Wake Up!

Last Thursday, Dec. 15th, exactly 220 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified, the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, allowing the indefinite detention and torture of Americans. When I first heard about the indefinite detention of American was in this Defense Bill]] passed by Congress and that President had said he would not veto it I could not believe it. I check it out and it was true but I heard little or nothing from the media and various peace groups and friends. Some say they did not believe it so I send them the few news report and comments on this part of the defense Bill. Finally today I received an email from someone in one of the peace group list that was outraged at this denial of the right of a U.S. citizen to due process of the law.

To me this casual awareness and acceptance of the lost of this basic human right is a sign of the time. We are all too busy with work, Christmas shopping, our own political and social causes that we are asleep. Where are the libertarians, conservatives and liberals when you need them?

One of the themes of the liturgical season of Advent, four weeks before celebration of Christmas, is waking up. When I was a youth minister and with youth planned a Mass in Advent we started it with an alarm clock going off on the alter and the start of some rap song that screamed “Awake”.

In the east people talked about ‘enlightenment’ which is not experiencing something new in life but really being awake to the present, seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling deep into the life of the moment.

In the West when an important issue comes up we talk and talk about it until the next hot issue comes up and we talk and talk about that etc. We seldom act and say like some are saying in the Occupy Wall Street Movement “we will not take it anymore”, we will stay here disrupt and occupy till there is change.

If a Martin Luther King Jr. or a political leader was emerging to unite people in struggling for basic human rights the government could stop that person, make him or her disappear indefinitely. But if the people move as a group, leaderless but united and strong, we could all come forward and, when asked for our leader by the government, say: “I am Spartacus.”

This is the heart of nonviolent power when individuals become aware of the powers they possess to “speak truth to power”, join forces, work together and be Awake.

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