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Showing posts sorted by date for query phil berrigan. Sort by relevance Show all posts
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7.30.2011

D-15 'If you're not massively sacrificing you're not Loving' SL www.youtube.com

http://youtu.be/kl7HQDopf7U


www.youtube.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/St​artLoving4#g/c/B539F17E459802A​C

D-15 'If you're not massively sacrificing you're not Loving' SL - YouTube

It's a mystery to me how I can arrive at several months shy of 60 years old and only be just 'getting' something like this, understanding something like this.  On the other hand it's what's driven me all my life.  I believes there were things to understand that I was not learning elsewhere.  and I had some sense I had to find out, for my own joy, and to execute my own responsibility as a human being.  If you're not breathing, you're not living.  If your heart's not beating, you're not living. If you're not drinking liquids you're not living.  If a plant is not inhaling CO2 it's not photosynthesizing.  It's not living.

If you're not massively sacrificing, you're not massively loving. Teresa of Calcutta has given the best definition of love that I've ever encountered.  And I've studied it academically, love that is, more than anyone you'll ever meet.   She said,  and this is a slight paraphrase, 'love is that which cannot remain passive in the face of suffering.  Love is that which does not remain passive in the face of suffering.'  Trillions of dollars, quite possibly, a year are spent that totally obscure and pervert the word love, so it's understandable that neither I nor you still grasp what the word love means.  And yes, what I'm saying is entirely disputable; have at it friend if that's what you wish to do.  But if you wish to grasp the neurological, psychological truth; if you wish to understand, by infinite measure, the most sacred and promising and awarding of human capacities, that capacity which is distinct from all others, which for me, deserves the word Love, as opposed to all else which is in the category of lust, self-service. 

Teresa is correct, love is that which cannot and does not remain passive in the face of suffering, real or potential.  This is what explains Gandhi.  This is what explains  King.  This is what explains, Eleanor Roosevelt, Diane Wilson, Col. Ann Wright, Oscar Romero, Phil Berrigan, Liz Hourican; all of those who have retained their full humanity and exercise it.   If you are not consuming massive amounts of suffering, and sacrificing your selfish alternatives for the Joy of serving our neediest brothers and sisters, you are not loving.  You are lusting.   I did not just say one is superior to the other.  That's for you to decide.  But they are clinically, objectively opposite ways being. 

This is a significant clarification for me.  Suffering and sacrifice are words that have been troubling to me, and I didn't quite understand why; I'm understanding more now why.  Mothers that we would consider healthy, when they talk about their child, do not center on the pain of childbirth.  They center on the Joy, although they might not use that word, of sacrificing their lives and they wouldn't use that word, or say it.  They do it for the advancement of their child, for the joy of that.  That's what we are designed do.  So  I've been very troubled by the word sacrifice and suffering.  When Jesus life is explained, for example, because what has been so clear to me, is what characterized the life of Jesus was not suffering but loving.  What I was blind to was the suffering was inseparable in the same way that consumption of CO2 is inseparable from the life-giving of photosynthesis, generating oxygen.  They're inseparable. They're inseparable.  They are totally inseparable.  Now Lust, flees from suffering.   Lust calls Love that which is devoid of suffering, and full of pleasure, intoxication.  That's Death, literally, Living Death - Death of the Soul - emptiness of the Soul l- which almost 300,000,000 of us in this country are devoted to we, that we in the US see as a virtue, as desirable, that walking Death, that Living Death.  In the movie, the brilliant movie,  The Matrix, do we really think that ever Neo and the others were able to inspire the, what, hundreds of millions or billions to leave the Matrix?  I don't know.  They, actually, probably many of them, if not the vast majority, were perfectly happy with their living Death, the same way hardly any alcoholics ever recover; any alcoholics ever recover, because they're unable to see the hellishness of their existence. 

If you or I are not massively sacrificing, in those seconds where we are not, we are not Loving, neither are we exercising our capacity for Love; neither are we Loving beings;  we are Lusting beings.  I didn't just say which one was superior, that's for you to decide.  But it's for me to point out the distinction.  And for me, I'm too greedy to want to be Lusting. I have too much enlightened greed.  Thank God to my biological father, and the man, Jesus, who I experienced truly as a young person.  I was gifted with close contact with both my dad, and Jesus as a result, and was gifted with greed for a life that is Loving, the only source of Joy.  And that by definition is not a life 'of' suffering, not a life 'of' sacrifice, but a life that sacrifice's'; a life that metabolizes suffering.  Yes, we know people to wallow in suffering.  No that's just another form of lust, clearly.  But Love metabolizes suffering; that is it's food, that is what it ingests, for the Joy of it. 

Love metabolizes suffering the joy of it.  No, not in some sadistic or masochistic sense.  Clearly there are people that are able to metabolize suffering exactly for sadism, or masochism.  But the people we admire as the most healthy metabolize suffering, too make it go away, as the is the engine, as the reason for exercising their own Love.  Oh, it's so easy to deny what I'm saying.  It's so easy to ignore what I'm saying.  And I will never try and force it on you.  To some of you I will continue to offer it.  To most of you, you will continue to demonstrate to me that you want not to understand.  Until you through some wonder change, unless and until through some wonder change, and want to know, I'll always be your brother, but I'll not enable your capacity for denial by trying to step into the breach, if you continue to willfully and aggressively indicate you wish not understand.  I'll not harm you in that way, out of Love.

2.01.2010

"'Peace Activist,' like 'Friend, 'Surgeon,' 'Pilot...' means NOTHING self-declared." SL

"'Peace Activist,' like 'Friend, 'Surgeon,' 'Christian,' 'Pilot...'
means NOTHING (or Death) self-declared.

Character, Competence, COMMITMENT,

SECOND BY SECOND PERFORMANCE / BEHAVIOR...
IS WHERE WE MUST LOOK FOR THE TRUTH OF SUCH WORDS.

'Anyone can be great, because anyone can Serve.'  MLK Jr.

'The least among you shall be the Greatest.'  Jesus

Thomas.  Gandhi.  MLK Jr.  Dave Dellinger.  Phil Berrigan.
Col. Ann Wright.  Mandela.  Diane Wilson.  Rodolfo Macias.
Liz Hourican. ClimateGroundZero...."
  SL

1.31.2010

"The ONLY essentials for the Peace Maker: Solitude, Space, Rest." SL

"The ONLY essentials for the Peace Maker: 
Solitude, "Space," and Rest.

A mark of the Peace Maker -
They will pay any personal price for
Solitude ("space") and Rest,
the only essentials of their Work
.

It is widely known that Prison time,
Solitude, Space, Rest -
was ESSENTIAL
to the Development of Powers of
Mandela, Gandhi, ML King Jr, Dellinger,
Wilson, Fr. Louis, Dan Berrigan, Phil Berrigan ...."
  SL

1.12.2009

PRESS RELEASE: ACKNOWLEDGING FAILURE DAY #25, HUNGER STRIKER ESCALATES CAMPAIGN BY ENDING FLUID INTAKE

January 12, 2009
Washington, DC, corner Independence and NJ Ave, NW Corner Cannon House Office Building
Press Contact: start_loving@yahoo.com

""A nation that year after year spends more money on the military than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," said Dr. King and they killed him one year later to the day", said Start Loving. "That was 41 years ago. We are not "approaching" Spiritual Death anymore - we're facing actual death - global civilization collapse."

"Yes, I've done my best so far in this Hunger Strike but I've failed my human family. We've only got until the finalization of the Stimulus Package 20 days or so from now to end the terminal threat to America, and the world - the $1 trillion annual Entitlement Program paid out to the Military Industrial complex in the U.S.," says Start Loving from his 24 hour per day Occupation on the Hill. "Despite the miracle of international activist Diane Wilson ( http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/unreasonablewoman) joining the Hunger Strike on Saturday, I've failed to mobilize our few, sheroic activists within the likes of Code Pink, Proposition One, the Washington Peace Center and WILPF to a take-no-prisoners lobby campaign on the Hill demanding nothing less than an immediate $200 billion dollar shift from WarMaking to non-DOD PeaceBuilding as called for in Lester Brown's "Plan B 3.0" ( http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm ).

Loving acknowledges some heart wrenching choices his demand calls for among the great activists, and the Progressive community more broadly. "I too have yearned, for example, for years to give my life to help save our Palestine family, and to save Israel and the world from the Zionists. I've joyfully gone to jail protesting Guantanamo. But these are symptoms of a cause - a $1 trillion U.S. military budget - and the symptoms will never ever be stopped or healed as long as the cause, that $1 trillion budget remains." Loving contends that as laid out in detail in the Cut War Fund Peace $200B Fast Campaign Outline (here http://jesusgodgoodetcnjay.blogspot.com/2009/01/campaign-on-one-page.html ) and as irrefutably laid out in "Plan B 3.0" Mother Nature, not we, dictate that it is now or never, January 2009 or never, to reallocate funds from death and destruction to life and construction. The 39' rise in sea level and continued doubling of failed states / terrorist hotbeds will simply overwhelm civilization leading to worldwide collapse, Loving contends. "Or do we continue to ignore our scientists, the CIA, British Military Intelligence, and Martin Luther King, Jr?" Loving asks?

"Who, if they saw this clearly, would not happily sacrifice their life attempting to get the attention, and I pray, the sheroic response of their fellows to such a calamity?" Loving asks. Loving will stay off of all fluids until either he is convinced of the folly of the Cut War Fund Peace $200B Fast Campaign Outline (here http://jesusgodgoodetcnjay.blogspot.com/2009/01/campaign-on-one-page.html ) or he sees a core of sheroic activists executing along the lines for which it calls.

Loving acknowledges that few people will understand or support or agree with his action. "We have never well understood nonviolence (putting your own life on the line to protect the other, refusing to threaten the life of another in doing so) in this country, and certainly not since the 1960's. We admire the likes of King and Gandhi, Phil Berrigan, Barbara Demming and David Dellinger, but we don't follow them. But we still have a hand full of true activists, and they might understand, and respond constructively to my action. Did you know that the cause of Dr. King finally speaking out against the war in Vietnam was the self immolation of Buddhist priests in Vietnam?"

Loving notes that the risk of arrest for him goes up dramatically now because he no longer has the strength to move his Occupation on the Hill to the slightly out of the way corner where he sits up all night. "I'll have to remain on the totally visible Capitol side of Independence and there is a Hispanic Captain that is visibly fearful of taking heat for how that might appear," says Loving. Loving says he will remain abstaining from food and water whether in jail or out.



6.17.2008

UNDERSTANDING BLINDNESS

Why am I relatively blind to that which animated, possessed the lives of the likes of Phil Berrigan and Helen Caldicott?!?!?!?

9.15.2007

JESUS IS MY HERO, WHO I ADORE. NO MORE. NO LESS.

Christ's Teachings,
Vinoba Bhave

(Buddhist &
Gandhi protege):


"I believe in Jesus Christ, but do not believe in circumscribing him within strictly sectarian or theological walls. To me Jesus was something far beyond any individual phenomenon. [Jesus] was Love and Compassion incarnate. We can carry his message to the people by serving them with love, mercy and compassion in our hearts. That message will spread despite you and me, because it is the innermost cry of the human heart."

"Ditto." Start Loving


JESUS IS MY HERO, WHO I ADORE. NO MORE. NO LESS.

My only hero? Oh my God, I have so many - Phil Berrigan, Dave Dellinger, Diane Wilson, Gandhi, King, Bev, Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, Mandela, young Tim Phiri, Thomas, Connie, Ellen, DIANE, Ann, Gael, Assisi, Eleanor R, Teresa of Calcutta, Col Ann Wright, MR, Buddha, Liz MacAlister, .... and so many others like these.

But Jesus is my greatest hero. Jesus is my greatest Love. Jesus is my greatest example.

Is He God? I don't know, and neither do you. And, like Gandhi, I couldn't care less. He is my brother. He loved us more than anyone ever has. He died to give us the example of how to Live. I want with all of my being to be like Him, for you, for your children, for their children....

9.07.2007

THERE IS A "HIGHER LAW"

If there is any conceivable circumstance in which the most human, law abiding "citizen" could and would disobey "the law," THAT is absolute Proof / Truth that there IS a HIGHER LAW.

The sheer existence of Gandhi, King, Jesus, Lincoln, Buddha, Mandela, Maguire, Diane Wilson, Phil Berrigan, Dave Dellinger, Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer... is ABSOLUTE PROOF OF A HIGHER LAW.

Where is this Higher Law written? It is obvious. In the human heart / nervous system / DNA. And until we are completely inhuman, that Higher Law is what can save us from this Planetary Hell we've created.

The Higher Law is almost synonymous with the psychological complex - Conscience, Heart, Love (Agape), Compassion, Empathy, Wisdom....

"I will admit
but one tyrant in my life;
the Still, Small Voice Within."
Gandhi

9.05.2007

!!! WHAT MILLIONS SHOULD DO, ONE MAN MUST DO !!!

  • What Millions would do, one woman did do. Rosa Parks
  • What Millions would do, one man did do. Nelson Mandella
  • What Millions might do, one woman is doing. Aung San Suu Kyi
  • What Millions would do, one man did do. Steven Beko

CLICK PICTURE BELOW FOR PRINTABLE FILE

  • What no "Christians" would do, one man did do. Deitrich Bonhoeffer
  • What Millions would do, one man did do. Gandhi
  • What Hundreds now do, one woman did do. Rachel Corrie
  • What Dozens now do, one woman did do. Liz MacAllister
  • What Dozens now do, one man did do. Phil Berrigan
  • What Billions of Christians have not done, one man did do. Jesus
  • And on...
  • And on...



The point?

  • Before billions of cell phones would be bought, one cell phone was bought.
  • Before everyone rejected apartheid, one person had to reject it.
  • Before everyone in the US rejected slavery, one person had to.
  • Before everyone sterilized scapels, Lister had to do it for decades, alone.

"What is to give light
must endure the burning."

Eleanor Roosevelt

A blaze that incinerates ALL Empire
would start with one, lone torch.
Start Loving


___________________________________________-

!!! WHAT MILLIONS SHOULD DO, ONE MAN MUST DO !!!


IGNITE THE FIRE
click the match.
IGNITE THE FIRE OF HUMANITY
!!click the match above!!
DO IT!
DO IT!!
DO IT!!!


You see I AM RESPONSABLE in "Dances With Wolves" in the opening sequence - the battle that is a genocidal stalemate until....



The armies are across the field from one another...












Agonizing, slow, mutual slaughter...







One person faces the madness, they are dead already...



Quietly, alone one rides out -WHAT MILLIONS MIGHT DO, ONE MAN MUST DO














As in EVERY CRUCIAL STRUGGLE, the odds are impossible...


But HOPE and POSSIBILITY, HUMANITY are in the ATTEMPT....





}}}}}}}} ALL IT TAKES IS ONE MATCH. YOU? {{{{{{{{









The Infection of "Possibility" Spreads...





And spreads....







And Salvation is at hand.



_________________________
IGNITE THE FIRE
click the match.
IGNITE THE FIRE OF HUMANITY
!!click the match above!!
DO IT!
DO IT!!
DO IT!!!

!!! WHAT MILLIONS MUST DO, ONE MAN MUST DO - NOW !!!

8.23.2007

NO GOOD WORK IS PAID

NO GOOD WORK IS PAID.

Who in "God's Name" would say that Her work is "Paid" work?
  • Jesus?
  • Gandhi?
  • Mandela?
  • Beko?
  • Mother Teresa?
  • Francis of Assisi?
  • Phil Berrigan?
  • Liz McAllister?
  • Dorothy Day?
  • Peter Maurin?
  • Diane Wilson?
  • Col. Anne Wright?
  • Ellen Thomas?
  • Thomas?
  • Connie?
  • Catholic Workers?
  • Etc?
  • Etc?

8.20.2007

DEEP GRIEF. GOOD GRIEF?

Good grief? The grief I feel, unceasing since my incarceration a week ago Thursday at the White House does not depart. I do not regret it. I thank the Almighty for it. But it is deep and painful. To come into intimate contact with the deep evil, EVIL, INHUMANITY, BESTIALITY of our US System is nauseating, deeply disturbing, deeply depressing to me.

Exactly as I enter this post I then find my self reading pages 66-67 in Phil Berrigan's must read, "Fighting the Lamb's War." Phil writes:

"What might Reverend King say if he could visit our country’s death cages, crowded with African-Americans waiting to die? If he could walk our inner-city streets again and see the legacy of crack cocaine, the. gangs, and hopeless poverty? I imagine him weep­ing, his tears drowned out by sirens and the sound of automatic gun­fire, his message of love and reconciliation smothered by fascist ideologues.
Black mayors. Black Congressmen. Black police chiefs. Black generals. Black rock stars. Black film stars. Black sports stars. Some commentators argue that the glass is half empty, others that it is half full. The analogy hardly matters. We lurch toward the year 2000, dragging our bloody chains, our crimes, behind us. Millions of African-Americans are still living in poverty, captive to the “tricks” of institutional racism, police bmtality, white fear, and capitalist manipulation."

"Malcolm X intended to present his case before the United Nations. He was determined to tell the world that the United States govern ment was systematically violating the human rights of its own black citizens. Would the white community believe him, then or now? When the police fracture a welfare mother’s skull, or kill her son in the hallway of a housing project, the crime hardly makes the news. When the bullet-riddled body of another black teenager is taken to the morgue, the event is of no importance. What we don’t see, we don’t believe. What we don’t know, doesn’t happen. The mirror we looked into in the fifties has become the vicious magic show of the nineties:

  • Ending affirmative action means creating meritocracy.
  • Cutting people off welfare means giving people hope.
  • Putting people to death means respecting life.
  • Building atomic submarines, instead of schools, means protecting democracy.
  • Destroying our children means saving them."

8.16.2007

OUR "AGENDA" DOESN'T INCLUDE JAIL TOO OFTEN. P.B.

Must read all of Phil Berrigan at Jonah House. The following is derived from Faith and Justice:

"Most of us play checkers with resistance; we calculate the next move so as to reduce inconvenience or eliminate it altogether from our lives.
We have our own agenda and it doesn't include going to jail too often. We want to say that we were there; we don't want to say how far we went in."
Phil Berrigan

YOU VOTE WITH YOUR FEET... AND LIFE. P. BERRIGAN

Must read all of Phil Berrigan at Jonah House. The following is derived from Dispatches From The Lamb’s War:

"Jesus Christ practiced direct action, as did the Jewish prophets and other nonviolent militants. Even before the American Revolution, colonists resorted to direct action in struggles against injustice. In a capitalist society, there are no other means for representation, redress, or justice. To vote is political window dressing. It makes not the slightest bit of difference. If it did, the American people would soon lose this “right.” The only means for fighting judicial corruption, corporate greed, worker exploitation, police brutality, and militarism is direct action. The Industrial Workers of the World — aka the “Wobblies” — were right: you don’t vote with the ballot, you vote with your feet and with your life."
Phil Berrigan

OURS IS THE EVIL GENERATION. P. BERRIGAN

Must read all of Phil Berrigan at Jonah House. The following is derived from Scapegoating:

"With all my heart, I agree with Gerard that the Gospel alone will destroy scapegoating and needless killing. The Gospel alone offers the truth and strength necessary to disarm and eliminate nuclear terror. But the unknown quantity are Christians and our disbelief.
Luke's Gospel (11:29) speaks of an "evil generation", and ours is certainly that. No sign is allowed this generation except the sign of Jonah the prophet. And that sign is the Cross - the execution, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
Fidelity to that sign will not be easy, but it will not be hard. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. (Mt. 11:30). We are not to be afraid, Just believe. (Mk. 5:36)"

ACCEPTING VIOLENCE WITH LOVE ENDS THE SPREAD

Must read all of Phil Berrigan at Jonah House. The following is derived from Scapegoating:

ACCEPTING VIOLENCE
WITH LOVE
ENDS THE SPREAD

"THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH COULD NOT..." P. BERRIGAN

Must read all of Phil Berrigan at Jonah House. The following is from Scapegoating:

"The early Christian Church could not bear the purity and weight of the true meaning of Jesus' execution. It could not grasp the sheer voluntariness of the Cross, the voluntary love of His choice. And so the belief grew that God sent Jesus to die, that from his conception He was doomed to die, the divine scapegoat. Theology acquired a determinism, even tinges of fatalism. The divine/human mission to restore God's Kingdom began to fade; the Church's unequivocal condemnation of violence and war began to fade. The empire began to absorb Christians, exacting taxes and military service from them."

Phil Berrigan

"STATE IS A PUBLIC... REBELLION AGAINST GOD." PHIL BERRIGAN

MUST READ: FOREWORD AS IS EVERYTHING AT THE JONAH HOUSE SITE by Philip Berrigan.

Some quotations from Phil Berrigan on Law:
  • the Bible gave human law ample treatment. 1st Samuel 8th chapter, for example, exposes the State as a public, bureaucratic rebellion against God.
  • the law, like the State is inherently flawed and violent -- its function to legalize a rebellious State.
  • Paul's Letter to the Galatians -- his most sustained indictment of human law.
  • The genesis of the State then, ancient or modern, is rejection of God, rebellion against God. "They have not rejected you [Samuel], they have rejected me as their King." (1 Sam. 8:7)
  • As the ruling hierarchy told Pilate: "We have no King but Caesar." (John 19:15)
  • Paul equates the law with sin and death -- sin because law has nothing to say to sins of omission, and death because most will draw their morality from the law.
  • The morality of most Americans is legalized. To become "law abiding" is to fear the penalties of the law, to become house-broken, domesticated.
  • Morality limited by the boundaries of the law is spiritual death.

8.14.2007

Phil Berrigan Quotes

  1. Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.
  2. "Peacemaking is not only a central characteristic of the Gospel, peacemaking is the greatest need of the world today. We are the daughters and sons of God, and that means we are called to be peacemakers."
  3. "There is no freedom without love."
  4. "You are the answer."
  5. "Don't get tired."
  6. "War on terrorism by the U.S. is impossible. We are the number one terrorist."
  7. “We're not made by God to mass kill one another, and that's backed up by the Gospels. Lying and war are always associated. Pay attention to war-makers when they try to defend their current war: if they’re moving their lips they're lying.”
  8. Herein lies a riddle. How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?
  9. "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Cantonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."
  10. "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Cantonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."
  11. "War can't end terrorism. War is terrorism."

"WORLD SINKS DEEPER INTO ... PSYCHOSIS..."

"Where does one
look for hope,
as the world sinks deeper
into social psychosis?

To the people alone,
particularly
to people of faith.
In the past,
the people alone
checked the mad ambitions
of the pharaohs."

7.14.2007

JESUS' WAY IN A HELLISH WORLD: MILITANT BROTHERLINESS

All of the following quotes come from
Peace and Nonviolence (Quotations from),
compiled by Monk Ed Guinan.

"It must be militant, massive nonviolence, or riots." Martin Luther King (not from Guinan's book)
"We have to become twice as militant and twice as non-violent, twice as tough and twice as tender, as only the truly strong can be tender. That’s what we need—a new covenant with God and with Christ for a new kind of manhood. To this new covenant we must devote a great deal of thought."
Willaim Sloane Coffin

"And who will provide what is most crucial of all—example?"
Phil Berrigan

"For until the adversary in power knows that non-violent men are willing to suffer for their beliefs, he will not be truly willing to listen to them, knowing he can count on their ultimate acquiescence to his power if not to his opinion."
William Sloane Coffin

"If men are not willing to practice the way of non-violence with the same kind of commitment and recklessness of cost or con­sequences as they practice the way of war and as Communists work for Communism, clearly non-violence will not work."
A.J. Muste

"Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure, but an engagement for service; that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons."
Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel

"Therefore the problem becomes—how to instill convictions strong enough to resist dehumanization in oneself, in others, in structures. How to instruct him in non-violence as a way of life, as mark of the new man, as instrument of human revolution and social regeneration?
"How to teach him the realities of power in all its nuances, from the will to dominate others to the will to exploit whole nations and peoples? How to toughen him SO that one will understand and accept persecution, contempt, ostracism, jail, or death on account of conscience and (above all) on account of the suffering brother’? How to infuse him with such sensitivity to human rights and dignity that one will confront violence in every turn of his life—in himself, in the culture, in the State? How to convince him that Christ’s man must integrate word and act, in full recognition that this might lead him to death, even as it did his Lord?"
Phil Berrigan

"We have chosen to say, with the gift of our liberty, if necessary our lives: the violence stops here, the death stops here, the sup­pression of the truth stops here, this war stops here."
Dan Berrigan

"Non-violence, in essence, means taking a stand in favor of life and refusing to delegate individual moral responsibility to another person or group; it means taking control of one’s life and aiding others in doing likewise. Non-violence is an attempt to find truth and love even in the midst of hatred, destruction and pride."
Ed Guinan

"Peace is the great concept extolling love among men, who discover that they are brothers and decide to live as such."
Paul VI

"Non-violence is meant to communicate love not in word but in act. Above all, non-violence is meant to convey and to defend truth which has been obscured and defiled by political double-talk."
Thomas Merton

"Mere words about peace, love and civilization have completely lost all power to change anything."
Thomas Merton

"Unearned suffering is redemptive."
Martin Luther King

"The luxury of a leisurely approach to urgent solutions—the ease of gradualism—was forfeited by ignoring the issues for too long."
Martin Luther King

"“If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
Martin Luther King

"Only love and sacrifice can engender love and sacrifice. This chain reaction is essential to the non-violent struggle."
Thich Nhat Hanh

"...Our struggle's purpose... the destruction of fanaticism and inhumanity, which are the real enemies of man."
Thich Nhat Hanh

"By accepting extreme suffering, one lights the fires of compassion and awakens the hearts of the people, as Christ did."
Thich Nhat Hanh

"The task of the non-violent action is to fight the injustice and to liberate men, those who suffer the injustice as well as those who are responsible for it."
Hildegaard Goss-Mayr

"Christ has not only taught this, he has lived it and furthermore has shown some techniques of how to live that force in a specific historical situation. He attacked the status quo of his time, those who betrayed men and were the privileged. He attacked the established Church of his time. He attacked the conscience of its representatives throughout the three years of his public life so strongly that they reacted in the traditional way with violence against him and crucified him.
He was not crucified because he did nothing, but exactly because he attacked the injustice of his time in a very clear and precise way and because he spoke the truth.
But he always respected men.
Neither did he join the established groups of his time nor the guerrilla who operated in Israel, and who wanted to liberate the country from the Roman occupation.
"He showed a new way of fighting evil and he was willing to accept the consequences of his action."
Hildegaard Goss-Mayr

"It cannot be affirmed that the powers that be, in any nation, are actuated by the spirit, or guided by the example of Christ, in the treatment of enemies; therefore, they cannot be agreeable to the will of God; and, therefore, their overthrow, by a spiritual regeneration of their subjects, is inevitable."
William Lloyd Garrison

"It will be our leading object to devise ways and means for effecting a radical change in the views, feelings and practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war, and the treat­ment of enemies."
William Lloyd Garrison

"In entering upon the great work before us, we are not unmindful that, in its prosecution, we may be called to test our sincerity, even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself."
William Lloyd Garrison

"All such as pretend Christ Jesus, and confess him, and yet run into the use of carnal weapons, wrestling with flesh and blood, throw away the
spiritual weapons."
George Fox

"How to provoke chain reactions not of hate and death but of new constructiveness, of new quality of life."
Danilo Dolci

"A complete rejection of the present social order and a non violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values."
Dorothy Day

"When we fight tyranny and injustice and the class war we must do so by spiritual weapons and by non—cooperation."
Dorothy Day

Militant Non-Violence, William Sloane Coffin

"Now we can see how ridiculous it is to define violence in physical terms alone. For a man killed by a bullet is no less dead than a man who has died from a disease resulting from eradicable poverty. When you stop to think of it, poverty is no longer inevitable; therefore it is intolerable. It is no more a private tragedy; it is now a public crime."
William Sloane Coffin

"We have our own bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapon."
Cesar Chavez

"When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life."
Cesar Chavez

"Therefore, let us render this service in the cause of peace: without measuring the sacrifices, try to prove that truth, love and faith, with the divine blessing, are capable of moving and breaking down the walls of Jericho."
Dom Helder Camara

"Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you, valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting— freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing. Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow; freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy."
Deitrich Bonhoeffer

"Jesus added “as I have loved you,” meaning, “Just as I gave my all for you, you do the same for your colleagues. Dedicate yourselves to this task.” This was his last message."
Buddhist Vinoba Bhave

3.04.2007

"The...State [and its law]...is Rejection of God," Phil Berrigan

From: FOREWORD by Philip Berrigan #14850-056Federal Correctional Institution at Petersburg 1996-1997Federal Correctional Institution at Elkton 2001

"The genesis of the State then, ancient or modern, is rejection of God, rebellion against God. "They have not rejected you [Samuel], they have rejected me as their King." (1 Sam. 8:7) And God instructs Samuel to tell the elders what a human King, Leader, Premier, Fuhrer, Prime Minister, President would cost the people -- sons for the military, daughters as domestics, crushing taxes, fields, vineyards and flocks confiscated, servants seized, slavery the final, tragic culmination. As the ruling hierarchy told Pilate: "We have no King but Caesar. (John 19:15) ... As the ruling hierarchy told Pilate: "We have no King but Caesar." (John 19:15)"

" Paul equates the law with sin and death -- sin because law has nothing to say to sins of omission, and death because most will draw their morality from the law. The morality of most Americans is legalized. To become "law abiding" is to fear the penalties of the law, to become house-broken, domesticated. Morality limited by the boundaries of the law is spiritual death."