Ponderings from the Eternal Now
September 2004 #14
Dear friends,
The month of August has come and gone so quickly I hardly knew it was here. I'm sure the same may be true for you, but with a bit more variety to the days. The leaves are changing and I've been thinking about what's changed in me, Ardeth and Jackie since I last saw them or heard their voices over a year ago. While I'm trying to be present to this Eternal Now, you need to know that being present to it is not the same as accepting that this is how life should be.
The name I've given this prison is “Leisure World”. Everyday I read, hear or see something of the horrors from around the world and here we sit 1,000+ women strong. Food and medical may not be the greatest, but we have both. Work is a few hours a day if even that for most. No responsibilities to speak of and lots of time, time, time. And the problem is there is so little to do that is constructive with that time for most of the women here. It is such a tragic waste of life. Where else but at “Leisure World” would one find grown women playing with bananas as guns or sleeping for hours on end. My latest comes from Garrison Keillor on his Prairie Home Companion, “say lettuce, spell cup!”
This month I've been pondering what Dan Berrigan calls “the wasting disease of normalcy.” His prophetic words to us are difficult to absorb because we all long for normalcy in our lives. I remember years ago my mother asking me why I couldn't be like the other sisters she knew who made weekly trips to the hair salon and had “normal” jobs. My response to her then and now many years after her death is still the same – because the Gospel mandate calls me to be an itinerant preacher…to speak truth to power.
I share these words for your reflection from The Price of Peacemaking by Daniel Berrigan :
We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues. War, by its nature, is total – but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial. So a whole will and a whole heart and a whole national life bent toward war prevail over the verities of peace.
In every national war since the founding of the republic we have taken for granted that it shall exact the most rigorous cost, and that the cost shall be paid with cheerful hearts. We take it for granted that in wartime, families will be separated for long periods, people will be imprisoned, wounded, driven insane, killed on foreign shores. In favor of such wars, we declare a moratorium on normal human hopes – for marriage, for community, for friendship, for moral conduct toward strangers and the innocent. We are instructed that deprivation and discipline, private grief and public obedience are to be out lot. And we obey. And we bear with it – because bear we must – because war is war, and good war or bad, we are stuck with it and its cost.
But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans – that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have our normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of lives.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs – at all costs – our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost – because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war – at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”
And, following on Dan 's words, I share this from “Do Not Lose Heart” by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves:
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more and continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
And so the question becomes, “How will we show our souls and avoid the wasting disease of normalcy?”
My deepest gratitude for you and your faithful lives!
Blessings and love,
Carol
p.s.
- No word yet on cuts to our $3 million shortfall prison budget here at Alderson.
- Barbara A. Hickey is our new warden and was the Assistant Warden at Danbury .
- The Chaplain here bought a new, jet black Chrysler Crossfire with personalized WV plates – HOLYFIRE!
- September 8 th I celebrate my 39 th anniversary as a Grand Rapids Dominican Sister.