On the Road to Peace

With many others, the news last week that President Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize left me dismayed. Out he stepped from the Oval Office to accept the prize, then back in he went to continue his preparations to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan. There, under his orders, they’ll drop bombs, follow their drones, make sweeps through villages and terrorize children. Not my idea of a peacemaker.

[Editor's note: Fr. Dear posted this column Tuesday, days before President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.]

When President Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council recently to endorse a resolution to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, we saw a rare sight -- a sign of global leadership pointing humanity toward a new future of peace. But while his words inspired, and hope springs from his symbolic stand, nothing has changed.

Ched Myers and Elaine Enns have just published a two volume work, Ambassadors of Reconciliation (Orbis Books), a great new resource for peacemakers and justice-workers interested in the latest insights for our struggle. Volume One provides an excellent overview of restorative justice and its connection to Gospel peacemaking. Volume Two profiles nine extraordinary, contemporary Christians from across the spectrum who practice restorative justice and peacemaking full-time, and make a huge difference in the lives of many. Together, these scholarly and readable books offer a new, ground-breaking theology and practice for Christians seeking to understand and live Jesus’ way of nonviolence and its application for today.

In the last few weeks, three laudable men died -- Senator Ted Kennedy, Fr. Coman Brady, and Jim McGinnis -- and the rash of deaths has me pondering not only their praiseworthy lives but the ineffable mystery of life itself.

The rich press coverage of Kennedy's funeral impressed me. So did the vehemence of those who assailed his record. I for one give thanks for his fight for civil rights, social justice, and universal healthcare. And I rejoice in his public stand against Bush's war on Iraq, "the best vote of my career," he said. I was moved to see footage of him reflecting on a politics of hope, on redemption and resurrection, on persevering in the good fight.

It astonishes me to read in the Gospel of Luke how Jesus instructs his disciples to love their enemies, be compassionate, welcome children, serve the poor, feed the hungry, and take up the cross -- and how the disciples just don’t get it. Instead, they ask if they can take up the sword. Two thousand years later, we still don’t get it.

Several hundred people gathered in a Chicago hotel this weekend for the annual Pax Christi assembly. There we met other activists, renewed old friendships, and took energy from inspiring speakers. Mostly, we pondered the theme laid out in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final sermon, “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution.” He preached it at Washington’s National Cathedral, four days before an assassin’s bullet struck him down.

King’s sermon evoked the image of Rip Van Winkle’s 20-year sleep. “One of the great liabilities of life is that too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution!”

Last week, between the two poles of my swinging pendulum from desert life to hectic travel, I spent a few days alone hiking the lush Redwood National Forest in northern California. I went with a purpose in mind -- to prepare my mind for trial. It was looming and bearing down. I faced the possibility of six months for my protest on Holy Thursday at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, home to our unmanned drones. But just before I left, word came down. The prosecutor had dropped all charges. I headed for the stately forest just the same.

Little on the planet prepares you for such a sight. The coastal redwoods are the largest trees on the globe. Some reach 35 stories tall, some are 1,500 years old. I ambled into vast groves of them, my neck craning upward, the sky nearly hidden. Seldom does a sunbeam find its way to the ground.

A few weeks ago, Orbis Books published Franz Jagerstatter: Letters and Writings from Prison, the first complete collection of his writings in English. Through his intimate letters and powerful reflections on faith, church and death, we enter the mind of a contemporary saint and martyr. And we learn a thing or two about growing in sanctity and how we might resist war and practice Christ’s peace.

On August 9, 1943, for refusing to take “the military oath of unconditional obedience to Hitler,” Franz Jagerstatter was beheaded. A year and a half ago, he was beatified during a Mass in Linz, Austria, with his children present along with his dear widow Franziska, now 96.

Last week, one dedicated Christian killed another during church services in Wichita, Kansas. Both men thought they were doing God’s will. One -- the zealous anti-abortion activist, Scott Roeder, believed in “justifiable homicide” to bring to a halt the activities of the other -- the abortion doctor, George Tiller. I grieve for both of them, for everyone in that scene, for all of us. Both were far from the nonviolent Jesus, but so are we all. This sad event confirms what many of us have been saying for years. We all need to repent of our violence and discover Jesus’ way of nonviolence.