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By: eileen fleming
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends...I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it. ..All I want is the truth. Just gimme some truth. I've had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians. All I want is the truth. Just gimme some truth." - John Lennon, 1971.
In Ray Coleman's biography of John Lennon, he quotes the artist circa 1969, "I'd like to be like Christ, [he described himself as a Christian communist] in a pure sense, not in the way Russia or Italy think of Christianity or communism...Every body's uptight [fearful] and they're always building these walls around themselves. All you can do is try to break down the walls and show them that there's nothing there but people. I only know that peace can exist, and the first thing is for the world to disarm. I think I'll win because I believe in what Jesus said." [1]
WAR IS OVER-Merry Christmas from the London Catholic Worker
"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment: "Thou shalt not murder'?" -Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Tolstoy greatly influenced Dorothy Day and is one of many pioneers in the global Christian liberation movement understood as Christian Anarchism.
Christian anarchists know inner freedom comes by way of doing the teachings of Jesus for Christianity is more than a religion; it offers a new vision of life.
Christian anarchists are critical of outer authority, be it Church or Government.
All individuals have free will and can choose whether or not to seek and knock at the door of ones own heart and communicate with God.
Jesus envisioned a society based on love and tolerance, which is completely incompatible with war and all violence.
When Jesus was mocked, whipped and nailed to a cross and remained NONVIOLENT he was over throwing the status quo of violent retaliation and eye-for-an-eye mentality.
Not many of his followers have been able to drink from that cup of The Prince of Peace, which is another name for Jesus Christ who commanded his followers to LOVE all people and to forgive in order to be forgiven.
Tolstoy understood that the command "Thou shalt not murder" meant that all governments who wage war are directly affronting the Christian principles that should guide all life, and shouldn't being pro-life really be about honoring the sacredness of every life that already is?
Tolstoy wrote to separate Orthodox Russian Christianity which had merged with the State, for it left behind the true message of Jesus Christ, as contained in the Gospels, specifically the Sermon on the Mount and of which I have written about-Read more...
Dorothy Day lived a diverse 83 years that culminated in 1980. She spent her youth amongst anarchists and bohemians, in bars and through unhappy love affairs. She ended life with a mile high FBI file and a paper trail that testifies that what she wrote, she believed, she did and lived.
As an unwed mother she shocked her progressive friends when she entered the Roman Catholic Church, and from the inside, she began to critique it. She called herself a journalist, but she was also like St. Francis of Assisi, a lone prophetic voice of wisdom that challenged the corruption of the gospel/good news that Jesus said was non-negotiable for his follower's; you must forgive to be forgiven and you must love-even those who do not love back.
In a 1994 issue of The Progressive , Erwin Knoll reported "the day after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor [was] a day when even the most committed pacifist might have been forgiven for maintaining a discreet silence"There was nothing discreet about Dorothy Day."[2]
On the Sunday after Pearl Harbor, Day spoke out, "There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European colonialism in this same area. We, the British, the French, and others set up spheres of influence"control national states-against the expressed will of these states-and represent imperialism"We dictate to [all] "to where they can expand economically and politically, and we declare what policy they must observe. From our nationalistic and imperialistic point of view, we have every right to concentrate American military forces [Everywhere we chose]"But I waste rhetoric on international politics-the breeding grounds of war over the centuries. The balance of power and other empty slogans inspired by a false and flamboyant nationalism have bred conflict throughout 'civilized' history.
"And it has become too late in human history to tolerate wars which none can win. Nor dare we quibble about just wars"All wars are, by their very nature, evil and destructive. It has become too late for civilized people to accept this evil. We must take a stand. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy"Evil enough when the finest of our youth perish in conflict and even the causes of these conflicts were soon lost to memory. Even more horrible today when cities go up in flames and brilliant scientific minds are searching out ultimate weapons.
"War must cease. There are no victories. The world can bear the burden no longer. Yes, we must make a stand. Even as I speak to you, I may be guilty of what some men call treason. But we must reject war: Yes, we must now make a stand. War is murder, rape, ruin, death; war can end our civilization. I tell you that within a decade we will have weapons capable of ending this world as we have known it." [IBID]
Day's prophetic voice is also a friend of wisdom and "Wisdom is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, and certain. Not baneful, but loving the good, keen, unhampered, beneficent, kind, firm, secure, all-seeing and pervading all spirits. Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion and SHE penetrates and pervades all things by reason. SHE is the aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of The Almighty. SHE is the refulgence of eternal Light, a spotless mirror of the power of God. And SHE who is one, can do all things and renews everything. And passing into holy souls from age to age, SHE produces friends of God and prophets." - WISDOM 7:22-8:1
Day took Jesus seriously and understood that for a Christian the higher law is God's not man's and for a Christian, God is love and "love is not the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of cities. Love is not killing...Our Manifesto is the Sermon on The Mount, which means we will try to be peacemakers."
But more that Dorothy and Tolstoy, it was John Lennon who inspired me to THINK for myself and act accordingly.
Dorothy Day entered the Catholic Church, but I left it at the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by Lennon's honesty.
Up until I was about six years old, every Sunday morning was spent in a glass-encased room at St. Bernard's one holy Roman Catholic Church, in Levittown, Long Island.
The glass-encased room was called, and literally was, the Cry Room.
Growing up with television, it was natural for me to stand up close against the soundproof glass and watch 'the show' on the other side.
Every so often, I'd hear the priest's voice filter through the loudspeaker above my head. But it was all Latin to me: and back then, it really was!
I see myself now, just as I was then, surrounded by squirming kids and uptight adults, engulfed by the sounds of crying and whining, and I truly believed that was church.
Once my younger brothers had grown, I got to be in the main room and the show lost its mystery to me, for the Latin had been changed to English and quickly became routine.
When I was 9, in 1963, two life altering events occurred.
By Thanksgiving that year, I was overfilled with images of JFK being shot and John-John during that motorcade. He was just a little guy in a short coat with his knees exposed who saluted as his father's casket rode by and many of America's other children also bid goodbye to their childhood.
But, three months later, the gloom was gone, for the Beatles appeared on a Sunday night in my living room, and the world as I had known it changed again.
In the summer of '66, it was reported that John Lennon made a comment to a friend and reporter that the Beatles were more popular with my generation than Jesus was.
I agreed with him, for my friends and I knew every lyric to every Beatles song, but nobody ever quoted Jesus.
Lennon made me think about my own hypocrisy, and that led me to drop the institutional church.
It was in July on a Saturday afternoon, immediately after the ritual of weekly confession that I knelt at the altar and mindlessly repeated the same old prayers as the week prior. But on that particular day in '66, in the middle of the three Our Fathers and ten Hail Mary's, it hit me like a light. Those words that I uttered never changed anything, and I got up and walked out, convinced I was doomed for hell, for I had failed at Confession!
I never doubted there was a God, but as John said and sang, I believed, "that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong"Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me. ..You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate...All we are saying is give peace a chance...All you need is love...Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one...Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
"Imagination is evidence of the Divine." - William Blake
On October 9, 2005, I wrote:
John Lennon would have been 65 at exactly 6:35 PM today.
On 3/7/04 inside of 216 North Park Avenue in Winter Park, Florida "When I'm 64" the traveling Lennon Art for Sale Show to benefit Instant Karma Adopt-A-Classroom; helping teachers, helping Children show cased the Love and Art of John for Yoko and Sean.
216 [2+1+6=9] North Park Avenue had previously been a Victoria's Secret and in the far end where padded bras had once hung had now become a temporary shrine of unending love of a father for his son.
The drawings upon the walls had been created out of play between John and Sean. Yoko had lightly tinged them pastel and turned them into a book called "Real Love"
I was captivated by one in particular titled "Sheep Meadowing" in which sheep had levitated into the sky and had morphed into clouds above the heads of sheep meadowing.
After a time of timelessness cogitating upon those sheep, I reluctantly pulled my head back through the clouds to continue on to the second Gathering of Women for Peace, where sisters of every color and creed gathered in harmony at the Mosque in East Orlando.
We came together to imagine what Peace in the World would look like and what we could do to make it happen.
All day long in my inner ear I did hear "Revolution 9" from the White Album tuned in so very clear and with a few new lyrics:
Number 9 Number 9 Number 9....Let all who are little come in here, Wisdom has built her house; come eat her food and drink her wine and walk in the ways of understanding [Proverbs 9]...I'm so very small I'm so very small, already within the heart of every atom yet extend Beyond the Universe and connect every mother and child....Number 9 Number 9 Number 9...
PS-A print of SHEEP MEADOWING hangs above my bathtub.
WAR IS OVER-Merry Christmas from the London Catholic Worker
[1] "LENNON", Ray Coleman. McGraw-Hill, 1984. Pgs -374-381.
[2] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n4_v58/ai_14951440/pg_1
Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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