Pax Christi Minnesota

Happy New Year!

We invite you to join us as you are able on the 4th Saturday of each month for a time of prayer, silence for meditation, and discussion of a reflection piece chosen by that month’s facilitator.  We would like you to consider an opportunity to volunteer as a facilitator in a future month.  If you are interested, contact Steve Clemens (steveclemens@msn.com)

The meetings are at St.  Joan of Arc Parish Center.   The meetings are from 9AM – 10:30AM.    Steve Clemens will facilitate on January 28th.   The following reflective piece written by John Dear that includes the Pax Christi Vow of Nonviolence.

If you are intrigued by Father Dear’s ideas, you may wish to hear him in person @ St. Francis Cabrini the evening of April 17th at a book event featuring his new book, Lazarus, Come Forth!

We also hope you will join us for our Winter Gathering on March 3 to hear lawyer and human rights activist Bill Quigley.   Stay tuned on this website for registration information.

REFLECTIONS 

A New Year of Nonviolence By John Dear S. Created Jan 03, 2012

“When a person claims to be nonviolent, he is expected not to be angry with one who has injured him,” Gandhi wrote. “He will not wish him harm. He will wish him well. He will not swear at him. He will not cause him any physical hurt. He will put up with all the injury to which he is subjected by the wrongdoer. Thus nonviolence is complete innocence.”

That was Gandhi’s editorial message on Sept. 3, 1922, in his newspaper, Young India. He was trying to inspire his nation to reach the highest ideal of peace, love and nonviolence as they resisted British imperialism.

Who could possibly be that nonviolent? Most of us get angry and vengeful at the slightest put-down. I know I do. If I’m disrespected or attacked for one reason or another — and that happens frequently to anyone who speaks against war — I feel hurt, then get angry, then want to retaliate with a verbal attack or worse. If I repress those feelings, I end up with a pool of resentment that eventually needs to be addressed or it will lead to even greater judgmentalism, self-righteousness or explosive violence.

“Complete nonviolence is complete absence of ill will against all that lives,” Gandhi continued. “Nonviolence is, in its active form, good will towards all life. It is pure Love. Nonviolence is a perfect state. It is a goal towards which all humanity moves naturally though unconsciously. The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress, the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”

Gandhi reminds me that the full effort to resist evil, respond nonviolently and deal with hard feelings without further retaliation is at the heart of the spiritual life. This journey can break the cycle of violence and take us deep into forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love. And isn’t that what Godly living is all about? Isn’t that real peacemaking? Isn’t that the life Jesus invites us to live?

As we begin another year fraught with uncertainty, injustice and war, Gandhi points us toward our highest ideal and invites us to a new year’s resolution of renewed nonviolence for the coming of a new world of nonviolence.

That’s what’s on my mind as we start this election year, as I survey the global landscape of violence, war, poverty, executions, corporate greed and environmental destruction. There’s simply no better beacon in modern history than Gandhi and his ideal of nonviolence. He shows us, I suggest, the Christian way.

Over the past few years, I’ve reprinted Pax Christi’s vow of nonviolence at New Year’s as a friendly reminder of our ongoing commitment to embody the peace we seek, to renew our personal nonviolence and to help the global movement for justice and disarmament. Gandhi’s vow of nonviolence encouraged him to remain nonviolent until his last breath. It pushed him, he claimed, beyond himself to his ideal, fully realized, true self. Such a vow can help us do the same. It has certainly helped me, first of all, by urging me not to say or do something I would later regret, which will only continue the spiral of violence.

Recently, I read how my friend Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy concludes her workshops on hope by inviting people to profess five vows as a way to solemnize their commitment to hope, peace and right action. They read:

I vow to myself and to each of you:

• to commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all being;
• to live on earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products and energy I consume;
• to draw strength and guidance from the living Earth, the ancestors, the future generations, and my brothers and sisters of all species;
• to support each other in our work for the world and to ask for help when I need it;
• to pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart and supports me in observing these vows.

Joanna Macy’s vows remind me of the “Metta Sutta,” a kind of prayer-vow, used at the end of meditation sessions at various Buddhist centers I have visited. It is recited slowly and together by the community as an act of renewal and re-centering, and can be a very disarming experience. It acts like a compass to point us in the right direction for the journey ahead.

May I be free from enmity and danger.
May I be free from mental suffering.
May I be free from physical suffering.
May I take care of myself happily.

May all beings be free from enmity and danger.
May all beings be free from mental suffering.
May all beings be free from physical suffering.
May all beings take care of themselves happily.

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be free from suffering.
May it be so.

 “Wage peace with your breath,” Mary Oliver writes in one of her poems. “Breathe in fire and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening. Hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup, play music … Wage peace! Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious. Act as if armistice has already arrived. Don’t wait another minute.”

The New Year has arrived. If we dare to dream about the highest ideal, we could wish for the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan; the abolition of the death penalty, hunger and nuclear weapons; and a national change of heart that will bring true universal health care, as well as decent jobs, housing and education for all, and a global rededication to the earth. For ourselves, we long to remain centered in the peace of Christ, to live and breathe that deep peace and to cultivate that peace in our personal lives, our workplace, our families, and in the various movements for social justice and disarmament we support.

As we wage peace, we send a ripple of peace into the world to joins the waves of nonviolence that wash over nations and empires and disarm us all.

And so I offer the Pax Christi “Vow of Nonviolence” again and invite you to read it slowly and prayerfully, to profess it by yourself or with friends. May it help us to follow the nonviolent Jesus on our journey to peace, that we might all hasten a new year, a new world, of nonviolence.

***

Recognizing the violence in my own heart, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the sons and daughters of God. Love your enemies that you may be sons and daughters of your Creator in heaven …”

Before God the Creator and the Sanctifying Spirit, I vow to carry out in my life the love and example of Jesus –

• by striving for peace within myself and seeking to be a peacemaker in my daily life;
• by accepting suffering in the struggle for justice and peace rather than inflicting it;
• by refusing to retaliate in the face of provocation and violence;
• by persevering in nonviolence of tongue and heart;
• by living conscientiously and simply so that I do not deprive others of the means to live;
• by actively resisting evil and working nonviolently to abolish war and the causes of war from my own heart and from the face of the earth.

God, I trust in your sustaining love and believe that just as You gave me the grace and desire to offer this, so You will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it. Amen.

Reminder that the monthly Pax Christi Minnesota prayer and meditation gathering for December

Saturday Dec. 17th. 9-10:30 AM at St. Joan of Arc parish center.
Lynn Cibuzar will facilitate using this reflection piece from Fr John Dear.
Steve Clemens

Finding Advent peace along the Carolina coast

By John Dear SJ.  Nov 29, 2011

It’s common here in North Carolina’s Outer Banks to see pelicans glide effortlessly in single file a foot above the breaking waves along the coastline. On occasion, I’ve seen a hundred pelicans circle over a dark area in the ocean. One by one, they dive straight down into the water to feed off a school of fish.

The other day, I watched in wonder as a dozen dolphins swam by. I especially enjoy studying sandpipers, the small, white birds with tiny legs like toothpicks who run down the beach right into the face of an oncoming wave, pick at the sand, and then turn around and run back before they get hit by the wave. Back and forth, all day long, they run right into the face of an oncoming wall of water and then turn around.

The North Carolina coast is known for its rugged beauty and raw wildness. It’s a good place to step out of our violent, consumer society and rediscover the refreshing reality of creation. Because the Outer Banks juts far out into the Atlantic, the currents and tides are particularly rough. The ocean can seem enchanting one day, and angry and menacing the next. It is alive, and one feels more alive in its presence.

I was born and raised not far from Nags Head, and decided to spend a few days at my parents’ house by the ocean to begin Advent in peace and quiet. I’ve been coming here all my life and feel at home on these dunes, by these roaring waves, under this big sky, in the company of pelicans, dolphins and sandpipers.

During the 1960s, since we lived close by, we visited the beach regularly. For two or three weeks each summer, we rented one of the classic flat-top houses and spent our days in the water –literally. My three brothers and I, along with our father, would run into the ocean at 8 a.m. and get out at 5 p.m. — every day for two or three weeks. We were fish. I was permanently sunburned but didn’t care. At night, we went go-cart racing. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.

These days, I prefer the off-season, when only the locals can be found at the coffee shop. Before the Cineplex, McDonald’s and Walmart, back in the 1960s, the Outer Banks were barren. The sand dunes of Jockey’s Ridge could be seen for miles, just as they had been 50 years before when the Wright brothers first flew across them. The only stores around were Wink’s and Anderson’s, a tiny cinderblock building that sold everything. Twenty miles south near the bridge to Manteo and Roanoke Island stood the little yellow Holy Trinity Catholic Church at Whalebone Junction. Not far north stood the beautiful old Currituck lighthouse. No one had a telephone, a TV, a computer or air conditioning. It was stark, simple, primeval, but quiet, healing and peaceful.

Nags Head is a good place to enter the holy season of Advent as a time of prayer, reflection, renewal and peace. It’s a place of peace where one can set one’s sights again on the God of peace who comes with the Christmas gift of peace.

At night, I look up and see the stars and watch the moonlight shimmering on the rolling ocean and listen to the sound of crashing waves. There’s not a soul in sight and the ocean stretches out far until it merges with the night sky. Here, one sees the big picture. Everything points to God. Everything bears God’s fingerprints. Everything makes peace.

Advent is a time when we beg God for the gift of peace, when we tell the God of peace, “Yes, we want your gift of peace.” Even though others might reject God’s gift, we welcome it with joy, hope and anticipation. That’s the work, the wisdom, the way of the spiritual life. We welcome God’s coming into the world with the gift of peace by living in peace here and now with ourselves and everyone.

Advent means getting ready for peace. Advent prays with Jesus, “Yes, may your reign of peace, love and nonviolence come. Yes, we welcome it. Bring it on.”

I think of Advent, then, as a Christian season of mindfulness. We take four weeks to return to our center, enter the present moment of peace, live and breathe and eat and walk in peace, and wake up to the holy essentials of peace. Advent offers the chance to start the journey of peace all over again. It’s a time to practice peacemaking in our day-to-day, hour-by-hour life.

In the morning, I’m up early to catch the sunrise over the ocean. Light appears along the horizon, a few clouds turn pink, then red. Suddenly, a red line appears. Then the sun pops up and I see the light. I walk two miles down the beach to the Avalon Pier and find the local fishermen and women standing above on the pier or knee-deep in the water with their fishing rods. I think of those comforting words, “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men and women.” I recall how the Galileans dropped their nets and walked off with Jesus.

But that’s not how it feels this morning. It feels, on second thought, like the journey has come to an end. I feel like St. Peter after Jesus’ arrest and execution, at a loss to understand our ongoing rejection of peace, hope and light. Peter goes back to Galilee, and starts all over again. He takes out a boat and goes fishing, and the others join him. That’s all they know to do.

Like Peter, I’m back where I started. And here, by the sea, at dawn, the risen Jesus approaches with his Advent/Christmas/Last Supper/Good Friday/Easter gift of peace and says, as if for the first time, “Come, follow me.”

Once again, I hear the call to take up the journey. It’s like I’m always beginning. And the initiative always comes from God.

This Advent, as we keep watch over the world with its wars, corrupt governments, greedy corporations, extreme poverty, unjust suffering, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction, we keep a lookout for the coming of the God of peace. The signs are all around us. We are headed toward ever-widening peace with creation, all creatures and the Creator.

We see God’s movement of peace in the ongoing Occupy movement; the School of the Americas protest; the steadfast resisters in Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Palestine; in the staunch witness of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi; in all those who struggle for justice and disarmament.

It’s in those moments under the night sky, by the sea or before the rising sun, as we remember the essential truths and our great calling, as we take heart from the growing movements for justice and peace, as we practice Advent mindfulness and open ourselves to the Great Compassion, as we reach out in loving kindness and creative peacemaking, that we hear an old song rising from deep within us and among us:

“O come, o come, Emmanuel …”

May your Advent be blessed with peace, hope and light!

John Dear’s new book, Lazarus, Come Forth! [3], has just been published by Orbis Books. It explores Jesus as the God of life, calling humanity (in the symbol of the dead Lazarus) out of the tombs of the culture of war and death.