I have observed that when people attack you and ignore your message, if you do not react and stay on message, the same people just ignore you and your message. I think that is good and better than reacting. By absorbing the attack it becomes clearer that it is the message that people are ignoring and a message ignored has a better ring of truth about it without a personal attack or defense.

Last week when I was going to Mass at the Jesuit retirement home I had an elderly and respected Jesuit priest come up to me and quietly tell me he agreed with the the letter I had printed in the sports section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]] commentating on Marquette’s violation of State and Federal reporting rules when, a few years back, when the institution did not report alleged rapes by MU basketball players.

You never know how your message is doing unless someone responds to it but you know if it is consciously being ignored there is something to it. When a person, like this Jesuit priest, makes a comment on a statement, positive or negative, you know the message be heard.

Martin Luther King Jr. felt strongly about breaking the silence and speaking truth to power and following one’s conscience. All the persons I admire, past and present believe this. But today, avoiding conflict, be it creative conflict, seems to take precedent over breaking the silence. I noticed way back in the early 70’s “doing your thing” and not hurting anyone seems to be the moral code of youth and still is. If you have a conflict with a person or message of someone, some think it is better to ignore the persona and/or message rather than speak your truth as you see it.

False conflicts are set up, Republicans vs. Democrats, Tea party persons against progressives, right against left as greed increases in our economic system, our education system becomes more militarized and the poor become poorer while the rich become richer.

On news tonight I heard the debated Farm Bill passed the Senate with major cuts to Food Stamps for those in need. The announcer said the cuts were more than the Democrats said they would accept but less than what the conservatives had demanded. Is this compromise or just another step in building inequality into our economic system?

Recently the House of Representatives and the Democrats agree to a budget spending bill for the year in which over half the money in the budget goes for military and war. Is this a compromise or a move toward a more militarized country?

Examples, like the above two, quiet things down for awhile and thus are not seen as a move toward a country with more income inequality and more militarized. False debates and pacification efforts, like the above, are simply a move by all parties toward a more militarized, individualized state.

The Gospel was written at a time when people thought in terms as members of a group or community not as individuals and the military was associated with the repressive forces of the Roman Empire. Thus the Gospel values of “Love your Enemy”, “Blessed are the poor” “sharing abundance with needy”, “the first shall be least”, “love others as self” make no sense to many in today’s world and are just empty words.

Persistent nonviolence, struggle for truth, is to only way, in my opinion, to overcome the ills of our society not petitions, letters, phone calls or more talk. I seldom get feedback on what I write in these postings which would be discouraging if I was writing to please others. But since I am just writing observations of life, as I see them, it does not matter. Someone responding to my words, negatively or positively, is nice but all my words are just my struggle to find truth.

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