on being an "adult" and the process of re-radicalization

at 3am, i finished a 4-day trip (with 26 hours of driving) to protest the School of the Americas/WHINSEC in Ft. Benning, GA.

Within that statement lives a world of confusion and joy and challenge and faith.

The last time I went to the SOA protest was in 2005 with the lovely JVC folks. I was young and hurting and in need of community. And I found it - I still have fond memories of time with Alex, hitting the Waffle House with Christine, and writing a wonderful poem for Erica at the JVC Atlanta house.

Now, I'm almost 30, still hurting but not so young. The world stings in different ways now, and my response is different, too. Going down to Georgia with 16 semi-strangers (and the lovely Amy) and arranging all the logistics and managing personal dynamics and trying to make sure we had gas and cars and food and lodging helped distract me, temporarily, from how i felt being there.

But, eventually, when it all calmed down and I remembered that everyone was a grown-up, I didn't have anything to distract me. And that's when I realized how far I'd come from who I wanted to be. Being older than many folks here, I struggle with what it means to live like a grown-up. I hadn't ever really sat down to think about the ways I've pre-defined my adult life. Adults don't protest. Adults don't get arrested. Adults don't drive 13 hours each way to learn things they might just have downloaded from the Internet. Adults don't really think that saving the world is feasible or that protests are effective or efficient. And I'm nominally an adult, so I expected myself to believe those things, too. But, then...

In our hotel room, after a semi-exhausting day, we made crosses. I looked at the list of martyrs from the slaughter at El Mozote to find a name to put on my cross. I chose Telesforo Marquez. He was 35 when he was killed. He was also deaf and mute. It made me think of folks I've known with disabilities, including my own mother. I thought about what it means that my government had any role at all in training soldiers who then went home and committed these acts against their own people. Do you know how many children were on the list of the dead at El Mozote? Until we fully acknowledge the role that the US played in providing tactical training for these killers, we can't claim to be a country that loves peace and freedom. At all.

While writing down Telesforo's name and details, I realized how incredibly selfish and safe I've become. What good does it do to come to a protest with all my baggage and not fully examine the ways that I'm culpable, the ways I sin? Every Sunday, I stand with my Catholic brothers and sisters and tell them that I've sinned in my thoughts and my words, in what I've done and in what I've failed to do.

But I don't always think of sins by name. In that hotel room, I knew that I've sinned by not exploring the privilege I inherit as an American and what that privilege takes away from others. I've sinned in not being brave enough. I've sinned in being safe. I've sinned in thinking that my form of world-changing is better than yours. I've sinned in my desire for comfort over the kingdom of God.

I'm sick of being a sinner.

So, this Sunday, I went to "mass" in front of the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia. We offered to break bread with a cop, and we all provided the homily and the blessing over the bread and the wine. We looked through barbed wire toward a world that's not as it should be. And we prayed for it. And we prayed for ourselves. And we let the dead bury the dead, but remembered their names in the land of the living. With every "Presente!", we called the dead back to us, carried them with us, and set them down in front of the gates of Ft. Benning, with prayers and sorrow for all the ways that our country sins, in its thoughts and deeds, and in all it does and fails to do.

And it was the most adult thing I could have done.

A Day Without Water

Heading out for my usual noon stroll with the baby I encountered my upstairs neighbor, Tristan, confronting the maintenance men who were working on the unit across the hall. They had once again failed to inform us residents that the building water supply would be cut off. I’d noticed this earlier but had chosen, as I am wont, to accept the injustice with apathetic resignation. For me it seemed little more than a minor inconvenience, so slight in fact that it did not even register as a real irritation. I had enough to keep me busy without calling the landlord to suggest the benefits of increased communication with his tenants. I was glad to see Tristan picking up the slack for the rest of us but also a little embarrassed. My feeling of embarrassment came, not from him speaking up, but the way and to whom he chose to make his voice heard. His tone was irate, inadequately masked by polite language, and addressed to a fella whose blank expression and reluctance to speak more than one or two words of English indicated a lack either of understanding or of interest.

When I got back from walking I put the baby to bed and set about preparing lunch. The lack of access to running water confronted me with a realization of how constantly I would typically use it. I faced the lack when I wanted to boil an egg, to rinse my hands after chopping vegetables, to wash the dishes that were now filling the sink, to make tea after I’d finished eating but still had the craving to consume (that is another issue, for another time). What would I do if I was in a situation in which water was not available for days or weeks at a time? What would I do if I was personally responsible for gathering the water I would use and once it was gone, it was gone; no turning on the faucet to bring it back? What would I do, in other words, if water was always—not just for these few hours because of maintenance work—in limited supply?

I will say here that I do realize there is in fact a limited supply and water has in many ways become a commodity. Though I concede being ignorant of much of the fresh information on this topic that is making the rounds I am cognizant that there is a dangerous scarcity of water in not only in developing countries but within our borders. That being said, however enlightened my intellect may or may not be about water challenges, I do not feel the truth of it. I don’t feel it because it is not part of my personal experience. When I want water, I call it forth with the flip of my wrist. Experience leads me to feel—whatever I may think to the contrary—that the water running through the faucet is something I have a right to and power over. I feel entitled to it, offended if my expectations are not met (What? Nothings coming out! It’s coming out brown? Outrageous!). It seems quite natural that water should run into my home and become automatically hot or cold according to my preference.

As long as this is my experience of “reality” genuine empathy eludes me and all that I can feel is a kind of billowy sympathy for the family in Eastern Kentucky in a trailer with no plumbing, not because it’s being repaired but because it doesn’t exist. I certainly can have no sense of solidarity with entire regions in India, Africa, Latin America, etc, where the only accessible water supply is contaminated. I recently saw a story on the Real News about a litigation case between the government of El Salvador and a Canadian mining company called Pacific Rim. The latter wanted to establish a mining operation a few miles from the town of San Isidro and was rejected. A primary concern for those in El Salvador is contamination. There is demonstrable evidence that gold mining consistently contaminates water supplies. Already only one third of El Salvador’s water supply is drinkable and they are anxious not to see their source diminished any further. Pacific Rim, through some clever machinations, is suing the government of El Salvador via a U.S. subsidiary for violating a free trade agreement.

This story grabbed my attention and I had intended to follow it, keeping track of what was happening and looking to see if there was any way that I could support El Salvador’s decision to prohibit the miners. Four days later, this is my first time to revisit the matter. The thought has presented itself a few times, but without the motivating force of feeling one would expect in the face of injustice. The thought came more as an inconvenience, an interruption so slight in fact, that it did not even register as a real irritation. I had other things to do and put the thought aside with apathetic resignation. Just like the plumbing, I expected someone else to handle it.

Kairos Chicago to Gather in Columbus, GA

Kairos Chicago @ The SOA

Kairos Chicago will be gathering for an afternoon of study and reflection on Saturday, November 21, in Columbus, Georgia. We will gather @ 4:00 pm and begin our meeting @ 4:30 pm to spend some time in conversation and community before the Ignatian Family Mass. All are welcome to join us. Feel free to spread the word and contact us for more information or if you are having trouble finding us. We will meet @ the park across the street from the Coca-Cola Space Science Center (at Front Ave & 7th Street, just South of the Convention Center). Contact Jake Olzen: 847.372.4289 or Jerica Arents: 262.366.3785 for further questions.


Also, on Sunday Morning, we will gather for a celebration of the Word and Eucharist. This inclusive, community-centered liturgy will take place just inside the gates to Fort Benning @ 7:30am to read scripture, break bread, pray together, and share the sign of peace.

Climate Justice Fast

Climate justice activists have begun a month-long, water only fast as the world prepares for the international climate talks in Copenhagen during early December.

Beyond Talk...

"Now you've got flash mobs and sky art, like the Climate 350 people who all stood together and made a 350," he said. "No mining company executive is shaking in his boots when he sees 500 people standing together in a field. It's about the confrontation. That's what these actions lack - they're creative but they're not creative confrontation." - Mike Roselle

Lately I've been feeling called to respond to the urgent need for comprehensive environmental and climate change. I got my start in activism through environmentalism but as war, torture, and immigration have entered more into my consciousness, that has been the realm I've participated in. We live in a desperate and finite time for the health of life-giving earth. I am interested in how we can step up our resistance, organizing, and commitment to environmental change and sustainable living in ways beyond what is easy for us: organic foods, local living, conserving water. We need to create confrontation with those killing our planet. Please read the full article that the comment above is excerpted from on Common Dreams: "Long-Time Environmental Activist: 'It's About the Confrontation,'" check out Chris Hedge's article "A Reality Check from the Brink of Extinction," and visit Beyond Talk - A Climate Pledge of Resistance. I challenge us to seriously consider the ways we are called to nonviolently resist and put our earthly bodies on the line.

Faith like a Child: Living Without Value

Even a brief, cursory reading of the Christian Scriptures can give us a deep appreciation and invitation to the teachings of Jesus and unlock a call to conversion and holiness that lasts a lifetime. From a perspective of evangelization, this universal accessibility to understanding the Gospel certainly reflects the timelessness of the Word of God and the call to preach it to all the nations. No doubt there is spiritual meaning and value to reading the Gospel within the context of one’s contemporary time and place, but in doing so does one run the risk of not fully understanding who the person of Jesus was historically or what it was that he was preaching? To take a person out of his or her temporal and environmental space can often distort the radical depth of his or her teachings and message. The way in which our modern understandings of language and patterns of thought have certainly done this to Jesus, both to his full humanity and to his full divinity, has altered his message in such a way that the radical inclusivity of the Reign of God that humanity to has been invited to is devalued. For me, Jesus’ teaching for us to be like children (Mt 18: 1-4) has wide-reaching consequences for my community, not just my own personal spirituality.

Albert Nolan, in his book Christianity Before Jesus, contextualizes how scandalous it was for the people of Jesus’ day to hear “unless you become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” For many, the popular image of a smiling Jesus surrounded by young, clean-cut children is a heartfelt reminder for us to return to a simple, joyful, and anxiety-free childhood. One imagines Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples to be akin to someone telling us to “take it easy” and be more light-hearted. But Nolan is quick to point out that “there is no evidence whatsoever for the popular opinion that that the image of the little child is an image of innocence” (Nolan, p. 69). In fact, the image of the child is one that shakes up Jesus’ Jewish audience because children had absolutely no status: The child is a live parable of “littleness,” the opposite of greatness, status, and prestige. Children in that society had no status at all – they did not count (Nolan p. 69).

In a society where “the dominant value was prestige” to say that children were the ones who were able to enter the kingdom of heaven is a complete reversal of the social values and hierarchy (Nolan p. 67). Those who are not even considered part of society, the children, are the ones who make up the kingdom of heaven. One must rid or detach oneself of prestige, honor, and social standing in order to become like a little child and enter the kingdom of heaven. It is a reality that many of us in the West, where we think of children having rights and being the first to receive care and attention, have a hard time to understanding. Because of our Western hermeneutic, without contextualizing Jesus within his time and how children were viewed within that society, we totally misinterpret what God is calling us to: a way of life that undoes placing worth and value on prestige and honor. The Kingdom of God is devoid of the social ladder; it is a

society in which there will be no prestige and status, no division of people into inferior and superior. Everyone will be loved and respected, not because of one’s education or wealth or ancestry or authority or rank or virtue or other achievements, but because one like everybody else is a person (Nolan p. 71).

By taking Jesus out of his historical time and place and not properly situating what Jesus intended it to mean when Jesus said to “become like children,” we radically depart from the rich spirit of inclusivity that Jesus scandalously taught.

In connecting to Nolan’s insistence that “becoming like children” was a shocking, provocative invitation that Jesus seriously meant, I was also moved by how Nolan describes Jesus’ own disassociation with prestige and honor to be in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. The way Nolan describes Jesus’ compassion is particularly challenging because of what it demands, but such compassion is an invitation into a deeper communion and love with God and others. Nolan names this the “paradox of compassion:”

The one thing that Jesus was determined to destroy was suffering: the sufferings of the poor and the oppressed, the sufferings of the sick, the sufferings that would ensue if the catastrophe were to come. But the only way to destroy suffering is to give up all worldly values and suffer the consequences. Only the willingness to suffer can conquer suffering in the world. Compassion destroys suffering with and on behalf of those who suffer. A sympathy with the poor that is unwilling to share their sufferings would be a useless emotion. One cannot share the blessings of the poor unless one is willing to share their sufferings (Nolan 138).

To become like a child means to endure the suffering of non-recognition, being counted last, and often going without food, shelter and other basic needs being met. This can be a hard pill to swallow, but in a world of increasing material poverty, resource abuse, and environmental crisis, it is a message that the world most needs to hear – not only does our spiritual salvation rely on it, but now our continued existence relies on it, too!

Nolan’s emphasis on the paradox of Jesus’ compassion through suffering was an affirmation of my vocation in the Catholic Worker movement and the reality of the cross being our path to liberation. A friend of mine is fond of saying that a way of liberation must pass through fire – that is, suffering. The passage cited above breaks my heart open and allows the message of Jesus’ suffering, nonviolent love to pass through me. But after that prayerful, contemplative moment I begin to realize what such a radical invitation to compassion might ask of me and fear and trembling sets in. It is no wonder that thee popular media that encourages us to have faith like a child misses the true, deep meaning of Jesus’ comparison: the truth is a hard message to hear and not an attractive one to sell!

Over the past week, the Gospel message of ridding oneself of prestige and social standing so that I can better be in solidarity with and for the poor has reminded me of the importance of the revolution of the heart. I can practice the corporal works of mercy, but if it leads to judgment of others and a self-edification that presumes honor in the eyes of God, I am not living the faith and spirit Jesus preached. If I can carry with me the Christian message to become like a child, one without status or attachment to my privilege – and encourage others to practice that faith – I think my ministry with students and in the Catholic Worker will be more faithful to what Jesus historically invited his followers to.

Obama’s Eternal Vigilance?

By Jerica Arents

In the third monotonous hour of waiting to be processed at the Anacostia Park Police Station, my eyes fell on a post-9/11, Bush-era FBI reward poster mounted in front of me.

The Cost of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance, propagated the sign. The madness is as prevalent today as it was eight years ago: Obama is continuing Bush’s folly.

Entering our ninth year in Afghanistan, sixty-one anti-war activists were arrested in front of the White House Monday morning calling on President Obama for an end to the war in Iraq, an end to the escalation and occupation of Afghanistan, an end to the drone bombings in Pakistan, and a swift closure of Guantanamo and Bagram military prisons.

An estimated 500 protesters watched as some of us clad in orange jumpsuits and black hoods chained ourselves to the fence, while others carried coffins, participated in a die-in, and wore shrouds with the faces of Iraqi and Afghan war victims and shouted, “Mourn the dead, heal the wounded, end the wars.” Among the peace groups were Witness Against Torture, the War Resister’s League, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance and Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

It is no secret that Americans are in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; 58% of the public is now against these U.S.-led wars, while legislators across the House and Senate, from Rep. Barbara Lee to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are calling Gen. McChrystal’s request for escalation in Afghanistan into question.

As mediocre bills to end war funding circulate endlessly through the white walls of Congress, I sit listening half-heartedly to the news on the reverberations of the day’s dead, the unbounded detention of innocent men, the infinite proliferation of weapons and warmaking, manufactured to take away the tiny, dirty hands and feet of the voiceless poor.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of my freedom, I am told. The richest country in the world with a monopoly on over a fourth of the earth’s resources, our freedom now is somehow guaranteed in playing the super-Vigilante of the impoverished country of Afghanistan, targeting the loosely connected, oftentimes illiterate and highly unskilled network of the Taliban.

Our strategy is to massacre and enter without looking back, destroying all opportunity for a collective livelihood and security, and leaving thousands of Afghans in IDP camps homeless and barefoot and uncertain of the U.S.’ interference in the first place.

We have spent over one third of my life in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrought with unfulfilled promises and millions of shattered lives. I believe deeply that I am implicated in the crimes my country is committing against our innocent sisters and brothers. My daily complicity is only reinforcing Obama’s – and before, Bush’s – paradigm of occupation and militarism, the culturally insensitive, ever-increasingly expensive and destructive ways of those in power.

Fifty one percent of my taxes (and yours) are spent on our country’s military machine. In Afghanistan, over 90 percent of the current administration’s spending is on military operations – leaving a miniscule amount to rebuild bombed schools, reconstruct neighborhoods of decimated houses, provide even excruciatingly low levels of medical care, or attend generally to the common stories of desperation.

So I did the only thing I could.

Remembering the name and family of a Guantanamo detainee cleared for release under the Bush administration and still being indefinitely detained today, I secured the chain that locked my wrist to the White House fence. Like those who have been held for eight long years, like the Pakistani women mourning their dead children after an unmanned aerial drone attack, like the Afghan villagers wanting desperately to return to their fields, I am locked to the actions the United States makes on my behalf. I’m hoping desperately our country’s ruthless vigilance isn’t predestined to be eternal.