I’m excited to speak with a bunch of you on Thursday, 3/31, 4pm PST // 7pm EST for our first-ever Examined Family book club. If you still want to join, register here. We’ve got a bunch of special guests, including physicians who trained under Paul Farmer and carry on his work. It’s going to be such a joy.
Could I add an extension of these questions? If you are someone acutely sensitive to all that suffering and part of that effort to fight the long defeat, how do you also survive it all?
Love these questions Courtney. Wish I had the bandwidth to join in the conversation tomorrow.
I had the thought years ago and still live with it today that "I am comforted by my discomfort". That discomfort drives me to do good, to make things better, even just a little bit at a time.
Vulnerability, openness, and honesty with self and others goes a long way when helping and healing.
Thanks immensely for posing such incredibly thoughtful and challenging questions! I’m very sorry that I can’t join the conversation on 3/31 because I’m traveling at that time. I hope not to miss the next one. Since I won’t be with you, I’ll try to respond briefly to each of these huge questions/problems but with no intention to intrude on your discussion. I feel extremely fortunate just to post ideas because these questions do go to the route of my concerns and actions.
Full disclosure: I’m a deeply frustrated lifelong pacifist, converted to this belief by MLK as I participated in the Civil Rights movement and perhaps stuck in that moment of time. I yearn for a return to the magnificent leadership of those black and white, women and men, who profoundly inspired me. Now, at age 84, I feel that such a golden era in American history won’t return in my lifetime and can only hope that a mass movement of strictly nonviolent transformations might happen for my grandchildren to experience. Do I idealize or exaggerate the quality of that movement and its significance? Yes. Can I deny the influence that it’s had on my own life? No.
Anyway, I said that this is full disclosure so please note my honest admission of limitations about what’s stated here.
This means, in direct answer to these questions, my lasting regret and sense of defeat is that I’ve been unable, as a teacher and activist, to make a real impact on American politics by helping to prevent war.
I’m not disappointed in any way about those who are with me in the cause of genuine peace. They’re still making great contributions, as we see with all efforts by Courtney and this certainly sustains me. My gratitude in this respect is boundless, as when I attempt to reply to these newsletters.
How could I be more “impractical” as a way of living my moral truth? By following the examples of my role models, pacifists like Dorothy Day, Barbara Deming, David Dellinger, the Berrigan brothers (Dan and Phil) who each managed to make personal sacrifices far beyond my meager efforts. Their commitment to nonviolence, including lengthy prison sentences through civil disobedience, are actions that I haven’t had the courage to commit.
I’m “hiding from suffering” in exactly this manner, by not going all the way through serious civil disobedience and accepting its full consequences.
I continually question my pacifist theory, especially after 9/11 when I entered into fierce and painful debates with Barnard/Columbia colleagues over entering the Afghan and Iraq wars. Very few of my closest friends agreed with a pacifist position, that is, by me urging,( with Thich Nhat Hahn, for example) that the US refrain from war.
Of course, I questioned my nonviolent stance and relied on support from TNH or others firmly opposed to invading Afghanistan, like Dan Berrigan who spoke eloquently at Barnard at my invitation. Those crises were excruciating moments in America; and now we live through them again as we face war in Ukraine.
The reward comes from my continuing research and writing on Gandhi as I’ve been doing at the splendid East-West library here at the university of Hawaii in Honolulu. My forthcoming book this year is certainly paltry in comparison to that published by Judith Butler’s “Force of Nonviolence” but it’s the best that I can write. I sincerely wish that I had the writing skills of Courtney Martin!
Could I add an extension of these questions? If you are someone acutely sensitive to all that suffering and part of that effort to fight the long defeat, how do you also survive it all?
Love these questions Courtney. Wish I had the bandwidth to join in the conversation tomorrow.
I had the thought years ago and still live with it today that "I am comforted by my discomfort". That discomfort drives me to do good, to make things better, even just a little bit at a time.
Vulnerability, openness, and honesty with self and others goes a long way when helping and healing.
Thanks immensely for posing such incredibly thoughtful and challenging questions! I’m very sorry that I can’t join the conversation on 3/31 because I’m traveling at that time. I hope not to miss the next one. Since I won’t be with you, I’ll try to respond briefly to each of these huge questions/problems but with no intention to intrude on your discussion. I feel extremely fortunate just to post ideas because these questions do go to the route of my concerns and actions.
Full disclosure: I’m a deeply frustrated lifelong pacifist, converted to this belief by MLK as I participated in the Civil Rights movement and perhaps stuck in that moment of time. I yearn for a return to the magnificent leadership of those black and white, women and men, who profoundly inspired me. Now, at age 84, I feel that such a golden era in American history won’t return in my lifetime and can only hope that a mass movement of strictly nonviolent transformations might happen for my grandchildren to experience. Do I idealize or exaggerate the quality of that movement and its significance? Yes. Can I deny the influence that it’s had on my own life? No.
Anyway, I said that this is full disclosure so please note my honest admission of limitations about what’s stated here.
This means, in direct answer to these questions, my lasting regret and sense of defeat is that I’ve been unable, as a teacher and activist, to make a real impact on American politics by helping to prevent war.
I’m not disappointed in any way about those who are with me in the cause of genuine peace. They’re still making great contributions, as we see with all efforts by Courtney and this certainly sustains me. My gratitude in this respect is boundless, as when I attempt to reply to these newsletters.
How could I be more “impractical” as a way of living my moral truth? By following the examples of my role models, pacifists like Dorothy Day, Barbara Deming, David Dellinger, the Berrigan brothers (Dan and Phil) who each managed to make personal sacrifices far beyond my meager efforts. Their commitment to nonviolence, including lengthy prison sentences through civil disobedience, are actions that I haven’t had the courage to commit.
I’m “hiding from suffering” in exactly this manner, by not going all the way through serious civil disobedience and accepting its full consequences.
I continually question my pacifist theory, especially after 9/11 when I entered into fierce and painful debates with Barnard/Columbia colleagues over entering the Afghan and Iraq wars. Very few of my closest friends agreed with a pacifist position, that is, by me urging,( with Thich Nhat Hahn, for example) that the US refrain from war.
Of course, I questioned my nonviolent stance and relied on support from TNH or others firmly opposed to invading Afghanistan, like Dan Berrigan who spoke eloquently at Barnard at my invitation. Those crises were excruciating moments in America; and now we live through them again as we face war in Ukraine.
The reward comes from my continuing research and writing on Gandhi as I’ve been doing at the splendid East-West library here at the university of Hawaii in Honolulu. My forthcoming book this year is certainly paltry in comparison to that published by Judith Butler’s “Force of Nonviolence” but it’s the best that I can write. I sincerely wish that I had the writing skills of Courtney Martin!
Lacking this gift is a price that I pay.
DD
This was the first Zoom meeting I came away feeling touched and nourished, and in tears. Thank you, Courtney.