Journal of daily reflections on the progress of my home-based agriculture experiments, mixed with observations about life, peace, justice, faith, family, community and friends.
See Say & Do - Thursday, May 23, 2013
While in my office today I looked through the windows into the backyard and saw one of the trees in our backyard that had been split into two look like two persons dancing. Taking the picture at the left it no longer looked like this but it still seemed like one tree interacting with itself. What we see does not always stay the same and what one person sees another person sees something else.
In the President’s talk today once again about closing down Guantanamo Bay and justifying Killer Drone strikes on Pakistan, and Yemen I keep thinking we have heard all this before and what has been done with both situations is not what he said he would do. He did not close Guantanamo Bay with an executive order as he said he could and would do five years ago. Sending Killer Drones to countries we were not at war with was not limited to killing certain persons who we call ‘terrorist’ but kill many innocent people often leading to more hate of the USA and its wars in the Middle East. What we say is not what we do.
Below are pictures of destruction from the latest killer tornado by Mother Nature in Oklahoma and pictures of destruction from killer drones by our Commander in Chief in Yemen and Pakistan. Both the killer tornado and killer drones killed innocent people and cause major damage to towns and villages. Can you see and say what destruction is from our US Commander-in-Chief and what is from Mother Nature?
See the full list of articles in the Diary of a Worm.
Quotes
First they ignore you
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Nonviolent Jesus
“Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teachings were nonviolent except Christians.” M. Gandhi
A Biography of Dorthy Day by Jim Forest
Letter from Dorthy Day prime directive of Gospel
On Lent
In general, in the first flush of Lent, the struggle is undertaken bravely. What if during the long weeks the fervor lessens and the work of accumulating graces was continued with many lapses, but by effort of will. That time when will has to be brought into play is perhaps the most important of all, despite failures and the total lack of a sense of accomplishment, of growth. Fervor comes again with Holy Week, joy comes on the day of resurrection, with all nature singing exultantly God’s praises.
To keep united to God through the suffering Humanity of His son—that is the aim of Lent. — Dorothy Day from her column “Day After Day”, The Catholic Worker, April 1935
People Need to be Distrubed.
“When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other. Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer. The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’ with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb, our ‘new look’.” (“Are The Leaders Insane?” By Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, April 1954, 1, 6.}
Everyday Chores
“Paper work, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all that happens — these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.”
— Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, December 1965
If you want to study modern history
If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.-- Thomas Merton New Seeds of Contemplation, ch 17
worshiping the false self in place of God
“After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is… And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard’s language, our true personality has been concealed under the ‘disguise’ of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.” —Thomas Merton, The Waters of Siloe
Harcourt & Brace, 1949, p. 349
silence between words
“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence,”
—Thomas Merton, “Philosophy of Silence,” in Disputed Questions
(NY: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1960), p. 181
ordinary tasks
[W]alking down a street, sweeping a floor, washing dishes, hoeing beans, reading a book, taking a stroll in the woods-all can be enriched with contemplation and with the obscure sense of the presence of God. — Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, William H. Shannon, editor, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003; p 66
Poor in the Military
“Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.” Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City
Worth Dying for
“If you haven’t found something worth dying for, you aren’t fit to be living.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Fear Each Other
“We often hate each other because we fear each other; we fear each other because we don’t know each other; we don’t know each other because we can not communicate; we can not communicate because we are separated.”
Priority of Conscience
“And it is my conscience that compels me to say publicly that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is agrave injustice against women, against our Church and against our God who calls both men and women to the priesthood.” Fr. Roy Bourgeois in his letter to Maryknoll why he could not recant his belief and public statements that support the ordination of women.
“Over the pope … there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary, even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.” Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI,in his 1968 commentary on the Second Vatican Council’s document, Gaudium et Spes.
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Nonviolence or Militarism
Breaking the Silence
Military Spending Voting Records of Rep. Paul Ryan [R]and Rep.Gwen Moore [D] of Wisconsin from 2005 – 20012.
Since visiting Guatemala in 2006 and doing my pictorial essay Buried in Guatemala I have had a keen interest in political history of Guatemala. This is an excellent article of what is happening today in Guatemala.
by Lauren Carasik ZNET
Thirty years ago, a “scorched earth” counterinsurgency strategy in the Quiche region of Guatemala left 1,771 Maya Ixil dead, tens of thousands displaced, and ruptured the social fabric of the community. This ruthless campaign of state repression was carried out by General Jose Efrain Rios Montt during the darkest chapter of the 36-year conflict, in which 200,000 Guatemalans died, the vast majority of whom were indigenous Mayans, and another 50,000 disappeared. Today, despite a pervasive culture of impunity in Guatemala and a veil of silence still surrounding those years, Rios Montt and Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, his chief intelligence officer, are being prosecuted in Guatemala for genocide and other crimes against humanity, a day many never thought would come.
The selection of intrepid Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz in 2010 ushered in a new era in Guatemala’s struggle against impunity. Long accused of atrocities, Rios Montt enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a member of Congress for 20 years, but was charged shortly after his departure from office in 2012. His prosecution sets a historic precedent for the people of Guatemala and the global community, representing the first time a head of state stands trial in a national court for the crime of genocide.
At the front of the cavernous courtroom, three judges sit closely together, occasionally huddled in conference, along a substantial wooden bench that stretched the length of the courtroom. On the wall above hangs the Guatemalan coat of arms: crossed rifles to signify defence of territory, swords emblematic of honour, and the date of Guatemalan independence from Spain etched across a scroll upon which a quetzal is perched, all against a backdrop of bay leaf branches symbolising victory. These lofty symbols however are imbued with a more ambiguous meaning to the vast majority of Guatemalans.
Phil Berrigan
“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”
— Barbara Tuchman
“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.” ― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
“This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good … for nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for neighbors.” —John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407)
“The really critical thing isn’t who’s sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens….” Howard Zinn
“The poor tell us who we are,
The prophets tell us who we could be,
So we hide the poor,
And kill the prophets.”
Phil Berrigan
Jokes and Editorial Cartoons
Neuroscience
Restoring the Senses, Gardening and Orthodox Easter
MAPS
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