia reconocimiento a la juez por el juicio, equal si se dijeron una conviccion, entonces de la misma manera se entregaron a la dicha carcel escogida por los manos estatales entretiempos cada quien de ellos hacia equal que yo--se puso meditativo--o se dio luz a su testimonio con charlas itinerantes a levantar la consciencia del pueblo dormido.

Bueno, por mi parte, me encuentro en medio de dos toros. Como una pesadumbre veo que me visto de color roja y los toros ya son furiosos. Un toro se llama el pasado; el otro, el futuro.

El pasado viene velozmente rapido avanzando, mientras tanto otro toro se ha ocurrido que toda la culpa de sus tormentores viene de la criatura de color roja. El uno no se ve el otro, ambos dos comparten la misma ferocidad para extinuir lo que sea roja.

Perdoname por la metafor extendida a las circunstancias (en que me situo desde que cruze la linea y en las cuales me pongan a vigilar existentialmente con anticipacion al juicio el rapido aproximando cinco de enero). Es que yo no soy un torero. No tengo entrenamiento para dar combate a los dos toros terribles. No log digo para evadir la responsibilidad! de ninguna manera! Niego que habia que uno se entrena por tal accion.

Nunca quiero dar la impression de que uno se debe preparar de tal manera a professionalizarse en el nombre del activismo social. Por eso, rehuso el titulo que ya me han puesto, "activista para los derechos humanos", aunque es cierto que renuncio todos los violaciones de derechos humanos...thankfully God laughed at the vain attempt of Babel.

At the WRCW we are a hen house pecking at each other to get done our newsletter. I wonder about vanity and my own inability to let go when the nearness to excellence still cannot suffice. My emptiness and longing for God stops my ears from hearing the goodness of the song already in performance.Blowing in the Wind Today. With the Church:

Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
Once again, O LORD of hosts,
look down from heaven, and see;
Take care of this vine,
and protect what your right hand has planted.

Ps. 80

See across the line-- "preface" and "intention forming"

across the line--an intention forming

I face six months of prison—if found guilty of the charge of criminal trespassing onto a military reservation. My freedom to face this consequence stems from surviving a near death fall in 2001 while on a pilgrimage to El Salvador. It grew thorns from prisoners of conscience who I watched cross the line in 2003. Pricked but too fearful to follow, I graduated from college and taught in high schools, took graduate study and became an acolyte in the Catholic Church. Eventually the buds of a white rose slowly bloomed and then, in a turning, I would become one.

What follows comes from a letter written to peers in 2008. Although I again discerned not to cross the line that year, it illustrates the intention forming in my conscience.

* * *

My step to cross the line at the School of Americas / WHINSEC marks the passage of counter-intuitive thinking. I go in hope of personal discovery, a search for meaning and sincerity, so that my understanding of God may be authenticated.

Either you will say, “Oh, how gross,” and you will dislike the whole idea, or you may conceal this and ask me “Is that the true calling of your zeal?” And either you will dislike the whole idea, or praise the end but find distaste in the means: saying, “How nice, but why so ornate?” Thus, the practical will surmise it all a misadventure and proof of an erring judgment; the acute analyst will observe that we should have had better foresight—approached the issue pragmatically—schemed for advantage with the renovation of the legislature or else asked with exasperation, “Why now?” Though thirty-odd votes cast against the bill to close the school no longer have authority nor their appendage philosophies represented, the school remains open. That’s why now.

The counter-intuition of faith leads me forward. I too ask the questions, and would spurn the radical subjectivity of my being made in the image and likeness of God. I do not [would not] go in doubt, but in gratitude for the gift of faith, a faith that I plead to be strengthened and made worthy, purified and made truthful. How else but amidst the “examination hall of the poor” may I test my faith in God’s liberation? I believe that Jesus’ teachings of mercy are to gain, yet also to be staked out; they teach me to trust instincts of love and to immunize the hateful, to adhere to authority of conscience. In conscience entitled to me as a baptized follower I now go to seek its formation: to reconcile myself defenselessly before my brethren’s so called justice. Should all that Christ died for be for naught, and that I do nothing for my brothers persecuted, for law bids me to mind my own storefront? If so, then there is no forgiveness for anyone who has fallen even once, and I would have Jesus be crucified all over again (Letter to the Hebrews).

Our acts give fulfillment to the sacred words, so the more we seek to fulfill them the more ornate they become. For this reason the Church gives praise in the Eucharistic prayer to the blood of the martyrs whose blood became emblematic of Christ, their bodies the broken vessels of his love. The protest seeks for self-aware signs of artistry, and each agent of change who would put forth his body into the spotlight knows the temptation of self-glorification, yet seeks creatively to carry in himself the humble love of Christ. For the faithful actor in a moment of Kairos, staging protest indicates a reality beyond commonplace citizenship. That’s why now.

Native citizenship naively forgets its history, but faithful citizenship enjoins the Christian in the tradition of those martyred by the state. These are the obvious reasons that our means seem ornate—Jesus had many qualities but dullness was not one of them. For years wood lent itself to his hand, and then women and men; he made tables and crosses and then he made community; finally in God’s hands he became a maker of mankind. As he had many apprentices in his shop and taught them by demonstration, so with his disciples he allowed God to craft from his via dolorosa the salvation of all humankind. Some who believed were asking, “Why now?” And then Jesus came to them with an answer: Because it is a jubilee year.

Then the disciples allowed themselves to be witnesses of a life greater than death. Now if only we allow ourselves to God likewise…Then they were witnesses of the resurrection. Now if only we witness also…Then they played significant parts in the revelation. Now if only we revealed also…Then they proclaimed the Kingdom of God. Now if only we would proclaim also. Why now? Because it is a jubilee year, a year in which we close the School of the Americas. That’s why now!

Authors note: To these words others can revise the context. Having put my body across the line I hope the words can now bear to you the weight of their meaning. At last I shoulder their yoke; but for the integrity gained in bearing Christ's cross, I could never be so grateful for whatever consequences may come: finally, I am becoming a Christian.

* * *

Epilogue: We make bold statements and God laughs. See part 3 here.

Across the line-preface

Preface: At the boundary of Ft. Benning begins a demarcation between civilian and military property. This separation of powers is enshrined in U.S.C. 32 section 18 which stipulates that civil liberties have no protection upon entering military grounds. In violation of this statue many have contended that a higher authority than humankind’s own had impelled them to do so and give cries of lamentation on behalf of the silent majority. They plead not guilty to charges of trespassing because the military had first broken the social contract. First were the trespasses committed by the military, namely those trained on the campus of Ft. Benning in the School of the Americas (SOA) / WHINSEC. Since these alumni violated civilian standards by so many extrajudicial assassinations and massacres, civilians who discovered this could only be culpable of accessory to the violence if they in turn did nothing.

In the twenty-one year history of the movement to close the SOA, the impetus that awoke a mass outcry was the indiscriminate killing of six priests and two women on the grounds of the Jesuit university in El Salvador. If this was the Kristalnacht—a reference to the horrific destruction of Jewish synagogues by Nazi mobs—then the three week closure of the SOA in 2001 was the act of appeasement by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Renamed WHINSEC, graduates have not abated from active desecration of civil liberties throughout the Americas:

• In view of 32,000 disappeared and four million displaced in Colombia as seven U.S. bases operate in the country;
• in view of a world terrorized by wars in Iraq and Af-pakistan plaintive to our policies of rendition and subcontracting, Guantanamos and Abu Ghraibs, the millions of refugees and the millions dead who met with ends now instructed at the SOA with “lessons learned”;
• in view of the former president of Honduras subject to a coup perpetrated by SOA graduates in 2009;
• in view of the currently molested in Mexico where two-thirds of the drug-running gang, Los Zetas, are SOA trained.

In view of all this, my complicity stands naked before the staring spectre of holocaust victims. Nevermind remembering horrors of the past, a holocaust on my watch requires me to act!

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the starving who steal bread have broken no law. Injustice is the law that would prevent a life from flourishing, so I starve as long as my brother and sister pale from the famine inflicted upon them by SOA graduates. I flourish not when my hunger is appeased, but when the Americas flourish. The violence is unnatural, the military wasteful. Its victims are like little babies left bloody from birth in between cornfields, abandoned. My dream is to be a Christian even if it means becoming a Samaritan, to take that baby in my arms with thanksgiving the way her dignity deserves.

* * *

I face six months of prison...see part 2: "intention forming" here.

Who is Sophie Scholl?

Her father Robert Scholl had credentials in taxation and law, though he most enjoyed reading All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque. During the First World War he took a pacifist stance and served as a member of the ambulance corps. Her mother was a Lutheran lay preacher.

In the spring of 1932 the family moved to Ulm where hills, caves, green fields and woods surrounded the city. Sophie wrote of her deep affinity with nature:

"I can never look at a limpid stream without at least dangling my feet in it. I cannot walk past a meadow in May. There is nothing more enticing than a fragrant piece of land...Luxuriant in its flowers, and I am knee-deep amid luscious grass and flowers... I press my face to the tree's dusky, warm bark and think 'My homeland', and I am so inexplicably grateful."--In Vinke, The Short Life of Sophie Scholl, pp. 27-28

“Tradition and Risk” is today the motto of Ulm.

Sophie became a trainee kindergarten teacher and was promptly beheaded at the age of twenty-one. That is, because she had social concern.

“I’d be lying if I told you that the children give me unadulterated pleasure. Almost every face conveys so clearly what it promises to become in future: in other words, the kind of people (Nazis) that exist today”. A letter to Fritz Hartnagel, 17 June 1940

The concern for the future of those children spurred her and the White Rose student resistance. God was a unifying factor for the members of the white Rose. “They all emphasized Christianity as the basis for moral regeneration in a post-Hitler Germany.” McDonough 95

Klaus Schlaier, interviewed by McDonough, is manager of Einstein-Haus which runs a photographic exhibition dedicated to the White Rose in Ulm. Sophie’s life, like the witness of the White Rose, was brief yet trenchant. Klaus Schlaier expanded on the aims of the group for the future of Germany. “They wanted a liberal idea of parliamentary democracy, which upheld basic rights: free speech, democratic elections, freedom of religion, free trade, toleration, a united Europe within Federal states. They were very international in outlook. They wanted a peaceful world, but they were also prepared to oppose tyranny and fight for human rights.“

The day of her sentencing Sophie made clear one desire, a single word written on the pamphlet she received in court: Freiheit (Freedom).

Thankfully we have more words to describe her. In Sophie Scholl: The real story of the woman who defied Hitler (2009) Frank McDonough writes, “Sophie in Ulm was nicknamed Baubamadle (tomboy), because of her ability to climb the tallest trees and her short boyish haircut.” She was an Amazon who transcended her times, a sign of hope for our own.

Because the Starbucks cup told me to, I had a conversation with a stranger

“Now what’s a young man doing sitting in a hospital lobby with his laptop?”

It was the voice of a woman whose husband killed himself. Her grandson is nearly my age. She lost her Jewish faith from the Holocaust and explains to me why.

“It’s much easier to get a group together to hate something than it is to…”

I realize she speaks with wisdom and experience. She was eleven when the members of the White Rose were beheaded, two years older than when I would stare in awe at the Persian Gulf map on the TV screen. The voice of Bill Jennings may remain engraved in my memory the way I imagine a speech of Hitler could echo across these many generations in the minds of those like her.

She had two strokes, her son thinks he has Asperger’s syndrome and she’s probably right, “We’re all inherently flawed.”

Hair like hers on a mannequin is as well groomed, auburn with blond streaks. Ears and fingers adorned with bulky gold, the fur coat as much as she a heirloom.

“The Catholic Church is an abomination,” she says, although I’m not sure if in her profession as a short story writer her license with fiction excuses such outbursts. I’ve just told her that I’m a Catholic, What am I doing in the hospital lobby talking with her?

“I am Jewish.”

Yes, with pink lipstick and a son who lacks social intelligence. He’s a surgeon.

“Christ was a typical Jewish boy. A revel. I’ve known lots of revels in my day.”

Unfortunately she had a black thumb. Her son did not; and she was so proud of him for growing pot. Until her friend was over and they discovered that the boy was growing pot. Then she shredded her fingers at me so that I could see what she did, to the leaves.

“Let’s say we don’t want to fight—what about the Russians?”

“Paul perverted everything.” Yes we’re all inherently flawed. “And the Catholic Church is so hideously rich.” What am I doing in the lobby, I wonder. She could be right: “Unless there’s strong government supervision…Can’t ever change.”

“What about the Russians…so we get belligerent back. Look what’s going on with Wikileaks. That’s why I’m an atheist."

Yes and her son does facial trauma; only five hundred and fifty five optomologists have the training to remove cancer from the orbit of the eye. He does pro bono, cataracts in Honduras, children and old people. They do one eye per person but they stay ten days. He and the others do one eye because otherwise they would be functionally blind. Yes he does pro bono with two inches of dirt on the floor. He does facial trauma for motor cycle accidents, sows eyelids back on, noses too. And by the time they finish with two inches of dirt on the floor, it’s a prayer.

“Christ was a typical Jewish youth, a revel, like the blacks joining the civil rights marches.” And I agree.

the mall, on black Friday ch. 1

In fear of where I am going…the mall, on black Friday…trembling even to admit for myself the impetus of this adventure, then as if to reassure me, the ghost of Thoreau said, “Remember I told you that every writer out to sit down to spell aught his philosophy for acting as he does?”

I nodded, though it was a forest then that surrounded the cabin in which I lay nestled between the covers, far from cosmopolitan constraints. His evenings could charge with the gas lit lanterns in sight from his pond, that is, after a mile’s walk along a friendly trail. This next walk will repeat, though I hope with less chagrin, the episode that I went in need of a phone charger to the mall, meandering about the north until I doubled back and took direction west.

The yellow pages had no listing for the cellular t-mobile store I had in mind from an earlier glance online. The full-lipped cellular wireless attendant knew the mall could have an outlet. The mall was unknown to the employee at the coffee and donut store but his manager knew the name of the street. Heading west two black teens said it was after the bridge past McDonalds and were also going that way. I felt inclined to traipse along with them if only to eavesdrop, but an event back at home would begin with dinner in the hour.

Dark had settled already and a jogger in full street clothes raises suspicions, so I slowed when a cop and I came to the same red light. With the cross walk permitting, my pace resumed the patience of an elderly marathoner. A few blocks trod underway before I slowed again, this time respectful of the Sabbath as the men who gathered at the corner broke up for home.

Hungry, or at least anticipating hunger, I suspected the mall could not service my ebt relief card so the liquor store past the McDonalds seemed worth a try. “What?” the clerk said. I saw no food on the shelves and no need to explain. EBT won’t pay for alcohol, I knew. Sometime later, on the way home, my pockets stuffed with a protein bar, a V8, and a banana, I was glad to have resisted all the menu’s displayed in the food courts. Each time I looped through them, whiling my time as my phone charged up it’s long dead battery, the food courts and their customers seemed, at best, dispassionate.

The large man whom I recognized from one pass had sat alone then, and though he quite outsized me, my quick pace must have given him a fright because he stopped and let me pass. Even parking lot sidewalks do not sooth the nerves of some defensive pedestrians. He crossed the street and emboldened me to shortcut the corner also, so in our own ways we left the shopping center grounds.

Midway through the street, a driver inclining toward the turn lane of the intersection, slowed to give me the right of way but peered at me unsure through the windshield as though, curious, but skeptical of the figure I cut at that hour, perhaps simply ogling me for choosing to walk. I couldn’t tell, but felt cardboard, two-dimensional, reduced to the caricature of a rogue.

When no one looks at you for most of an entire night’s walk, the stares stick with you and then remain like a fastidious widow rapping at your memory’s door and you continue to feel with a nag that for some debt you may have not fully paid, the look must have a meaning of which I am deserving. Thus, to forget a stare comes as a relief, just as it did when my mind flushed with new sugars after the seven-11 stop. And home would appear, unhurriedly, after a casual cell phone conversation with my mother.

Advent and Petra

"Let us kneel before the LORD who made us. For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides."
Psalm 95: 6-7

Struggling with the mystery of Bethlehem on her pilgrimage there, Layla Karst wrote: “Perhaps the real difficulty isn’t that God can be born, but that God can die.” She raises the question of Holy Saturday, when the bleak sight on the horizon reveals that the crosses remain standing. The night has not removed yesterday's torture.

Advent, the perennial winter flower, blooms from the fallow seeds of our reck and bleary summers.

From deferred dreams and inconvenient truths, we look to, ask of, and pray for what has been abandoned.

In advent, we admit as one people that without God's guidance we stray, confessing with sorrow the exile in which we find ourselves.

I don't know about you friend, but I miss the garden of Eve and Adam. Eden must have been that place where no bird freezes.

Eden must have been that place where no bird sung, whose cry I

could not understand. That place where every joy was sung, bird and I singing as one.

I have lost that language, my mind dulled by so-called "necessities" of life. My politics, once a polyphany, now huddle into a single tongue.

But dimly I have known a remnant eden and advent reconciles me within the memory of that time when I spoke with other tongues, dreaming in other lands.

So I came anew to words I wrote, these after visiting ancient Petra:

"The desert plateau looked like an altar of desecration. On it lay a melted body bag abandoned to the vultures. We trod toward it through the white-hot sand, aiming first for the freakish presence of a giant shrub. I was wrong, according to the guidebook and the signs pointing to the tent tarp suspended over a pile of rubble; it was the remains of a Byzantine church. This could only make sense as I gathered my

wits again in the shade tendered by the shrub’s gnarled branches. But it was a tree actually, and looking at the wrinkled face of the Bedouin sheik, who sat ceremoniously for photographs beneath the sign’s official pronouncement, I could believe Jordan’s oldest

tree really was nearly five hundred years old. But I blinked for a long time at the inscription I discovered inside the church:

“In 1993, a cache of 152 papyrus scrolls was found in a room adjacent to the church. They had been carbonized in the fire and that is what preserved them.”

Throughout the season of Advent, in the fires of worldly concern, it will be our communion that preserves hope in the world. By human bonds of love will we resist the entanglements that destroy. Pathways do exist in the trails made by saints, so that even though we appear to wander in deserts, we trust God leads us to the everlasting oasis. Amen.

For reflection:

As the Kin_dom nears, what areas of our lives do we yearn to stand "first" in line?

Even in our thirst for justice, where is the Eden we have wandered from and to revisit that place, how can we abnegate our place in line?

We let others drink from our own wells, how will we let God refill them during this season of Advent?

The Recorder's Court

[For my three girls]

Annemarie

Regina

On Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Columbus Recorder's court

Judge Michael Cielinski

Found 21 of the 24 who were arrested by the city

guilty of all charges.

Two were convicted in state court the next day.

All were released from jail by Monday,

With fines and bonds as high as $4,152.50 .

--SOAW

Undoing Violence Against Women

While I write, the temptation to show myself as "the good guy" often circles overhead like a vulture. I felt worry, in error, an unconvincing candidate to address this topic. "Hadn't I done a few things right?" I thought, insecure. Is the vulture an omen, a sign, that my voice begins to cry out like one in the wilderness?

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Thursday, besides being a turkey day, was also the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women which was adopted by the UN in 1999.

What are practical actions we can take as a community to eliminate violence against women?

We can watch our assumptions. Years ago I read Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson (see essay). Teresa, a Jesuit volunteer from Ohio, had thrust the book in my hands with her usual vivacity and bubbled about its sensuousness. It was a test of our relationship, in a way, since she had just come out to me with ambivalence, both declaring her attraction to me and at the same time, her bisexuality. She wanted me to read the book and tell her whether I thought the narrator was a man or woman.

We can safeguard our tongues. A housemate of Teresa’s, I’ll call her Victoria, spoke up one night about the violence of words—it was the title of her college thesis. That night we talked of medical labels and cuss words and of the abuser’s heinous “You deserve this.” Having a wake up is troublesome; it surfaces to the conscious mind those buried burns; I recalled the fresh wound I received in an exit interview: “You don’t have professional dispositions.” Those words annihilated a piece of my truth.

Looking back, I wonder, did it cause me to know, by experience, a fraction of the age old suppression of women in a patriarchic workplace?

Fortunately, Victoria’s exposure of the radical subjectivity of the spoken word indirectly revealed the truth of nonviolent communication. Since words reflect values, prejudice, and they harbor the collective unconscious, deliberate exercise of words that reflect my values can create the world I long for. As Jesus says in Today’s Gospel (Lk 21:29-33): “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” We can preserve the Holiest of Holies while revealing eternal meaning in today’s vernacular…And inclusive language dawns little by little, little comfort that it is.

What are other practical actions to eliminate violence against women?

We can vigil outside planned parenthood. A woman I once dated lost her faith in the Church because of this kind of action becoming so militant on her campus. At St. Louis University the vigils against abortion were ubiquitous and until her best friend became pregnant, they seemed benign. Her friend wanted to keep the baby, but had grown fearful of her boyfriend. Muslim, he and his family were adamant that the baby was theirs by inalienable right. I don’t know whether vigils seemed to lack compassion, but as the nightmare unfolded my friend lost her faith.

We can adopt. Isaac is my mother’s Godson. Growing up it amazed me to see mom in the role of godmother. Since Isaac is black, her affection for him helped open my boyish eyes to our brotherhood. His mother Theresa practices medicine in Seattle; a doctor who assists with births, she found a vocation in child rearing as well. The nine siblings Isaac has are African-American, Caucasian and Asian, constituting a family that expands the image-nation. But the best symbols of Teresa’s acting to eliminate the violence against women were the birthday parties! Often that big house on the lake crowded up with community; it lifted off the foundations and ran wild in the yard and of course it went swimming.

We can urge better legislation. The 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) opened the threshold to allow women who sought citizenship to leave abusive husbands, whose citizenship was a vise of codependency, enabling these women to independently further their application. Now we can go further with the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA). In both the 110th and 111th Congresses it has been introduced but not brought to a vote. Seeamnestyusa.org

When it comes to role models we can cultivate a spirituality led by Juana Ines de la Cruz, Joan of Arc, St. Hildegaard, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Gertrude the Great andSojourner Truth. Robert Ellsberg recounts Truth’s response to an angry heckler who said “Old woman, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea,” to which Truth replied, “The Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”

Lydia Wylie-Kellerman stood throughout the Eucharistic prayer at every Sunday Mass. While the congregation kneeled, she raised the question. I had permission from my Jesuit superior to attend a discussion on the witness...with the caveat that I could not talk.

In keeping that silence I felt the struggle of so many religious who have been silenced. No, this is not so passive a silence as it seems friends. More difficult is the dialogue from one human heart to another than from the heart of a mortal to the Sacred heart of Jesus. Indeed, the activity of silence cloaked in piety also perpetrates institutional violence.

Afterwards, Lydia spoke gentle as ever with me. “There’s no excuse” was all she said. And then, in the cross hairs of her emerald and sky eyes, she made me see myself.

On discovering an 'ordo' from a past life.

I stumbled across a file with notes from one of my first days in the Jesuit Residence in Portland. It struck me in two ways: first I noticed that Dad had recommended an article about food stamps. At that time, I could not conceive myself as ever needing them...now I rely on them as a means to secure a healthy diet. Second, it began to dawn on me what a shift of ethos I now know in contrast to the sense of order I once had.

************************************************************

No, not always have I lived this way: where I am "host" here at this Catholic Worker while upstairs my elder, and better, is the "guest".

Where I lived before the walls did not show a picture of the fallen Dr. MLK Jr on April 4th, 1968, or Dorothy Day seated framed by two gips strapped with holstered guns--a picture matched by a quote, "Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system"--nor could I learn from the walls to make art not war, or facts like Sayf Bin Abdullah/cleared for release...that humanitarian aid is never a crime...and military spending accounts for 59% of the budget.

Where I lived, many black and white portraits of Inuit were hung: a masked dancer, spear ready seal hunter, the sage elder and others. The photographer could not publish because of allegations against him that would never see the light of trial.

Where I lived not all the community members knew that the housekeeper, Jim, wasn't doing them a favor by cleaning their individual bathrooms for them. The worst disturbance to find was a dishwasher still unloaded, for everything had its place. Here you can find Karen Labacqz' Six Theories of Justice on two different book shelves. Here ladies' under garments hang to dry in the kitchen. A converted bookshelf is painted with a manifesto to Our Lady of the Dumpster with decrees about a Gift Market. Items deposited on the shelf are free for the taking; Bikes corralled aside the staircase suggest themselves.

There a wine was available with every dinner, the custom inherited from Turin predecessors. Here we have no 'pre-prandials' chosen from the glass cabinet or the fridge stocked with soft drinks and micro-brews. And though I can pop open a left over can of "the champagne of beers," I can't help but contend with the fact my ebt (or food stamps) will not purchase me alcohol.

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1.03.10

8:30 rose with knock from Isidro. Gave him a ride to the bus/train depot.

9:00 help from Jim for bus tickets

10:00 Andy & Teresa's son Daniel James baptized at Downtown Chapel. A joy seeing Rosy, Frs. Ron and Bob, the JVC member Garrett, and the urban plungers from the great Notre Dame, as well as Julie and Bernie.

11:00 walk home with Peter [my superior]. Talk of my exit from the good Gonzaga Prep. Transition here will mean working with 5 generations, the restless spirit, learning from example of the Trappists to be empty consciously: to be aware of my frenetic need to disconnect from my feeling, and discover generosity in unexpected ways.

3:30 writing to Bernie, Colette, Mom about the meeting with Colette.

4:00 writing emails to Matt Pyrc, Greg Vance, Dad. Saw dad’s photo of the New Years game of Frisbee. Read the article he sent of food stamps that was in the NYT. Also

4:15 walk with Phil. He tells me of the guys, their personas... and needs.

5:15 Prayer with a few of us in Chapel. Song, quiet meditation communal evening prayer ordo.

5:50 social

6:00 dinner

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"The Safety Net--Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html

"The Safety Net--Living on Nothing but Food Stamps." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/us/03foodstamps.html

Visit from Mary Ireland, May 23rd.

While I lived in Portland my friend Mary came to the west coast with her husband for a road-trip from Seattle to Los Angeles in celebration of their first wedding anniversary. They met with John's cousin and then stopped by for dinner. Afterwards I wrote the friends that Mary and I studied with in El Salvador, fall 2002.

La visita from Mary is a joy. I guess I ought to say Mary and John (and his cousin), for they really are a pair, becoming one.

Each is the muse of the other. John isn't nearly as coy as that picture Mary once showed us, and I can't wait to see the shots capturing how photogenic he is. For his part, John is coaxing Mary to journal as if hungry for the crumbs. Yes, they are still curious of each other. Looking at the World Atlas, Mary leans in when John points out the village he's been to in Bolivia. I pry their attention ajar just for a glimpse of John's cousin whose narrative is a waitress/hotelier's version of Jack K's On the Road.

Then I'm shameless, cribbing my guests for part of the evening Mass with me, during which Mary ribbed me when I dozed, we shimmy out after the lugubrious state of the parish.

"I thought the sermon was really good," John says seriously.

Mary nearly refuses my parting handouts "After just hearing how broke you are, really?"

I haven't seen the latest adaptation of August Wilson's Fences but have read what I expect to see in the fruition of Mary and John's happiness: during the interview with the NYT the pair of actors playing Troy and Rose even finished each other's sentences. M-J are smooth all around.

Notes from 1/12/10 after hosting guests at the Downtown Chapel in Portland

A brick red envelope pinned into our community wine cork bulletin board accosted my attention. On it was a stamp with a dizzy fingerpaint yellow-beige-blue cacophony by Joan Mitchell. My address had already changed a dozen times but like a revolving door I was glad to be back inside Chicago finding heat. It said,

11/20/2010

Dear Chris,

Hello! How are things going in Chicago? How is the peace mission these days? We are well & healthy in Portland, enjoying the rain. Hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving…D & M

Inspired, here are notes I took after a morning volunteering at the Portland Downtown Chapel where I first met M and later D.

********************************************************************

Today I worked the host position. The job means that I welcome the guests upstairs, offering the friendly face that we hope to make them feel at home. Flanked by Keya and Mary at the doorway, we welcomed over sixty guests today. One of them was Gail, dressed like an Eskimo with a long red jacket that had a hood of fur. She sparkled when she learned that I am a Jesuit [was], exclaiming that she knew Fred Mercy ever since she was nineteen. It was left unsaid that time was ages ago.

I would later ask her how she prayed. Immediately she through her hands in the air, leaned backward in her chair and looked up at heaven. Like Hannah, she prayed but as her mouth moved, I heard no words. She translated the message to God she had sent, a call to Grandfather, lord Jesus God. Her grandmother had taught her to pray by entering prayer in faith. “If I don’t begin in faith, it isn’t prayer” she said.

A nurse

In training, serving food she commented on a man’s hat. 10 minutes later he returns to her wearing a different hat. “Do you like this hat” she agrees agreeably. He gives her the first hat. She doesn’t want to make him feel based. He gives her a hug and kisses her cheek. But its okay, “I’m emotional” she began. It touched her deeply.

Chase

Interrupting me as a I announced names. “Am I on the list?” I ignore him (he wanted attention). He ignores my handshake when I call him.

Chris Harris

Remembers my name. Sticks with Ida on way out.

John

“Tomorrow’s level 13.” He has a chef’s accreditation to pass. I wish him luck and he says he hopes he has learned something over the years. Remarks in the sharing round: “I tell it was people, people were probably happy from not having service yesterday except shots. People ate alots,” he explains.

Andy

Sick, missed yesterday bc of it. Went to 2-mo. check up w/ son James. He takes a pass on sharing but said he’s glad to hear.

Jack

He and I speak in foreign languages, he in Italian to my Spanish. Tuesday volunteer. Played guitar with Andrew. Visits with Kristy, a returning volunteer from last year.

Fred asked for a cane today to aid his back trouble.

Julie had swollen shoulders from five shots she received yesterday. The advice another gave her was to ICE it.

Ibrahim

“Salaam Aleekum”

Only see him again once, handing a bag to the man I visit with today. “Here, you want this?”

Janice went to the doctor this morning.

Keya

Probably neither Indian nor Nepalese, but has polished oak skin, with tracing of silver in roots of her crows peak, a body of what they call ‘fine features’ and delicate fingers. She said nothing in reflection because: “I had nothing insightful to say.” A Tuesday volunteer.

Kristy

Returning volunteer from last year, connects with Jack. “I’m happy” [she] brought Joevin, who will head to boot camp in two weeks.

Mary

“I have a good memory” she says, admitting its okay I forgot her name. but she remembered mine.

Michael

wore a green nurse uniform retired from OHSU, and fatigues. The pants matched the camo of his doobie—night cap. Dark shades masked his eyes, but he seemed to speak with a smile of such radiance that his thoughts had the meaning of delight, whatever the incoherent association he made. For instance, he referred to “the wood,” but enigmatically signaled to something more: “W-O-O-D, take away the O.”

As I listened to him speak about knowledge, Daniel, Adam and Eve, “the war, the same war,” and a tree in the wood, the threads of thought weaved a rug of a mind trodden, frayed from life ruin, all a hole from the riddle of some mind-a-sorrow.

Theories according to Michael included the theorem of the roots. All coming from the great tree, they mingle the soil intertwining with other roots.

The theorem of the nonsense: a situation of the land before God’s teaching informed the dwellers.

The theorem of man: In his cosmology, the man must be named a she. Only what is God may be understood as he.

Theorem of the angel: it known as an angel has first led the world astray as a devil. Since it has past the stage of demonic force, it knows the strategy of the devil and can defeat it.

Nick

Left a plate of food to make a call to the bishop. When I looked the # up in the phone book he balked. Said he thought I would have a direct line

Norm Armstrong

Reeks. Asks for deodorant.

Oatmeal man

Full of cocoa and cookies, the oatmeal the man gives me a bite of ...

Perry

He said that hanging out around me he has wanted to thank me for so humbly taking on the way we do things.

He spoke of enjoying floating today, as long as it was around the elevator.

Thomas

He told me about needing a doctor yesterday. He has learned that he has a heart murmur since an incident in the Fall. At a routine visit, the doctor ordered an ambulance. He had to stay in the hospital “only” two days. In the future he may need a pacemaker.

I’ve been invited to lunch.

Thomas told me last week about the death of his puppy dog, well, she ran away. Two years ago, he said.

Int__stingly, he claimed that he never took medication in his life, owning kinship with Christian Scientism.

Woman

with Cry the Beloved Country

She said that last night she gave it to another woman at the shelter, who wanted to read it.

Joe Blake

Laundry voucher today

Gail

She knows Fred Mercy from the time she was 19. That would be quite a long time ago. She told of the time when she was the only woman that he would allow upstairs at Blanchet House. It was an exception so she could accompany her husband.

Speaking of the distances her people were accustomed to in the country of Alaska, she compared the proximity of a friend living fifteen miles away, to “putting on the machine for two minutes and arriving.” It would seem as close as walking three blocks to 3^rd street.

Maria

A nurse in training in carol’s group, went up to man in a corner who retreats from the group socialization, opens him up. She told me some of the migrant camps in Hillsboro.

Ida

Leaves with Chris Harris today.