On November 25, 2005, Tom Fox was kidnaped in Baghdad, Iraq, along with three comrades. All four were members of a Christian Peacemakers Team, working to exhibit a spirit of peace and reconciliation in a land riven by war and terror.
His three colleagues were freed by British and U.S. troops on March 23, 2006. But almost two weeks earlier, on March 10, Tom’s body was found in a garbage dump in the city; he had been murdered.
Yes, January 27 is Mozart’s birthday. He would have been (and IS, in a real way) 250-plus years old today, give or take.
And the nightmare scenario just recounted haunts me because it brings home how drastically poorer my own life would be, had the musician by some miscarriage undergone the kind of conversion it imagines.
How much difference has it made? There was an underground comic strip back in the Sixties about several disreputable characters called the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. These fellows had a saying, that “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.”
For me, tho I enjoyed the Brothers in their time, a truer motto would be, MOZART will get you through times of no money better than MONEY will get you through times of no Mozart!”
And let the church say, “AMEN!”
Here is the message that has been sent out by Northwest Yearly Meeting leaders on January 22, 2016; it does not seem to have been made widely public yet:
“Regretfully, we are not able to come to unity to overturn or affirm the elders’ decision to release West Hills. Therefore, we’ve postponed the effective date of West Hills’ release at least until yearly meeting sessions.
At that time, the Board of Elders will report to the Yearly Meeting its summary of the state of the church, allowing time for prayerful consideration of issues raised by the report and by any attached judgments or interpretations offered by the Board of Elders.”
Doug said about “Words In Time,” when it was first published:
This book is a collection of short pieces, most of which have appeared in print elsewhere. They cover a nine-year period, 1988-97. I chose the title “Words in Time” because several of the pieces were written for particular occasions, and address specific dilemmas facing Friends at the time. As such, these keynotes and essays are somewhat time-bound and situation-specific. For example, “The Covenant of Light” addressed Friends United Meeting shortly before the “Realignment” controversy erupted at the end of 1990. But problems of alienation and mutual exclusion within the wider Quaker family continue; the message of reconciliation still needs to be heard.
[Thee Can Say THAT Again! Okay, he will: “But problems of alienation and mutual exclusion within the wider Quaker family continue; the message of reconciliation still needs to be heard.”]
Early Spotlight Team investigations in the Boston Globe usually took aim at public corruption, of which Boston seemingly had an endless supply. I never met any of the team writers; they kept a low profile, but the group provided a model of getting the dirt, getting it straight, and getting the story out, that sticks with me to this day.
Looking back, there’s one more big jolt of reality for me in the film: it came as Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, as reporters Mike Rezendes and Sacha Pfeffer, compile a list of more than seventy Boston priests with pedophile track records –using the real names that the Spotlight Team unearthed. The list scrolled down the screen, and one name jumped out: as a cub reporter, I had met and interviewed one of the priests on the list.
Father Paul Shanley, about the time I interviewed him. I had no clue. Neither did anyone else. Except his victims, which were already numerous.
It was in the early Seventies, and Father Paul Shanley presented as a hip young cleric, with long hair, pursuing a “street ministry” to runaways, pushing the stodgy church envelope. I took him to be in the orbit of Catholic antiwar radicals like the Berrigan brothers, whom I had also interviewed.
Exposed thirty years later by Spotlight writer Sacha Pfeiffer, played by Rachel McAdam in the film, he was brought up on multiple charges of child rape, and in 2005 sentenced to 12-15 years in prison.
At the time I talked to him, he was deep into his boy raping career. I never had a clue.