What happened in the Seminars

We've asked one participant from each of the seminars to tell us something of what went on there. Here's the first report -- with more to follow.

led by Joel Hanisek, Presbyterian representative to the UN

reported by Joel Hanisek
[8-23-07]

Gathered in faithful community during Ghost Ranch’s Week of Peace, the UN workshop dedicated itself to some sight-seeing. In the midst of the beautiful red rock mountains of New Mexico we cast our gaze toward Matthew’s parable visions of "the kingdom of heaven." What are characteristics associated with this realm, we asked? Reading Matthew 25 we discussed the gospel imperative to respond to conditions of basic hunger, thirst, and sickness in the world as part of a kingdom ethic. We talked about questions of hospitality and difference, and the ever-present challenge to welcome Jesus in the person of the stranger. We asked, "Who is imprisoned in today’s world; who is not free to live out life in all of its fullness?" And then we asked the dangerous question of "Why?"

Together we sketched a portrait of a broken world in which the sins of fear, poverty and violence shackle human freedom and expression. Then we smoothed this rough sketch with the contours of a church that is called to be a transformative community, both reflecting and evidencing the peace of God’s realm. As we talked about the different paths of discipleship that lead to God’s realm we paid particular attention to the dynamics of international cooperation and the opportunities for witness and ministry that are present at an institution like the United Nations.

After we had studied Matthew’s vision of the kingdom of heaven, we studied the vision of peace on earth presented in the UN Charter. We asked how a phrase in the UN Charter such as the affirmation of "faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person," compared with Jesus’ call in Matthew to feed, clothe, and visit "the least of these who are members of my family." While they were not equivalences we found that they compared favorably. This comparison led us into a very specific conversation about human dignity, the UN’s Convention Against Torture, and the ways in which churches and organizations are working on multiple levels, from grassroots to intergovernmental, to end torture.

led by Larry Rasmussen and John Preston

from Gloria Olsen    [8-20-07]

We were young, old and middle-aged; male and female, clergy and lay, from all points of the compass – the usual messy, diverse group of church folk, who help make a week such as this so lively. With the able leadership of Larry Rasmussen and John Preston, we examined five faith traditions, and asked ourselves how they might inform and guide our own faith journeys in such a way that each of us can truly say that ours is a faith which honors the earth. The faith traditions of sacramentalism, mysticism, asceticism, prophecy and wisdom all carry seeds of a new way of looking at and living with the rest of the natural world.

There were so many insights that it is difficult to choose one or two, but I was especially struck by our conversation about making the transition from dominion to stewardship to nothing less than a subject-subject relationship – NOT a subject-object relationship – with all the natural world. It is insufficient to say that we must be "good stewards," because implicit in this statement is the notion that humans are above and different from the world around us. Rather, we are all part of a great web of life, and unless we can begin to experience ourselves as just one part of God’s creation, all mutually interdependent parts, then we cannot make that leap which helps us become faithful participants in God’s ongoing creation.

Our Christian, reformed traditions are rich with images, stories and parables which can lead us in this new direction, but in the industrialized countries, many church communities have become captive to a view of the world which is purely utilitarian: All natural resources have come to be valued only to the degree that they can be extracted, exploited or used in some way. We are blind to the intrinsic value of the creation. It is very difficult for us to examine this view critically, and make a transition to viewing our place in life with much greater humility. Human communities are linked to the natural communities of our planet, and we are only now beginning to realize how fragile, intricate and intertwined are the strands which make up the web of life. God’s will for our world, the vision of the Kingdom, includes all the living and non-living things which make up our world, and calls us to shift our view radically. As Larry Rasmussen put it, "Nature discloses God’s presence – the Earth IS a sacrament. Life is a freely offered gift of the Creator and it is the medium of grace."

We were introduced to many resources and heard from many faith traditions, pondered the meaning of familiar Scripture examined in a new light, and opened each session with a devotional planned by some of the participants. Seminar participants worked with each other to prepare plans for how each of us would act on what we learned when we returned home. Each evening, those participating in Peace and Justice week gathered for worship in the new Agape Center. What a rare privilege it was to share this special place, Ghost Ranch, with friends new and old, and to worship together the God who beckons us to become truly a part of the Creation! I returned home refreshed by sharing a week with those whose faith shines brightly in their lives, and I have begun to follow up by placing an article in our church newsletter, asking for time on the Session agenda in September, sharing Larry Rasmussen’s sermon of August 2, and praying for the patience, persistence and wisdom to live into a new way of being in the world.

Peace and Grace,

Gloria Olsen
First Presbyterian Church
Kerrville, Texas

John Preston, one of the Seminar leaders, adds this comment on the importance of worship in an "earth-honoring faith"    [8-23-07]

This summer Larry Rasmussen and I led the Earth-honoring Faith seminar, sponsored by Presbyterians for Restoring Creation, one of the workshops offered during Peace, Global Justice, and Creation week at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico. Such a faith is expressed in actions which include our liturgical practices. I approached the seminar with the question, "Is the worship generally practiced by our nation’s churches earth- honoring?" My premise was that much of our worship is supportive of the United States as dominant world empire and is, indeed, not earth-honoring.

The seminar allowed a positive approach to this dilemma. Earth-honoring faith is intentional about five traditions within our long biblical and historic traditions. Our seminar reflected upon the sacramental, mystical, ascetic, prophetic-liberative, and wisdom traditions. We kept these five deep traditions in mind in planning the Thursday worship service for the whole Peace gathering in the new Agape Worship Center, using especially the imagery of water.

In discussing these traditions I appreciated how the mystical and the sacramental traditions captured the wonderful nature imagery that surrounded us. Just as importantly, the sacramental and mystical traditions provide a counter to theistic worship imagery that models hierarchy and power as the norm for cosmic and social reality. Since all empire is based on hierarchy and domination, spiritual traditions and practices which avoid this imagery and provide worshipful alternatives are a saving grace for worship leaders sensitive to the justice ramifications of liturgy.

Another of my learnings was that the prophetic-liberative voice does not totally depend upon our sensitivity to the unjust practices of extraction, exploitation, extinction, and extermination associated with the darker side of our world wide political-economy. That voice can also spring from the worshipful attitudes of gratitude and communion that flow from our experiences of the mystical and sacramental. For those of us who would express justice and peace within the heart of our liturgy these traditions of spiritual power and depth are key to practicing an earth-honoring faith.

Speaking Truth to the Powerful and the Not So Powerful
led by the Rev. Carol Wickersham

from Barbara Quintiliano     [8-21-07]

How do we speak the truth about injustice to those in power and to our next-door neighbors? What are we called to witness to and to whom, and who do we mean when we use the collective pronoun "we?" These are the questions we pondered during our seminar facilitated by Rev. Carol Wickersham.

In Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, we met the metaphorical beast – variously named Empire, axis of evil, and fear – with many heads. Each of the monster’s heads represents one of the calamities visited upon society by Empire, evils such as torture, wars of aggression, military domination, hyperconsumerism, pillaging of the earth’s resources, and inequitable distribution of the earth’s goods. Clearly, this beast is too formidable for any one group or movement to defeat, so our strategy must be to choose one of its manifestations and get to work. As activists we must also take care never to demonize our opponents, for our goal is not to crush specific persons but the evils that their powerful positions allow them to perpetrate.

According to social theorist James M. Jasper, individuals are catapulted into activism after experiencing a "moral shock." We took some time to share with one another the events that jolted us into the realization that the ways of Empire clashed with our Christian value system and to acknowledge our share of complicity. Taking as our case study the practice of torture by the US government, we also recognized with humility that, according to research studies, almost anyone is capable of becoming a torturer.

Before launching into action, we needed to be sure we had correctly identified the problem by asking ourselves what is God’s intention for humanity and how is that vision being supplanted or corrupted. Torture violates the God-given dignity and inalienable human rights of individuals; furthermore, this heinous policy has become inscribed in our national laws. Having stated the problem, our call to action was incontrovertible: "Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." (Hebrews 13:3)

We learned the factors to consider when constructing our activist strategies: 1) the culture of our social milieu, 2) the life stories of our movement’s leaders and opponents, as well as our own personal stories, 3) and the material and social resources at our disposal. Knowing our audience is crucial, as it enables us to choose arguments that speak to our listeners’ cultural, moral, and religious worldviews. As examples of matching the argument to the audience, we read two articles opposing torture, one written by David P. Gushee and and the other by Kermit D. Johnson, one addressed to evangelical Christians and the other to veterans and other supporters of the military. Another important rhetorical technique is to appeal to our listeners’ self-interest by emphasizing how the problem can affect their own lives. In the case of torture and unjust imprisonment, any American can be labeled an "unlawful enemy combatant" under the Military Commissions Act and denied his or her constitutional rights. The final step in speaking truth is empowerment of our listeners by telling them what they can do about the issue, such as writing their Congress members concerning pending legislation.

Having identified the powerful and the not so powerful that we will witness to and the concrete steps that will take, we asked ourselves what resources we would need. Finally, we needed to identify our sources of sustenance, realizing that, like the prophet Elijah, we will inevitably experience periods of exhaustion and frustration.

Though the beast may intimidate us with its many gruesome heads, we are at the same time emboldened and sustained by the example of Jesus who defied Empire by living the Kingdom and Vision of God here on earth.

_____________________________

Selected Resources on Political Activism

Jasper, James. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. University of Chicago Press, 2002.

---."Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust." http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html

Selected Resources for Torture Resistance

National Religious Campaign Against Torture – Interfaith organization "committed to ensuring that the United States does not engage in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of anyone, without exceptions."
http://www.nrcat.org/

no2torture – Carol Wickersham is one of the founders. http://www.no2torture.org/
See extensive list of resources:
http://www.no2torture.org/study/

An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture
http://www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org/Declaration.pdf

Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

United Nations. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Degrading Treatment or Punishment
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. 80-minute HBO film, directed by Rory Kennedy, features the familiar and very disturbing pictures of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and raises many questions. DVD available for free for churches to show. See info at: http://www.nrcat.org/spotlight.aspx

Cavanaugh, William T. "Taking Exception: When Torture Becomes Thinkable."Christian Century, 122.2 (Jan. 25, 2005), 9-10.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_2_122/ai_n9505722

Gushee, David P. "5 Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong." Christianity Today, 50.2 (Feb. 1, 2006): 33-37. Online version: http://www.davidgushee.com/against_torture_CT.doc
Gushee is one of the authors of the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.

Johnson, Kermit D. "Inhuman Behavior: A Chaplain's View of Torture." Christian Century,123.8 (April 18, 2006): 26-27. http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1990  Johnson is a chaplain and major general in the U.S. Army (retired).

Spezio, Michael. "Lasting Torture: Effects of Torture on Social and Emotional Processing in Survivors and Perpetrators." (PowerPoint presentation)http://www.no2torture.org/come/miami06/torture_effects.ppt  Spezio is a Presbyterian minister with a Ph.D. in neuroscience.

Zimbardo, Philip G. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.New York: Random House, 2007.

_____________________

The author:

a report from Michael Benefiel

[8-21-07]

Summary. About thirty of us gathered at Ghost Ranch for Peacemaking 401. During six days, we built a small community, assembled a toolbox for peace work, collected and exchanged stories of persons and practices for peace and justice, and found numerous opportunities for spiritual renewal, inspiration, personal reflection, and mutual support. Each day brought a distinctive topic, including accompaniment, civil resistance, violence reduction, civil initiative, and prophetic vision. The theme of the week was anchored in Luke 6. (Note 1)  Narratives in this text challenge us to live seeking justice in a world of injustice. In many passages, tension exists between authority and faith. Many ideas about righteousness, faithful action, and obedience to the law coexist. At the conclusion of our time together, we shared dreams of peace and justice work and future achievements. Rick Ufford-Chase, Executive Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, invited us to return in July 2008 for a continuation of this peacemaking workshop. End summary.  (Note 2)

Introduction [from the Ghost Ranch online catalogue] Week VII [July 30-August 5, 2007]

The Week of Peace: Co-sponsored by all the coolest organizations working in and around the PC(USA) for peace, justice and environmental sustainability, this will be an old-fashioned "cowboy camp meeting." There will be worship every night in the new worship space. Argentine theologian Roberto Jordan (who co-wrote the World Alliance of Reformed Churches Confession from Accra, Ghana) will preach four of the nights, noted environmentalist/theologian Larry Rasmussen will preach one evening. Sign up for one intensive workshop on a variety of peacemaking concerns, which will meet each morning. Afternoons will be free to enjoy the ranch. An intentional camp culture will be created (led by Rick Ufford-Chase) for those who prefer to rough it and share meal preparation together. (Note 3)


Tuesday – Accompaniment / Accompanimiento

On Tuesday, July 31, as we began our meeting in the lounge room next to the Agape Worship Center, Rick invited us to take time each day to build a community with one another. During the first round of self-introductions, participants named an inspiring array of life experiences, gifts, and motivations. Among many there were: descriptions of high desert spiritual questing, prison ministry in Los Angeles, accompaniment in Colombia, urban ministry, co-creating the Accra Confession with colleagues at the 2004 meeting of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Note 4), organizing the weekly vigil of Women in Black, joining a peace delegation to Iran, lobbying for legislative change, community organizing, caring for children, using civil disobedience to raise awareness, celebrating prisoner’s release, journeying with Witness for Peace to Nicaragua, serving in New Orleans with a youth leadership team, training others in nonviolent communication, co-creating the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Colombia Accompaniment Program, promoting international educational exchange, carrying posters in public witness, telling stories of victims of violence, doing mission work in Africa, working to increase employment in marginalized communities, and even more.

Rick broke the large group into small groups and assigned us the first eleven verses of Luke 6. He asked us to examine these words in the light of our concerns for law and justice.

Sarah Henken summarized the history and achievements of the PPF’s Colombia Accompaniment project. Fifty-five people have been trained; 38 have gone to Colombia since 2004. Invited by our partners, the Presbyterian Church in Colombia [Iglesia Presbyteriana de Colombia or IPC], U.S. people have visited the internally displaced, impoverished citizens of Colombia, particularly in the North Coast region. As the Colombian church defended the victims, the Government of Colombia and paramilitary organizations began to threaten church leaders. Death threats, actual killings, and acts of intimidation have forced church leaders into exile, both in North and in South American communities. The price for the courageous witness of the Colombians has been high, because many in the pews feel the pressure and have become afraid to attend worship. Strong voices for the rights of the victims of violence have been silenced or hushed. Five people in the Peacemaking class had served as accompaniers. Sarah Henken invited participants to send friends or come themselves to the next training, scheduled for September 28 – October 2, in Louisville, Kentucky. The PPF also plans to arrange a delegation visit to Colombia, led by Sarah Vance-Ocampo, January 18-28, 2008.

The PPF is working in collaboration with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines to organize a February 2008 delegation to that country. Two delegations to the Middle East, at Advent and at Pentecost, are also in planning. (Note 5)

Wednesday – A Prisoner of Conscience, One Person’s Journey

As we began on Wednesday, Rick invited us to return to the text of Luke 6 and read it in the light of a question: “How are community and risk-taking related to one another?” (Note 6)

Our community building exercise on Wednesday morning took place outside, as we formed inner and outer ovals, faced each other, and answered questions: What is the earliest conflict you remember from your childhood? When have you felt yourself part of a community? When have you taken a risk and how did that turn out?

Phil Gates spoke of his journey from a “conservative Republican” to an inmate of the Metropolitan Detention Facility in Los Angeles, for two months earlier in 2007. He began with a series of reminders:

· Expect the unexpected;
· Make yourself a fool for Christ;
· Deny yourself and pick up the cross;
· We are Christ’s Ambassadors – what a job description! [laughter]

Phil was living in Prescott, Arizona, in May 2004. He responded to the invitation to become an accompanier in Colombia and traveled there in July and August 2005. Accompaniers travel in teams of two, and Phil was paired with Kathryn ‘Cat’ Bucher, who is a bilingual activist from Texas. Cat and Phil traveled extensively, including to the site of the mass killing at El Salado, in Bolivar province. Cat translated as survivors narrated the details of the humiliation, torture, and execution without trial of about forty residents. Phil showed us a photo of a young woman who had been forced to watch as violent men killed her parents. “No child should ever have to see that,” Phil said.

The work of accompaniment does not end when the accompanier returns to the U.S.A. After his return from Colombia, Phil spoke to 25 different churches. He often felt like a war veteran, struggling to communicate the emotional truth as well as the facts of his experiences with Colombian victims of violence and injustice. As Phil learned more about the complicity of the U.S. Government and the role of military in counter-insurgencies and undeclared civil wars in Latin America, he kept finding connections with the U.S. School of the Americas, located at Ft. Benning, Georgia. (Note 7) Phil listed the following:

Lorie Gates, using the techniques of living history performers, narrated the life of Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, who grew up in the Lithuanian-American community of Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1940s and 1950s. As a member of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese’s Mission Team in El Salvador, she was known as Madre Dorthea from 1974-1980. On the night of December 2, 1980, she and three other U.S. religious women were abducted from the La Libertad airport, interrogated, physically and sexually abused, and shot by five National Guardsmen.

Following Lorie’s performance and a pause for us to recover from the wrenching emotional impact, Phil continued.

Phil and Lorie came to the SOA Watch (Note 9) in November 2006, and were joined there by some 22,000 people. Phil went to Ft. Benning still engaged in the process of discernment, seeking to learn how his faith would direct his responses. He called his three adult children and two of them took his decision to make a public witness against the SOA well. Phil’s daughter, married to a U.S. Navy officer, with a grandson just admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, reminded Phil, “You brought us up to obey the law. I do not want you to bring up this topic again.” This estrangement may be counted a cost of seeking justice according to Phil’s own discernment of his call.

At Ft. Benning, Phil found support among those of us who came together at the PPF breakfast last November 28. He attended several workshops to reflect and inform himself in conversations with prisoners of conscience who had been arrested and served prison terms, with legal defense lawyers, and with a variety of supporters. At one point, Phil was directed to give $200.00 in cash to a shaggy haired young man wearing cutoff jeans. Despite appearances, this young man was responsible and well-organized, and Phil reported that the money was there when he needed it. [Laughter]

The U.S. Army had prepared for the SOA Watch demonstrations with a massive show of force. A helicopter flew over the crowd, and a cherry picker [also called a boom lift] was positioned to allow close-up aerial surveillance of the site of the demonstration, for example. The U.S. Army’s Military Police were professional, respectful, and well-disciplined, reported Phil, as they carried out his arrest and processed people who crossed from the public areas onto the base for arraignment and trial.

The Federal District Court sitting in Columbus, Georgia, tried all those arrested on November 19, 2006, on January 29, 2007. Since the nonviolent demonstrations against the SOA began in 1990, 183 prisoners of conscience have crossed onto the base and been imprisoned after trials. Between 50-75 have been tried and not imprisoned. In 2007, sixteen people appeared before Federal Magistrate G. Mannon Faircloth, including Phil. Magistrate Faircloth found all guilty and sentenced Phil to serve two months in Federal prison. The charge is only “trespassing with an illegal purpose” and is classified as a class B misdemeanor. Usually persons convicted of a misdemeanor are not imprisoned. Those who trespass at Ft. Benning can expect different treatment from Magistrate Faircloth.

One of the sixteen who crossed the line in 2006 was a 17-year old student from Grinnell College in Iowa. This minor was found guilty and sentenced to one year’s probation. Phil, nearing age 70, served his sentence in March, April, and May 2007, at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Facility. Phil described in detail abusive, disrespectful, and humiliating treatment by guards. He takes three kinds of medicines, and only careful advice from expert counsel allowed him to overcome the small cruelties and larger indifference of the prison’s medical care personnel. While Phil was in prison, the U.S. Social Security Administration withheld his monthly checks. This also became a cost of his faithful nonviolent witness. Phil quickly learned the rules for living “inside.” Ethnic and racial rivalries mean that certain TV sets, and certain dining tables, are set apart and cannot be used by anyone. Phil did prison ministry, studying the Bible with others and finding that “God was there.” During his stay, he was the only prisoner convicted of a misdemeanor charge. The other 134 prisoners waiting for early release [out of a total prison population of 1,200 men] were convicted felons. Once these prisoners knew more about Phil’s journey, they would tell him, “You don’t belong in here.” Phil valued this sense of justice and shared worship and singing with genuine happiness as part of the fellowship of the faithful.

Following Phil and Lorie, Rick asked us to return to Luke 6 and join in small groups to explore this narrative again. Among the questions in my small group, we raised these: Why didn’t the scribes and Pharisees answer Jesus’ question, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good?” Where did the rage and disgust of these church people come from? How do we account for the malice of adversaries? Are we empowered to act in the world in accordance with God’s law? How does the Holy Spirit work through conflict between faithful people who both claim righteousness?

Rick closed our morning session by recounting his experiences caught in the conflict within the Presbyterian Church (USA) generated by a proposal to study disinvestment from firms who supported Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In paraphrase, Rick observed that he became convinced that the PC(USA) was called to be in the middle of the conflict, to hear the authentic passion on both sides, and to hear and understand both Israeli and Palestinian narratives.

He promised to introduce us to the concept of “civil initiative” on Friday.

Thursday – Pathways to Peace, Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron, a simulation/role play of Chiapas case study, more

We learned about a variety of approaches and organizations. [My notes are missing, which is painful, since my performance as the “Embassy official” received rave reviews from my friends and classmates. They claimed that they had met my doubles at U.S. Embassies around the world.]

Friday -- Civil Initiative, Sanctuary, No More Deaths, Borderlinks

Rick described some of his journey. He joined a Witness for Peace [WFP] delegation to Nicaragua shortly after he left the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1986. He was a candidate for assignment to a WFP team but was turned down because he didn’t speak Spanish. He learned from the experience, went to Antigua, Guatemala in 1987, and can now work and preach in Spanish, as well as English. Since the mid-1980s, Rick has done work for peace and justice in Central America, along the “Trail of Tears” from Guatemala to the U.S.-Mexico border, and in a variety of humanitarian projects along the border in Arizona.

As he introduced the concept of “civil initiative” to us, Rick used the analogy of a man drowning in a pond behind a fence marked “No Trespassing.” For us, the tension we feel between the value of a human life and the value of obedience to law is immediately evident. While the statue [small “s”] prohibits us from crossing the property line, the Law [capital “L’] requires us to do all in our power to save the life of this person. Rick named three concepts: civil obedience, civil disobedience, and civil initiative. Upholding the Law and seeking justice may require that we disobey unjust statues. The Civil Rights Movement mobilized political forces to overturn unjust laws and to make new laws by organizing nonviolent civil disobedience, for example. Some of the direct actions of the Civil Rights era could also be understood as “civil initiatives.” At times in the 1960s, no court had ruled on conflicts between, for example, the need for public safety on the roads of Alabama and the right of people to march to the state capital and seek a hearing for their right to register and vote. Civil initiative can be a strategy to create a community-based sense of justice and engage in dialogue and negotiation with civil authorities about resolving such cases.

Rick described the principal concepts of civil initiative and handed us a short summary handout. Rick described a moral philosopher, Western rancher, author, and Quaker activist named Jim Corbett (Note 10) as his mentor and teacher.

In summary, civil initiative is a creative response to the tension between our accountability to the legal order of U.S. democracy and our moral responsibility for protecting the lives of all, especially those suffering persecution and injustice.  In the words of Jim Corbett:

As formed by accountability, civil initiative is nonviolent, truthful, catholic, dialogical, germane, volunteer-based, and community-centered. (Note 11)

Rick elaborated the concept as it was practiced during a series of related efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in the Arizona desert. In the early years, dedicated volunteers agreed to place tanks of water in the desert, in order to save lives at risk from dying of thirst. This civil initiative became a coalition of secular and faith communities called “No more deaths – No mas muertes” (Note 12) In 1995, new U.S. Federal legislation titled the Immigration Enforcement Improvements Act was proposed, passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Clinton. U.S. Border Patrol agents began to target those, including volunteers with humanitarian aid teams, who “knowingly supported” the presence of illegal immigrants into the U.S.A. Like the earlier examples, here, too was a tension between the value of saving lives of human beings in distress in the Arizona desert and the value of democratic lawmaking and voluntary obedience to these statues. The court judged these matters when U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested No More Deaths volunteers, Ms. Shanti Sellz and Mr. Daniel Strauss, in July 2005. The U.S. Attorney charged Shanti and Daniel with alien trafficking. They and their legal defense team claimed that providing humanitarian aid [in this case, medical assistance] could not be considered supporting the presence of undocumented migrants in any case. The judge decided that a long public record of humanitarian assistance projects in the desert (civil initiatives) gave Shanti and Daniel and their volunteer partners an expectation that what they were doing was legal. However, the judge pointed out that since the prosecutor’s charges now established that the U.S. Government considered such assistance illegal, volunteers must no longer take that expectation for certain, and could no longer use it as a sufficient defense.

Rick noted that much of the civil initiative work is designed to set community standards of help and care against a prevailing hostile public attitude toward “illegals.” For all the value and regard we have for our laws, we citizens – members of faith communities and others – may not turn over our sovereign responsibilities for justice-seeking to government officials.

Rick asked us to move into small groups and find in Luke 6 a list of Jesus’s tools in his peacemaking and justice toolbox. In my small group, we listed:
· Reducing violence
· Taking civil initiatives
· Teaching and educating
· Praying, keeping a vigil, and witnessing to others
· Healing trauma
· Organizing communities
· Managing a small team of loyal volunteers
· Speaking prophetic words
· Shaping strategic communications
· Naming injustices
· Promising blessings and joys
· Speaking truth to power in love
· Using nonviolence and acting with generosity
· Resolving conflict and transforming relationships
· Practicing creative and assertive nonviolence
· Leading Bible [Torah] study and following consistent spiritual practice
· Loving one another in community
· Remembering to practice self-reflection
· Identifying and claiming feelings
· Sorting types of people and matching each to purposeful activity
· Seeking sustainable, grounded engagement with others and the world
· Discerning the signs of the times and acting in creative response.

Rick took up the topic of how we might re-vision church. For many years, leaders in the organized church have led the institution-building and maintenance functions. The practice of delegating mission work to specialists and supporting such work with a “mission board” allowed a sort of “mission by proxy” for the church. For Presbyterians living today, this model of being church no longer meets the needs for active engagement with the world. The world has changed and we have changed. We are reviving our faith by finding new ways of being church. Some of the characteristics of this new model will be coordination, flexibility, and creativity.

Rick spoke about the decade of experimentation and failure that Myles Horton described in his autobiography, The Long Haul (Note 13). One of Myles’s insights came from watching birds during their migration. They made decisions based on real, existing conditions, and they never lost sight of their destination. Birds might rest when they faced strong headwinds, for example. They conserved their energies, ready for the change in the winds that would allow them to resume their journey, in community.

Rick spoke of the civil initiative actions during the “Declaration of Peace” public witness in Washington, D.C., in September 2006. Rick, along with three other Presbyterian pastors [Gwin Pratt, Tim Simpson, and Roger Scott Powers] prayed and witnessed in the Hart Senate Office Building Atrium. The U.S. Capitol Police arrested them, along with about two dozen others, charging them with violations of public assembly and building regulations. From that experience, and awaiting their release from police custody, they began to discuss plans for continuing the witness and building on the good work of many partners.

Between October 2006 and March 16, 2007, a coalition of Christian faith partners planned and organized the “Christian Peace Witness for Iraq [CPWI].” On March 16, more than 4,000 people gathered at the Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. An ecumenical worship was followed by a mass procession to Lafayette Park. The event was a powerful nonviolent public witness for peace. More than 220 people were arrested for praying on the sidewalk just north of the White House. Despite the earnest requests from many peace activists of other faith traditions, including Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, the partners in the CPWI committed to become “who we are” and to “do our own work,” explained Rick. Once we create the water to swim in, the movement toward joining us in partnership will become irresistible, he said.

From here, we can begin to envision an ecumenical order for peacemaking. This would call people into the vocation of risky work for peace in areas of conflict, like Hebron, for example. Such a model might be comparable to the “women’s missionary movement of the 1890s,” for example. (Note 14)   Such an ecumenical order will require spiritual nurture and a community base. Several models for covenant groups could be named: those seeking to reduce their carbon footprints, those seeking just relationships in diverse communities, those seeking intentional simplicity, and those ready for resisting the culture of selfishness and materialism that seems so dominant now. Models might be the Iona Community of Scotland, or the Church of the Savior in the U.S.A.

The Peacemaker’s Toolbox weaves the principles of nonviolence through all of an array of options (Note 15):
· Protests, demonstrations, direct action
· Spiritual nurture, Bible study, prophetic preaching and storytelling
· Delegations & political advocacy [Witness for Peace, others]
· Economic justice [Fair-trade, Equal Exchange, Cafejuste, others]
· Civil disobedience [SOA Watch, prisoners of conscience, others]
· Accompaniment [PPF Colombia project, others]
· Conflict transformation/resolution
· Violence reduction work [Christian Peacemaker Teams, “getting in the way”]
· Trauma healing [STAR (Note 16), others]
· Civil initiatives [Sanctuary Movement, No More Deaths, more]
· Prayer/vigils [Congregations, faith communities, others]

For our homework assignment on Friday, Rick asked that we all write down our dreams and visions in the form of a story, with this beginning: “Everything in this story is true, except for the part that hasn’t happened yet.”

On Saturday, we worked individually or in small groups and told stories of many varieties. Their common themes included faith, hope, and love.

Rick invited us to return to Ghost Ranch beginning on July 28, 2008, for a continuation of the Peacemaking class.

 

Notes

1   Luke 6 begins as Jesus and his disciples walk through grain fields and eat some kernels, prompting the question, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" It ends as Jesus describes those who hear his words and live them as builders who lay the foundations of their homes on rock.

2   Mike Benefiel transcribed his notes and edited them for this report. He is missing notes from Thursday, August 2, so this section omits material.

3   This is a copy of the course description found online in the Ghost Ranch Abiquiu catalog for week VII, July 30 – August 5, 2007.

4   Argentine theologian Roberto Jordan, who attended our Peacemaking 401 class at Ghost Ranch, was also a delegate to the 24^th General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which took place in Accra, Ghana, from July 30 to August 13, 2004. The "Accra Confession" is also titled "Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth" and can be viewed, downloaded, and saved to computer at http://warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/news_file/doc-181-1.pdf.

5   The November-December 2007 delegation will be led by Walt Owensby and expects to visit Iraqi refugees in Jordan. The May 2008 delegation may be led by Anne Bar-Weese and hopes to arrange a visit to Syria, too.

6   Our Peacemaking 401 class met from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon each day, Tuesday through Saturday, for a total of fifteen hours. Evening worship at 7:00 p.m., related closely to the topics and themes of Peacemaking. Roberto Jordan spoke on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Larry Rasmussen spoke at worship on Thursday evening. Chaplain and Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev and his wife, Rochelle Ward-Lev conducted Shabbat worship at the Casa del Sol on Friday.

7   The School of the Americas was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation by the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, signed by President William Jefferson Clinton. The official website for the WHINSEC is at https://www.infantry.army.mil/WHINSEC/  Its motto is Freedom, Peace, and Brotherhood and much of its information is also available in Spanish: Libertad, Paz y Fraternidad, for example.

8   Phil’s own powerful statement at the time of his sentencing in January 2007 included the following: "During the course of my study, I learned that a United Nations Truth Commission completed a study of human rights abuse involving military personnel in Colombia. Its report revealed that of 246 individual Colombian soldiers cited for participation in acts of human rights abuse, 105 of these (43%) had graduated from the School of the Americas. I learned similar patterns of human rights abuse involving SOA graduates have been documented in many other Latin American countries as well. For example, I learned that during the 12-year civil war in El Salvador from 1980-1992 fully 73% of the Salvador officers cited for human rights abuse by a U.N. Truth Commission were SOA graduates."

9   The SOA Watch was organized by Father Roy Bourgeois, a decorated Vietnam vet who entered the Maryknoll Missionary Order’s seminary and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1972, sent in that year to Bolivia. Fr. Bourgeois spoke against the Bolivian government and gave voice to the voiceless in that country, which led to his expulsion from that country. He founded SOA Watch with a small group of dedicated individuals in 1990. The website address for SOA Watch is http://www.soaw.org. Each year, the weekend before Thanksgiving, nonviolent demonstrations are held in Colombus, Georgia, at the gates of Ft. Benning. The "Vigil and Nonviolent Direct Action to Close the SOA/WHINSEC" is scheduled for November 16-18, 2007. The PPF and other peace activist groups, both secular and faith-based, will send participants.

10   Jim Corbett, a well-educated and original Quaker moral philosopher, died Aug. 2, 2001, aged 67 years. Jim co-founded the 1980s Sanctuary Movement to shelter Central American refugees. He worked with Rev. John Fife of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, and Fr. Ricardo Elford, a Redemptorist priest, according to Miriam Davidson’s report in the National Catholic Reporter of September 14, 2001. In 1984, Jim Corbett accepted the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award on behalf of the Sanctuary Movement. The U.S. Government considered him a dangerous subversive, charged him and ten others with alien smuggling in 1985. Eight were convicted and received probation. Jim Corbett wrote Goatwalking: A Guide to Wildland Living, a Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom, in 1992.

11   In the handout, titled "Samaritan Patrol," each of these concepts is further explained as follows:

12   More information about No More Deaths is at http://www.nomoredeaths.org/

16   STAR means "Strategies on Trauma Awareness and Resilience" and is a joint venture between Church World Service and Eastern Mennonite University’s Conflict and Transformation Program. More information about these partners and STAR is available at http://www.churchworldservice.org and at http://www.emu.edu/ctp/star-project.html.

PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

Got more blogs to recommend?

Plan now for our 2010 Ghost Ranch Seminar!

GHOST RANCH SEMINAR

July 26-August 1, 2010

If you like what you find here,
we hope you'll help us keep this website going ... and growing!

Please consider making a special contribution -- large or small -- to help us continue and improve this service.

Click here to send a gift online, using your credit card, through PayPal.

Or send your check, made out to "Witherspoon Society" and marked "web site," to our Witherspoon  Bookkeeper: