�e��ections
Nonviolent Community
for
a book of readings
the oak ridge environmental peace alliance
april - may 2017
front cover:
Six strong women peacemakers were honored at the 2017 Peacemaker
Award celebration in Knoxville on March 11. From left, Sarah Scott,
Caroline Best, Shigeko Uppuluri, Marese Nephew, MaryAnne McNutt and
Judy Ross. photo by ed sullivan
About this booklet
This booklet grows from an intentional exploration of nonviolent
community embarked upon by members of the Oak Ridge
Environmental Peace Alliance. It has since expanded to embrace
many members of our peace community.
Our intention is to use the booklet to build spiritual community.
Those who are using the book are asked to participate by
contributing readings to it.‡
The common thread in these reflections is the struggle of human
beings to improve the world. In OREPA, our struggle to end bomb
production is part of that struggle. In these reflections, we join
ourselves with the larger community that works to heal the world.
The reflection booklet has been provided free of charge to all who
request it. We welcome donations—$20 would cover the cost of
paper, printing and mailing for one year—but they aren’t required.
Each Thursday you will find the name of a member of the
community who is using this reflection booklet. This is an
opportunity to think a little about that person and all those who
work for peace on her/his day.
‡ contributions, suggestions, requests can be sent to OREPA,
P O Box 5743, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 or by e-mail to [email protected]
sources
Readings for this reflection booklet were contributed by Mary Dennis
Lentsch.
Saturday, April 1
1983 :: 14 mile human chain surrounds greenham common in nuclear protest
Only when power is widely distributed, and only when
people work together to create the world they want to live in—only
then can transformation be deep and holistic while also being
liberating, compassionate, and inclusive.
~ Sarah van Gelder
Sunday, April 2
As resistance seeks to liberate men and women from the
pain of social injustice, contemplation seeks to liberate us from the
pain of yet deeper alienation, an impoverished and autonomous self.
~ Jim Douglass
Monday, April 3
The shadows of this world will say
There’s no hope why try anyway?
But every kindness large or slight
shifts the balance toward the Light…
When justice seems in short supply,
lean in toward the Light.
~ Carrie Newcomer
Tuesday, April 4
1968 :: martin luther king, jr assassinated, memphis, tn
We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end.
Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis.
We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need
to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on
strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Wednesday, April 5
We must love both those whose opinions we share and those
whose opinions we don’t share. Both have labored in the search for
truth and have helped us in finding it.
~ Thomas Aquinas
Thursday, April 6
Amanda Allen
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
~ William Stafford
Friday, April 7
Nonviolence is a power which can be wielded equally by
all—children, young men and women, the elders, provided they
have a living faith in the Source of Love and have therefore equal
love for all humankind. When nonviolence is accepted as the law
of life it must pervade the whole being and not be simply applied to
isolated acts.
~ Gandhi
Saturday, April 8
563 :: birth of the buddha
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our
countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to
do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for
example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace,
we can be at peace with those around us. When our community
is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring
communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards
others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps
us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
~ Dalai Lama
Sunday, April 9
1898 :: paul robeson born
The Zen master would say if you want to change
government, you have to aim at changing corporations, and if
you want to change corporations, you first have to change the
consumers. Whoa, wait a minute! The consumer? That’s me. You
mean I’m the one who has to change?
~ Yvon Chouinard
Monday, April 10
1930 :: dolores huerta born
1988 :: northern ireland peace agreement signed
In both personal and political relationships love, power, and
justice are inseparable. Without love, power becomes tyrannical and
justice is only a name for the ruling of strong. Without power, love is
reduced to sentimentality and justice to an impotent ideal. Without
justice, love is a perverse dance of domination and submission.
~ Paul Tillich
Tuesday, April 11
mawlid al-nabi, muhammad’s birthday
1996 :: african nations ban nuclear weapons
1963 :: pacem in terris, john xxiii encyclical opposes nuclear weapons
Anyone who talks about revolution and class struggle
without referring explicitly to everyday life—without grasping what
is subversive about love and positive in the refusal of constraints—
has a corpse in his mouth.
~ Raoul Vaneigem
Wednesday, April 12
I’m done with great things and big things, great intentions
and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral
forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through
the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary
oozing of water. Yet which, if you give them time, will rend the
hardest monuments of our pride.
~ William James
More than 1100 people came out, on 48 hours notice, on a Wednesday
afternoon, to protest President Trump’s immigration ban in February.
After marching from Market Square, the crowd gathered in front of the
City/County office building while representatives delivered letters to our
Senators and Representative.
Thursday, April 13
Lee and Jack Hoefer
1919 :: eugene debs imprisoned for war opposition
Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened—
there was nothing, and then…
But maybe sometime you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?
We have to watch it and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don’t watch out.
Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party that your life is.
~ William Stafford
Friday, April 14
1986 :: us bombs libya
Loving service rendered with integrity teaches multitudes in
darkness, those who still sleep, far faster than books or lectures.
~ Nan Merrill
Saturday, April 15
1889 :: a philip randolph born
Work when there is work to do. Rest when you are tired. One
thing done in peace will most likely be better than ten things done in
panic.
~ Susan McHenry
Sunday, April 16
The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat
without losing heart.
~ Robert Ingersoll
Monday, April 17
1960 :: student nonviolent coordinating committee founded, greensboro, nc
1961 :: us invades cuba (bay of pigs)
Never despair! But if you do, work on in your despair.
~ Henry Tyrell
Tuesday, April 18
The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is
merely tenacity.
~ Amelia Earhart
Wednesday, April 19
1948 :: costa rica abolishes army
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in
the long run. The daily work—that goes on, it adds up.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
Thursday, April 20
Gaye Evans
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our stars.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruely
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
~ William Stafford
Friday, April 21
if each day falls
inside each night
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned
we need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.
~ Pablo Neruda
Saturday, April 22
earth day
To learn to meet our needs without continuous
violence against one another and our only world would
require an immense intellectual and practical effort, requiring
the help of every human being perhaps to the end of human
time. This would be work worthy of the name “human.” It
would be fascinating and lovely.
~ Wendell Berry
Sunday, April 23
If we have a goal in life, work becomes like
mountaineering. We have a view of the role we want to play:
a vision of becoming a complete person, contributing both as
an individual and one of humankind. One stands at the foot of
the mountain and the climb seems easy; yet after the first few
hours it becomes difficult, you get tired, you rest, then the path
clears only to get difficult again before the summit—but what
joy and what ecstasy on reaching the top where the canopy of
heaven is all-embracing.
~ Oonagh Stanley-Foffolo
Monday, April 24
1965 :: us invades dominican republic
But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over,
for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story
which will not be over, and it isn’t the game that is over, it is
just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings.
When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness.
But it is a long day.
~ Robert Penn Warren
Judy Ross, right, and her daughters Ellen and Kathleen, came to celebrate
peacemakers—Judy to receive a 2017 Peacemaker Award and Ellen and
Kathleen to help celebrate and bask in the glow!
Tuesday, April 25
I had wondered what Nicholas was doing behind the closed
door of his study at an early morning hour. Now I knew. He was not
just reading and praying. He was following a discipline which focused
him and made it possible for him to realize his full potential. He
was lining up his center with the integrating principle at work in the
universe, the principle which was ultimately stronger than the drive to
fragment. He was tapping into the power of light which would allow
him to live dynamically, surfing the chaos, splitting the darkness,
serving the creator by serving others again and again.
~ Susan Howatch
Wednesday, April 26
Compassion is a kind of fire—it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites,
it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it
especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds,
and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those touched by compassion have their
lives turned upside down.
~ Matthew Fox
Thursday, April 27
Linda Ewald
They tell how it was, and how time
came along, and how it happened
again and again. They tell
the slant life takes when it turns
and slashes your face as a friend.
Any wound is real. In church
a woman lets the sun find
her cheek, and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book; there are sorrows
a choir can’t reach when they sing.
Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.
~ William Stafford
Friday, April 28
1967 :: muhammad ali refuses induction into us army
1977 :: first demonstration of mothers of the disappeared, buenos aires
What if we asked ourselves every night: “How does what I did
today nurture life?”
~ Carol Christ
Saturday, April 29
1915 :: women’s international league for peace and freedom founded
There is no greater impotence in all the world than knowing
you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave
crashes upon you.
~ Norman Mailer
Sunday, April 30
1970 :: us invades cambodia
1975 :: vietnam war ends with reunification of vietnam
Under the current law, it is a crime for a private citizen to lie
to a government official, but not for a government official to lie to the
people.
~ Donald Fraser
Monday, May 1
1830 :: mother jones born
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
~ Joseph Campbell
Tuesday, May 2
If 40 million people say a foolish thing it does not become a
wise one.
~ W. Somerset Maugham
Wednesday, May 3
1919 :: pete seeger born
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the
freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in
power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
~ James Madison
Thursday, May 4
Jerry Bone
1970 :: four students killed by national guardsmen firing on peace
demonstrators at kent state university
It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
Far to the north, and indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked—
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders—we
encounter them in dread and wonder,
But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.
Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.
~ William Stafford
Friday, May 5
1991 :: last cruise missiles removed from greenham common base in uk
The workplace is as good a school for spirituality as a
monastery. Our work, our homes, our neighborhoods, our public
meeting places, our voting booths, our classrooms—all are
conducive to the practice of spirituality. Our turf, our stuff, however
cluttered and discombobulated, are holy ground. The ordinary
hassles of daily living are rich soil in which to grow and bloom.
~ Rich Heffern
Saturday, May 6
We must lie on our beds at night and wrestle with how we
can individually and collectively bring our faith from talk to power,
how we can bring our faith and works to bear on the real issues of
human need. I believe that right now we are facing a most difficult
time in history. We are discovering that old strategies have failed
and that the new ones, or rediscovered ones, will not let us hold
onto our old lifestyles.
~ John Perkins
Sunday, May 7
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of
human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live
together and work together, in the same world, at peace. The only
limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let
us move forward with strong and active faith.
~ Franklin Roosevelt
Monday, May 8
Compassion is not an invitation to non-action or
complacency nor a license to sit idly, viewing the events of life from
a perspective of non-involvement, numbness or denial. Becoming
compassion is your invitation to immerse yourself fully into the
experience of life, whatever the offering from a place of nonjudgment. Serving simultaneously as the path you may become,
as well as the gift you offer to others, compassion is only possible
in the healing of polarity; ie., transcending your personal polarity
while remaining in this world of polarity.
~ Gregg Braden
Tuesday, May 9
The oppressed, who have been shaped by the deathaffirming climate of oppression, must find through their struggle
the way to life-affirming humanization, which does not lie simply
in having more to eat (although it does involve having more to eat
and cannot fail to include this aspect). The oppressed have been
destroyed precisely because their situation has reduced them to
things. In order to regain their humanity they must cease to be things
and fight as persons. This is a radical requirement. They cannot enter
the struggle as objects in order later to become persons.
~ Paulo Freire
Wednesday, May 10
1994 :: south africa inaugurates president nelson mandela
Love is something you and I must have. We must have it
because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it
we become weak and faint. Without it our courage fails
~ Chief Dan George
After Knoxville Representative Jimmy Duncan said he would not hold town
meetings because of kooks, the city and several organizations, including
the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, held our own, and the auditorium was
packed. It was also well behaved, hearing testimony from people whose
insurance is at risk if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.
Thursday, May 11
MaryAnne McNutt
1998 :: india conducts 3 underground thermonuclear tests
It was all the clods at once become
precious; it was the barn, and the shed,
and the windmill, my hands, the crack
Arlie made in the ax handle: oh, let me stay
here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;
let the sun casually rise and set.
If I have not found the right place,
teach me; for somewhere inside, the clods are
vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing
for the saints forever, the shed and windmill
rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.
Now I know why people worship, carry around
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.
~ William Stafford
Friday, May 12
“Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” presupposes the answer
can be only one of the two possibilities. However, I heard one elder
pose a different question altogether: “Is the glass the right size?”
~ Michael Garrett
Saturday, May 13
By our nonviolent action we shall show that truth has its
own strength. Ours is a strategy based on love, not hate, and should
result in a chain reaction of discussion and insight.
~ Danilo Dolci
Sunday, May 14
1970 :: two students killed in anti-war protests at jackson state
The only power nonviolent liberation seeks is the power to
serve, to care, to love, to build the earth into a city of brothers and
sisters.
~ Jim Douglass
Monday, May 15
1958 :: japanese students protest pacific testing of nuclear weapons
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world
in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of
tortured children.
~ Albert Camus
Tuesday, May 16
Without love, we can no longer look confidently at the
world. We turn inward, and little by little we destroy ourselves.
~ Chief Dan George
Wednesday, May 17
1954 :: brown v. board of education ruling outlaws school segregation
1968 :: catonsville 9 burn draft records in vietnam war protest
Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten
system.
~ Dorothy Day
Thursday, May 18
Eric Evers
1974 :: india explodes first nuclear weapon in rajasthan desert
When we first moved here, pulled
the trees in around us, curled
our backs to the wind, no one
had ever hit the moon—no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars,
and only other people’s neglect
is our precious and abiding shell,
pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.
From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide:
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice, the hovering hawk
of the state, or the sudden quiet stare
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.
This message we smuggle out in
its plain cover, to be opened
quietly: Friends everywhere—
we are alive! Those moon rockets
have missed millions of secret
places! Best wishes.
Burn this.
~ William Stafford
Friday, May 19
1925 :: malcolm x born
We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed
on us.
~ Malcolm X
Saturday, May 20
As my suffering mounted I soon realized that there were
two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with
bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I
decided to follow the latter course.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Sunday, May 21
Patience is also a form of action.
~ Auguste Rodin
Monday, May 22
1838 :: trail of tears forced march of cherokees begins; 4,000 will die
With love, we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With
it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.
~ Chief Dan George
Tuesday, May 23
The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is
to annoy people who are not in them.
~ Dave Barry
Wednesday, May 24
What if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to become fully human?
~ Paulo Freire
Thursday, May 25
Rocio Huet
Fog in the morning here
will make some of the world far away
and the near only a hint. But rain
will feel its blind progress along the valley,
tapping to convert one boulder at a time
into a glistening fact. Daylight will
love what came.
Whatever fits will be welcome, whatever
steps back in the fog will disappear
and hardly exist. You hear the river
saying a prayer for all that’s gone.
Far over the valley there is an island
for everything left; and our own island
will drift there too, unless we hold on,
unless we tap like this: “Friend,
are you there? Will you touch when
you pass, like the rain?”
~ William Stafford
Friday, May 26
When people made up their minds that they wanted to be
free and took action, then there was a change. But they cannot rest
on just that change. It has to continue.
~ Rosa Parks
Saturday, May 27
Spirituality is that deep well of the heart that houses
our treasured values and meanings. It is an active movement, an
engaging energy source that runs through our core, challenging us
to be our best selves.
~ Patricia Chappell
Sunday, May 28
1961 :: amnesty international founded
1998 :: pakistan tests thermonuclear weapons
In many parts of the world the people are searching for a
solution which would link the two basic values; peace and justice.
The two are like bread and salt for mankind.
~ Lech Walesa
Monday, May 29
Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble
struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself,
a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Tuesday, May 30
If compassion never ceases to flow, then that is meditation.
Meditation is not just sitting in the lotus position with eyes closed.
Real meditation exists in the midst of the dynamic activity of life.
~ Dae Haeng Se Nim
Wednesday, May 31
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among the
mysteries.
~ Theodore Roethke
Yes, Sunday vigils are still a thing. Gathered at the main entrance
to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex on a chilly Sunday afternoon
in March, Mary Dennis Lentsch and Jim Ullrich listen as vigil leader
Dennie Kelley reads. OREPA has maintained a nonviolent witness to
life every Sunday afternoon (5:00pm Eastern time) for more than
17 years. Come join us! Knoxville’s answer to the Immigration ban attempt by President
Trump—more than a thousand people responded to the call by
BRIDGE Refugee Services and AKIN (Allies of Knoxville’s Immigrant
Neighbors), gathering on Market Square for a rally before marching
through town on a Wednesday afternoon. Below, the rally reconvened at the City/County building for chants; OREPA coordinator
Ralph Hutchison led the crowd in a reading of The New Colossus,
Emma Lazarus’s powerful poetic tribute to the Statue of Liberty.