Almost twenty years ago, Jesuit peace activist Father John Dear wrote in the CAC’s journal Radical Grace about the nonviolent impact that interfaith cooperation can make:

At the heart of each major religion is the vision of peace, the ideal of a reconciled humanity, the way of compassion and love and justice, the fundamental truth of nonviolence.

Mahatma Gandhi [1869–1948] was the first to point toward interfaith nonviolence. . . . When he moved to India, and saw again the deep hostility between Hindus and Muslims, he made interfaith nonviolence the core of his daily worship. Each day when his community gathered for prayer, they read excerpts from the Hindu and Muslim scriptures, from the Sermon on the Mount and the Hebrew Bible. Then, they sat in silence for forty-five minutes. They concluded usually with a hymn about the all-inclusive love that reconciles everyone, the love even for one’s enemies. Forty years of interfaith, contemplative prayer transformed him into a universal spirit, as all the major religious scriptures hope for all of us. . . .

“Religions are different roads converging to the same point,” Gandhi once wrote. “What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?” [1] . . . [and] “There will be no lasting peace on earth unless we learn not merely to tolerate but even to respect the other faiths as our own.” [2]

As we learn from each other’s religion, Gandhi discovered, we can help each other deepen in the faith of our own personal tradition. His critique of organized Christianity—that it rejected the nonviolence of Jesus and has become an imperial religion based on the Roman empire—has helped innumerable Christians return to the core teachings of Jesus, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount. The Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr. testified that the Hindu Gandhi helped him more than anyone else to follow Christ.

Since the early 1980s, Dear has worked as an author, activist, and peacemaker, deeply influenced and inspired by interfaith friendships.

For the last twenty [now almost 40] years, I have experienced the deepest multicultural and interfaith connections through my work in the peace movement. I have developed many friendships across cultural and religious boundaries because of our shared vision of nonviolence. This interfaith peacemaking sprang from the Civil Rights Movement, when Dr. King called religious leaders to march with him to Selma. The friendship modeled between Dr. King, Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Thich Nhat Hanh still bears good fruit in our world and exemplifies the journey we must all make.

As the world hangs on the brink of nuclear and environmental destruction, as we wage war in the name of religion, we need to explore the religious roots of nonviolence, just as Gandhi did. Perhaps then, we will hear the call to disarm, to embrace one another as sisters and brothers, and welcome the gift of peace that has been already given.

Sarah Young…..

Do not let any set of circumstances intimidate you. The more challenges you face, the more of My power I give you. I empower you based on your challenges of the day. The degree to which I strengthen you depends on two things: 1) the difficulty of your circumstances and 2) Your willingness to surrender

Ephesians 1:18-20
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,

Psalm 105:4
Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.

Deuteronomy 33:25 NKJV
Your sandals shall be iron and bronze; As your days, so shall your strength be.

The Holy Water We Share

Author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes about what she calls “holy envy,” befriending followers of different traditions, and allowing such friendships to enrich our own faith. She summarizes an insight taught by inter-spiritual theologian Raimon Panikkar (1918–2010): 

Raimon Panikkar . . . spent a lot of time thinking about what it might mean for Christians to focus on contributing to the world’s faiths instead of dominating them. Born in Spain to a Catholic mother and a Hindu father, he used the analogy of the world’s great rivers. The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges all nourish the lives of those who live along their banks, he said. One flows through Israel, one flows through Rome, and one flows through India. If he were writing today he might have added the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which flow through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

None of these rivers meet on earth, Panikkar said, though they do meet in the heavens, where water from each of them condenses into clouds that rain down on all the mortals of the earth. In the same way, he said, the religions of the world remain distinct and unmixed on earth—but “they meet once transformed into vapor, once metamorphosized into Spirit, which then is poured down in innumerable tongues.” [1]

Eventually all people of faith must decide how they will think about and respond to people of other (and no) faiths. Otherwise they will be left at the mercy of their worst impulses when push comes to shove and their fear deadens them to the best teachings of their religions.

Taylor recalls a trip she took with her students to a local Islamic center, and the inspiration it provided: 

Once, at the end of a field trip to the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam, the imam ended his meeting with students by saying, “Our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Thank you for coming.” Then he was gone, leaving me with a fresh case of holy envy.

I could do that, I thought. I could speak from the heart of my faith, wishing others well at the heart of theirs—including those who had no name for what got them through the night. It might mean taking down some fences, but turf was no longer the reigning metaphor. I was not imagining two separate yards with neighbors leaning over a shared boundary. I was imagining a single reservoir of living water, with two people looking into it. One might have been a Muslim and the other a Christian, but there was nothing in their faces to tell me that. All I saw were two human beings looking into deep waters that did not belong to either of them, reflecting back to them the truth that they were not alone.

 Only Love Is Absolute

This week’s Daily Meditations explore the fruitfulness of interfaith friendships. We begin with Father Richard reflecting on Jesus’ inclusivity, which has allowed Richard both to affirm and critique his own religious tradition—and invites us to do the same. 

In no other period of history have humans had such easy and immediate access to people of other cultures and other religions, often as friends. Once a person has developed any “discernment of the Spirit” it becomes clear that God’s holiness exists all over the place.

The Second Vatican Council gave Catholics some fine official guidelines and freedoms. Nostra Aetate, the 1965 Catholic document on non-Christian religions affirms, “For all peoples comprise a single community, and have a single origin . . . one also is their final goal: God. [God’s] providence, manifestations of goodness, and saving designs extend to all [people].” [1] Such an affirmation rightly places us all inside the same frame of history and allows no foundational distinction between us. We are clearly from the one God, tending toward the one God, and as the mystics of all religions teach, Reality itself is one. 

It is strange that it took us almost all of our two-thousand-year history to get back to the “ecumenical” attitude Jesus had at the very beginning! He goes out of his way to make non-Jews the heroes of many of his stories and teachings. He is quick to point out the failures and fallacies of his own religion, Judaism, while still remaining faithful to it. Jesus held a very critical stance toward his own religion, but for some reason few of us think we can do the same.

On the other hand, sadly, many people think that if they no longer believe in the absolute primacy of their own religion, then it has no absolute call on them and they often give up on it entirely. But I am convinced that the biblical tradition is saying that the only absolute available to us is the faithful love of God, and not any concept or structure—even our religious traditions themselves. God’s love itself is the center and the still point of the turning world. But if we have never actually experienced this love, we will most assuredly look for absolutes in other ways.

What is unique about Jesus is his inclusivity itself! He is so grounded in the absoluteness of the Divine relationship that he is quite free to relativize the Law, simplify the Prophets, and find God outside of his own tradition. He is constantly and consistently inclusive—without denying his Jewish foundation and faith. I believe we can only be inclusive when we have a deeply held and shared experience that we can include people “into.” We have to have a “home” to bring people home to.

What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.

Learning from Others

If something is true, no matter who said it, it is always from the Holy Spirit. —Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate

Father Richard reflects on how his commitment to Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have continually helped him recognize God in other traditions:

In my own life, going deep in the Christian religion of my birth has enabled me to see the same Spirit and Love in other religions as well. It’s been quite a journey from growing up in a Catholic “ghetto” in Kansas, and hardly even knowing any Protestants. And yet, at age fourteen, I was sent to study with the Franciscans in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they gave me a very ecumenical theological education.

One of the best courses I had was on the Hebrew Scriptures, which gave me a great love for Judaism. It’s probably why I emphasize the prophets so much, because I realized the prophets really weren’t about what we call today retributive justice. They were about restorative justice. When we stay with their message, there will be these magnificent passages toward the end of their books that invariably point toward love. God eventually says through the prophets: “I’m going to love you anyway. I’m going to redeem you by my perfect love. I’m going to love you into wholeness” (see Isaiah 29:13–24 and Hosea 6:1–6).

In 1969, when I was sent as a deacon to the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, I had only a basic introduction to Indigenous religions. I observed how mothers in the pueblo would show their children how to silently wave the morning sunshine toward their faces, just as we learn to “bless” ourselves with the sign of the cross. Indigenous peoples here had contemplative prayer long before we Franciscans ever appeared.

The rediscovery of Christian contemplation opened my eyes to Buddhists and Sufis—their teachings and practitioners. Buddhism taught me the phenomenology of perception—what’s going on in our brains. Every world religion at the mature levels discovers some forms of practice to free us from our addictive mind, which we take as normal. Starting in the 1960s, our increased interaction with Eastern religions in general, and Buddhism in particular, helped us recognize and rediscover our own very ancient Christian contemplative tradition. The Sufis’ deep love of mysticism, especially as expressed by their poets Rumi and Hafiz, often captures the stirrings of my own heart.

My latest discovery was really Hinduism, which is considered the oldest world religion. In the early 1980s, I gave a retreat in Nepal; between talks I would just walk the old streets and walk into temples and try to remain invisible. I remember these lovely Indian women coming in wearing saris, so gracefully, and paying no attention to anything else except maybe the flame or the oil they were holding. With what reverence they would bow! What do we think they’re bowing to except God, the Mystery?

Like the wind, the Spirit blows where it will (see John 3:8).

On The Cosmic We podcast, hosts Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant interviewed minister and scholar Dr. Walter Fluker, who shares a transformational experience he had during an ancestral grief ritual:

Walter Fluker: We hardly know the grief of our suffering. Certainly among Black people, but it’s true for all of us as you think of the Cosmic We and this universal moan [of suffering]. Even creation is moaning. Why shouldn’t we?. . .

I was involved in a grief ritual on Cortes Island off Vancouver, British Columbia. This island, all of these people from around the world were just going through these rituals. One evening . . . during what the Dagara people called the grief ritual, where we pay our debt to the ancestors through grief, through weeping and moaning that universal moan. . . . So [my friend Malidoma Somé] said just be free, so they started playing the drum and Sobonfu

was hitting some kind of shaking instrument. I just started getting down. . . . All at once, out of nowhere, my father is there. . . . I fell to my knees and I cried. I said, “Daddy, we miss you.” He had died in 1984.

I had performed a eulogy but never mourned him. I was too busy being me. I said, “Daddy, we miss you. Mama misses you, B. misses you.” I just went through the whole family. When I came to myself, all of the women had taken me to a corner in the room and they were rocking me. This Japanese woman whispers in my ears. She says, “You’re only five years old.” I didn’t know what that meant then. It was years later [that] I discovered, when daddy left Mississippi in a hurry, he sent for us, thanks be to God. I was five years old. I was still grieving my daddy’s departure.

That was one of the most healing moments in my life. He was more real than even in life real. So, I have no doubt that ancestors not only exist, but they are present for us. They come to us in moments of great need and trial, and they also celebrate life’s moments with us. They want to celebrate with us. . . .

Holmes and Bryant invite listeners to give space to their own need to grieve:

Donny Bryant: I guess the question is for our listeners . . . what trauma, what healing, what hurt, what pain that we need to be healed from could benefit from the practice of our own unique grief ritual?

Barbara Holmes: Yes, and how can the organized religious institutions, the churches, the places where we assemble to finally shed some of our arrogance, how can they help us to grieve, to lament, to begin to get free? . . . What are you grieving that you don’t know that you’re grieving? How will you process that grief?

………

Sarah Young

Transform Your Disappointments

Every time your plans or desires are blocked, use that as a reminder to be surrendered and connected to Me.

Our communication will be a blessing for you, and you will learn disappointments are transformed into opportunities for good.

Begin to see all your setbacks as opportunities and you will transform your disappointments into blessings.

Proverbs 19:21
There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.

Colossians 4:2
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving;

Philippians 3:7-8
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ

Part of One Body

Father Richard connects the church’s teaching on “the communion of saints” and our ancestors:

Humans throughout history have often had a strong appreciation for and connection with their ancestors. I think the collective notion of oneness is what Christians were trying to verbalize when they made a late addition to the ancient Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints.” They were offering us the idea that the dead are at one with the living, whether they’re our direct ancestors, the saints in glory, or even the so-called souls in purgatory.

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) wrote of experiencing a tender oneness with his mother in a dream and in nature:

The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut of my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet . . . wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil. [1]

Father Richard continues:

The whole thing, all of life, is one, just at different stages, all of it loved corporately by God (and, one hopes, by us). Within this worldview, we are saved not by being privately perfect, but by being “part of the body,” humble links in the great chain of history. This view echoes the biblical concept of a covenant love that was granted to the Jewish people as a whole and never just to one individual like Abraham, Noah, or David.

For those of us committed to nonviolence, what do we do with the warrior imagery in our religious traditions?  Zen priest and activist angel Kyodo Williams writes about living with a nonviolent “warrior-spirit” inspired by the Buddha:

The man who became the Buddha was known as Gautama, and he was born into a warrior clan known as the Shakyas. . . .

But even before Gautama was born as a Shakya warrior, he had been a warrior of another kind. In previous lives, Gautama had been a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means “awakening being” and refers to a person of any culture that is brave and willing to walk on the path of wakefulness. . . . They are awakening warriors that give up floating through life aimlessly and being concerned only with themselves. Awakening warriors live in a way that is of benefit to all, and their work is done here in this world. They see that we must all take responsibility for ending suffering, not just for our own individual freedom, but for that of others as well. What these awakening warriors realize is that in order to live harmoniously and with joy, they must take their natural place in the world.

Does this mean that in order to live with more joy and grace and less fear and anger we need to run out and take up arms or develop aggressiveness and a warlike stance? Not at all. What we want to do is embody the spirit of a warrior and bring that to function in our daily lives. “Spirit” refers to that which gives life. “Warriors” live a life of action and clear direction. We can bring warrior-spirit to the cause of peace and harmonious connection because it is about life and living, not power and aggression. . . . Warrior-spirit is a frame of mind that lets us make a habit of cultivating the qualities and skills that are already available to all of us. [1]

Valarie Kaur of the Revolutionary Love Project understands her Sikh warrior tradition through a nonviolent lens that asks “Who will you fight for?” on behalf of justice and peace.

What does it mean to be a warrior-sage for a new time? Who will you fight for? What will you risk? It begins with honoring the fight impulse in you. Think about what breaks your heart. Notice what it feels like to have your fists clench, your jaw close, your pulse quicken. Notice what it feels like to want to fight back. Honor that in yourself. You are alive and have something worth fighting for. Now comes the second moment: How will you channel that into something that delivers life instead of death? Breathe. Think. Then choose your sword and shield. You don’t have to know the answers. You just have to be ready for the moment when the world says: Now. [2]

____________________________

Sarah Young

Do not expect to be treated fairly in this life. When someone mistreats or misjudges you, see how quickly you can grow in grace by forgiving them. Do not try to set the record straight, it is my view of you and our connection that matters. When treated unfairly, see this as an opportunity to be surrendered, connected to Me and to move on living out of that.

Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord

Isaiah 61:10
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,

Ephesians 1:7-8
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Romans 5:15
But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God,

In today’s meditation, Father Richard summarizes Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of nonviolence:

1. Nonviolence is a way of strength and not a way for cowards. It is not a lack of power which allows us to be nonviolent, but in fact the discovery of a different kind of power. It is a choice, not a resignation; a spirituality, not just a tactic.
    
2. The goal of nonviolence is always winning the friendship and the understanding of the supposed opponent, not [their] humiliation or personal defeat. It must be done to eventually facilitate the process of reconciliation, and we ourselves must be willing to pay the price for that reconciliation. King based this on Jesus’ lifestyle and death and on Ephesians 2:13–22 and Romans 12:1–2.
    
3. The opponent must be seen not so much as an evil person, but as a symbol of a much greater systemic evil—of which they also are a victim! We must aim our efforts at that greater evil, which is harming all of us, rather than at the opponent.
    
4. There is a moral power in voluntarily suffering for others. We call it the “myth of redemptive suffering,” whereas almost all of history is based on the opposite, the “myth of redemptive violence.” The lie that almost everybody believes is that suffering can be stopped by increasing the opponent’s suffering. It works only in the short run. In the long run, that suffering is still out there and will somehow have to work its way out in the next generation or through the lives of the victims. A willingness to bear the pain has the power to transform and absorb the evil in the opponent, the nonviolent resister, and even the spectator. This is precisely what Jesus was doing on the cross. It changes all involved, and at least forces the powers that be to “show their true colors” publicly. And yes, the nonviolent resister is also changed through the action. It is called resurrection or enlightenment.
    
5. This love ethic must be at the center of our whole life, or it cannot be effective or real in the crucial moments of conflict. We have to practice drawing our lives from this new Source, in thought, word, emotion, and deed, every day, or we will never be prepared for the major confrontations or the surprise humiliations that will come our way.
    
6. Nonviolence relies on a kind of cosmic optimism which trusts that the universe/reality/God is finally and fully on the side of justice and truth. History does have a direction, meaning, and purpose. God is more fundamental than evil. Resurrection will have the final word, which is the very promise of the Jesus event. The eternal wind of the Spirit is with us. However, we should not be naïve; and we must understand that most people’s loyalties are with security, public image, and the comforts of the status quo. ……………

                Sarah Young…

As you become more aware of MY Presence, you find it easier to discern the way you should go, When you are surrendered and connected and are living out of that you no longer need worry about what is ahead or what you should do…if or when….. Stay connected and I will lead you along fresh paths of adventure.

Psalm 32:8
I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will give you counsel and watch over you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life.

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void;

Isaiah 58:11
The LORD will always guide you; He will satisfy you in a sun-scorched land and strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

God Is a Peacemaker

In New Mexico, where the CAC is located, there are two national nuclear laboratories. In a recent pastoral letter, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe called for a conversation toward nuclear disarmament. He rooted his invitation in Jesus’ teachings: 

I invite us to reflect on how Jesus practiced nonviolence and how we can do the same in the United States.

When he began his public ministry, Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). In part, he was saying the days of violence, injustice, war, and empire are coming to an end. We are invited to welcome God’s reign of peace and live in God’s universal love and nonviolence here and now.

In the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), Jesus commanded us to be peacemakers and to love our enemies, saying: “Blessed are the peacemakers, they will be called the sons and daughters of God” (5:9). “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you: ‘offer no violent resistance to one who does evil’” (5:38–39). “You have heard it said, ‘Love your countrymen and hate your enemies.’ But I say love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, then you will be sons and daughters of the God who lets the sun rise on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (5:43–45). In these teachings, Jesus says that God is a peacemaker, and since we are God’s sons and daughters, we are peacemakers too, not warmakers. He says that God practices universal nonviolent love, and since we are the sons and daughters of the God of universal nonviolent love, we practice universal nonviolent love, too. There are no exceptions, no justifications for warfare, and no “just war theory.”

Many would question these teachings as naïve, impractical, and idealistic. But as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote so well about this call to love our enemies, “Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist.” [1] Dr. King also stated:

Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to
love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. [2]

Archbishop Wester continues:

I invite us to have a conversation together about what it means to follow the risen, nonviolent Jesus, who calls us to be peacemakers, put down the sword, and love everyone, even the enemies of our nation. Certainly, these commandments challenge us to face the violence that is being prepared in our name here in New Mexico, and to start the process of nuclear disarmament so that no one ever again calls down hellfire from the sky. As Dr. King concluded, “May we . . . hear and follow [Jesus’] words—before it is too late.” [3]

Women Working for Peace

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee founded a women’s nonviolent peace movement that helped stop the second Liberian civil war in 2003. One night she heard a clear spiritual call:

I had a dream.

I didn’t know where I was. Everything was dark. I couldn’t see a face, but I heard a voice, and it was talking to me—commanding me: “Gather the women to pray for peace!”. . . 

In some ways, that dream [and] that moment, were the start of everything. We knelt down on the worn brown carpet and closed our eyes. “Dear God, thank you for sending us this vision,” said Sister Esther. “Give us your blessing, Lord, and offer us Your protection and guidance in helping us to understand what it means.”

My dream became the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative. In April 2002, about twenty Lutheran women from local churches gathered to follow the message I’d been sent, praying each Tuesday at noon in the small upstairs chapel of the St. Peter’s compound. Sometimes we fasted. Soon, other church women heard what we were doing and began to join us. “Jesus, help us. You are the true Prince of Peace, the only one who can grant us peace.” . . .

We lived in a closed, guarded box, and the most ordinary acts could bring down terrible punishment. . . . Nobody seemed willing to do anything. . . .

Now, finally, we women were going to take action.

Gbowee describes the tireless efforts of organizing for peace in a country that had undergone immense suffering, violence, and corruption:

Three days a week for six months, the women of WIPNET [Women in Peacebuilding Network] went out to meet with the women of Monrovia; we went to the mosques on Friday at noon after prayers, to the markets on Saturday morning, to two churches every Sunday. . . . We gave all our sisters the same message: Liberian women, awake for peace! . . .

It wasn’t always easy. Women who have suffered for nearly as long as they can remember come to a point where they look down, not ahead. But as we kept working, women began to look up and listen. No one had spoken to them this way before.

We handed out flyers: WE ARE TIRED! WE ARE TIRED OF OUR CHILDREN BEING KILLED! WE ARE TIRED OF BEING RAPED! WOMEN, WAKE UP—YOU HAVE A VOICE IN THE PEACE PROCESS! . . .

As the women of WIPNET gathered together, my fear, depression and loneliness were finally, totally, wiped away. Others who felt the way I did stood beside me; I wasn’t alone anymore. And I knew in my heart that everything I had been through, every pain, had led me to this point: leading women to fight for peace was what I was meant to do with my life.

A Nonviolent Love

Richard Rohr reflects on the spiritual foundations of nonviolence embodied and taught by Martin Luther King Jr.

Part of the genius of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show people that violence was not only immoral but also impractical and, finally, futile. In the long run, violence does not achieve its own stated purposes, because it only deepens the bitterness on both sides. It leaves both sides in an endless and impossible cycle that cannot be stopped by itself. Instead, some neutralizing force must be inserted from outside to stop the cycle of violence and point us in a new direction.

King would insist that true nonviolent practice is founded on spiritual seeing. . . . He took it as axiomatic that the attitudes of nonviolence were finally impossible without an infusion of agape love from God and our reliance upon that infusion. He defined agape love as willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination. This is clearly a Divine love that the small self cannot achieve by itself.

We must live in and through Another to be truly nonviolent. [1]

At a 1960 lunch counter sit-in protesting segregation in Arlington, Virginia, Quaker peace activist David Hartsough discovered God’s power in the power of nonviolence: 

“Love your enemies . . . do good to those who hate you.” 

I was meditating on those words when I heard a voice behind me say, “Get out of this store in two seconds, or I’m going to stab this through your heart.” I glanced behind me at a man with the most terrible look of hatred I had ever seen. His eyes blazed, his jaw quivered, and his shaking hand held a switchblade—about half an inch from my heart. . . .

I turned around and tried my best to smile. Looking him in the eye, I said to him, “Friend, do what you believe is right, and I will still try to love you.” Both his jaw and his hand dropped. Miraculously, he turned away and walked out of the store.

That was the most powerful experience of my twenty years of life. It confirmed my belief in the power of love, the power of goodness, the power of God working through us to overcome hatred and violence. I had a profound sense that nonviolence really works. At that moment, nonviolence became much more than a philosophical idea or a tactic that had once made a difference in Gandhi’s India. It became the way I wanted to relate to other human beings, a way of life, a way of working for change.

My response had touched something in my accuser. He had seen me as an enemy. But through my response, I believe I became a human being to him. The humanity in each of us touched. [2]

Nonviolence Is Power

Lifelong peace activist and priest John Dear curated the CAC’s forthcoming edition of Oneing on nonviolence, which features Dear’s interview with Methodist minister and activist James Lawson. After visiting followers of Gandhi in India to study nonviolent resistance in the 1950s, Lawson began training civil rights activists in the principles and tactics of nonviolence. His students helped desegregate lunch counters and became Freedom Riders who pushed to integrate interstate travel. In response to a question about how he defines nonviolence, Lawson offers:

It is hard to define nonviolence. I think it was Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) who first used the term. [1] He maintained, in his book Non-violence in Peaceand War, that the term is his translation of the Jainist theory of ahimsa. Gandhi translated ahimsa as “Do no harm; do no injury.” Jainism was an ancient religion of India, begun around the time of Jesus of Nazareth. That’s one definition I cling to. It allows me to live, to function, to practice.

Gandhi also stated that nonviolence is love in action, compassion and truth in action. Of course, he coined the word satyagraha [often translated as truth force or soul force] to further explain tenacity in truth, in the soul, in God, and in struggle.

So, for me, nonviolence is that quality that comes out of all the great world religions: the notion that the creative force of the universe is love, that God is love, and that love is all-encompassing. Gandhi insisted—and I think this is Gandhi’s great contribution—that the creative force of the universe is the force that we humans must learn to exercise because that force is the only force that can cause the human race to do God’s will.

And nonviolence is power. It is not, as I was taught in college in 1947, just persuasion. Persuasion is a form of power. Aristotle wrote that power is the capacity to achieve purpose. It is a God-given gift of creation to human beings. Nonviolence has its deep roots in the long journey of the human family as people operated out of love and truth despite all that was raging around them.

As Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. also said, nonviolence is the science of how we create our own life in the image of God, how we create a world that practices justice, truth, and compassion.

Gene Sharp (1928–2018) was the first scholar to pull together the science and the methodology of nonviolence. So, I have a two-fold definition. First, the religions of the world reflect on love as truth and power, as the way the human race discovers how to carry out the will of eternity. Second, we’re still learning about nonviolence as the science of bringing about personal and social change and establishing a world where all life is honored.