(A number of friends had suggested that I do not attend tomorrow a nonviolent study group on Jim Forest’s book on Dorothy Day, All is Grace. Here is my response with some editing.)
Thank you all for your advice. After a day of prayer, fasting and reflection I decided I need to attend the nonviolent study group on Jim Forest’s book on Dorothy Day from 12–1pm at the MU Center for Peacemaking. It is not about any agreement I made with someone at Center and certainly it is not about working against the MU Center for Peacemaking. When I signed up for the study group last December there was no problem. Now there is. The only difference I can find is that we took no actions against ROTC at MU last semester and this January we had 2 dinner/meetings at my house to plan a course of action for the next few months.
The Center for Peacemaking has been silent about MU teaching killing. Now we are again Breaking the Silence and the center has a problem saying I am breaking some agreement and working against the center. In our two brief phone conversations, initiated by acting director of center, after three years of rejecting my offers to reconcile and work together, he said, when I asked how I was organizing against the MU Center that was the “truth” and he would not explain.. In the other conversation he said the situation was escalating. Now I know what he was talking about.
I have no problem with acting director of Center but if he is going to use intimation and fear to stop us speaking truth to power as MU I will not personally be part of that. Simply I am going for nonviolent study group that I signed up last December. I am not organizing against the
Center and I am not breaking any secret agreements.
I will probably be by myself and thus denied entrance by security and Patrick but I will try. Dorothy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Jesus, I believe would do the same. They were not so faulted a person as I am so they might have had some support. If I am denied going to a nonviolent study group on Dorothy Day it will be act of violence. But you should know that MU Public Safety or Legal Department have not notified me of my ban against attending this study group. I doubt if they will issue any type of ban but the peace center can lock me out of a nonviolent study group about a book that I had suggested.
Thank you for your concern. But what can happen to me except the locking out or arresting of me. If this happens, which I hope not, it will show what the real stance of Peace Center on stopping MU from Teaching Killing. The silence will be broken.
As I told some of you today I learned a long time ago working as a youth minister that young men and women do not do what their parents and teachers tell them to do but they do what parents and teachers do. We can talk all we want about peacemaking but students at MU will do what teachers and faculty do, talk but keep silent in action. Now I understand why students come by our actions and say “No thank you” to our flyers. That is what the Peace Center is doing.
Thank you for your support. Last night three of us with three of the five trustee that own the million dollars left from sales of three Catholic . The meeting went well and it was a healthy dialog. All of us agreed in principle on the Cry of the Poor petition that two of us first gave the Archbishop in May and now has been signed by 38 persons. They did not sign it but agreed with it which is most important since they will be three of the five final decision makers. This is the results of dialog, even with mu talking too much and interrupting. Most of my life I have fought against discrimination, stigmatizing and marginalizing persons and am blessed to have another chance tomorrow.
Peace,
If I am put in jail for gong to a nonviolent study group, not to protest or work against anyone, but just to look at the wisdom and grace of Dorothy Day, so be it. I will write you a letter from jail.
Comments
(:commentboxchrono:)