March, 2008

Thursday 20 March 2007

I have known some amazing activists at SLU: Eric Sears, with whom I studied in 1999; Emily Weiss, who took my class in 2002, Charlie Crowley, who enlightened us in 2005, and Kathryn Jonas, who made my summer with her participation in class in 2007. All four have made major commitments to, among other works, Amnesty International. Kathryn has been living and studying in China this academic year and has much greatly missed by many of us. The following are some of her reflections on passages from The Book of Mev…

“As the outspoken Brazilian archbishop remarked, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist.” [26]

I’ve seen this quote before and always loved it, so I’m glad to know now who said it. I think this happens still today, even though the label of communist is not nearly as damning as it once was. Everyone praises those who spend time at soup kitchens feeding the poor on Christmas and it’s an important thing to be done. But even in my work with Amnesty, USAS, or Jobs with Justice, I’ve been criticized as unpatriotic, anti-America, terrorist lover, hippy, and, yes, even communist. Why? Because I see poverty and I work against the structural systems in the US and abroad that maintains and thrives on this poverty. As soon as one questions the structures of poverty, whether they are governments or multinational corporations, you are no longer seen as magnanimously helping the poor. Rather, you are seen as trying to start a riot. And in some ways, I guess I am.

“I’ll give thanks for one thing, or person, or event, or challenge of the day…I’d just rather go to sleep grateful instead of anxious.” [41]

I thought this was a great idea when I read it, and so, I tried it. Ii didn’t have a rosary, but I would move my thumb across my finger tips and think of something to be grateful for. I thought about being able to take summer classes, working at a job I enjoy, being able to go to China, all the many people I have met. I found that I would get distracted, or just off topic. I would be thinking about one thing I was grateful for and then think about other aspects of it and then forget that I was supposed to be giving thanks. It’s difficult for me to focus sometimes, especially when I’m lying in bed trying to sleep. Nevertheless, it did keep me calm, and I didn’t get anxious worrying about classes or other future plans. So while I didn’t always stick right to the topic at hand, I did go to sleep grateful instead of anxious. That itself is something to be grateful for.

“As the rector of the University of Central America in San Salvador, Ellacuria believed that the University had to confront the Salvadoran national reality, characterized by the dehumanizing poverty of the majority of the population. The University could not be a sequestered, detached haven from society; rather the University’s center of attention ought to be the unjust national reality of misery for millions of Salvadorans.” [106]

If only every University took this approach to how they interact with the community! Whether in a small town or major metropolis, US universities always seem in a world of their own. We all know about the dreaded SLY “bubble.” At this point, I would imagine even Biondi is familiar with the phrase. And while SLU does do things to help St. Louis, it is clearly not the center of attention. And at a Jesuit University of all places, it really should be. Instead of a new sports arena, imagine if we put all that money into redevelopment projects for North City. I mean, think of it, it seems too crazy to comprehend. And yet, sadly, as long as this idea remains so far fetched, and as long as we continue to fail to realize the immense positive impact SLU can make, the SLU bubble shall live on, and so, too, shall the plight of North City., Our destinies are interlinked.

“We also came to learn that to be in solidarity with the poor we didn’t have to give up everything or stop being who we were. I’ll always be middle-class, even if I lower my salary. We’re middle-class by the very way we understand society, our level of education, our access to persons and power. We can’t deny our own history!” [141]

I appreciated this insight on how being middle-class is something we will always be no matter how much we change our lifestyles. I have met young people who, I feel, try too hard to deny the privilege of being middle class, I feel, out of guilt. Example: A friend of mine asked another where she got her dress. She, in shame, responded target. Why so ashamed? I’m middleclass, and target is where I shop. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Excess is selfish and unhealthy, but we should be grateful for the wealth that allows us to buy the clothes, books, cds, and cars we like. Embrace middle class with open arms, for as they say, you must love yourself before you can learn to help others.

“All men on stage, in robes and hats and crowns, their time had come. We can do the warm up, but the youth, women, blacks and Hispanics become spectators to the spectacle of the male. To be part of this multicultural worshipping community is a joy, but who and what are we worshipping? It is so top heavy, so male, such a pyramid. This is our church. Not amen.” [210]

When I was Catholic, I too had great qualms with the power structure of the Church. Going to an all girls high school, it sometimes seemed the only role model we had for women in the Church were pious nuns praying in a tucked away convent somewhere. I remember the pope coming to Saint Louis and it really did seem he was being worshipped at times. The Church is diverse and multi-cultural, why does the leadership not represent this? Don’t even get me going about women and the priesthood. The community and unity of the Church is a great thing, but there were often times I was ready to do away with the entire formal structure of the Church. I wasn’t much interested in being a nun anyway.

“Look, I believe the essential thing in life is dignity. The only important thing you can lose is your dignity. Ultimately, nothing in human life beyond human dignity is truly impotent. But if you lose your dignity, you cease to exist. You are finished. You die.” [228]

I was struck by this passage because it was very reflective of the beliefs I hold now. Religion is always a confusing thing with me, but the one thing I firmly believe in is human dignity. Human dignity is the part of us that is eternal. Like Salgado, I feel this is the most important thing in life to remember. If we recognize that each individual contains something greater than anything we can begin to understand, we can realize to respect and love each person. And also like Salgado, I believe to lose dignity is to lose everything. That is why acting in a way that disregards a person’s dignity is such an atrocious thing to me. Now, what this suggests about god and his existence, I’m not always too sure, but I remain firm in my belief in human dignity.

“Her pleading face when she looks at you with a message trapped inside sticks inside my mind; the hand or arm motion which means to her something real, but to us is meaningless and has no context to let us guess; Mev holding up two fingers to mean that she wants to say two things, not that what she has to say has anything to do with “two.” Like charades, of course.” [287]

I was trying to imagine what it is like to be unable to express yourself to others. I was reminded of times when I have presented bills in the student government. After the questioning period, the senators begin debate, and not being a senator, I cannot speak. I can hear the senators misinterpreting my words or making inaccurate assumptions, but I can’t say a thing. It’s unbelievingly frustrating. However, when it’s all over, I can calla friend and let it all out. But Mev felt this way day after day never able to let it all out. How she remained not only sane but upbeat is an anomaly to me. The human spirit, and Mev’s especially, is an amazing mystery.

“You never get over anything, you just get through it—once you surrender to the fact that you can’t get over it, you’re already through it.” [339]

This quote gave me quite a bit of clarity. As I was reading of Mev’s funeral and dealing with grief I was flashing back to my friend Kimmie’s death and funeral. She died when we were sixteen and she at least died quickly. However, the shock of losing sometime so suddenly left me in a dazed, almost surreal state of grief for many days and reality was never quite the same when I returned. As I was reading about your grief and remembering my own, tears started to run down my face. I told myself that I shouldn’t cry, it’s been four years, I thought I had been able to move on. I forced myself to read again and was met with this quote. I wiped my face, kept reading, and realized that I just have to keep moving forward. There will be more tears, but I will keep moving forward.

From Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank: “My problem with newspapers is that I can’t settle on the right time to read them. In the morning they darken the day, at noon, they kill my appetite, after lunch they make me sick, and in the evening they set the pattern of my nightmares.”

The Logic of Insertions

I ask my students each semester to commit to doing 35 hours of an insertion, during which time they insert themselves in a situation of injustice and find creative, constructive ways to respond. The idea originally came from my teacher, Venezuelan sociologist Otto Maduro, who now teaches at Drew University.

Recently, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and Code Pink both, came by to speak to two of my classes. She concentrated mostly on Code Pink’s work in trying to respond to the carnage in Iraq attributable to U.S. policy.

A lively discussion ensued with students and folks from the community. Ryan Clavelle commented on how hard it is to stay focused and pay attention, just given the day-to-day routines so many of us find ourselves in: “gotta go to class; eat some lunch; see friends, go to that party later…” In his exchanges with Medea that day, Ryan came to assert that the way to break that routinization and distancing from suffering is to get and feel connected in the heart. Medea then commented that when she speaks about Iraq—which is a lot—she is thinking about very specific Iraqi friends she has. Those relationships ground her and motivate her to do the work she is doing. Similarly, Sister Chan Khong would always carry photos of her beloved friend Nhat Chi Mai and Vietnamese children whenever she would speak in the 1960s in the United States about the war back home. The dialogue between Ryan and Medea also reminded me of that letter Thomas Merton wrote to Jim Forest 44 years ago, the essence of which is “It’s the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

The logic of these “insertions,” whether deliberately pursued or unintentionally realized, was summed up by a former student, Liz, who worked at the Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma. She spent her semester with a ten-year-old girl from Afghanistan. Over twelve weeks, that girl changed the way Liz saw the world, the United States, and herself. The girl wasn’t trying to change Liz; rather, I think, that girl entered Liz’s heart, which had become open. And thus, Afghanistan, war, refugees, and hope became very narrowed down and incarnated in this one, irreplaceable, special girl.

Tuesday 18 March 2008

A few weekends ago, I went to Manhattan with my friend Pat Geier to take in a play by our friend Abed Abusroor at Fordham. Before that evening’s performance of 21 Positions, we walked by the New York Public Library and were startled to see that there was huge exhibit on Jack Kerouac, “Beatific Soul,” and the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road.

Now I was pretty familiar with the Beat Generation, I’d read On the Road several times over the decades, I knew of Allen Ginsberg’s efforts to get friends like Kerouac accepted and published by the New York houses. Maybe it was the dreary day in late February, or my initial disorientation at being back in Manhattan, or the exhibit itself that left me melancholic.

The focal point of the exhibit was the original scroll on which we wrote On the Road. But, in addition, there was all that Kerouac youthful memorabilia, his letters on display, photographs documenting his handsome youth and world-weary, puffy faced middle-aged end, even a pair of his shoes were in a glass case. As Thomas Wolfe would have cried out, “O Lost!”

In Ginsberg’s poem, “Cosmopolitan Greetings,” there’s a line that is in obvious reference to Jack: “Don’t drink yourself to death.” Kerouac died at 47, the age I am now. I will always be grateful to Sheri Hostetler, who one day in 1990 found amid the MIT library stacks the Evergreen Review, which had Kerouac’s “list of essentials,” which fifteen years later found their way in The Book of Mev, whose original working title was The Holy Contour of Life.

On Kerouac’s grave, the family had inscribed the following epitaph: “He honored life.” And here’s Jack writing in his journals in his late twenties, long before fame and drink disrupted his life: “I’m going to write ceaselessly about the dignity of human beings no matter who or what they are, and the less dignity a person has the fewer words I’ll use. It’s the sheer humanness of a man that comes first, whether geek, fag, ‘Negro,’ or criminal, whether preacher, financier, father, or senator, whether whore, child, or gravedigger. I don’t care who or what—and that I should have cared before is an insult to Dostoevsky, Melville, Jesus, and my fathers.”

Tuesday 18 March 2008

When I first started teaching at Saint Louis University and Webster University, I was happy to invite my friends from Karen House to speak to my students about the Catholic Worker Movement. At that time, Teka Childress and Becky Hassler, who are important presences in The Book of Mev, would come and share their experiences.

Soon, though, I began to ask the next generation of Catholic Workers, like Jenny Truax and Courtney Barrett, then finishing their academic/scientific/practical rotations (Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, respectively). They graduated from SLU in 1999, and had become community members at Karen House. I figured given their youth and familiarity with the university scene, Jenny and Courtney would be intriguing to my 20 year-old students.

That was eight or nine years ago. Three years ago, I had an amazing Social Justice class, three of whose members are now living at Karen House as community members: John Carroll, Tim Cosentino, and Megan Heeney. Megan recently spoke in all three of my classes, and she radiantly communicates to the current 20 year-olds the beauty, simplicity, and rigor of this way of life. What could be better than having lively kids to share breakfast with each morning?

In On Pilgrimage, Dorothy Day writes, “… we are still trying to work out a theory of love, a study of the problem of love so that the revolution of love, instead of that of hate, may come about, and we will have a new heaven and a new earth wherein justice dwelleth.” So many people I’ve known from SLU—Becky, Courtney, John, Teka, Megan, Jenny, Tim, ranging in age from 50 to 23—are encouraging us in Saint Louis to embrace this revolution of love.

Tuesday 18 March 2008

The following is from Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning: “I do not at all wish ‘to be read’; my sole purpose is to act and to inspire activity.”

On the United States in Iraq

The following statement is for Pat Geier to read at the antiwar rally in Louisville, Kentucky on March 19, on the fifth commemoration of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

On this solemn occasion, we have simply to face two imperatives.

The first is to tell the truth, the truths that have been exiled from American public life on-going for five years.

The truth is—the United States is guilty of the supreme crime of aggression against the people of Iraq. All the deaths, torture, destruction, and mayhem for five years have their point of origination in that illegal invasion. If there were justice in this world, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many others would be in jail for this crime. Words are important: The U.S. intervention in Iraq wasn’t and isn’t a “mistake,” it is a crime of the highest order.

The truth is—the United States has instituted a military occupation of another country. The Iraqi oil is there for the U.S. to control. That’s why there are now permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. Why else could Senator McCain state that the U.S. will stay a hundred years if it needs to?

The truth is—the United States invasion and occupation has destroyed yet another nation (remember Vietnam? Remember Nicaragua?)—the Iraqi infrastructure, the public health system, the culture, the social fabric, the economy.

The truth is—the U.S. occupation has led to the catastrophic uprooting of 4 million of the 27 million people of Iraq: two million refugees outside of Iraq, and two million within. Try to imagine a Hurricane Katrina happening over and over again in the American South: the chaos, multiple ways of being killed, separation from loved ones, and the destruction of home and disappearance of daily security.

The truth is—too many of us Americans have shielded ourselves from the crushing consequences of these truths of criminality, occupation, destruction, and catastrophe. Yes, there is debate about how and when to bring home U.S. military personnel, there is an accurate counting and mourning of our American dead. But the realities of Iraqis are far from us.

Consider the following account of one Iraqi family’s horror by the unembedded American journalist Dahr Jamail:

[Another man approached me with the two children of his brother, killed by U.S. gunfire, by his side.] “This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the Americans. Who will take care of this family? Who will watch over these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That’s it? This is the reason? Why didn’t anyone talk to me and tell me why they have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening every day? This is our future? This is the future that the United States promised Iraq?”

Over sixty years ago, French writer Albert Camus made the following candid self-examination about World War II: “During these four dreadful years all French men [and women] were witnesses to a crime not foreseen by any law (and in saying this we are weighing our words carefully): the crime of not doing enough.”

After telling the truth, our second imperative, then, is to refuse to be guilty of the “crime” of not doing enough. Our tasks are three—resistance, delegitimation, and accountability. We must act relentlessly, cunningly, and creatively to undermine and end the criminal and catastrophic U.S. occupation of Iraq.

If we don’t, then future generations will judge us mercilessly and Senator McCain may prove to be a prophet: the U.S., indeed, will remain in Iraq for 100 years.