Category Archives: War & Peace

2016: Politics “When The Sky Darkens”

Most years, I put up with politics: it’s as necessary as taking out the trash, but only about as interesting.
Sure I have my preferences, and occasionally a candidate is exciting, for awhile. But usually I’m eager to get it over with, and go back to what feels like real life.
This year is different. I’m following the campaigns as closely as I can, with a morbid, horrified fascination.
The NY Times’s Roger Cohen gets at the reason why: Democracies can die.
Many parts of our former republic, including civil liberties, are already close to catatonic; and profoundly anti-democratic forces (the secret security state, the war machine) are already loose and beyond our control (which is why we mostly prefer not to think about them).

But all this could get much, much worse, depending on how this political year turns out.
Cohen comes at the 2016 campaign from the BTDT (“Been There, Done That”) perspective, of those who have seen — and lived– this movie before. It’s also a movie which is being remade in more and more corners of their continent. And What about Ours?

Quakers: “Cannot Learn War Any More”; Or Maybe We Can.

A letter of self-preservation directed to King Charles II by Margaret Fell and George Fox in 1660 started it all. Brief excerpts from the letter appear today in the Quaker books [of] Discipline and Faith and Practice. In part the excerpts read:

We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. … The Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move us unto it … [it] will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the Kingdoms of this world. … Therefore, we cannot learn war any more.

These few sentences are foundational for Quakers. They are a kind of Quaker scripture, drafted by Quaker founders, preserved by Friends of all branches, and recited by Quaker faithful for three and a half centuries. But the truth about the Quaker peace testimony cannot be contained in a few sentences that are in fact altered from the original 1660 letter. In this discrepancy we glimpse the actual history of Quaker pacifism—a much more tangled, ambivalent, and compelling saga.

The original letter actually starts out: “All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars. . . .” Like other radical groups, Friends in England in 1660 were powerless, facing persecution by a newly restored monarchy that feared dissenters would plot coups. The letter to Charles hoped to ward off this persecution (it didn’t succeed, but that’s another story). The letter noted that while the Quakers had foresworn violence, they did not expect their rulers to do so

February 12, 2006, Iraq: Quaker Hostage Tom Fox Disappears

“Tom Fox was our anchor, our stalwart. . . . During those first days of relentless, terrifying, excruciating uncertainty, Tom dove into prayer the way a warrior might charge into battle. He turned his captivity into a sustained, unbroken meditation. The chain that bound his wrist became a kind of rosary, or sebha (the beads Muslims use to count the names of God). He would picture someone: a member of his family, a member of the Iraq team or the CPT office, one of the captors–whoever he felt needed a prayer. . . .
Tom’s vigilance in prayer was astounding. . . .”

But as the weeks wore on, Tom seemed more adversely affected by the winter weather and the emptiness of the days:

Loney:

“BETWEEN CHRISTMAS and New Year’s, something shifted in Tom. Perhaps it was the lack of protein his body craved, the absolute lack of solitude or the relentless cold. Perhaps it was his inability to sleep, the burden of fear that came with his U.S. citizenship, or the extreme boredom. The intransigent strength and unflagging leadership of those first weeks evaporated. He asked for a sedative to help him sleep, and the captors obliged.

Tom took one, then two pills each day and still complained of being unable to sleep. His mind lost its suppleness. He seemed to be more fixed on his own ideas, less able to incorporate new information, his perceptions more rigid. We would frequently have to repeat things. He was either stone-silent or helplessly garrulous.”

Norman Morrison’s Transcendent Language of Self-Immolation

On a chilly November day in 1965, a thirty-one year old Quaker pacifist named Norman Morrison, a father of three, left his home in Baltimore with his infant daughter Emily and drove forty miles to Washington, DC. Once there, as dusk settled over the capitol city, he drove to the Pentagon where he drenched himself in kerosene and struck a match on his shoe. It is not clear if he had handed Emily to someone standing nearby or had sat her down out of harms way. As Norman burned alive, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looking out of his office window only yards away, was horrified. He watched as Pentagon attaches rushed to try to put out the flames, scorching themselves in the process.

Tom Fox Memorial Book Is Available Again

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.