What a gift today was.
This morning in Quaker meeting I found myself reading a little book called “Peacework” by Henri Nouwen. I don’t usually read during worship, but today I just really felt led to do so. The book had been sitting on my shelf for a while, but today I took it to meeting with me and read the first of the three essays in it: “Prayer”.
Nouwen was a Catholic priest who was a theologian and peace activist before he passed away in 1996. He is the author of the theory of “The Wounded Healer“, which I think is a very powerful way of understanding the possibility (and limitations) of being a peacemaker in the world. I find him not quite as engaging a writer as Thomas Merton, but I think his understanding and explication of the roots and nature of of violence are extremely powerful.
Today in meeting for worship, I was riveted by this (Peacework, pp.28-29):
- When I listen to the sounds of greed, violence, rape, torture, murder, and indiscriminate destruction, I hear a long, sustained cry coming from all the corners of the world. It is the cry of a deeply wounded humanity that no longer knows a safe dwelling place but wanders around the planet in a desperate search for love and comfort.
Needs that are anchored in wounds cannot be explained simply … This is the pervasive tragedy of humanity, the tragedy of the experience of homelessness that winds through history and is passed by each generation to the next in a seemingly unending sequence of human conflicts with even more destructive tools of rage in our hands. The vicious repetition of wounds and needs creates the milieu of “those who hate peace.” It is the dwelling place of demons. And it is a place that lures us precisely because we are all wounded and needy.
Anyway, he continues by arguing that to escape from these destructive (and multi-generational) cycles of wounds and needs we need to find our own sanctuary in prayer.
I also found this part very powerful (pp.34-35):
- It is not hard to see that the house of those who are fighting is a house ruled by fear. One of the most impressive characteristics of Jesus’ description of the end-time is the paralyzing fear that will make people senseless, causing them to run in all directions, so disoriented that they are swallowed up by the chaos that surrounds them. (Quote from Luke 21:25-26) … The advice that Jesus gives his followers for these times of turmoil is to remain quiet, confident, peaceful, and trusting in God. He tells them not to follow those who sow panic, nor to join those who claim to be saviors, nor to be frightened by rumors of wars and revolution, but “to stand erect and hold your heads high.” (Luke 21:28)…
This is, of course, very similar to the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh that I wrote about here, back in December 2003.
(It was interesting to go back to that earlier JWN post and read that description of the experience of being in an 11 a.m. worship seession here in Charlottesville Friends Meeting. Today’s was very similar in size and spirit. Today there was a new baby, Theodore Staengl, gurgling and cooing in his baby-carrier on the floor. My friend Linda Goldstein’s dog started barking outside at one point. But the meeting felt extremely gathered to me– to the extent that when the kids came in at 11:45 I was amazed that so much time had passed already… )
I found an interesting perspective on violence in a book about brain evolution called “braindance”. In the last chapter the author, Dean Faulk, describes research on the behavior of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee. These monkeys form tribes which have territories. Groups of chimapanzees patrol these areas and they will clobber or kill any smaller groups they meet. Does this sound familiar?
“The Politics of Victimization” by Robert Ellis also has some interesting insights on this topic.
All right, but let me tell me tell my side, too. When the “fall” came, I went and spent time in a monastery (Prinknash). I had been schooled by Benedictines at Downside. I wanted to reflect on this institution founded 1500 years or more ago, and still going. I found things to dislike, such as the smell of boiled cabbage, and the precious male domesticity devoid of the vulgar wit which makes other such situations tolerable. But in the library I found the Bhagavad Gita in the translation of Christopher Isherwood (and an Indian whose name I have forgotten).
This work tells you that there is no home for you in this world but (as somebody quoted from Goethe the other day ) “the deed is all”. Reflection without action is poisonous.
I know you, Helena, are not like that. You are extremely active, to say the least of it.
But here you are appearing to advocate quietism in the “end times”.
It was the opposite message that I got in that abbey. My message was: Your house has fallen down. So what? You must still do what is right according to your lights, house or no house.
Hi, all. Nice to be back conversing more easily here, eh?
Dominic, you need to understand that I really didn’t do justice to all of Nouwen’s argument re “calm” and “quiet” there. His basic argument was that people definitely should be active in the public social-political sphere in the struggles for justice and against war– but that they also need to make sure they do what’s necessary to keep themselves calm and focused while they do so.
I guess you could call this an argument for “some periods of quiet” rather than argument for quietism. And as such it’s one that speaks very much to my condition.
He also warns– and again I find this very useful and too often necessary– that the peacemakers thmselves (ourselves) need to be attentive to not using fear-inducing strategies in our work: “We need to be reminded in very concrete ways of the demonic power at work in our world, but when an increase of fear is the main result we become the easy victims of these same powers.” (p.35)
(I am a pretty ‘noisy’ Quaker. The call to some periods of quiet is a good one for me. And my participation in C’ville Friends Meeting has brought me nothing but sustenance, support, and joy.)
I should read the Bhagavad Gita sometime, though!
Helena, thanks for the message on the traumatic effects of destruction & violence. I have been reading of Friends heroic work to heal the wounds of another confilict, Rwanda/Burundi. See African Great Lakes Initiative, http://www.aglionline.org/sub/trauma.htm
Prayer and withdrawal has its place but so does community and communication. I always thought the spiritual answer was the primary one but lately I wonder why now Quaker spirituality seems so hollow (just to me personally a 22 yr member) but the social action so impressive, and why Buddhism even Engaged Buddhism seems to speak up lttle on humanity’s problem.
Ah yes the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi’s favorite book as oft noted.
Nice to see you liking Nouwen; I consider him one of my teachers. He learned of our homelessness living among those whose mental disability might have separated them from humanity, if some had not chosen to live with them. So did I, a little. And then, feeling the peace, we must struggle for justice.
Gosh, traveling in Lebanon is making me reflective. Peace be with you.