Fear, Thomas Merton, and William Willimon

Last night I finished two books just before going to sleep. I recommend them both.

I usually read a few books at a time but this time these two books provided me with a lot to think about. And they both concern “fear”.

Jim Forest’s The Root of War Is Fear: Thomas Merton's advice to peacemakers was published this week and, getting it on Kindle, I devoured it in four days. 

Thomas Merton has been a significant person in my life.

Merton's collection of quotes from Gandhi in Gandhi on Non-Violence played a major role in helping me in the late 1960s discern how to respond to war and peace. I was against the war in Viet Nam, but Gandhi’s explanation of the courage that is needed for the nonviolence of the strong spurred me to a commitment to active nonviolence.

Merton's collection of quotes on the Desert Fathers, The Wisdom of the Desert, opened up for me another aspect of living with God – especially the Zen-like quips and deeds of those who left for the desert – in part to offer an alternative to a Christianity allied with the Empire.

The collection of essays Raids on the Unspeakable sustains and challenges me even now. Here he wrote on the Eichmann trial, inspired by Hannah Arendt’s coverage of the Eichmann trial. His essay, “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room,” has provided me with a Christmas meditation almost every year. The opening essay, “Rain and the Rhinoceros,” pulls together an ancient Christian writer, the existentialist dramatist Ionesco, rain, and war.

But the essay “The Root of War Is Fear” is one of his most important writings for me. It is full of great wisdom and a challenge for all of us.

Jim Forest, a personal friend, takes the title of his work from this essay but goes well beyond Merton’s challenges expressed there. Jim, who has written a great biography of Merton, Living with Wisdom, with fantastic photos – as well as one of Dorothy Day,  All Is Grace – gives an overview of Merton’s life, with great insights gleaned from Jim’s visits and correspondence with Merton.  

The book is filled with extensive quotations from Merton, most often situated in their context by Jim’s marvelous prose. The full text of the letter from Jim that provoked the Merton letter known in its abbreviated form as “Letter to a Young Activist” is included, together with the full text of Merton’s response – which reveals a wisdom and a sensitivity that are badly needed today. An unpublished satirical letter of Merton’s, in the style of Jonathan Swift, from Marco J. Frisbee, is included as an appendix.

I will return to this book in the next few months, savoring the wisdom of Merton.

The other book I finished last night was William Willimon’s Fear of the Other: No Fear in Love is the work of a Methodist theologian and bishop responding to the current site of fear in the United States (and around the globe).

I ran across Willimon’s writing many years ago and am probably one of the few Catholics who read and really liked the 1989 book he co-wrote with Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens. I was also impressed by other writings, especially in relation to higher education. I thus persuaded the planning committee of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association to invite him to one of their national conventions.

In Fear of the Other, Willimon offers a vision of faith, centered in Jesus Christ, who comes forward to us and changes our way of being. As he writes, “God is shown, in Christ, to be pure will toward embrace.”

And thus, “I take the step toward [the Other] and open my arms, not primarily because of my enlightened redefinition of the Other but rather because of Jesus’s redefinition of me.”

Again, it is a book full of gems that challenge us, especially in his reinterpretation of the story of the Good Samaritan. I will not write here what he suggests, lest I spoil the impact it had on me – and may have on most US church-goers.

These two books are very different but they have both helped me begin to understand why I do not experience a lot of fear, even though there is violence around us here in Honduras. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to take seriously the challenge of Merton and Willimon.

Willimon writes:

         We are commissioned to the active, searching, seeking, embracing love of the Other.

And, as Merton wrote to Jim Forest:

All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love.

On death and freedom

Two weeks ago mayor of Concepción was shot at on a road leading into Dulce Nombre. He was uninjured, but a two month infant in the truck was killed and the infant’s mother wounded. My initial reaction was fear.

The next morning I learned that he had been receiving death threats and so the attack was probably planned.

But that night I began to have some doubts about my plans to move out to the countryside net year, specifically since I’m planning to move to the village where the mayor comes from.

I would be driving the road where he was shot. I learned later exactly where his car was shot up. It’s not far on the road out of Dulce Nombre toward Caleras. I often pass the site.

I began to ask myself whether I would be risking my life by doing this.

It was not an easy night.

But after much thought and prayer, I felt at peace with my decision to move out. I will die eventually but I don’t see moving out to the parish as really dangerous. Most of those who have been shot at were specifically targeted.

But I realized also that it was the thought of death that opened up my heart to come here to Honduras.

When I was in New Orleans with a group from St. Thomas Aquinas in March 2006, we emptied out one woman’s house onto the sidewalk to be carted away to the dump. As we did this I wondered what would become of all my “stuff” after I died.

I think that fear of death and concern for security are obsessions of many in the United States.

But that fear can paralyze us and not open us to the workings of the Spirit. In The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times, Dean Brackley, S.J., wrote of fear as a disordered inclination:

Insecurity stirs our fear – of hardship, rejection, and death. Fear “disorders” our desires: we grasp for idols which promise security, but fail to deliver it. Idols enslave their devotees and demand human sacrifice.

In addition, reflecting on fear and freedom, I thought of this passage from Hebrews 2: 14-15:

the death [of Jesus] destroyed the one holding the power of death, that is the devil, and freed those who remained in bondage all their lifetime because of the fear of death.

The power of death holds us in bondage. Jesus, taking on flesh and suffering death, offers us a way to live in freedom.

It was, therefore, a blessing to read what Pope Francis said in his November 27 General Audience:

 One who practices mercy does not fear death. Think well of this: who practices mercy does not fear death! Do you agree? Shall we say it together so as not to forget? One who practices mercy does not fear death. And why does he not fear death? Because he looks at it in the face in the wounds of brothers, and overcomes it with the love of Jesus Christ.
If we open the door of our life and of our heart to our littlest brothers, then even our death will become a door that will introduce us to Heaven, to our blessed homeland, toward which we are directed, longing to dwell forever with our Father, with Jesus, Mary and the Saints.

“One who practices mercy does not fear death.”

Mercy pulls us into the lives of the poor and suffering – as Christ Jesus moved into our lives, becoming flesh and suffering with us.

And so I pray for mercy – for the grace to be merciful – and for the freedom to live that mercy with the poor.

In all this, I am at peace.

Looking out from a window of the church in Bañaderos

Angry and ashamed at the US government

I just got back from a long two-day trip to Tegucigalpa with three leaders from the parish of Dulce Nombre de María. One has been the parish council treasurer for years; another has been the parish council secretary and is one of the parish’s 16 communion ministers; he other worked on the parish’ three year agricultural project and is on his town’s church council. They are real representatives of the parish

St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, Iowa, a sister parish with Dulce Nombre, had invited the parish here to send some parishioners for a visit in order to deepen the relationship between the two parishes. St. Thomas promised to pay all the costs involved and has already paid for three passports and for the $160 per-person non-refundable interview fees.

They also each had a letter from Padre German, Dulce Nombre’s pastoral administrator, attesting that they were going as the parish’s representatives. I also gave them a letter explaining to the embassy that I was accompanying them to and from Ames, Iowa. The Republican Senator from Iowa also sent a note by e-mail to the US Department of State in Honduras at the request of St. Thomas Aquinas Church.

But these three leaders were denied, despite the fact that the letter from Fr. Jon Seda, the pastor of St. Thomas stated that the parish “is assuming all the costs” for their visits. The first parishioner was refused after the interviewer read the letter and looked at the information from his bank. He was asked who would pay and replied, “St. Thomas.” The interviewer told him that he was refused because he didn’t have enough money in his bank account.

Yeah. He’s poor!

They were all three given a letter in English and Spanish to “explain” why. Interestingly, the Spanish version is slightly different from the English. The letter explains that they cannot appeal the decision but they can reapply at any time, of course submitting a new form, paying the application fee again, and making a new appointment.

Then in English it reads: “If you choose to reapply, you should be prepared to provide information that was not presented in your original application, or to demonstrate that your circumstances have changed since that application.”

The Spanish reads: “Durante la entrevista, Usted deberá proporcionar la información que no fue presentada en la solicitud original demonstrando que sus condiciones socio-económicos han cambiado”.

The Spanish says that the changed circumstances are related to their “socio-economic conditions."

I know that this happens everyday and has happened twice here to two other persons who were to be sponsored by Catholic institutions in the US.

I know that this is only the tip of the iceberg that is the unjust immigration system in the US.

But it strikes home. I know this people who are sincere followers of Christ.

There are poor people but a parish in the US, which is in solidarity with the parish here, promised to pay all the expenses – and has already put out more than $800 for this.

I don’t think that is the fault of the interviewer. According to the two men they were treated respectfully.

But what the US government looks for in these interviews is the almighty dollar. Solidarity does not mean much.

Money matters, not solidarity.

I think this reveals some of the problem with US migration policy. It’s based on fear, fear of the other, of the different. There is also the fear to “our way of life.”

Security matters – but security in terms of money and what money can buy.

But real security here must be measured in terms of solidarity, which I experience over and over.

I experienced it the day before yesterday. My car broke down again on a hill outside San Miguelito, Intibucá. A guy who was a mechanic stopped by and looked at the problem. He told us that he would get his tools and come back and see if he could fix it enough for us to get to Esperanza. He came back in fifteen minutes, bled the brakes, and sent us on our way. While he worked on the car he told me that his name was Santiago, but everyone calls him Tito. I offered him money, but Tito refused it.

For him, solidarity is more important than money.

And so I am ashamed - again - of what the US government does.

And I am angry that three good leaders of our parish here will not be able to share with the parishioners of St. Thomas Aquinas parish.

But I am grateful to be here and for the people's solidarity.