Sample Chapters

1.

In his 2007 book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had this to say: “When we arrived there in January 1996, it was obvious that the Israelis had almost complete control over every aspect of political, military, and economic existence of the Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza.” It’s good to say what you see. It’s even better to see what you see.

2.

Later, Jimmy Carter even went to Bil’in where the local Palestinians have protested weekly for years against the apartheid wall Israel has been building. They’ve been joined by internationals and Israeli dissidents. The people of Bil’in embody sumud—“steadfastness.” Critics smugly ask, “Where are the Palestinian Gandhis?” Those critics would see plenty of Gandhis in Bil’in and many other villages of the West Bank if they would go there, as Jimmy Carter did.

3.

When he was governor of Georgia in March 1971, Jimmy Carter celebrated an “American Fighting Men’s Day.” On that day he urged the state’s citizens to be in solidarity with one of Georgia’s own and so to drive with their headlights on “to honor the flag as ‘Rusty’ had done.” “Rusty” was Lieutenant William Calley then under house arrest at Fort Benning; he was facing charges for murdering over 100 “Orientals” in the Vietnamese village of My Lai on 16 March 1968.

4.

In 1977, the first year of his presidency, Jimmy Carter was asked at a press conference if the U.S. should pay reparations to the Vietnamese. He responded, “The destruction was mutual.  We went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or impose American will on other people.  I don’t feel that we ought to apologize or castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.”

5.

When he was out of the Oval Office, Jimmy Carter stood side by side with the Palestinians, who are still seen as terrorists by the Israeli state that seeks their disempowerment and dispossession. In his mid-eighties now, Carter could conceivably take a flight to Southeast Asia. It could be arranged for him to meet people over age fifty who survived My Lai. They could tell him a thing or two about how Rusty Calley and Charlie Company honored the flag. Carter and his esteemed elders could make a pilgrimage to many villages throughout southern Vietnam, so many of which received similar treatment from the U.S. armed forces, albeit on a smaller scale. And the Vietnamese could tell Carter enough stories to give him nightmares for the rest of his life.

6.

On another trip to Vietnam, Jimmy Carter could spend some time with some of the young and aged Vietnamese victims of U.S. chemical warfare (Agent Orange, provided by Dow Chemical and Monsanto, among others). He could explain to them how the U.S. owes them no debt. He could tell them he has never castigated himself for what took place there as ordered by four of his predecessors in the Oval Office.

The following is a chapter from The Book of Mev.

After the exhilarating World Youth Day experience, Mev jumped right into her doctoral program at the GTU in Religion and the Arts. Early on, she became acquainted with Maria Bower, a doctoral student in spirituality, with whom she increasingly spent time. She also continued her Haiti solidarity work with local activists Pierre LaBoussiere and Nancy Laleau. But even as she began her study, her experience earlier in the year in El Salvador was raising all kinds of questions to her about higher education. She dashed off the following letter to St. Louis University President Father Lawrence Biondi.

6 September 1993

Lawrence Biondi, S.J.
St. Louis University
221 North Grand Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63103

Dear Father Biondi,

Greetings from a SLU alumna living in California. I hear good words about you from both my father, Peter Puleo, and from some SLU faculty with whom I keep in touch, such as Sr. Dolores Greeley. Congratulations on your good work.

I am writing in response to the “Campaign for St. Louis University” materials. You and those who worked on this produced a beautiful publication with an attractive layout — which I appreciate as a professional photographer. A while back, when I was heading to El Salvador for a meeting, Fr. McGannon gave me some literature on both the SLU Campaign and for the UCA-El Salvador Campaign. (I imagine you are familiar with that publication as well, put out by the AJCU in D.C.).

As a graduate and great fan of SLU, and as a person who has been active in solidarity work with Central America for more than a decade (which I began during my student years at SLU), I was jarred by looking at the two campaign booklets side by side. I am very impressed with the UCA’s attention to “Social Outreach,” their ongoing analysis of the “national reality,” their attention to institutional violence, defense of human rights, and to bringing together people from across the political spectrum to try to encourage a more just, humane society. They are explicit in their aims to educate the privileged (the literate and college-bound) to lead and serve the needs of the majority of the country. While the SLU booklet mentions community service and scholarship funds, these themes of immersion, analysis and engagement in the local social reality are absent.

Clearly these positions have been shaped by the national reality of El Salvador: wealthy elites and impoverished masses, civil war, corruption, brutal disregard for human rights. The philosophy of education developed by Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, and, since their deaths, by Jon Sobrino and Dean Brackley, was and is in response to that reality. Specifically, they sought and seek to be a Christian university and to make the option-for-the-poor universitariamente (as a university). Because of this vision, the six Jesuits and two women were killed in 1989, but their successors still struggle to keep the vision alive at the UCA and in post-war El Salvador. In fact, there may never have been peace negotiations without the leadership, vision and moral courage of Ellacuría and others.

Well, this brings me to the question: What would it mean for St. Louis University, as an institution, to more fully embody the social dimension of the faith and make an option-for-the-poor universitariamente? There have been good efforts throughout SLU’s history — community service, scholarships, shaping the public debates. My own moral consciousness was shaped at SLU — through the example of professors and campus ministers — in a way that inspired me to devote my energies towards building a more compassionate and just world community. And yet, I suspect this is not the case for most SLU students. During my four years at SLU, it was a small group of a lot of the same faces who joined Pax Christi, SLUCAP (volunteering in the inner-city), Amnesty International, etc. I wonder, institutionally and in our own local St. Louis community, what more is being done? I believe we have so much to learn from the UCA experience! One place to begin might be the writings of the Jesuit martyrs on the social role of a Christian university.

Might it be possible for SLU to generate its own such vision — rooted in a context of St. Louis and the United States — a vision that analyzes the national and local reality, that seeks to understand the institutional violence in the U.S., that promotes social outreach and defends human dignity in the St. Louis community. While our national reality is far from that in El Salvador, the levels of drug dealing, the conditions of prisons, the numbers of murders, unemployment, poor public education and other afflictions in urban St. Louis, especially on the Northside, are really tragic. This is our national/local reality. This is where we are called to be Christian as individuals and as a university.

Dolores Greeley told me of several projects where St. Louis U is trying to be of service to the local community. I am writing both to ask what is happening in this area, and to ask that the University (administrators, staff, faculty, students, alum) really listen to the example of the UCA and join in more dialogue with our local community to try to be a truly Christian university, a sign of God’s reign of justice, peace, dignity and compassion in the world.

By way of concrete suggestions:
1. Perhaps select members of the SLU community could invite Dean Brackley and/or Jon Sobrino to help them shape a vision for a university in the U.S. to adopt a similar, though indigenous, vision.
2. Perhaps the University could establish regular dialogue with SLU alumni who are truly immersed in the life of St. Louisans who struggle with poverty, unemployment, homelessness and neighborhood violence. (The Catholic Worker Karen House on Hogan Street comes to mind as it is staffed by several SLU alum. I also think of urban churches — in particular St. Matthews and the neighborhood center they participate in, since it is a Jesuit parish!)
3. Perhaps the University could begin “listening sessions” with the actual disenfranchised who live within a certain radius of the University — again, the unemployed, young people, the homeless, struggling families who have to cope with neighborhood violence and drugs.

I would love to take part in something like this or at least be kept abreast of such developments, and I could recommend other wonderful alumnae and faculty for this kind of project. There must be other similar initiatives happening somewhere in this country. Any such initiatives would have to include women and men, religious leaders and African-Americans and community members from Midtown and from North St. Louis. Given the location of Parks College, more dialogue might begin with East St. Louisans.

Again, I write this imagining that many efforts similar to this are already underway, but the very difference in the campaign booklets reminds me how far we at SLU (and overall, we in the U.S.) need to grow in our vision. A bold project in this direction at SLU would not result in Jesuits and their friends being shot in the middle of the night. Rather, a bolder vision and a more courageous response to the “signs of our times” would build up the St. Louis urban community and the University.

Father Biondi, I thank you for your time in reading this letter and for your dedication to shaping the future of SLU. I have studied some of the writings of the Salvadoran Jesuits and was very inspired by my visit there in January. As a theology student and photojournalist, I have also been inspired by the academicians I have met in Brazil — Catholic theologians who teach 6 months in the university and spend 6 months in the Amazon building up Christian communities, or working with labor unions in urban areas. So, I have been shaped by this vision of socially-engaged-academics and the socially-committed Christian university.
These campaign booklets have been on my desk for 10 months now, and I am finally getting around to actually writing these thoughts to you. Perhaps, oddly, my delay in writing reflects how crucial I believe these issues to be for the future of SLU and our community. I wanted to wait a good while to see if I still felt as strongly as when I first saw them, and I do. In fact, I just spent three days working with and visiting with Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian theologian, and in hearing about the direction of theology and pastoral practice in Peru, it stirs me to want to do more to foster truly Christian social commitment in our U.S. practice and institutions as well.

If these thoughts provoke reflections or reactions in you, please contact me at the address on the first page. I would be glad to hear from you. In any case, I continue to wish you well in your ministry of administration at SLU.

Peace be with you and may God continue to bless you!

Most sincerely,

Mev Puleo

Mev. . . now what kind of name was that? I’d heard the name Maeve, which is an Irish name, but Mev was Sicilian on her father’s side and German on her mother’s. Plus, she spelled and pronounced hers differently. Where did “Mev” come from? She informed me early on that it was a nickname a grade school friend had given her, short for Mary Evelyn — Mary for her aunt and Evelyn for her mother. It had stuck ever since seventh grade. Even after being around her only a few times, it was clear she acted more like a “Mev” than a “Mary” or even “Mary Evelyn,” as “Mev” was original, short, and brisk. She later informed me that the scientific abbreviation mev stood for a million electron volts.

One morning, I observed Mev and Gustavo Gutiérrez walking together through the outdoor dining area at Maryknoll. She had first studied with him in 1985 at a summer course at Boston College. Suzanne mentioned to me that Mev had secured an interview with Gustavo. It wasn’t such an unusual experience for Gustavo to be interviewed that summer, since there was so much hoopla surrounding him, including a press conference and write-up in the New York Times. But for Mev, it was a major opportunity to ask her most pressing questions to someone whose theology had been nurtured amid poverty and suffering, as opposed to academic conferences, air-conditioned seminar rooms, fax machines and ever-expanding libraries.

The 1988 Maryknoll Summer Program was intended to celebrate several anniversaries. First, we honored Gustavo’s work on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Second, we took note of the 20th anniversary of the Latin American Bishops Conference at Medellín, at which they gave voice to the need for a preferential option for the poor. And third, we marked the 15th anniversary of the English publication of A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo’s most famous book and one updated for publication that summer.

Gustavo lived in Lima, worked at the Bartolome de Las Casas Institute, and served as a pastor to the poor in the slum of Rimac. Although he had become one of the world’s most well-known theologians, he was quite humble, taking all the festivities and testimonies in stride, appreciating people’s affections but also remembering that his work made no sense apart from his struggling people back in Peru. To those folks, he was simply Padre Gustavo. He didn’t appear prey to the kind of self-important individualism of our usual American celebrities.

Later that summer and into the fall as I got to know Mev better, I learned that she — peripatetic photographer, devotee of the poor, interviewer of liberation theologians — had been born into an affluent family, the fourth child of a middle-class mother and a father who had lived the rags-to-riches ascent of some Sicilian immigrants. She had grown up in a fashionable suburb of St. Louis, gone to preppy Catholic schools, and traveled to China, Africa, Europe and Latin America on vacations. Yet after university studies, she moved into a poor neighborhood in North Saint Louis and tried to bridge these distant worlds of the rich and the poor. For someone with all of her advantages and privileges, Mev had been more committed to experimenting with downward mobility and voluntary simplicity than being ensconced in an upper-middle-class enclave. In her interview, Mev’s questions to Gustavo were those of a passionate young woman concerned, anxious even, to find her place in this world of gut-wrenching poverty and soul-numbing wealth.

Interview

Mev: In recent years people are talking more about the spirituality of liberation theology. How would you describe this spirituality?

Gustavo: First, we have to say that spirituality is a “way” to be Christian. Spirituality is more important than reflection. Or, to be more exact, all reflection on faith (theology) is inside of something more important: the way to be Christian (spirituality).

What I just said is true for all theology. It seems to me that behind liberation theology there is a spiritual experience of a liberating God, the experience of innocent suffering, the experience of the hope of the poor.

Mev: Why do you describe the suffering of the poor as “innocent” suffering?

Gustavo: I believe that here “innocent” doesn’t mean “not a sinner.” Every person in some way is a sinner; that is, at some time he or she rejects the love of God and neighbor. Innocent in this case means someone who suffers a situation that she doesn’t deserve. I think of children in my neighborhood, for example, who are malnourished and spend their days in the street. They don’t deserve this kind of life. They don’t deserve to live in such small houses and sleep with the whole family of six or seven people in only one room. This is what we call the suffering of the innocents.

And it’s not only the children: This is true for adults as well. There are people who can never eat what is necessary to live humanly or have a house with enough room to live with dignity. These are great sufferings — sufferings of innocent people because they don’t deserve this suffering.

Mev: You speak from time to time about humor. What is the role of a sense of humor in theology and in ministry with the poor?

Gustavo: I talk about not taking ourselves too seriously. I believe that humor is something that allows us to take a certain distance from things so we don’t feel too much in the center of everything. I often fear that living in the midst of such severe problems we understandably tend to think that ours are the greatest problems of humanity. We even tend to take theology and people doing theology too seriously. I also consider humor important in life because it helps us not to be closed to other things and persons. I believe that one of the greatest victories of those who oppress the poor is if they can make the poor bitter. Bitterness makes us closed to other people. One thing I see and admire in poor persons is that they know how to keep up a certain capacity of happiness, and humor is an expression of happiness. The joy of the poor is not superficial.
The poor have a sense of humor, though not intellectual or refined humor. The children in my neighborhood have a great sense of humor. The intellectuals, on the other hand, tend to think they are the center of the world. Also, people who are worried, tense and busy tend to think that the whole world revolves around them. For people like this, humor is great therapy.

Humor lets us laugh at ourselves and the events in our lives. I don’t mean we should laugh at other people. Humor doesn’t mean making fun of others. I’m impressed by the Bible with its many expressions of humor. Taking ourselves too seriously is an obstacle to the Gospel.

Mev: Are there different kinds of “poverty”?

Gustavo: For me, the poor is the insignificant person, the non-relevant person. No one pays attention to the poor person in society or even in the church. A great majority of these “insignificant” people are poor, in the economic sense. To be discriminated against as a woman, for example, is to be poor, insignificant. But, you know, the great majority of insignificant women are poor, economically speaking as well.

Now there are human problems besides poverty — old age, loneliness and alienation. Not all suffering is from poverty. But real poverty is characterized by death. Real poverty is people with no means to live with human dignity.

Mev: We are sometimes criticized for our consumeristic lifestyles and the influence of our culture abroad. Do you notice this in our context as well?

Gustavo: I believe that this is the nature of a rich country. Consumerism is to consume for mere pleasure more than is necessary. This is exactly the contrary when you come from a poor country. The things I notice the most seem like a joke. That is, here in the United States the most sought-after foods are low-calories. The most valued food in poor countries is food with calories. It’s understandable, but it’s an incredible contradiction. Here, the people want to eat food with as few calories as possible to not gain more weight and people in poor countries try to eat food with many calories to gain at least a little bit of weight. We come from very different contexts. Consumerism is certainly a very great human deformation. Furthermore, it brings a permanent search for money and buying, encouraging us to forget the needs of other persons. Consumerism truly blinds people. This is very strong in this country, as in all rich countries. It’s also strong in Europe, Canada and Japan.

The United States does have a very big influence. I believe that through the means of communication, such as the TV, the North American way of life is very present among other peoples. Some of the positive values are present here, but also many limits, such as when people from our cultures want only to imitate the North American way of life.

Mev: What are your own hopes, then, for people who are born rich?

Gustavo: I love to answer this remembering a sentence of Dom Helder Camara. He was in Switzerland many years ago criticizing the Swiss banking laws. You know, there is more Latin American money in Switzerland than in Latin America. Dom Helder was very critical of this. He finished his speech affirming in a very simple way, “It is more important to be Christian than to be Swiss.” The next day a daily Swiss newspaper asked for the expulsion of Dom Helder Camara for insulting the country.
Very frankly, I think that for Christians in this country it is more important to be Christian than to be North American, just as it’s more important for me to be Christian than to be Peruvian. Thus, I’d desire that the rich people of a country such as yours have a big consciousness of their responsibility as human beings and as Christians before the poverty of this world. Also, it seems to me that there are things that will not change in Latin America if things don’t change in other parts of the world — in Europe, the United States or Asia. I believe that our problems today are more universal and planetary. I come here to teach because it’s good for persons in your world to know more directly the voice and reflection of the poor of Latin America. Also, we need the solidarity of people in this country. Solidarity from other Christians is really important for the poor of Latin America.

Eventually, Mev shared her musings with me. “The poor of the Third World are often said to be voiceless. But that’s not true. They’ve got a voice, but we’ve just got to hear it. I’m going back to Latin America next summer.”

I asked, “To Brazil?”

“Yeah, I’ve got friends in Brazil, and I’m going to interview them and their friends and see what they have to say about faith and hope and love. Who knows,” she chirped, “maybe I’ll go to Peru and see Gustavo.”

This is changing my life! It is — as I read these words of commitment, Sylvia – “It is a time to take our option for the poor to the ultimate consequences, that is what we’re trying to do in this community, to go to the ultimate consequences of the option we’ve made.”
And I think that our world, primarily at the instigation of “my” country, is on the brink of war – nuclear potential, no less – and I am in the process of conversion. This is a significant moment. The convergence of hearing daily the words, stories, laughter, challenges of people who have made an option and are paying the cost, are reaping the grace — I am called. I am called forth to say no to injustice, war, the preparation for war. I am called forth to yes to life, yes to diversity, yes to the stepped-on ones standing up and claiming what is theirs.

This is a turning point in my life. I was an activist in college, engaged in various ways. But the Middle East situation has told me that my life as usual can’t continue when such massive bloodshed is being planned, discussed, prepared for! It makes me sick. There is not a moral indignation, but a moral revulsion, nearly physical, that impels me to move, to do, to deepen my reflection, to put my body out there on the line. Enough. Stop the bloodshed. Repent. God have mercy. God, empower us to strive and struggle with integrity, love and humility for a better world, to strive and struggle courageously, willing to risk, willing to be inaccommodated, placing our freedom on behalf of others’ unfreedom — empower and inspire us to act creatively and justly and lovingly and disruptingly. Life as usual cannot go on, as it grinds the poor into the dust and sand – sick, sick, sick. God, heal this sick world and let us be your hands. Condemning no one and afraid of no one. Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine that crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, PWAs, elderly, children, orphans, strangers, Jews, Palestinians, Latin Americans, Iraqis, U.S. soldiers – no more. No more. No more.

Some things are profound enough to interrupt our lives. And, as I watch the war machine grow more deadly, the world more precarious each day – I listen to the voices of prophets and saints and “good persons doing good things locally,” yet stretching their voices globally through my ears, eyes, and hands – they are calling more forth. The communion of saints. Toinha, Goreth, Sylvia, Dom Pedro, Clodovis, Carlos Mesters – all. You are a mirror, and it sometimes chills me and embarrasses me to look at myself in your light. I feel disgrace, a need for mercy, a need for your strength to pull forth to me. You who have lived through death threats and dictatorships, monstrous bishops and abuse from Mother Church, you who walk daily attending Lazarus’s wounds. Help me. Move me. Be with me. We are one. Yes, the struggle is one. The struggle is one.

I knew it was coming, but I just kept putting it off.

When I was an undergraduate in the early 1980s, I suffered from the debilitating condition of not being able to get far on an assigned composition unless I really liked my opening sentence and first paragraph. In the era before PCs and laptops were commonplace in homes and at universities, I ripped up innumerable sheets of looseleaf paper until I could get the right beginning.

A few years later, when working as a lay minister in two Catholic parishes in Louisville, Kentucky, I was given a copy of Natalie Goldberg’s book, (more…)