When We Get Discouraged…

Author: Madelyn George

I often cry when I read the news, or listen to news on the radio, so more often than not I simply don’t read, or don’t listen because I don’t have the energy or the time to have my heart broken every morning. It is especially hard to have one’s heart broken by any number of stories of violence in the world, then to go about our daily lives only to find that most people one encounters don’t even know or care about the situation weighing so heavily upon one’s spirit.

I hear the anger and frustration in the voices of Friends who are moved to stand and speak during meeting for worship. They rise from the blanket of silence and their voices shake. They ask questions like, “How can we be so calm? Why aren’t we doing anything?” I hear a lot of anxiety about where we are headed – how young people may or may not be demonstrating their aptitude for the type of peace work Quakers are famous for. I guess I take it a little personally.

In the summer of 2009 before I began my last year of college, I received a fellowship from the American Friends Service Committee to organize peace action on my college campus. I was shocked. My pacisifism up until then had been the quiet type – I began attending Quaker meetings as a teenager, so it was more of a belief system than anything else that directed my interest in social change. Now, with one year of college left, I would finally have to start organizing, spreading the word, and actually talking with people about my beliefs.

Columbia College has a diverse student body and a sprawling urban campus. Getting students to show up for stuff, much less unite behind a cause was going to be a challenge, and I had absolutely no idea where to start. I went into the year knowing that young people have some unfortunate negative stereotypes associated with activism, and yet Columbia is full of individuals with a ton of creative energy and plenty of talent. At least there was potential.

Things started out slowly. Working with a faculty member and AFSC I helped to organize a die-in in response to the anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. At this point I had no student collaborators. On the day of the event I was disappointed that more people didn’t show up, but I made a couple of new friends and that was all it took to begin forming a group of student activists on campus. When it came time to lay down under the white sheet while the names of one hundred civilian victims of the war were read aloud, and felt my skin prickling and tingling. I had been so busy dealing with small details of the event that I hadn’t spent any time honoring its significance. I laid there on the sidewalk as the names were read, hearing people moving around me, hearing their varied responses, and I silently expressed my gratitude that all my friends and loved ones were still living.

I wish I could say things fell into place easily, but actually there was struggle involved every step of the way. I kept trying to predict what my peers were going to be interested in. What did they need in terms of peace activism on campus? I found myself feeling extremely discouraged when even my close friends just didn’t seem to care. But then I would remember that I still had complete control over my own actions, and I could only hope that by living the truth I believed in I might affect others without knowing it. This would last for a couple of days before I got discouraged again, and I kept finding myself completely depleted, exhausted, as if I had nothing left to give!

I shared my story of frustration and exhaustion along with these three major revelations to a hundred people at an AFSC benefit in the spring of 2010:

1.     Individual responsibility is the only path toward collective responsibility. BE informed. There were so many things I knew nothing about. Up until recently, I chose my opinion, felt confident that it was the right one, and then never bothered to learn more. There is something to be said for being present, bearing witness.

2.     Actions should evoke empathy. I had to redefine my goals as an organizer in order to affect people emotionally. Mass amounts of people showing up to an event don’t necessarily make it successful. It’s the change one person can undergo, the experience they have inside their bodies in an instant that’s important. Images are a great way to make this happen. Fewer facts. Fewer discussions. People need to be given a chance to feel something about injustice and unspeakable violence, and to feel a sincere love for peace.

3.     Stay centered. Don’t forget about inner peace. It’s easy to get caught up in today’s cultural machinery – emails, networking, promoting. But we need to stay connected to the roots of our active pacifism so that as this country’s passionate peacemakers we don’t find ourselves exhausted before the job is done.

I am still not sure which forms of activism make the most sense for the current generation of young people, but I now have the tools I need to move forward as someone who makes at least a little more change than the passive person who used to do nothing but care. Caring is not enough, yet I have learned that it truly doesn’t take much to affect change by affecting others as long as we stay connected to the roots of our beliefs. These roots are internal, and must be nurtured with compassion before we can act with our full Light shining forth. We must nurture our inner light daily or our own quest for peace threatens to place us at odds with the world. And maybe it’s okay to let the news go unread, trusting that wherever there is violence in the world there is also beauty and love. The light that shines in us shines everywhere.

So what is special about Quaker education? Some reflections…

Author: Michael Batinski

While flying home from a visit to The Meeting School, I thought about the people, there in New Hampshire and at home in Illinois who gather the resources for making a peaceful world.  They do good work, quietly, so often unaware of coworkers hidden from each other by distance and condition.  Lessons might be learned by attending to what each of us is doing.

Somewhere in midair between Boston and St. Louis, I returned to the question that flitted though my thoughts last year while Ginny and I lived in The Meeting School community as Friends in Residence.  So what is it about Quaker education that makes it unique?  While feeding the ducks and cows in the early morning, I felt prodded by some Friends who have written questioning whether there is such uniqueness.  Sometimes, as I grasped for words to address the question, I too doubted.  But through the year as I wondered and as Ginny and I shared our thoughts, I grew satisfied that there is a tradition, a rich one, and that this tradition is best understood not so much by listing principles but by witnessing its practice.

As I reflected, I realized that the answers flowed into another question: how might this tradition guide the world at large?  Or can the practice of Quaker education guide and focus us as we work toward developing the resources for peace among Friends as well as among neighbors in the larger public?  Last year, while Ginny and I sat in community meetings, cooked meals, taught and counseled students, did farm chores, and laughed and played with students, we wondered about this miraculous learning community and moved toward understanding by making comparisons with educational practices that prevail in the society at large.  “Why,” Ginny would lament, “is it that other young people no matter their place in this society cannot learn in a community like this?”

Comparison with prevailing practices seems a good first step toward understanding.   As retired members of a public university community, one a teacher and the other a counseling psychologist, we were most familiar with society’s norms.  As we sat in community meetings with students and teachers together learning to work in common and as we watched students wrestle with the mysteries of pre-calculus and physics, we could not but attend to the public discussions over education in the print and broadcast media.  Two points of comparison served as guideposts: first, the prevailing discussions over academic achievement (which is as old as the 1950s bestselling Why Johnny Can’t Read) and, second, the nagging worries about violence in the schoolyard (which are also at least as old as the film The Blackboard Jungle).  What was striking was not just the prevailing concern about achievement scores as measures of academic achievement or the measures of violence as registered in incidents of bullying taken to tragic ends.  Counting, while useful, carries worrisome implications.  Equally troubling is a predisposition to conduct each discussion, of academics and of violence, on two adjoining and separated platforms.  But need the discussions be separated?  As we watched practices in this alternative learning environment, we inevitably asked ourselves what is the price for making such a division or what is gained by making integrations?

Academics, equality, community—what happens when schools treat these concerns as important but separated? Or what happens when a school weaves them together?  Academic excellence is pursued for what end?  To gain competitive edges?  To “race to the top”?   As an historian, I listen to today’s talk about education and hear the echoes of Social Darwinism.  What kinds of community members are we raising by focusing narrowly on identifying students and teachers who do well at calculus?   Or where and how do the schools open students to the habits of community and equality?  For what end beyond technical skills are we preparing this rising generation?

Or what happens when students and teachers learn and live in community?  In a community that nurtures egalitarian habits?  The miraculous transformations I witnessed in weekly community meetings still enrich my imagination.  Imagine students and faculty gathered in meeting with the clerk a student.  But that by itself seems a superficial procedural matter when compared to the spirit that guides the conduct of the meeting.  Students come here with expectations conditioned by their acquaintance with something called student government as conducted in public schools.   Those of us who came from that tradition learned quickly the unsaid little truth that student democracy was contained by the authority of the assistant principle.   We learned to understand, even identify with, Holden Caulfield.  Across the meeting room I watched fascinated as students who came from that public tradition ready to test the school’s professed principles of community and equality.  At first, they were testy in the manner of all-too-familiar adolescent rebels waiting to discover the truth underlying the rhetoric.  Soon, however, they recognized that their voices did carry weight, and they began to conduct themselves accordingly and to take on responsibility for community life.

While writing, I can hear an inner voice from my public school experience that warns: what about discipline and order?   Last year’s experience taught me to quiet such memories.  Equality and community work well with respectful listening.  Teachers need not abandon their responsibilities to mentor.  Nor need they forsake the wisdom that comes with age.  Teachers work, for example, to help nurture awareness of such concerns as housekeeping, sustainable practices, and smoking tobacco.  But rather than simply dictating rules from above, they work together with students to write the school’s agreements that define such behaviors as smoking.   While the community has embraced a minute against smoking on campus, the faculty has been guided by the awareness that the rule itself does not necessarily address the matter of healthy lifelong practices.  After a long and thoughtful process, the school moved to address smoking off-campus at home among neighborhood friends.   This was a long process that began while our son was a student five years ago.   I confess that as I write I smile anticipating eyes rolling in skepticism.  How naïve!   Perhaps.  But during morning opening last month, a student spoke from the silence volunteering that he smoked with friends during home visits.   No one suspected.  There seemed no reason to come forward other than inner direction.   While living in this community, he had internalized not just rules but also an ethos of healthy living.  He only asked for the community to help with this struggle.

The process is slow, frustratingly slow, by prevailing standards.  But the community agreements emerge not as rules imposed from above to be dodged by those below.  Discussion continues over the internet, its distractions and seductions.  Students and teachers discuss the matter, come to agreements, and revise them in light of experience.  At year’s end an issue arose that needed quick response, more quick than community process might allow.  As expected, students came to community meeting indignant both about the decision and also the unilateral manner in which it was made.  I watched comparing the present with similar situations when I attended public school.  How different was the spirit guiding this discussion.  Slowly the students came to recognize the reasoning that guided the head of school and finally agreed, but they also spoke clearly to their concern that the decision had not been made in the spirit of community process they had come to expect.  The head of school and faculty learned that they had done their work well in nurturing healthy community.

This learning community illustrates the uniqueness of Quaker education because it places the Quaker clearness process at the center.  If we consider school budgets, in particular faculty and student time, clearness committees may seem expensive.  If we make integrity, respect for self and others, and clarity of communication essential aspects of student growth, the price seems as reasonable as hiring a geometry teacher.  Students ask for meetings for clearness when considering which college to attend or while struggling with a roommate.  Teachers request them with students who are not meeting their potential or with colleagues over the inevitable differences that arise in a small community.  Civics can be taught from a textbook or it can be learned from experience.  While watching, I returned to long-standing concern about prevailing patterns in public education that rest on authoritarian, albeit short-term economical, norms.   How do we build schools that nurture the essential spirit of democracy?  John Dewey still asks that question of us.  Sadly, our schools practice as if he does not ask.  Perhaps, the answer can come by attending to the traditions of Quaker education.

From these practices emerges the peace testimony.  I think so.  Is peace studies the subject of a course?  Yes, in a way.  But this small school in Rindge, New Hampshire, offers an instructive alternative to prevailing practice.   Before retirement I taught a course on peace in American history as part of a peace studies curriculum.   It was an elective, on the margins of the mainstream curriculum, and it was attended largely by those who were predisposed to listen.  But more important, I think, my course was just one course, a fragment of the student’s education.  Peace studies is an integral part of The Meeting School, but not simply because there is a course requirement but because the precepts of that course permeate the entire learning experience from community meetings to clearness committees, to classes, and even to doing farm chores.

There is a difference in Quaker education.  I felt so as we listened to the radio’s reporting a local incident of schoolyard bullying that ended tragically.  Slowly I have come to understand what was happening.  There are alternative ways to grow through the trials of adolescence.  Perhaps the challenges are universal.  Questioning one’s identity and one’s life course may be common to modern youth.  But I began to learn that these uncertainties and anxieties that commonly can turn to predatory behaviors need not—need not, if the environment changes.  Youth need not be violent, uncaring.  Students brought the same issues to The Meeting School but were learning with the support of strong, patient, and attentive listening that there were alternatives.

The students told me so by the lives they were learning to lead.  I listened to students talk about becoming doctors in less privileges places, lawyers and advocates of human rights, urban farmers making a greener world, English teachers.  During winter intersession they are exploring these ideals by living in a Catholic Worker group (Dorothy Day’s) in New York, by working with a volunteer health clinic.  Last year one student worked in Africa with school children and another camped in a northern Vermont refuge for wolves.    If there are significant indicators to measure a school’s success, they come by attending to the graduates.  I have spent much time in the last year talking with these wonderful people, most of whom are working in caring professions.  They are teachers, workers in social welfare agencies and international development agencies, and counselors.   One teacher who returned for a second term, separated by more than twenty years, now is preparing to join the Peace Corps in Africa.  What better indicators of healthy education can we find?  And what better answer to questions regarding the uniqueness of Quaker education?

Meeting 57th Street Friends: Contessa Miller

Author: Breeze Richardson

In December we saw our largest crowd yet, with Tiegan, Riona and Gus being joined by Iggy, Jackson, Adrian, and his friend Owen. Perhaps it was in great anticipation of Contessa’s lesson: we were headed into the kitchen to make teacakes!

[slideshow]

Watch the photo slideshow to see the children in action as they worked together to bake these treats. Throughout the experience we talked about baking, the necessary ingredients, measurements and favorite things.

When I asked Contessa afterwards what she might have to share about the experience, she wrote: “I loved being with the children and felt so warm and happy inside as they seemed to be loving my being with them too. I glowed as they followed me upstairs for the end of Worship and were gathered around me near the fireplace. I can’t remember being happier in my life!”

As the “Meeting Meeting Friends” series continues, I do feel its beginning to start something special. Bruce (who was our guest in November) joined us as a helping Friend for the December lesson and the children were noticeably familiar with him. I liked it. I do think this experiment in deepening community is working. (And so to Friends of 57th Street Meeting: I am looking for Spring guests, so please get in touch if you are interested in getting to know the Meeting children a bit better!)

Lastly, …drumroll, please… here is the recipe we used for Old Fashioned Teacakes. If you’re led, be with us in spirit and bake up a batch – preferably with a good friend!

3 cups of white flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 sticks of butter (softened)
1 egg
1/2 cup of buttermilk
~ ~ ~ ~

Cream together softened butter, powdered sugar, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla.
Sift together flour, soda, salt, and nutmeg.

Roll dough out on a floured board; with a teaspoon scoop up a bit of dough and roll into a ball; place onto cookie sheet about an inch or so apart.  You probably will need to keep the palms of your hands well floured.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 15 minutes until lightly brown.  Let cool before removing.

***
Happy holidays.

“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

Meeting 57th Street Friends: Bruce Chenoweth

Author: Breeze Richardson

On the third First Day in November the First Day School of 57th Street Meeting was joined by Friend Bruce Chenoweth, who brought with him a favorite & much loved book.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry begins with a thought-provoking  dedication: “I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for  dedicating it to a grown-up…  All grown-ups were once children – although few of  them remember it.”

Bruce began his introduction of the book with this dedication, and the children  seemed to appreciate the honest acknowledgement that there is indeed a difference  between adults and children (and I appreciated it as well).

As Bruce continued his reading with the book’s beginning pages, Tiegan, Riona and Gus sat patiently and listened, looking at the drawings (“of a hat?” Riona said of the first drawing, which Bruce and I shared a smile at & all those familiar with this story have to also find a bit amusing).

When we had corresponded in the weeks before this lesson, Bruce had shared a drawing his wife Chris had given him as a birthday card. He brought it this morning to share with them in person:

I continued with a bit more from “The Little Prince” after Bruce’s reading, sharing the story of The Prince’s rose. We read about how he first thought it the most unique and unlike any other flower in the world. “If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.” But then he came upon a rose garden and spoke with them, realizing that while he thought his rose was the most unique in all the world, it was just a common rose.

Unique and common. Two interesting concepts for twin almost six year-old girls and an almost four year-old little boy.  But they understand being loved, being special, being cherished, and how sharing with those you love that they are special is important and always well-received.

To finish the hour, we made our own roses “most unique in all the world”.  Thank you to Bruce for joining us and sharing a special story!

“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

 

 

 

The Quran Reading at Gaia House

Author: Michael Batinski

Three weeks ago in Carbondale, neighbors from the Abrahmic faiths and from other traditions gathered at Gaia House/Interfaith Center for a reading of the Quran that would last twenty-four hours.   During the first hour, people began to sense separately and collectively a feeling of wellbeing that warmed the room.   The feeling came upon them quietly, slowly, catching some unawares.  Those who worked to make this moment possible were doubtless preoccupied with mundane matters of programming, seating, acoustics, and food.   Then, as I recall, the gathered souls felt the light.   I felt so, and others volunteered that they felt similar feelings.  This awareness came upon me as if from my peripheral vision.  If words can capture the feeling, it seemed to come from a shared sense of thankfulness, thankfulness that we had come together.

Through the evening, into the night and early morning, and then through the day until we gathered in evening prayer, people came together, listened to the Quran read in Arabic and English.  We listened as members of the Muslim community explained the guiding precepts of their faith such as compassion, repentance, as well as views of Jesus and of democracy.  I cannot speak for others who shared in this experience.  I can recall so vividly the faces sparkling with warmth and thankfulness.

I have been reflecting since.  Those who organized the event began out of shared concern regarding the harsh words directed at the Muslim community.  Soon, however, as the organizers met at Gaia House, I sensed small transformative moments.  The initial concern—the hate speech—was rarely discussed.  Instead, neighbors were gathering around a common need to express community.   In the last organizing meeting, a Muslim participant worried that the event would not be a success, however one can measure success.  And I volunteered that the planning process itself had in itself become a success.  He beamed in agreement.

Was the reading a success because more than two-hundred people had come to Gaia House?  The numbers were gratifying.  When I returned at 4:30 in the morning, I found eight hardy souls struggling with fatigue.  With the dawn the numbers increased again.  New faces appeared, some I was surprised to see.   Yes, the numbers are a way to measure.   And there are other measures.  Some shared, days later, that praying with Muslims had been transformative.  How?   The answers are still emerging.  Something more than numbers, indeed other than words, is needed to explain.

Last week, while attending an Interfaith Thanksgiving at the mosque, I encountered a person I had first met at the Quran reading.  We smiled at one another, and I felt as if we both were sharing in the afterglow.   I cannot speak for my Muslim neighbors but to observe that they came to this project with great worries about the temper of the times.  They spoke as if under siege, as if it were best to be quiet and not visible.  In a small way, the reading seemed to give them some measure of assurance.  Many non-Muslims, like myself, are simply thankful.

And something may be happening.   Participants in the reading are beginning to gather to make plans for continuing down this path.  What will happen or where these conversations will lead I cannot presume to answer.   The discussion continues, and that also may be a sign of success.   There are glimmerings emerging from these talks:  discussion groups, perhaps small classes on various faiths. May form.   What will emerge, what resources will be gathered—such concerns will turn to action as the meetings continue.

I pass these reflections on because I feel that in these times we need to share such moments.    Good work is being done.  Sometimes as in the case of the Quran reading at Gaia House the electronic media does turn from the louder and harsher events that seem newsworthy and takes a moment to give attention to this kind of work.   The event did receive such attention and others who did not attend expressed their gratitude.  Most important, such events illustrate the good work that is being done in communities such as Carbondale.  While Maruine Pyle, as director of Gaia House, did much to guide the community’s energies, I also marvel at the creativity that emerged from this process.  Perhaps such a moment may work to move imaginations and faith.   (If interested in more on the reading you may visit    http://www.ourgaiahouse.com/. )

At this time when we might feel disheartened, we might find assurance by sharing such news.

Meeting 57th Street Friends: Chip Rorem

Author: Breeze Richardson

Welcome to a new series, a monthly contribution to “How Do You See Peace?” which aims to extend a First Day School lesson at 57th Street Meeting of Friends into the virtual space as a way to extend the experience. What thoughts do you have to share with the children?  What ideas does this story give you?  Please add your Comments below.

Teaching the Meeting children by example, we are building community, as we meet adult Friends one at a time & hear something about their childhood that still influences them today or they think the kids might enjoy.  Learning more about each other we are in a better position to say hi after Meeting, share a treat, and support one another in our lives (plus it helps to remember people’s names).

Chip Rorem is an amazing Friend.  His presence is always joyful & his attention towards the youngest members of & visitors to our Meeting is intentional and loving.  When I asked him about his willingness to join me in First Day School so that the children could get to know him better, he was delighted and immediately had a story to tell.  A wonderful story, which shared a special time from his childhood that led to an adult outcome which saved resources, taught a powerful lesson and allowed for the execution of Quaker witness in a meaningful and contemporary way.

[slideshow]

One summer when Chip was a boy, his backyard was turned into a lumber yard when the scrap wood from the kitchen equipment crates that his dad brought home from work became the prized possession of the neighborhood kids.  They dutifully organized what they were given to assess the collection, borrowed tools from parents, asked one dad for some nails & bought others with their allowance.  Then construction began: a treehouse was underway!

As Chip told his story, he illustrated on a large tree exactly how he and his friends troubleshooted each step. Adding rungs up the tree to get taller, building a platform, then a railing, then a roof.  Once the treehouse and the story were complete, he handed out pictures of the tree to each of the kids to draw their own treehouses.  They followed his lead exactly: rungs up the tree, a platform, railing and roof.  They added rain (because why would you need a roof unless it was raining?) and stickers of friends & supplies (like fruit and footballs).  Chip told them of resourcefulness – reusing the crate lumber to make such a wonderful play space – as well as team work & learning. (One of my favorite parts of the story was when Chip told of he and his friends scouting for construction sites then spending the afternoon sitting on large piles of dirt, taking copious mental notes as they watched the men build actual houses so that they might learn how to accomplish something with their own build that had been previously unsuccessful.)

But perhaps the coolest part of Chip’s story was the end, after the children had finished drawing their beautiful treehouses, we gathered back around to share before heading up to Meeting.  He passed around pictures of the Cabins at McNabb and told of how their creation was in the same spirit as the treehouses.  As most adults in the Yearly Meeting know, the cabins are reclaimed from the dorm that once stood at the property.  Instead of being destroyed, that building was deconstructed so that the building materials could be reused.  Even the floor, which was cut into the exact sizes needed for the Cabin floors, was reused.  It was a beautiful end to a wonderful story, with a powerful lesson of creative thinking and re-use.  Child’s play can inspire great achievement.  Thanks again to Chip!

“Meeting 57th Street Friends” is a special project at 57th Street Meeting (Chicago) that took place Oct 2010 – March 2011 where non-parent adult Friends visit with the Meeting children each month to share their reflections on Quaker life & identity today by exploring something they hold dear. A childhood memory, a story, a life lesson or a life passion – by sharing our experiences across the generations we are living in community.  Learning from each other about our lives is a way to move towards better understanding and our testimony to peace.  

Faith Community Makes Statement Against FBI Raids

Author: Breeze Richardson

Here in Chicago there has been much press and discussion about the recent FBI raids into the homes of anti-war activists. Hatem Abudayyeh, Executive Director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) was among those whose home was raided and he served a Grand Jury subpoena.

The Arab American Action Network published a response, stating AAAN: “denounces the raids on the homes of, and the serving of Grand Jury subpoenas to, these anti war activists in Chicago and across the country. The FBI has overstepped its boundaries and targeted individuals based on their commitment to peacefully challenge U.S. policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Colombia.”

On Monday (October 4), the Peace Resources Committee was sent the “Chicago Faith Community Statement on FBI Raids and Grand Jury” authored in-part by AFSC Chicago who has joined the Interfaith community protesting these FBI raids. The email asks Friends to sign the statement and encourages organizations to sign on.

Members of the PRC have expressed a range reactions, towards both the spirit and the letter of what has been authored. Our varying communities are reacting to the FBI’s actions in different ways; individual and corporate action is being discussed (and opposed); and the historic role of such statements and coalitions, and the impact they had, is surfacing.

What is your reaction to this Statement?

Hiroshima Day address 2010 (Hyde Park in Chicago)

Author: Kent Busse

I am inherently a very happy person. As a happy person, of course I understand sadness. I share the burdens of the less fortunate, and join reverently in the sober commemoration of this day.

But if I were only a negative, unhappy example, I would not persuade you to be an abolitionist like me. You do not want to follow me in negative thinking. It is only by extending hope in positive outcomes and shared happiness that I can persuade you that we must abolish nuclear weapons totally and forever.

A deceiver will argue that security is the arm of flesh: namely, superior coercive power and dominance. However, either a brief or a thorough examination leads directly to the realization that balance of terror is still terror, and that the real possibility of mutual annihilation does not make annihilation less likely.

Positive understanding teaches that lasting security lies in collaboration and cooperation. In conflict resolution and in ordinary daily enterprise, success is not established by selfish competition and dominance, but rather by the ability to work together toward shared outcomes. Beating our swords into plowshares reconstitutes them as tools of production.

I do not deny outbreaks of irrational and aggressive behavior; instead, I subject them to (a) a social contract (b) governed by reason (c) which leads to mutually agreed and implemented (d) rule of law. The essence of a society is its ability to use this cooperative mechanism to replace internal and external isolation, ignorance and brute force.

Therefore today I call upon you to move beyond preoccupation with the unthinkable, into the realm of a kinder, gentler, existence. I realize that this must begin with me, and I promise you that as you adopt this thought pattern of happiness, you will create and cultivate those associations in which you can persuade those nearest you to join this chorus of expanding circles. When our hearts are pure and our persuasion is effective, it is the summing of these circles that will ultimately carry the day and result in worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons, beginning at home.

May we never take our eyes off the prize, and may our love be so pure that it will indeed bring others into our new day of shared happiness.

copyright © 2010 Kent Busse

Arizona, Immigration, and human kindness

Contributed by Kent Busse
(reserving right also to publish elsewhere)

1. Long ago, somewhere else, a child was born in a place that did not really have room to welcome another child; resources stretched very thin.

2. Not so very long ago, that child reached manhood and migrated to a place that seemed to offer more resources. Lacking certain official papers, he was never offered the earning capacity of the local natives, but he had more resources than he had left behind.

3. Quite recently, the new place also saturated its consumption of resources. The man was considered excessive and burdensome, not welcome to the local opportunities and resources of the new place.

4. Suddenly the government of the new place imposed harsh state measures to make the man doubly unwelcome.

5. Finally, individuals and governments surrounding the new place withdrew their commerce and further reduced the resources in the new place. The new place contemplated retaliatory measures of withholding exports from its neighbors.

In every step, everybody suffered.

1. Did the parents freely choose to bring the child into the world?

2. Did the local natives of the new place understand the humanity of the immigrant man? Did they offer equality?

3. Did the society in the new place attempt to share its burdens among all present?

4. Did the government of the new place search for solutions and provide leadership in organizing the sharing?

5. Did the boycotters put themselves in the shoes of the new place long enough to understand why its residents did what they did?

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If my daughters were young enough to play in a sports tournament in Arizona, I would hope first of all that they would not go with an attitude of superiority. If they entertained any thought of teaching, I would expect them to avoid giving offense or patronizing. Finally, I would send them with the assignment of learning.

Even as I ask the boycotters to temper their judgment, I require myself to temper my judgment of the boycotters. Perhaps the government of the new place would temper its judgment of the immigrant, and the immigrant would temper his judgment of the place he left.

This little story is to give immediacy to the masterfully crafted paragraph of the Peace Resources Committee 2010 annual report that ends with the passage

“The tendency to conflict is part of the human condition. This tendency must be forever tended to as one tends a garden. It requires continual study, testing and reexamination.”
 

 

The story is a thread of situations that require being “forever tended to.” It is told to encourage the reader to find a purpose–to do something–relating to some individual step of the sequence. In doing so, may we recall the motto of the Oxfam America mailings:

Go to the people.
Live with them.
Learn from them…

Start with what they know;
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders,
When the work is done,
The task accomplished,
The people will say,
We have done this ourselves!
                                  
Lau Tzu (700 BC)