Wednesday, August 24, 2005
My trip to Camp Casey, near Crawford, Texas, has not only been about supporting Cindy Sheehan’s efforts to meet with President Bush, it has been an experience of inspiration and growth for myself as well. An interesting and healthy community has developed there with much to teach, and not only to the Bush administration and its supporters. There are lessons to be learned for all in the peace movement as well. This second report picks up with the Sunday evening Joan Baez concert and then describes my work and learnings experienced on Monday, August 22, 2005.
As the sun set on a blistering Sunday afternoon, the number of people in Camp Casey II’s big tent multiplied. The Waco newspaper later estimated the gathering to be 500 folks. I found a spot near the stage where the breezes blew without impediment. This turned out to be a great vantage point from which to see speakers and performers as they prepared to mount the stage. 84-year-old Liz Carpenter, press secretary for Lyndon Johnson, spoke with great humor on the importance of learning to wage peace instead of war. She recalled a conversation with a professional diplomat during her days in Washington. She asked him what diplomacy was. He responded, “Keeping the conversation going.” She deplored the current administration’s having ended the conversation about Iraq. Her speech was one of great hope. She recalled the poet Tagore: “Where danger is near so also is salvation.” She encouraged everyone, especially women, to learn how to wage peace.
Liz Carpenter
As Liz was speaking Joan Baez stood awaiting her introduction, looking trim and beautiful with the setting sun gracing her face.
Joan’s 30-minute concert was full of contemporary meaning; no nostalgia here. To be sure, she sang some of the 60s and 70s peace movement classics but they had an eerie relevance. “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?” is an essential question for today. There were several moments when there was a lump in my throat, particularly when she sang a hymn set to the tune of Finlandia. It is a hymn that proclaims love for one’s country as well as respect for others.
This is my home, a country where my heart is
Here grew my hopes and dreams for humankind
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight shines on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too and clover
And skies are ev'rywhere as blue as mine
O hear my prayer, O God of all the nations
A song of peace for their lands and for mine
That spirit of peacemaking continued on the personal level at that point. Cognizant that we were gathered less than one mile across the horizon from the Western White House, Baez noted that she had ceased telling Bush jokes in her concerts. One reason related to a letter she received from a fan who said that his friends had been so offended by a joke she had told during a concert that they left and missed a very important part of the concert. The deeper reason for no longer telling Bush jokes related to her reading Bush on the Couch which led her to stop hating the president.
After her concert, the MC, Ann Wright, a member of Veterans for Peace and the leader of the Camps while Cindy Sheehan is away caring for her ill mother, called Baez back to the stage to tell her how important Baez’ witness had been when she, Ann, was in the military during the Vietnam war. She recalled a night when she and her colleagues changed out of their military dress and attended a Baez concert in San Diego. She said that she and her friends were deeply torn about that war and that Baez had been a challenge and an inspiration.
When the history of the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon is recorded, I pray that the story of Ann Wright is entered into the annals. A career military person, who toward the end of her career served in the diplomatic corps, Ann resigned from duty out of protest when the U.S. invaded Iraq. She accompanied Cindy Sheehan to Texas on that first day, August 6, 2005, and has commanded the effort with grace, diplomacy, and intelligence ever since. I came to appreciate her beyond measure.
Ann Wright then called us to surround the field of crosses in the dark. Jeff Key, a Marine combat veteran in Iraq and more recently a playwright (The Eyes of Babylon), played taps. The families who have lost relatives in this war then stood together and sang, “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” With the fullness of these emotional experiences I retired for the night.
On my drive back to Waco, I had an extended telephone conversation with the former mayor of Waco, Charles Reed. Charles had written a powerful essay, “Pax Americana and Christian Values,” for the Common Dreams web site, August 19, 2005, connecting this war and a brand of Christianity which Jesus would not recognize. “The church has done a poor job of teaching Christian social values over the last 30 years.” I had called Charles prior to my trip asking for some face time for a conversation while in Texas. He was booked up but we were able to have a 30-minute phone appointment. He seems to be an anomaly in Waco, a liberal who surprised the Waco establishment in 1989 when a group of liberal Texans promoted his successful mayoral candidacy. Our phone conversation illustrated what solid witnesses for peace and progressive Christianity are coming from those southerners who are active members of their churches (in Charles’ case, it is a Baptist Church in Waco). Charles said, “I think the religious right pays much more attention to the Book of Revelations than to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” He had long ago predicted the unprepared-for calamities of this war, he resists the war, and stays meaningfully connected to conservatives. I am certain that that meaningful connectedness on the interpersonal level across the divide is a vocation for all of us.
On Monday morning I wanted to spend some time in downtown Crawford prior to returning to Camp Casey. I shopped in three gift stores and then had a great meal in the only restaurant in Crawford. Every business establishment is a political advertisement for the Bush administration. There are life-sized cardboard cutouts of the president and his parents standing in every room of every business. Postcards, books, t-shirts, dishtowels, costume jewelry, and caps are for sale expressing the views of the Bush family. Everyone has a sign in front of their store proclaiming support of our troops and our president.
One clerk asked me where I was from. After I answered, she asked, “Are you here for business or pleasure?” I said I was here to support Cindy Sheehan. She said, “Well I don’t think you will find anything in here to your liking.” Then she volunteered, “You know, I imagine 99% of you protesters are fine people. But we are worried about that 1%. My neighbor was taking her children to school this morning and drove by the first Camp Casey. In one of the buses people are sleeping in there was a man standing up naked and then another man urinating in the ditch, not even hiding himself. Those children were exposed to that. I won’t even let my son go outside for fear of a child molester coming by to kidnap him.”
I assured her that I had seen no one who seemed unbalanced in any way but I could imagine that for a town in which the population is 705 it is quite a jolt to have 500 people come into a concert last night. She said that she has had a bull lost for a week and a half, but she can’t get to her farm on the narrow roads clogged with traffic and parking to go look for him. We shook hands and parted so that I could continue my tour of downtown.
The public signs indicate a belief that peace advocates are people stuck in the 60s as well as people whose peace advocacy aids and abets the spread of evil. As one who sees Jesus primarily as the Prince of Peace, it has been difficult for me to acknowledge that in the mind of the religious right (Jew, Christian, Muslim), the rule of war is seen as intrinsically godly and that bombs, war, and killing are righteous instruments for overcoming evil. (We have just had that reinforced by Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of the democratically elected President of Venezuela as a moral act.) We are living in parallel universes where righteous war-making is the religious conviction of one side while others of us are convinced that meeting evil with murder and the bombs of war perpetuate a cycle of evil violence in the world.
I am convinced that the world’s religions have a significant task ahead. We must teach and proclaim how peacemaking is not a peripheral concern of religion but rather is God’s core instrument for promoting not only international relations but also the well being of every person on the planet. This must be our work not only on the political level, but the interpersonal level as well. We are called to cultivate significant and respectful relationships with those in the other intellectual, political and religious universe. That is one place where the hard work is. It is where we must invest some quality energy, not limiting our gatherings exclusively to those with whom we agree.
Part of self-care in the peacemaking journey, however, must be significant recesses from that tough confrontive work. We need to gather for consolation, encouragement, affection, training, and affirmation. And that is what was waiting back at the Camp. The sparse number of those under the tent was quite a contrast with the night before. However, there in a corner was Joan Baez, autographing t-shirts and enjoying being with other peacemakers. I waited in line to tell her how important she had been to me in 1971 during the Vietnam War when I became aware that I was a Conscientious Objector. My lips began to tremble with emotion and I knew I was in the presence of a grace-filled and healing moment. Martin King, Joan Baez, the Berrigan brothers, Dorothy Day, Caesar Chavez, Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Thomas Merton, and Will Campbell had all cast their light on my path during the period from 1968-71and helped me say yes to what God was speaking in my own depths about the kind of life I was being called to live. That had culminated in my leaving Vanderbilt Law School and applying for a Conscientious Objector discharge from my responsibilities as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. And here in Joan Baez I was able to touch an actual embodiment of my own spiritual and moral Pantheon and I was moved to tears. Joan signed the bill of my Tutu cap I had been wearing to try to keep from being sunburned (an unsuccessful aspiration for a red-head). And then she and I embraced and kissed and posed for a photo which brings me deep, deep joy.
At that moment everyone ran outside the tent, pointing up into the air. There in the sky, people shouted, was the President being transported by helicopter to Salt Lake City, Utah to speak to the VFW convention. What a juxtaposition – the power of the war system flying over a humble gathering of war resisters. We later learned that the president was met by 1,000 war protestors in Utah – a touching expression of what Jonathan Schell calls the “Unconquerable Power”. I thought frequently this weekend of King and Tutu who believe so mightily that ours is a moral universe. In God’s time, if we do our work the Unconquerable Power will prevail over the Imperial Power.
I wanted to present the signatures of All Saints supporters to people who represent Cindy Sheehan before my flight back to Burbank, so Ann Wright led me to three Gold Star Mothers Against the War with whom I had a lengthy emotional conversation. Lynn Bradach, Karen Meredith, and Michele DeFord spoke with me movingly about their lives since their sons, Travis, Kenneth, and David had been killed. This quiet extended conversation reinforced important pastoral truths.
All three were raised Roman Catholic and so we spoke first of faith. One had been angry with God for her son’s death. She had prayed so fervently for his protection and God had not protected him. Another said that she had been very clear that her son’s death was not God’s fault but the choice of human beings. Then we spoke of how their sons are still with them, as ever-present voices and guides. Michele DeFord had been given the honor of introducing Joan Baez the night before. In that introduction she had said that her son kept nudging her into more and more challenging responsibilities. First becoming vocal about the war and then even to the point of introducing someone who for her was such an exemplar of what it means to be a woman. All three told me of having a real sense that their children were still alive, albeit in a different way. One said she thought that her son’s primary concerns were for his buddies in Iraq and so was hovering over them today. One said that she was asked how many children she had. She said three: two in New Jersey and one in heaven. Another spoke of the mother who lived before her son’s death, but died when her son did, and became a very different person. During the conversation we wept and embraced and mourned. I had a renewed sense of what it means when Jesus said in a sermon, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” There is comfort in fact in mourning in community, something our country will inevitably have to face.
We spoke of the denial of death that is the American mentality. All of us are in denial about the dying in Iraq. From the lack of media coverage of the return of our dead soldiers and their funerals, to the refusal to do body counts on Iraqis, it seems to me that in order to be a peacemaker each of us will have to come to terms with the death that this war spreads. I’m struck by the fact that in the same sermon (Matthew 5: 1-10) where Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” Jesus also speaks about the holiness of grieving. Our country has such a long journey ahead if we are serious about peacemaking. Jesus also proclaims in that same sermon words about hungering and thirsting for justice and calling us to bless those who persecute us. Mourning, justice-making, blessing persecutors, are all of a piece with peacemaking and being blessed.
Presenting 500 names of All Saints worshippers who signed petitions of support after church on Sunday, August 21, 2005 to Dante Zappala, Michele DeFord, Karen Meredith, and Lynn Bradach of Gold Star Families Against the War.
Jeff Key helped Michele DeFord find her son’s name and photo on a huge coffin erected under the tent. That coffin painted with stars and stripes has affixed to it the name and photo of every soldier killed in Iraq – more than 1800 now.
And then with that I had to leave to catch my plane back to Southern California.
An early conversation I had on my first day was with Kimberly Clark, an Episcopal laywoman, wife of a retired priest, and part of the leadership circle at Camp Casey. She exuded such joy and hope about what was happening in Crawford. She said she thought that after the President ends his vacation, that the Crawford Peace House will become a center for the continuing development of the peace movement. We have no other organizing venue for the peace movement right now. Wouldn’t it be a surprise for God to choose this humble place from which the 21st century peace movement is launched? God has done stranger things. The Christian tradition repeatedly notes occasions when greatness and strength come from humble beginnings and weakness. From a mustard seed comes the biggest of all shrubs. The stone that the builder rejects becomes the cornerstone. Paul says, “For when I am weak then I am strong.” God, use our bumbling and stumbling desires for peace to make a new way of being for the world so that the human race can become the human family. May God bless the community in Crawford so that it becomes a new Bethlehem.
See Part I: Forging a Path to Peace
Other Crawford-related links you may be interested in: