Holy Week Faith and Resistance Retreat King and the Cross Jim Douglass rt: at Arms Bazaar at Marriott Hotel left: the Jonah House goats say "War is baa..d at the White House."

THE HOLY WEEK FAITH AND RESISTANCE RETREAT
6:00 p.m. Wednesday, April 4, 2007
through early afternoon on Saturday, April 7, 2007

We begin our Holy Week Retreat on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. Christ and King were killed because each challenged the systems of domination that oppressed their people. Both were victims of society's gratuitous violence, mocking derision and intimidating brutality. Both died teaching that defeating the powers of this world means stepping out of a world where violence is the ready solution and into another where the spiral of violence is broken by those willing to absorb the violence in their own flesh.

Our culture was founded on the will to dominate, always resorting to whatever violence technology could conjure and create. Nuclear weapons and a permanent state of war expose its descent into violence: a merciless humanity divided between included and excluded and a ready death machine, capable of destroying all that sustains life on earth. There is too much suffering in history, too much blood in our paths, too many millions who carry in their flesh crosses of bitterness and injustice.

We long to create a world where weapons are banned, bread is shared, debts are forgiven and life is held sacred. Jesus, Martin Luther King and others have shown the way of nonviolence - and what a counterforce it is to the Domination System. It is in the light of nonviolence that we come together and in the light of our scriptures, our stories, our models in the struggle to whom we turn for inspiration.

More, in this retreat time, we come together with each other; we have this time together to reflect / act / reflect and practice nonviolence - which is to practice resurrection.

We invite you to gather - to reflect and to act

• For the nonviolence of disarmed hearts in a disarmed world
• On behalf of justice for the oppressed, abandoned, murdered
• Against the injustice that plagues our planet, a plague that finds so much of its origin in our own country and by our own government…

WHERE - St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church , 16th & Newton Streets NW, Washington D.C.

WHEN - begin with supper at 6:00 p.m., on Wednesday, April 4, 2007 through early afternoon on Saturday, April 7, 2007

WHAT -

• A time to reflect/act/reflect.
• A program - reflection sessions each of our days together to help us deepen our sense of this year's theme.
• We will learn from and be inspired by Jim and Shelley Douglass who will help us understand how we can bring our message to the public. We will plan to do that; we will do it; and we will evaluate how well or badly we did it. Then we'll repeat the process - led in our discernment of how damaging war is to all manner of life by Iraq War Veterans and wives of Iraq War Veterans .
• We will pray together and maybe sing and laugh some.
• We will provide simple meals and sleeping bag space at the Church. If you require "other" accommodations, please let us know and we will try to connect you with a source.
• There will be a program for children but we'd need to know ages and numbers of children coming to be better prepared to provide for them.

WHY - we gather because we know how urgent are these times and how deeply so many are suffering and how fragile is this spirit called hope.

The retreat is organized by

The Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and
Jonah House Communities.

You can contact us at:

Dorothy Day Catholic Worker
503 Rock Creek Church Rd, NW
Washington D.C. 20009
202-882-9649
csm91@hotmail.com

Jonah House
1301 Moreland Ave.
Baltimore MD 21216
410-233-6238

disarmnow@verizon.net
www.jonahhouse.org