archive2003

8 May 2003

These are troubling times, these post-war times we are now in. Or are they pre-war times? I suspect in the 1920s and early ‘30s our parents and grandparents thought they were in post-war times as well. Little did they know. It is in times like these, times of uncertainty and dramatic shifts of political realities, that we need to look for models, perhaps even heroes, to help us wend our way through this dark thicket. I was looking for just such a hero when my friend here in Philadelphia, Katie Day, offered me one of hers. For those of you who do not have the good fortune to know Katie, she is many things – a mother, a teacher, a scholar, and not to be overlooked, an ordained minister as well. So, as I was grappling with all this aftermath of the war, Katie was kind enough to share with me her hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer’s story is a complex one, and only someone with Katie’s credentials should tell it at all. What I want to focus on is what she told me about him, and a little of what I gleaned from his writings from prison. In a nutshell (I hope I get this right, Katie!) Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran theologian and a pacifist. He migrated intellectually and spiritually from a rather dispassionate, almost tangential, relationship to the world, to a profoundly passionate, totally committed actor in the world determined to, as he said, not tolerate the intolerable. This great thinker, a product of that time between two wars, eventually was arrested and later executed after a foiled plot to kill Hitler, and thereby end the suffering of so many in Europe.

But to me what makes this man truly remarkable was his faith in the face of so much ambiguity. To the very end of his life he did not succumb to the crutch of religious certainty, but held steadfast to his convictions all the while doubting and questioning. And that is what I hold as the profound learning from (as Katie calls him) this Lutheran saint. It is not about the rightness or wrongness of his actions in this particular case, but in his capacity to act with conviction, even when such an act might mean the loss of everything he holds dear – including his conscience.

Bonhoeffer himself would no doubt bristle at the characterization of sainthood. In one of his letters he mentions this and then goes on to point us in the correct direction in these darkening times. He writes,
“I remember a conversation that I had in America... With a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it is quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it...

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempts to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner... A righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities...”

Of course Bonhoeffer was speaking of faith in God, and or specifically faith in a Christian God. But I believe that his words have meaning even in the secular realm as well. In a way he is making faith an action, a way of living rather than a way of being. Each of us must find our own “worldliness”, and move into action politically and or spiritually in whichever ways are authentically our own. But he does seem to say that acquiescence in the face of intolerance is intolerable, and standing mute in the face of injustice is unacceptable.

For the past few weeks, while these dispatches have been dormant, I have been asking people I know what they think of humanity as a whole. I’ve been asking them if they believe that we, as a species, are developing morally, or are we pretty much the same as we have always been through the ages. It’s a difficult question. Probably impossible to answer, but I appreciate all those who joined me in the struggle. Curiously, it was many of the people in the “moral development business” who seemed to think that we haven’t moved the needle on the moral meter very far. What I took away from those conversations is the likely possibility that, even if we have not matured all that much morally and ethically since the time of our ancestors, we have created structures and systems to better protect ourselves from ourselves. We have constructed laws, rituals and ethical systems that make it more difficult for our basest instincts to hold sway. And if that is the case, then I fear that they may be breaking down, as those in power today seem to be deconstructing some of those important safeguards.

Such things as the PATRIOT Act that is now up for renewal in Congress, is in reality a deconstruction, a devolution rather than an evolution in our development. It is acquiescing to fear as opposed to safeguarding hard won liberties. It is a reminder of how tenuous our purchase is on the slippery stepping-stones out of the chaos and carnage of our recent past. We need to do all we can to have this act repealed, to ensure that some of the most vulnerable in our society are protected from the harassment that is the inevitable outgrowth of unbridled power. These recent immigrants as well as outspoken critics of this regime, visitors, foreign students and guests, all contribute immeasurably to this wild and wonderful conversation we call a country, and they deserve such protections as much as anyone else. We already had sufficient laws in place to deal with those who choose to cross the line beyond legitimate political discourse, or even those who wish harm to this country. In this case we need to repel this act to again protect ourselves from ourselves.

So, we do have models, beacons who have lit the way for us. Bonhoeffer is but one. Yet this is our time and not theirs. We cannot, we must not, blindly follow those paths, no matter how “correct” they appear with the gift of historical perspective. But we can ask some of the same questions they did, questions about evil and justice, and the meaning of suffering, and the morality of violence. And even here Bonhoeffer weighs in:
“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men [sic]. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Good questions, don’t you think? And thanks, Katie, for letting me borrow your saint for a bit.

Be careful out there.

Edd

PS And a long overdue thank you to Jane & Colette Swim, my good friends from the Bay Area, for their steady stream of links, insightful comments, and kind and supportive words. Keep ‘em coming.

PPS If you feel so inclined, please feel free to forward this to friends and colleagues. But once you have received a forwarded HigherPortal and you would like to receive future dispatches, please contact me via e-mail (address below). I’d like to have some idea as to who is receiving these. Thanks.

PPPS If you are receiving this and do not wish to be on the list, my apologies. Please let me know and I’ll take you off the list right away.

© Edd Conboy 2003
econboy@earthlink.net

Links:

Patriot Raid
AlterNet , US | Jason Halperin,
First person account of how the PATRIOT Act is sometimes implemented.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15770

What is Victory?
ashbrook.org, US | David Tucker
A view of the Iraqi war from the perspective of the conservative think tank, The Ashbrook Center.
http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/tucker/03/victory.html

Cheney oil firm widens Iraq role
The Guardian, UK | Oliver Burkeman
Kellogg Brown and Root, aka Halliburton, is already back in the oil business in Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,951383,00.html

Cashing in on Reconstruction
Al Jazeera
The Bechtel Group is also at the trough. (The article fails to mention that George Schultz is the former chairman of Bechtel and still on the board, but it does bring Cheney into the picture.) It also points out that “foreign” companies cannot be contractors in the Iraqi reconstruction effort. Aren’t American companies foreign as well?
http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=2813&version=1&template_id=263&parent_id=258

Rep. Waxman Questions Halliburton Ties To Terrorism
truthout.org US
Most of you get Truthout regularly, but just in case you missed this one, Rep. Waxman poses some disturbing questions to Rumsfeld.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/050603C.shtml

Some BBC dispatches worth noting:

Roadmap ‘failing on human rights’
BBC, Jerusalem | David Chazan
Human Rights Watch says the plan needs work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3009305.stm

US troops ‘encouraged’ Iraqi looters
BBC News Online, Nasiriya, Iraq | Jonathon Duffy
Some American forces may not have been just indifferent bystanders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3003393.stm

Appeal at looted Iraq nuclear site
BBC News World Edition
Here is the good news: “ Workers say the looters did not appear to be after the uranium, only the containers it was kept in...”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3005913.stm