{"id":183981,"date":"2021-05-03T12:01:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T11:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=183981"},"modified":"2021-04-29T05:10:28","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T04:10:28","slug":"daniel-berrigan-and-his-fearless-nonviolence-at-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/daniel-berrigan-and-his-fearless-nonviolence-at-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Berrigan and His Fearless Nonviolence, at 100"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Five years since his death and 100 since his birth, legendary priest, author, poet and activist Daniel Berrigan continues to offer wisdom and insight on living a life of creative nonviolence.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Jesuit Priest, Nonviolence Peace Activist, Father Daniel Berrigan
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27 Apr 2021 – <\/em>\u201cOne is called to live nonviolently,\u201d Daniel Berrigan once wrote, \u201ceven if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the United States around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In some ways, that statement sums up the life and teachings of the legendary priest, author, poet and activist Daniel Berrigan, my friend and teacher who would turn 100 on May 9. The only way to survive in the world of violence, indeed, to live and thrive and even make a difference, he insisted, was through the daily life of creative nonviolence.<\/p>\n

Dan was famous for his way with words. He put an original twist on everything, making any statement for justice and disarmament more mysterious, poetic and challenging, even mystical.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, when I was going through his archives at Cornell for my collection, \u201cDaniel Berrigan: Essential Writings,<\/em>\u201d I discovered his unpublished notes for a talk he gave on nonviolence, probably in 1964 or 1965. He spoke of \u201cthe nonviolent mystique,\u201d which he said was more important than \u201cthe nonviolent tactic,\u201d and went on to speak about \u201cthe nonviolent mystique in action.\u201d Such puzzling expressions still have the power to take us deeper into self-understanding, and the contemplative depths of movement-building.<\/p>\n

\u201cNonviolence sees itself at its best, as indivisible, and at its least, as potentially universal, that is, as a way of life that is simply human,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you always note among responsible people both a profound spiritual root and a profound political responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here was his point: the nonviolent person was \u201ca person of history and a person within history, the person who believes that history has a future, the one who within normal times can save normal times from their idolatries \u2014 neglect of the poor, growing bourgeois selfishness, weapons of war and the other realities around us. So the nonviolent person is a person there. Period. In normal times, in crucial times.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That, to me, as his friend, editor, fellow priest, and now literary executor, sums up the extraordinary, prophetic life of Daniel Berrigan: He was a person of nonviolence within the history of violence, who through mystique and action helped transform the times and even history toward nonviolence. I don\u2019t know what greater compliment can be paid of anyone.<\/p>\n

To mark Dan\u2019s 100th birthday, I\u2019m offering a three hour Zoom session via the Beatitudes Center<\/a> on May 8, at 2 p.m. EST. There will be a break in the middle to reflect on his life, his witness and his writings, along with brief responses by Bill Wylie-Kellermann, author of the new collection of essays on Dan, \u201cCelebrant\u2019s Flame.\u201d My hope is that as we remember our teacher, we will dig deeper into our own nonviolence, take on the long haul view of history, and do our best to transform the times through our own nonviolent mystique and action for justice, disarmament and creation.<\/p>\n

He changed my life, but unbeknownst to the world, he probably changed millions, if not billions of other lives, with this influential stand for peace. As one of God\u2019s great recent prophets, I invite us to pause and turn to his writings and example as a way to go forward in these strange, difficult times. His wisdom and insights offer new courage, strength and fearlessness we didn\u2019t know we had.<\/p>\n

Dan possessed an astonishing once-in-a-millennia charismatic, steadfast, faithful, take-it-or leave nonviolence. He taught me from the day I met him till the day he died, on April 30, 2016<\/a>,\u00a0just before his 95th\u00a0birthday \u2014 and he\u2019s still teaching me.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0first\u00a0met Dan soon after entering the Jesuits in the early 1980s, at the\u00a0Kirkridge\u00a0retreat center in Pennsylvania. We stayed up late that first night talking. I remember asking him how in the world I could ever work for peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you afraid of?\u201d he asked me. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid.\u00a0Don\u2019t live in fear. Live in faith and hope and peace.\u201d\u00a0I\u00a0was shocked. No one ever said such things to me. I\u00a0decided\u00a0then and there\u00a0to\u00a0give it a\u00a0try.\u00a0Later, I realized: We all need a teacher who tells us not to be afraid.<\/p>\n

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Read more: What the obituaries missed about my uncle, Dan Berrigan<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Right from the start, I\u00a0saw his\u00a0fearlessness. To me, he was\u00a0Gandhi. He was a tower of faith, so it felt like\u00a0I was\u00a0sitting with\u00a0St. Peter or St. Paul.\u00a0In fact, I\u00a0had\u00a0never meet anyone before who exhibited such faith.\u00a0I\u2019m not sure\u00a0if\u00a0I\u2019ve ever met anyone\u00a0like that since. Dan believed in God and Jesus, but as the instrument of God\u2019s daring, universal nonviolence love,\u00a0 he acted like he believed \u2014 paying the price, dearly. He let the chips fall where they may, as he used to tell me.\u00a0But no matter. He kept going, right until his last breath, trusting in the God of peace, cursing the false gods of war and violence, adhering to the nonviolent Jesus and doing what he could to spread the revolution of Gospel nonviolence.<\/p>\n

The next morning,\u00a0Dan stood in front of a little podium\u00a0before\u00a0our small group\u00a0of retreatants\u00a0and started to talk about Jesus, using the letter to the Ephesians as his text. He said:<\/p>\n

The world is a kingdom of death, and into this world walks the great Yes of God, the Christ, bringing trouble and all sorts of dislocations, unmaskings, law-breakings and truth-telling. The disarmed God and the disarming of God in Christ is the great scandal of history. We are not yet a disarmed church because we are not yet worshippers of a disarmed God. God comes to us disarmed in Christ \u2026 Christ does the wrong things, in the wrong places, at the wrong time, to the wrong people. Today, we are asked to live out the drama of the disarmed Christ in a world armed to the teeth. To confess Jesus these days is to work for disarmament, justice and peace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was astonished\u00a0then, and I\u2019m still astonished.\u00a0I know these quotes\u00a0by heart\u00a0because I still have the notes\u00a0I took that morning long ago. Dan told me that\u00a0following Jesus\u00a0meant\u00a0working publicly for peace and justice. If you are not working for peace and justice, you are not following Jesus. It doesn\u2019t matter how pious you are, how connected you are to a religious institution. Discipleship to the nonviolent Jesus in a culture of permanent war and violence requires radical, active, creative, public nonviolence.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Daniel\u00a0Berrigan was born on May 9, 1921 the fifth of six boys.\u00a0He grew up in Syracuse,\u00a0entered the Jesuits in 1939,\u00a0was ordained a priest in 1952\u00a0and published his first book of poetry, \u201cTime Without Number,\u201d in 1957,\u00a0which won the Lamont Poetry Award. Dan quickly became well known as a poet, and published a book a year from then on \u2014 some 50 books of poetry, essays, theology studies, journals, plays and scripture studies. At Dan\u2019s 85th\u00a0birthday party, Kurt\u00a0Vonnegut\u00a0said to us, \u201cFor me, Daniel Berrigan is Jesus as a poet.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the mid-1960s, with his brother Phil, Dan became a leading voice against the war in Vietnam. On October 22, 1967, there was a massive mobilization on the Pentagon.\u00a0Dan took a\u00a0busload\u00a0of Cornell students to the protest and\u00a0suddenly\u00a0they all marched forward to face arrest \u2014 so he joined them. He was the first priest in U.S. history arrested in the cause of justice and peace, and with that, believe it or not, opened up a new tradition in the Catholic Church that continues to this day.<\/p>\n

In February 1968, he traveled to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn. While there, the United States\u00a0bombed Hanoi. They hid out in a shelter for a\u00a0full\u00a0week as U.S. bombs fell above him.\u00a0He got the point.\u00a0He was ready to up the ante.<\/p>\n

On May 17, 1968, a month after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., Dan and Phil and seven others\u00a0entered a draft board house in Catonsville, Maryland, took\u00a0some\u00a0300 draft files out to the parking lot and,\u00a0in front of the press, poured homemade napalm on the draft records and burned them. He then distributed one of the greatest statements in resistance literature:\u00a0\u201cOur apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, for the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their action attracted massive press\u00a0coverage\u00a0around the country, even\u00a0the world, and\u00a0eventually led to\u00a0over\u00a0300 similar demonstrations that\u00a0systematically\u00a0ended\u00a0the draft and hastened the end of the war.\u00a0You will not read this anywhere, nor will you\u00a0hear about this on Ken Burns\u2019 PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. There is no mention of the Berrigans, though I tried my best to reach out to the prestigious filmmaker.<\/p>\n

The draft board raids were the key. In the days before computers, when type-written records were it, the destruction of\u00a0paper records throughout the\u00a0Northeast meant that thousands of young men could not be drafted to kill for the United States! The days of the Vietnam War were numbered.<\/p>\n

Dan and his friends were, of course,\u00a0found guilty. He spent the summer of 1969 writing his\u00a0popular play,\u00a0\u201cThe Trial of the Catonsville Nine,\u201d but the war only worsened. So instead of reporting to prison, in April 1970, he went \u201cunderground.\u201d For months, Dan traveled around, speaking to the media, appearing on the national news, writing major articles against the war, and infuriating FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his henchmen.<\/p>\n

Read more: When Father Daniel Berrigan went underground in \u2018The Holy Outlaw\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the summer of 1970, he appeared one Sunday morning in a\u00a0Philadelphia\u00a0church to give the sermon. \u201cWe have chosen to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power,\u201d\u00a0he told the congregation. That August, he was arrested\u00a0on Block Island, Rhode Island, and sent to Danbury prison. His health and spirit deteriorated over the next two years in Danbury prison, until one day, while having a dental exam, he had a massive allergic reaction to the novocaine and nearly died. He was released shortly thereafter by the authorities for fear that he might die in prison.<\/p>\n

Dan became one of the most well-known priests in the world, if not its most well-known, the world\u2019s first radical priest since Edmund Campion was hunted down by the British royalty. He consistently called the Church to abolish the just war theory and return to the nonviolence of Jesus.\u00a0He was featured on the cover of\u00a0Time\u00a0<\/em>magazine, interviewed by none other than Dick\u00a0Cavett, and referred to in songs by Paul McCartney (\u201cToo Many People\u201d) and Paul Simon (\u201cMe and Julio Down by the Schoolyard\u201d).\u00a0Given the church scandals of today, it\u2019s hard to imagine his radical derring-do.<\/p>\n

While underground, for example, Dan wrote an open letter in the Village Voice<\/em> to the Weathermen, inviting them to reconsider their violence and use the tactic of nonviolence in their resistance to the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe death of a single human being is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

That, I submit, is his most important teaching and worthy of reflection for the rest of history.<\/p>\n

In other words, he said, there is no cause however noble for which we will ever again support the taking of a single human life. We do not kill people. We do not support killing. We do not kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong. We work to stop the killing. And so, we will not join the U.S. military, we will not send our kids into the military, we will urge young people to quit the military, and we will resist the military and its wars for the rest of our lives. The future is a world without war, a new culture of justice and nonviolence that we can barely imagine, but is within our grasp if we dare work for it.<\/p>\n

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The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the most amazing aspects about Dan and Phil\u00a0Berrigan\u00a0was that\u00a0they kept at it. The press grew bored, the crowds stopped showing up, their book sales dwindled, the movement died, the world worsened \u2014 and they kept at it. That is one of their greatest legacies.<\/p>\n

On September 9, 1980, Dan, Phil and six friends, walked in to the General Electric headquarters in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and hammered on unarmed nuclear weapon nosecones. The\u00a0Plowshares Eight\u00a0were arrested, convicted and faced up to\u00a010\u00a0years in prison. Theirs was the first of some 100 \u201cPlowshares actions\u201d \u2014 including the one I did with Phil in North Carolina in 1993, for which I faced 20 years in prison.\u00a0Here\u2019s what Dan said during\u00a0his famous 1981 trial:<\/s><\/p>\n

The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly \u2026 It\u2019s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, \u201cStop killing.\u201d There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can\u2019t do them. I cannot. Because everything is endangered. Everything is up for grabs. Ours is a kind of primitive situation, even though we would call ourselves sophisticated. Our plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that \u2014 everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout the\u00a01980s and \u201990s, Dan spoke each week around the country. He continued to publish a steady stream of\u00a0poetry, essays,\u00a0journals and then, a long series on\u00a0the Hebrew\u00a0prophets. He served as a hospital chaplain in\u00a0a\u00a0New York hospital for the poor, and then at St. Vincent\u2019s Hospital, ministering to AIDS patients<\/a>. In 1984, he traveled to El Salvador and Nicaragua, and later published his journal from the experience, \u201cSteadfastness of the Saints.\u201d In 1985,\u00a0he traveled\u00a0to South America where he helped out in the acclaimed movie \u201cThe Mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

During those years, Dan formed and participated in a little Manhattan peace group, which he named \u201cKairos.\u201d There we met with friends every other Tuesday\u00a0night\u00a0for\u00a030\u00a0years\u00a0\u2014\u00a0one of the greatest experiences of my life. Every few months, we\u00a0planned\u00a0nonviolent\u00a0actions and got arrested\u00a0against some injustice, usually at the\u00a0military recruiting station\u00a0in Times Square\u00a0or\u00a0the Riverside Research nuclear weapons\u00a0laboratory (until they closed it!) or the U.S.S. Intrepid War Museum on the Hudson\u00a0River.\u00a0Along the way, Dan was supported by actor Martin Sheen and former U.S. Attorney Gen. Ramsey Clark, who passed away<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n

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Dan Berrigan at his 80th birthday in 2001. (WNV\/John Dear)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the mid-2000s, Dan was frail and tired. He was never sick; literally, he never suffered any major disease, never had cancer, never had surgery. In fact, he never took a pill! But he began to spend long hours every\u00a0afternoon in bed. By 2010, he was actively declining.\u00a0We moved him to the Jesuit infirmary in the Bronx, where I visited him every three months over the next few years until his death.<\/p>\n

What people do not know is that he was resented, if not actively, hated by other Jesuits since the 1960s. No Jesuit should become that famous, no matter what, so he was despised by many. I remember that during practically every visit to the Jesuit infirmary during those years, most of the other Jesuits would avoid him so as not to have to speak with him \u2014 all because of his public stand for peace. Some would not get in the elevator with him. His friends and relatives, on the other hand, surrounded him with love, and he knew it.\u00a0And so, he felt loved till the day he died.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

I spent a thousand\u00a0evenings with Dan\u00a0over the decades,\u00a0and he would always stop the meal or the visit\u00a0or the trip, and\u00a0insist that his guests\u00a0go around and\u00a0share\u00a0about their lives, their struggles,\u00a0their hopes and their dreams. Every occasion in his presence turned into a life-changing, spiritual experience. In that sense, he really was a Christ-figure.\u00a0He was concerned about our lives and what we were doing with the\u00a0precious gift of life, especially faced with this all-consuming culture of death.\u00a0\u201cWhat are we doing with our lives? What does it mean to be a human being? Can we become people of nonviolence?\u201d These\u00a0were questions I heard Daniel Berrigan ask repeatedly.<\/p>\n

You can find clues in his writings, like the following excerpted poems \u201cJubilee!\u201d \u201cThe Trouble with Our State\u201d and \u201cYour Second Sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fairly modest urging\u2014
\nDon\u2019t kill, whatever pretext
\nLeave the world\u00a0unbefouled.
\nDon\u2019t hoard.
\nStand somewhere.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

The trouble with our state
\nwas not civil disobedience
\nwhich in any case was hesitant and\u00a0rare\u2026
\n\u2014\u00a0our trouble
\nthe trouble with our state
\nwith our state of soul
\nour state of siege\u00a0\u2014
\nwas
\ncivil
\nobedience<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Walking by the sea
\nI put on like glasses
\non a squinting short-sighted soul
\nyour second sight
\nand I see washed ashore
\nthe last hour of the world
\nthe murdered clock of Hiroshima<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

In his 1970 book \u201cNo Bars to Manhood,\u201d Dan wrote:<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dan taught us to let go of results and to\u00a0work for\u00a0justice, disarmament and\u00a0peace as an ordinary part of our day-to-day lives, whether or not it would make a difference.\u00a0Do the good because it\u2019s good, he said. Speak the truth because it\u2019s\u00a0true. Work for peace and justice because that\u2019s what\u00a0the\u00a0God\u00a0of peace and justice\u00a0wants.\u00a0Do what we can,\u00a0and leave the outcome in God\u2019s hands.\u00a0From now on, nonviolence and nonviolent resistance are our ordinary day-to-day life.\u00a0Just trust that it will one day bear good fruit.<\/p>\n

When I went to him for advice as a 22-year-old novice, he said: \u201cAll you have to do is close your eyes to the culture and open them to your friends.\u201d\u00a0When my friend Ken Butigan sought him out for advice, Dan said, find a good group of friends that you can pray with and march with, and everything will work out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people argue that equanimity achieved through inner spiritual work is a necessary condition for sustaining one\u2019s ethical and political commitments,\u201d he once said in an interview.\u00a0\u201cBut to the prophets of the Bible, this would have been an absolutely foreign language and a foreign view of the human. The notion that one has to achieve peace of mind before stretching out one\u2019s hand to one\u2019s neighbor is a distortion of our human experience, and ultimately a dodge of our responsibility. Life is a rollercoaster and one had better buckle one\u2019s belt and take the trip. This focus on equanimity is actually a narrow-minded, selfish approach to reality dressed up within the language of spirituality.\u201d\u00a0This again is quintessential Berrigan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that the prophetic vision is not popular today in some spiritual circles,\u201d he continued.\u00a0\u201cBut our task is not to be popular or to be seen as having an impact, but to speak the deepest truths that we know. We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if doing so does not produce immediate results in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIf you are going to spend your life resisting death,\u201d he told me when I was 22, \u201cyou better learn how to live life to the full.\u201d He both resisted death and lived life to the full more than anyone I have ever known. He walked every day, enjoyed healthy food and a drink or two every evening, and loved friends and laughter and nature and poetry and books and people. At the end of our regular daily community evening mass, before drinks and dinner, he offered the (hilarious) ritual announcement: \u201cWe\u2019ve been good long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan lived as\u00a0if the resurrection of\u00a0the nonviolent, revolutionary, executed\u00a0Jesus\u00a0was true, that the\u00a0worst had already happened, that the outcome was\u00a0indeed in better hands than ours, and that despite the evidence, there is reason for hope. All we have to do is go forward and enact that hope in organized grassroots movements of disarmament, justice and peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus didn\u2019t have a mean bone in his body,\u201d he said to me and a friend once, when we were having a mass and a picnic in Central Park. It was Easter Sunday and I was commenting that I was appalled that Jesus even came back, and that he remained so nonviolent and loving after all he been through, including his arrest and execution. His response remains with me to this day.\u00a0Dan taught that the resurrection of Jesus meant we were called to carry on his campaign of nonviolence, and live out the \u201cslight edge of life over death.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the\u00a0breakthrough\u00a0of Daniel Berrigan in modern Christian history.\u00a0Here\u2019s a favorite passage\u00a0he wrote in an obscure publication long ago, which I hold as one of his greatest teachings:<\/p>\n

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Once there was a dead man, a criminal, a subject of capital punishment. And lo! He refused to stay dead. He stood up. As the authorities shortly came to sense, this was an earthquake in nature; in the nature of law and order, in the nature of death, the nature of war. For in the nature of things, as defined by the nation state (a great one for deciding what the nature of things is) \u2014 dead men stay dead. The word from Big Brother, the word that gives him clout, inspires fear, is \u2014 a criminal, once disposed of, stays disposed!<\/p>\n

Not at all. Along come these crazies shouting in public, \u201cOur man\u2019s not dead, He\u2019s risen!\u201d Now I submit you can\u2019t have such a word going around, and still run the state properly. The first nonviolent revolution was, of course, the Resurrection. The event had to include death as its first act. And the command to Peter, \u201cPut up your sword.\u201d So that it might be clear, once and for all, that Christians suffer death rather than inflict it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAll worldly systems and arrangements are simply by-passed by the Resurrection,\u201d Dan said on another occasion.\u00a0\u201cIf death has no hold over people, in the sense that they\u2019ve exorcised their fear of death\u00a0\u2014\u00a0then what\u2019s left worth fearing, or worth hoping, from any worldly structure? They deserve, one and all, the feisty appellation conferred on them by Dorothy Day,\u00a0\u2018The filthy rotten system.\u2019\u00a0I take it she was referring to their main function, multiplying the metaphors and means of death. The end of such a world, as she realized, was not only near. The end has occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Dan Berrigan at his cottage on Block Island in the early 2000s. (WNV\/John Dear)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dan\u00a0walked and\u00a0talked and practiced resurrection. Dan referred to all his peace work as living in the resurrection. That\u2019s why I define resurrection as having nothing to do with death, having not a trace of violence in you. Resurrection means total nonviolence.\u202fDan knew our survival was\u00a0already guaranteed, so\u00a0he said,\u00a0we need not be afraid, or violent\u00a0or discouraged. We are heading toward resurrection! Here, in my opinion, is\u00a0his greatest teaching:<\/p>\n

\n

Since 1980 and all the Plowshares actions, some of us continue to labor to break the demonic clutch on our souls, of the ethic of Mars, of wars and rumor of wars, inevitable wars, just wars, necessary wars, victorious wars, and say our no in acts of hope. For us, all these repeated arrests, the interminable jailings, the life of our small communities, the discipline of nonviolence, these have embodied an ethic of resurrection. Simply put, we long to taste that event, its thunders and quakes, its great Yes. We want to test the resurrection in our bones. To see if we might live in hope, instead of the thicket of cultural despair, nuclear despair, a world of perpetual war. We want to taste the resurrection. May I say we have not been disappointed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the gauntlet that Dan threw down before us\u00a0\u2014\u00a0to taste the resurrection, to pursue the heights and depths and length and breadth of creative nonviolence.<\/p>\n

Despite the insanity of the world and the times, we have been given a beautiful example in his nonviolent life, and so we have no excuse but to rise to the occasion and carry on. Like Dan, we too can stand up and say no to racism, war, greed, poverty, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. We too can base our lives on loving kindness, building community, practicing nonviolence, speaking out publicly, advocating for a new culture of peace, and spreading the vision of a new nonviolent world far and wide. This is the mission, whether or not we make a difference, and like Dan,\u00a0we\u00a0can go forward, knowing that\u00a0we, too,\u00a0will not be disappointed.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Daniel Berrigan, and happy birthday!<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Rev. John Dear is a longtime peace activist, organizer, and former executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He is currently the executive director of the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus<\/a> where he offers regular zoom workshops. He was nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the Nobel Peace Prize. For more, visit: www.johndear.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – wagingnonviolence.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Apr 2021 – Five years since his death and 100 since his birth, legendary priest, author, poet and activist Daniel Berrigan continues to offer wisdom and insight on living a life of creative nonviolence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":183983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[229,444,1243],"class_list":["post-183981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nonviolence","tag-activism","tag-nonviolence","tag-nonviolent-action"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}