The "Vote"

A little late, but a collection of thoughts and comments with friends over email:

Here's a quote from the US Bishops' "Faithful Citizenship" (2007): "When all candidates hold a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate or, after careful deliberation, may decide to vote for the candidate deemed less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods."

These are extra-ordinary times. The U.S. government is an Empire of political, social, and economic violence that keeps its lot off of the blood and sweat of millions of poor, oppressed and marginalized people all over the world. Do not be fooled by patriotic whims of electoral duty...a vote for any president is a vote for war and violence. Take a stand for peace and truth, withdraw consent from bloody regimes and begin organizing local, sustainable, nonviolent communities from the ground up. Quit paying taxes to the war machine. Quit our consumer habits that rape the Earth and pillage the poor. Vote by every mile you ride your bike instead of driving the car. Vote by buying fair trade, local and organic food from cooperative projects. Vote by demanding, (with our bodies, because talk is cheap these days) every power elite to shut down Guantanamo, shut down immigration raids, shut down wars for oil, shut down discrimination and hate based on age, gender, race, orientation, shut down nuclear proliferation, shut down the prisons, shut down scandalous electoral politics and hundreds of billions of dollars of campaign finance...put that money into the Dunkin' Donuts cup of the homeless man begging for a meal, a bed, a conversation. Don't let the politicians play their games of rhetoric and backdoor devilry, don't let them spit in the faces of the widows and the orphans who are turned away empty handed because all the coffers have been emptied for Blackwater and Halliburton, don't let them bleed the Earth of the life and beauty that sustains us all. The good news here is that we don't need them. They need our votes, but more importantly, they need our dollars. Tell them to take a hike and give you dough to the young veteran back from Iraq who has been left on his own to find treatment for PTSD. Give it to the local food shelf, or better yet, invite the hungry into your home and cook a meal for them and make some new friends. Give shelter to the undocumented who are being persecuted by ideologues and bureaucrats. Change starts here, not Election Day. We don't need four more years. The revolution, the real revolution, of learning to love our neighbors AND our enemies, has been going on for thousands of years. We don't need a president or elected official to tell us how to do that. We have each other, we have community...start building it now: our lives depend on it.


Is this "rhetorical flourish," or do you dare believe what you write?
And God said to Jake, "You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you" (Luke 12:20).
If what you write is true, then our lives should never...can never be the same.


Why do we waste so much time not meaning what we say or saying what we mean...I do dare to believe this. Dare I take this on faith? Dare I write this and share it with others? These are but passing fancies.

The real rub, the task at hand: Do I dare make this belief reality - or, rather - does my life become one with the creator and creation so that this daring proposition is made real? My salvation is your salvation is her salvation is their salvation is...

Who am I to say if this is true...I've merely been blessed (or cursed, the jury is still out!) to have caught a glimpse of the banquet feast at Maryhouse. The Lord said "Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people" (Ezekiel 12:2). And we are called the rebels by the ones with the bombs and the ballots!

Spare some change? Sorry, good sir, I am on my way to vote so that you are no longer poor. I would buy you a meal but gave my last to the Obama campaign. I hope you understand, but change is on its way, if you would just wait a bit longer... "Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." (Matthew 26:10-13)." So much for the least of these. The works of war (ahem, I mean politics) have once again usurped the works of mercy.


Because the structures that govern this country are inherently created for injustice to persist...it does not matter who is a part of them, violence and extortion are part of their function. A voting system exists to create illusions of control of the people. The reality is that these votes are manipulated by slick advertising, non-binding campaign promises, and cheap rhetoric that borders on idolatry. I fundamentally disagree with the way our country is governed and have strong reservations about the ability of a nation-state to even hold a nonviolent position. So I withdraw my consent and support for that structure (by not voting, paying taxes, etc.) while realistically recognizing that the dismantling of that structure will take some time. The ethical mandate of a Gospel politic (concerning citizens and interaction with the State) is rooted in the works of mercy, the forgiveness of sins, the calling of conversion to state and church powers to serve the poor. That morality, because it is rooted in truth, can be spoken to any politician or person in the power elite because it is the good news. One need not vote for one or the other because any person, whether it be in a local position or the executive branch, will need reminders of what it means to be good. That is just the nature of the beast. In the meantime, I will continue to work on behalf of the poor, the tortured, the oppressed by serving them directly as best I can and organize communities that can create an alternative social structure that eliminates the power elite and their nuclear weapons. Forgiveness and self-sacrifice is the only way God can be known and the government refuses to do either.

Truth and Reconciliation

The Dakota people came home for too short of a time to the land they were forcibly removed from by primarily White settlers and their military. A few weeks ago the 5th annual Dakota Gathering and Homecoming happened in Winona, MN. It was a weekend of education, dancing, food, entertainment, and community building for the Dakota people and the people of Winona.

One of the most powerful experiences of the weekend was the Truth and Reconciliation circle. In principle, the circle is quite a simple idea. It is the intentional creation of a space to share personal stories and pain, give opportunity for those whose voices are drowned out to speak and for those who speak too much to listen, for history to be told from the perspective of the victim. But such a simple idea becomes a powerful moment. This was the first time I've sat in on any circle of this kind where oppressor and oppressed meet to share in something. For me, I was there mostly as an observer trying to understand the pains and sufferings that hundreds of years of history have granted me privilege and power while belittled and stripped the life and dignity of others.

I just want to share some things I wrote down as I listened to powerful witnesses of pain, stories of hope, and prophetic calls for redemption.

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History: It needs to be learned. Stories of genocide and crimes of humanity are what this country is really built on.

Maintenance sobriety, language, and spirituality are of the utmost importance.

Treaties are a thing of the past, made between “governing” bodies. They are impersonal and static and allow for oppression and injustice. A covenant is about relationships and learning and growing with each other.

Oppressors can learn much from those they have oppressed. They can help us understand ourselves. And the more we learn about ourselves, the more we learn about reality. We need to step out of our ignorance and ASK OTHERS TO TEACH US.

Our minds have been numbed by a materialistic culture. We have no imagination. Our minds are contaminated. The minds of the youth are pure, do not destroy or brainwash their imagination.

The consciousness for our ethical judgments was conceived and developed through an imperialistic mentality; it seeks to control and mold the way we think.

A number of women shared their personal stories and the pain of patriarchy and sexual abuse within their lives on the reservations. The voices of the oppressed within the oppressed are what hold together life and salvation. Create space for the autonomy of women and youth to be exercised, both within native culture and the dominant culture. “A Nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women are lying on the ground.”

The Earth is retaliating for all the poisoning we have done it her. She does not care if you are brown, or white, or red, or black. We all need to become part of the Earth Community and ask the question of ourselves: Who or What comes first in your life? Is the answer the Creator? God? The Earth? My Country? Myself?

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It seems to me that, as folks become more and more concerned about environmental issues (such as the Mississippi River Revival and BLEW's Save Our Bluffs), there is an inherent connection that emerges to issues of human and indigenous rights. It is obvious the the life of a people is connected to the life of the land when the spirituality is rooted within an Earth Community understanding of life. The way to address the systematic and capitalistic development of natural places and open spaces is by returning them and granting access to the lives of the people who have the closest connection to the land. Many of these spaces are sacred burial sites and if shut up and listen to the stories of our unlearned history, rather than looking for government documents to "prove" what the land is, relationships and community with displaced First Nation people and the land will be restored and protected.

Freedom in Nonviolence

The coercive nature of violence is the real threat to freedom and peace in the lives of all peoples in the world today. Those of us who enjoy some semblance of "freedom" to exercise certain rights or privileges that have been granted us by some structure of government or other state apparatus experience the same coercive violence as those peoples who suffer tremendously for exercising the same rights contrary to the will of the powers of domination. The soul of the Land of Liberty is dying amidst a war of liberation and fight for freedom. Freedom is not a byproduct in need of salvation through violent conflict with an enemy. Freedom is an act of faith and an act of conscience.

Nonviolence is a choice, an expression of freedom that says to the attractive, overwhelming convincing power of violence "I don't need you to solve my problems." The martyrs who stand up for peace and justice through nonviolent speech and action and suffer the consequences of repressive state and corporate violence are the real "Freedom Fighters." They are the ones who realize Freedom cannot be bought or sold, won or lost. Their freedom is not a gift but a choice.

Following the Nonviolent Jesus

How is it, that as Christians - and some sects of Christianity that explicitly embrace a personal call to follow Jesus, that Christians have failed to assume the Gospel nonviolence that Jesus taught to his friends and students? The early church lived the nonviolence of Jesus, by sharing their lives with the poor and marginalized and each other in small, communal lives. They resisted state violence and oppression by living outside such systems of injustice and were then martyred for their prophetic outrage to such state domination. Have we forgotten that Jesus is an enemy of the state? Jesus was even enemy of the church, because of how he called the church to conversion and conscience.

We 21st century Christians have gotten off easy. We believe in a personal Jesus that loves us dearly but makes no personal claims on how or why we live our lives. The nonviolent Jesus is one of love, sure, but also one of conflict, one of faith and conscience, one of peacemaking and works of mercy. Is this the Jesus that is followed in most of our churches and communities? Is this the Jesus that the stranger knows, the enemy knows, the oppressed know?

Let us begin to reclaim the Jesus that our Gospel stories and traditions reveal to us. Let us remember the nonviolent Jesus.

Tax Resistance: Non-Cooperation

Gandhi wrote: "When a government becomes lawless in an organized manner, civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty and is the only remedy open specially to those who had no hand in the making of the Government or its laws. Another remedy there certainly is, and that is armed revolt. Civil Disobedience is a complete, effectives and bloodless substitute."

I believe our government, "the greatest purveyor of violence" in the world, to borrow some words from another prophetic advocate of nonviolence, refuses to be accountable to the people it is supposed to represent. When Dr. King spoke these words, he was assaulted by many people. People he thought were friends accused him of betrayal for expressing his non-consent for the war in Vietnam. "Injustice somewhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Because my voice is not being heard when I contact my "leaders" or large, public actions such as protests are, at best, glazed over by mainstream media, the only way this renegade war, started and continued with very little support of the the people, is to stop giving the government the money to fund the war. Over 50% of our income tax pays for military expenditures, past and current. The war in Iraq has cost, in the past 5 years, $600 billion. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, estimates the real cost of this war to be $3 trillion, when we consider all the factors of war (Veteran's Healthcare, Rebuilding, Reparations, etc.)

I will not fund that. The money I would have paid the government has gone to the Chicago Anti-Hunger Foundation. When votes no longer matter we vote with our dollars. I vote for the works of mercy and feeding the hungry. And if it means the IRS is gonna come knocking on my door for $119, I will offer them some food too. And if they ask for a check, I'll go with them to jail. That's another work of mercy, visit the imprisoned. If we took the works of mercy as seriously as we took our 1040s and economic stimulus package, the Kingdom of God would be at hand.

Nonviolence is a way of life, it is the way of the cross, the way of truth. There is too much suffering in the world right now. Just imagine, if all of us who profess a faith in Jesus, the man who said "pick up your cross and follow me," such great suffering would redeem us.

a way?

How tedious we have become. Grasping blindly into the dark for something to hold on to, something that will resist and hold strong as the current beats endlessly against us. We are lost, we cannot find our way.

We turn to...the church? Far off realities echo in the complacency of vast pulpits that (at one time?) were reserved for those who spoke words of peace and truth.

We turn to...the law? We urge the political machine to be wary of where they tread, but our appeals to torture and war as illegal and immoral fall on the deaf ears of the proud.

We turn to...the teachers? Words escape those who used to guide us and walk with us as we lit our own lights in the world, but now fear and insecurity lay waste to projects of the mind and freedom of discourse.

We turn to...the family? Disintegrated by a racist, sexist system of injustice that turns mother against son, father against daughter, sister against brother.

We turn to...the community? What are my neighbors names?

We turn to...ourselves? Our minds have been stolen from us and imaginations killed by drugs: those prescribed for the symptoms of a culture of death and those enjoyed by self-professed enlightened ones.

We turn to...violence? Brief sentiments of security, a sense of peace (absence of war) brought because our bombs and guns are bigger: how do we stay safe once we've killed all our enemies?

We turn to...God? An abandonment to something worse than all we have ever known: for it asks, no demands, of us a humility to the truth that we so desperately seek to hide. God, we turn to you.

Letter to Cardinal George

There is a unique opportunity here for Cardinal George, the Archdiocese of Chicago, and the Roman Catholic Church to embark on a journey of peacemaking and forgiveness. One does not have to agree with or condone one's actions as a mandate for forgiveness. Perhaps Cardinal George could lend some valuable wisdom to the six individuals trying to resist war. I cannot help but think of Jesus's instructions to his disciples on the nature of forgiveness and the striking parallels it has to the events of Easter Sunday:

"If your brother or sister sins against you, go and tell them their fault, between you and them alone. If they listen to you, you have gained a brother or sister. But if they do not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If they refuse to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let them be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two or three of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother or sister sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven." (Matthew 18:15-22)

Are these "Holy Name 6," as these six individuals have come to be known, the ones who have sinned and in need of a brother or sister coming to them in reconciliation? Or do these six see themselves as coming to the Church, to tell the Church of its failure to be the peacemakers Jesus calls us to? Drawing from the exegesis of Stanley Hauerwas and his assertion that the Church is to be a community of both peacemakers and forgiveness, we see "[t]hat the Church is such a community of truthful peace depends on its being a community of the forgiven", there are pieces of truth from both perspectives.

Lead us, Cardinal George, in being a community of peacemakers, unequivocally calling for an end to the war in Iraq and engage in a process of reconciliation that seeks not to continue tearing apart a Church wounded and divided by Easter Sunday's events, but to restore us to community of God's forgiven that practices forgiveness.

Teach Us How to Pray

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."

Strong words Jesus spoke when his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers some poignant insight into these ingrained words we utter at Christian services on a daily basis: "'Forgive us our trespasses' is in some ways the hardest bit of the Lord's Prayer to pray, because it tells us straight away that to pray is also to be willing to change."

Let us consider the common usage of the word trespass in our lexicon. For most of us, images of trespassing do not conjure up all the various grievances and sins we have committed or have had committed toward us. Rather, it's an image of someone being somewhere they should not be. Breaking the law by intruding into someone else's property. Jumping over a wall, climbing a fence, breaking a window - going into or through some place where one does not belong or has not been invited.

How many of us are praying for forgiveness for this country's invasion of Iraq? Do images of burnt-out buildings, blood-stained streets, over-populated and under-resourced hospitals come to mind for the U.S. trespasses into Iraq? War, in the modern age (if not for all of history), has always been the story of one trespass against another. Why, then, can we sit in our churches and in our homes, praying to the Lord, Our Creator, Mother, and Father, for something we really do not believe in? Do we believe in a world without trespass? Without war? A world where change is possible? Where one can turn away from trespass and "sin no more?" If we pray these words that the teacher taught us to pray with hardened hearts and embittered ideas of our world and our God, we blaspheme the Holy Name of the divine and reduce our humanity to a stoic, fatalistic community of despair and un-redemptive suffering.

Forgive us the trespass that our country has done to the people of Iraq (and Latin America, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, etc.), as we forgive those who have trespassed against us (those who seek to terrorize us, al Qaeda, the criminals of 9/11, etc.).

We cannot pray these words, neither in the silence of our hearts nor in the sanctuaries of our communities, without recognizing the invitation to reconcile with our transgressors, make friends with our strangers, and forgive our enemies. No national identity or patriotic call for retribution replaces the supremacy of God's divine call to forgive seventy times seven.

Thoughts on the Holy Name 6 Action

Easter Sunday services with Cardinal Francis George were interrupted by six anti-war activists as they denounced the war in Iraq and staged a die-in with fake blood. Accounts of the action can be seen and read at:

chicago.indymedia: story 1, story 2


I think a number of different discussions can emerge from this and look forward to what follows. While I do not entirely agree with everything said in this discussion thus far, or with the entirety of Holy Name actions, when I called the Archdiocese to ask the charges to be dropped, I mentioned that. I do not have to agree with the activists tactically to agree with their message and with their nonviolence. Jesus threw out the money changers for desecrating a holy place. How do we understand money changers today in our own churches, temples, mosques and place of prayer? Are the activists the money changers who need thrown out? Is it a congregation complicit with silence? A church hierarchy failing to honor truth and justice? All questions I think worth asking. Below is a letter to the editor I submitted:

Dear Editors,

The public outcry that denounced the actions of the six peace activists who symbolically reminded a largely silent and complicit Catholic population that we are a nation at war worries me. When there is more outrage and opposition to one group’s small but courageous attempt to
speak truth to a church called to pray for our enemies and love those who persecute us, I wonder if Jesus has truly risen in our hearts, in our minds, in our communities, or in Iraq this past Easter Sunday.

Surely, there will be many different attitudes and opinions concerning the message, the action, and the location these six activists chose. Of all the opinions I would most like to hear, would be that of Iraqi Catholic Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. But his body was found in a ditch after he was abducted during a shootout outside his church, after celebrating the Via Crucis, earlier this month. It is realities like this that we Americans are so insulated from in our calm, sanitized Easter Sunday services.

I recall the words of Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ. He is one of those rare Catholic believers who took seriously (perhaps too seriously!) the words Jesus spoke at the Sermon on the Mount: "We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total--but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial...There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war--at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death
in its wake.”

faith

Dark enters further into the recesses of my soul. Yet...
in this darkness, light beckons. But what emerges is something best left hidden. So I thought.

Creeping, Crawling - grasping in the blinding night (or is it the brightness of the sun?) - I search for an answer. Or is it that I reject the answer given and thus keeping searching?

How desperately I want this unsettled fear to leave me, for it to be replaced by the Peace of something tangible, something real. But this fear, this violence, this is my past - my history - my life. Must I really let it go? Who, then, will I be? Or...*gasp*...who will I become?

It is in the darkness I am born. The pain of light entering my life, my mind, my soul marks the beginning. A transformation. A conversion. The suffering grace of a nonviolent love. Be this the love of Jesus? It is too much. I throw it off, in pride.

It is too late. The darkness can no longer hide what the light has already revealed. Pray that this cup may pass be by. I will go thirsty the rest of my days. But what is in that cup? What does it taste like? Can I just have a glimpse of what is inside before I take a drink? Or is the chalice so deep that darkness hides what is in there too?

I drink from it. Out of fear, desperation. Out of love. Out of the peace that so eludes me and my people. Who are my people? Why do we kill each other? Light - shine out to us. Warm our wearied, war-torn faces. Let us dance, while we still have the light, in the love and laughter of the great invitation. Gratitude at so great a gift. I am not worthy. Celebrate in Thanksgiving. And when the darkness comes again...Surely, it comes, for it always comes...Let us dance into the dark night until we collapse, wrenched with fatigue from so great a day, and rest up for the oncoming fight of our lives, one more time: No easier than the last, no harder than the next. But let us do so in the love of life and gift that is God, knowing that the invitation will come again soon.

The Sacrament of Voting

I have grown tired and weary of the accusations that I am part of the problem in my choosing to not vote in the primary elections. There are many reasoned, rational, and well-researched arguments I can present for my not voting but at the end of the day, I have chosen to vote with my conscience and that choice was to not vote. We, the U.S. as a country, has turned the holy act of voting into a political sacrament that is to be received with humility and grace. I am not opposed to the act of voting, in fact, I believe every person's dignity brings forth the inherent right to voice their belief and choice. There are many people around the world whose lives are denied them because they have no right to voice. But there are also many other people around the world whose lives are granted such right. I do not think America's current political situation and system allows for enough adequate change in anything other than rhetoric. In participating in our voting structure, I do not wish my voice to be silenced through the machinations of ballot boxes and check marks. If I vote, I agree to participate and condone the system as it is. My conscience will not allow me to do that and I will continue to work for greater political and social change between election days.