Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
Just, you know, stuff. And things. Things and stuff. Yeah, basically that’s it.
On last night’s Jeopardy!, the $1600 answer in the category “Rage Against the Machine” (all about people raging against machines, not about the band) was:
In a 1980 antiwar protest, these priest brothers, Daniel & Philip, attacked missile warheads at a G.E. plant.
Contestant Roy, a building inspector from Rancho Cucamonga, California, correctly, albeit ungrammatically, questioned, “What is Berrigan?”
Howdy folks. This Sunday, April 29, I’ll be participating in the Peninsula Harbor CROP Walk. This is a 10-km walk around the streets of fabulous San Pedro, California to raise funds for Church World Service’s interfaith efforts to fight world and local hunger. My sister is a high school teacher and is heading a team of some of her students called Team Jester (after the St. Joseph’s HS mascot). You can find out more about Church World Service here.
Donation is easy! Just follow this link and you will be taken to my personal donation page where you can make a secure online credit card donation. Donations of any amount are appreciated.
I used to do the Long Beach CROP Walk every year when I was a little kid and it was always a happy event.
James Martin, S.J., reminds us that being canonized does not mean that a person was without flaws, even after their conversion. This is a big misconception about saints that a lot of people, Catholic and otherwise, have, and I’m glad to see it clarified in a secular forum.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m no longer an employee of the mighty cable access station WCCA TV13.
I am, however, a devoted volunteer, so my bias in such matters is unchanged.
I spent part of today, my last day of “work,” teaching a class at a distingushed local non-profit organization that’s only 1/10 of a mile from my house. I had no idea there was such great stuff going on there. That’s what I like about city living—the harder you look for treasures, the more you find.
In an ironic twist, today I got a real office!
“Danger networking” with Justin Duffy
People gathered on the street last February for the first airing of “Democracy Now”
Cool PSA the youth program completed this week:
Larry Cirignano is being arraigned in Worcester court today. You’ll recall he allegedly pushed a woman to the ground at an anti-gay-marriage rally.
I was outside the courthouse a little this morning to try and snap a picture of the elusive fellow, but no luck.
Update: I’ve heard conflicting reports of the hearing. How can there be conflicting reports of an arraignment? Anyway, I think if there was real news, Ethan Jacobs would have posted something on the “Bay Windows” website by now.
Update 2: “Cirignano pleads not guilty”
Most young Americans don’t have a firsthand experience of war. Many grow up with no experience of intense violence at all. Their attitudes towards these things are shaped by art: books, TV shows, the news, and movies.
David Griffith, author of A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence In America, is one of those people. So am I.
My peers and I really didn’t question violent entertainment while we were growing up, I think in part because we figured the stories told by adults were probably a good reflection of the world. (Today’s young people may be naturally more skeptical of these sorts of stories, since they can easily share their own videos with their peers over the Internet, and because their video games are more immersive—they can all use adult tools to act out their own stories. For people of my and Griffith’s generation, access to these tools implied some sort of legitimacy.)
In the essay “Some Proximity to Darkness” in Good War, Griffith revists the movies that shaped his sensibilities as a young man, this time taking a cold, hard look at them. I was shaped by many of these movies, and while reading the book I felt that Griffith was taking a cold, hard look inside my own head. Quite a trip.
Continue reading “God, violence, and what I watched growing up”
The non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation is trying to raise extra donations as they push towards the 1.0 release of their open-source video player Democracy (Miro): “Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple.” (Cory Doctorow)
If you love this sweet piece of software (even my dad likes it), they’re asking you to “subscribe” and donate $5/month. In exchange, you’ll get a shirt with the new logo.
My philanthropy strategy is to give to my church first, then to Oxfam or UNICEF for childhood disease prevention, then to small groups that are doing effective work in areas where a little work has a big impact. These days, for me, those would include groups like Vegan Outreach, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the PCF.
Perhaps you would care to Digg this project.
A few dozen members of the Catholic Worker movement staged a protest in front of the University of Notre Dame’s administration building today, saying the university’s ROTC program contradicts Catholic teaching.
“It saddens us that one of the preeminent universities is training warriors,†said the Rev. Ben Jimenez, a Catholic priest from Cleveland.
An appropriate quotation from the pope (Feb 18, 2007):
Why does Jesus ask us to love our very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is certain is that Christ’s proposal is realistic, because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more kindness. This “more” comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to good, beginning from that small and decisive “world” which is man’s heart.
This page of the Gospel is rightly considered the “magna carta” of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil — as claims a false interpretation of “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29) — but in responding to evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Herein lies the heroism of the “little ones,” who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of life.
Emphasis added.
See also: Father Michael Bafaro’s address to the Worcester March 24 antiwar rally.
The L.A. Times has a nice article today about how the Catholic Worker doesn’t register with the IRS as a non-profit corporation.
Seeking and Working for Social Justice and Peace as Guided by Nine Themes of Catholic Social Teaching: An Easter Novena and Conference at Anna Maria College.
50 Sunset Lane, Paxton, Massachusetts
April 10-21, 2007
Continue reading “Nine Days in April: Schedule”
