There are a few things, maybe too many, that anger me. One is when other people decid what is best for me without consulting me. Poor people suffer from this all the time, from conservatives or liberals. Another one is when someone offers criticism of you to others but never directly with you. Criticism is not always easy to take, even when it is constructive; however it is very hard to take when you hear it from a third party.

Today I read a quote from Gandhi about passive resistance, which we called nonviolence. “Passive Resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms.” Now you may know why I call myself a ‘want-to-be pacifist’. I do not use arms but I do talk or write back rather than take personal suffering. After all the rejections I have faced, by Archbishops, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Marquette University, community organizations, church people, liberals and conservatives one would think that I would be more comfortable in being the “Reject” than I am. However, rejection has been risen to new levels today when people just ignore something they do not want to hear, like “Marquette Teaches War and Killing” or the local St. Vincent de Paul Society donations to poor and uses them building central office empire.

The above might explain why I get along with poor, children, elderly and persons with mental and other illnesses better than the average adult. These persons know what it is like to be powerless or stigmatized or both.

Now on the positive side I have my heroes, Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Merton, all whose quotes I collect, showing me the way to be a kinder, gentler person, one who can take insults, rejections and even loss, suffer with it and turn into something positive. Maybe some of this is what is meant by “Turn to the other cheek.”

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