Continuing our Lenten reflection, let us begin with a few quotes:

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.….  We’re a superpower, and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower….  Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” 

Stephen Miller (top White House advisor) in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026

“I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary.”

H. Rap Brown, Black Activist, 1967

“Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.” 

Ken Burns, historian and documentary maker, 2026

“No one is illegal on stolen land, and, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to do and what to say right now, and I just, I feel really hopeful in this room and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter and the people matter. And F ICE is all I want to say.”

Billie Eilish, at the Grammy Awards, 2026

“There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used…Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.”

Gil Bailie, Catholic theologian

“The Park Service debuted the digital tool in step with other recent actions across the national park system complying with Executive Order 14253, ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’ They include removing materials describing atrocities committed against Native Americans, dismantling exhibits highlighting the treatment of enslaved people, and deleting information on how climate change is negatively impacting ecosystems and landscapes.”

From SFGate, Feb. 11, 2026

It is not easy to think or speak about nonviolence in our culture or really in any other culture without at the same time seeming to sink into total irrelevance.  To some people “nonviolence” looks like a safe harbor for cowardice; to others it appears as a moral Disneyland….you can visit the “fantasy” at times, but it’s not life as we know it and you can’t live there; and to still others it is nothing more than a fatal passivity and abnegation of responsibility.   And truly history would seem to vindicate such opinions.  Too often these kinds of caricatures of true nonviolence are what is presented as an alternative to a violent response.  What Stephen Miller is articulating in the above quote has been the vision and practice of all great powers, from ancient times to now.  But violence, either in aggression or in response to aggression,  is pervasive in human culture at all levels—political, social, economic, relational, and, yes, even deeply personal.   So often violence is concealed and disguised as some form of a “good” both on a grand scale and also in our everyday personal life.   Whether the violence emerges from the established order (or better called, disorder), or whether it emerges as a response to this disorder/injustice from either a simple shout of “F…. you” out of frustration/anger toward  another human being or it goes all the way to a bloody revolution, it is all within a great untruth. The fact is we all live within this Great Lie and it influences all we do and all that affects us. To get some understanding of what this really means and then what true nonviolence is we will enlist the aid of Vaclav Havel.

Havel was a Czech playwright, brilliant intellectual, and a forceful dissident against the totalitarian communist governments of Eastern Europe in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.  In 1978 he wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and some have called it the most Important essay of the 20^th century.  Originally an underground publication, it became a manifesto for dissidents and resistance across the Soviet bloc and a foundational text for the Solidarity Movement in Poland.   In it he acutely analyzed and made manifest the real nature of their systemic oppression and how to go about dismantling it.  

From the internet:   “Havel argued that late-stage communist regimes weren’t traditional dictatorships held together by a single tyrant. Instead, they were ‘post-totalitarian’—sustained by a vast bureaucracy and an all-encompassing ideology that functioned like a ‘secularized religion’.  They were living within a Lie, and the system’s survival depended on everyone participating in its rituals, even if they didn’t believe in them. By performing these empty gestures, citizens became both victims and supporters of the system.”

Havel illustrates this with an example:  every morning a shopkeeper goes to his store and as he opens up he puts  up a sign:  Workers of the World Unite.  The grocer doesn’t believe the slogan to mean anything real, nor does he care or expect anyone else to believe it means anything; but he displays it diligently as a signal to officials that he is ‘beyond reproach’ so he will be left in peace to pursue his little business and avoid trouble with the state.  This example is Havel’s metaphor for how ordinary people sustain such a regime through small, seemingly insignificant acts of conformity.  In putting up the sign, he signals his willingness to comply with the regime’s rituals.  Every shopkeeper on the street does the same; they collectively create a world of appearances that sustains the regime.

Havel then explains that the system’s power doesn’t come from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to act as if it were true.  This is what Havel means by “living within a lie.”  But Havel continues the metaphor:  One day the shopkeeper decides to take down the sign, decides to stop putting up the sign.  It is an act of resistance, and by this act he “shatters the world of appearances.”   Now he is moving toward “Living in Truth.”  He stops voting in sham elections and starts saying what he actually thinks.  In effect the shopkeeper has become the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  Let us review the fable with help from the Internet:

“The plot follows an emperor who cares excessively about his appearance and expensive clothing. Two swindlers arrive in his city, posing as weavers. They claim to create a fabric so magnificent that it is invisible to anyone who is either unfit for their position or hopelessly stupid.  Fearing they will be seen as unfit or stupid, the Emperor’s ministers—and eventually the Emperor himself—pretend to see the non-existent cloth.  The swindlers dress the Emperor in the invisible garments. He marches through the city in a grand procession before his subjects.  The townspeople, also afraid of being judged, praise the clothes until a small child shouts out the truth: ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’”

So the Lie, the façade,  is shattered by a child who is not shackled by social status or ego, and thus is able to speak the objective truth.

Havel goes on to explain that this single act is extremely dangerous to the state. If the system is built on a universal lie, even one person breaking that lie threatens the entire structure because it invites others to do the same. This “power of the powerless” is the idea that personal moral decisions can ultimately lead to political and social transformation.  This whole approach is very resonant with Gandhi’s teaching on the relationship of truth to nonviolence and personal and communal transformation.

I have borrowed Havel to help us understand our own situation, which is of course radically different in many external ways….but also disturbingly deeper and darker in its grip on our lives.  In the past I was often envious of the dissidents in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc…their problem, their “living within a lie,” appeared to be staring them in the face, quite clearly, or so it seemed at that time.  But now our problem is so pervasive, so dark yet so deeply intertwined with what we value, so subtle that it seems “natural,” and “normal.”  And it leads to a kind of deceptive “flourishing,” “success” with a poison pill in it….the “American dream” masking  a nightmare.  The essence of our problem is that the Great Lie within which we all live is not really something nameable so that we can “measure it” as it were and keep it “out there” and simply put it on the list of “problems to solve”…..simply elect a different political option and then we won’t be bothered…..but in our case THAT does not “take down the sign.”   

To name the Great Lie is to deceive ourselves that we see its limits, that we know what it is, how close it is to our hearts and lives and how it totally affects us; when we think we have named it, we are sinking ever deeper into its grip.   The Great Lie is not something that we can limit to politics or economics or sociology or law or personal relationships or even religion.  It surely involves all these but perhaps not in a way that is apparent to our now-crippled vision.  Both Havel and Gandhi….and Merton and a few others….can help us understand our situation, what is at stake, and “what must I do.”  And this Lent in these dark times all of these good folk would say with one voice:  “Take down your sign!”  Resist the Great Lie and begin living in the Truth.

Violence at all levels and falsehood at all levels is the language that the Great Lie speaks publicly and in our hearts.  Nonviolence at all levels is the language of resistance to the Great Lie.  Gandhi was a master at understanding this.  His primary focus was on Truth– deep, fundamental Truth.  Truth (Satya) and nonviolence (ahimsa) were for him two sides of the same coin.   For Gandhi, truth was not just telling the truth but the absolute, underlying reality of existence….Divine Wisdom we might want to say.  And his whole life he sought to align his thoughts, his speech, and his actions with this Truth. ( In this he reminds me of some of our Desert Fathers.)  And ahimsa (nonviolence) is the language of Truth with which Gandhi calls us to confront the Great Lie and “to take down the sign” in all aspects of life—personal, social, and political—to shatter the façade, the appearance, of what passes as “normal,”  “realistic,” “pragmatic,” etc.   And ahimsa absolutely means much more than just refraining from physical violence; it is non-injury in thought, word, and deed, driven by love and compassion.  Gandhi:  “Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.”

Consider now that iconic scene of the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness.  The Gospels present a tripartite temptation structure:  1. Temptation based on appetite, a basic human drive.  The Great Lie distorts the meaning and purpose of this bodily function; 2. Temptation based on the reality of power.  Power as the  Great Lie defines it is marked by possession, domination, and inevitably violence; 3. Temptation based on ego/identity, even doubt about who one really is.  (Interestingly enough, the early writings of Buddhism also depict Buddha as undergoing a tripartite temptation ordeal by Mara the Deceiver.)  Recall now that scene in the Gospels when Jesus rebukes Peter, the apparent lead disciple: “Get behind me Satan!”  Jesus had implied that his mission to manifest Divine Wisdom, the Divine Reality, the Truth, would require a total self sacrifice even leading to suffering and death.  Peter objects to such a scenario.   By calling Peter “satan,” Jesus is telling Peter he is totally in the grip and living within the Great Lie.  That kind of religiosity knows nothing of God though it may utter much “God language”.  What is at stake here is our very identity in God….as we are all called to be a manifestation of the Divine Reality.  

One of the most egregious distortions of the Great Lie is aimed at the very notion of nonviolence itself.  All paths of authentic nonviolence go through the heart.  Nonviolence is not just a strategy or a tactic to use to “win” against an opponent; it is not a method or technique of manipulation to be used “against” someone.  It does not recognize anyone as an “enemy” to defeat; it is not anti anyone.  Nonviolence is not simply political, nor all social action, and not just personal—though of course it will encompass all these dimensions of life as we seek the Truth.  Resistance to the Great Lie must take place in all these dimensions, and change will manifest but surely not in the way the Great Lie can recognize.

Michael Nagler, prof. of classics at Berkeley and Gandhian disciple:

“True change is not about putting a different kind of people in power but a different kind of power in people.” 

“….there is a world of difference between calling something evil and calling someone evil. The first strategy mobilizes resources against the problem; the second only recycles the ultimate cause of the problem, which is ill will, resentment, lack of empathy, and eventually hatred.”

“It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.”

Gandhi 

“Gandhi would always offer full details of his plans and movements to the police, thereby saving them a great deal of trouble. One police inspector who availed himself of Gandhi’s courtesy in this matter is said to have been severely reprimanded by his chief. ‘Don’t you know,’ he told the inspector, ‘that everyone who comes into close contact with that man goes over to his side?’”

Reginald Reynolds, in A Quest for Gandhi, Doubleday, 1952

During the 1960s, during the Vietnam war, there was quite a vigorous protest movement against the war effort.  Much of it was non-violent, but certainly there were many occasions when things slipped into a sad confrontation that got swallowed by the Great Lie.   I remember seeing protesters shout, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many babies did you kill today!” or protesters calling soldiers returning from the war “baby killers.”  And all kinds of much worse instances.  Merton wrote about the protests and advised a number of peace activists and leaders.  He definitely supported a resistance to what was going on, but he also had some serious criticism about the way things were unfolding.  Here’s a couple quotes from that period:

“ Nonviolence must simply avoid the ambiguity of an unclear and confusing protest that hardens the warmakers in their self-righteous blindness. This means that in this case above all nonviolence must avoid a facile and fanatical self-righteousness, and refrain from being satisfied with dramatic, self-justifying gestures. . . .  Nonviolence . . . is convinced that the manner in which the conflict for truth is waged will itself manifest or obscure the truth.”

And

“The important thing about protest is not so much the short-range possibility of changing the direction of policies, but the longer range aim of helping everyone gain an entirely new attitude toward war. Far from doing this, much current protest simply reinforces the old positions by driving the adversary back into the familiar and secure mythology of force. Hence the strong ‘patriotic’ reaction against protests in the United States. How can one protest against war without implicitly and indirectly contributing to the war mentality?”  

Merton understood well how difficult the way of nonviolence could be.  In fact it was the journey of a deep spiritual life and its concomitant struggles.  Nonviolence could be a way of life only for courageous people.  Its goal was community, friendship and understanding; not humiliation or “defeat” over an opponent.  So, nonviolent resistance will attack systems and policies of injustice, not the people who happen to be doing the evil.  

“Nonviolence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but because it excludes mere transient self-interest from its considerations. In a very real sense, those who practice nonviolent resistance must commit themselves not to the defense of their own interests or even those of a particular group: they must commit themselves to the defense of objective truth and right and above all of human beings.”

 

To discern and resist the Great Lie in the public square first of all requires that we discern and resist the Great Lie working on our minds and hearts.  Otherwise we are just trying to defeat an opponent.  And a reshuffling and a recycling of the problem takes place; the villains of one revolution are killed and new ones are established; one war sets the stage for the next war, and so on.  In the early ‘60s Merton was studying the writings of Gandhi when he had this sudden epiphany….from one of his early Journals:

“Today I realize with urgency the absolute seriousness of my need to study and practice non-violence. Hitherto, I have ‘liked’ non-violence as an idea. I have ‘approved’ it, looked with benignity on it, have praised it, even earnestly. But I have not practiced it fully. My thoughts and words retaliate. I condemn and resist adversaries when I think I am unjustly treated. I revile them; even treat them with open (but polite) contempt to their face.  It is necessary to realize…this restricting non-retaliation merely to physical non-retaliation is not enough—on the contrary, it is in some sense a greater evil.   At the same time, the energy wasted in contempt, criticism and resentment is thus diverted from its true function, insistence on truth. Hence, loss of clarity, loss of focus, confusion, and finally frustration. So that half the time I don’t know what I am doing (or thinking).  I need to set myself to the study of non-violence, with thoroughness. The complete, integral practice of it in community life.”

One last thought:  From a Christian perspective we have one more resource in following the way of nonviolence, in our resistance to the Great Lie.  If history is only what Macbeth and Stephen Miller described, only “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury,” then the Great Lie has dominance;  but no, we have the “eschatological secret” as I alluded to in the previous post in regard to Julian of Norwich, and this means “sound and fury” are not the “last word.”  Love, infinite love defines and encompasses the end and meaning of it all, even our most horrific failings….but in a way we cannot see or comprehend.  Resistance to the Great Lie is already to be living in the eschaton.

And to conclude:

“That’s fine, Dude, I’m not mad at you.”

      Renee Good’s last words to the ICE agent who shot her.  Renee was “taking down the sign” as she died.

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
– The Upanishads

Ash Wednesday and Lent are upon us once more, and so a few  reflections, observations, questions arise in our dark days…..  Considering our times and our world, not a bad idea to see Lent as a kind of diagnostic moment of ourselves and our social situation.  Diagnosis means truly examining the symptoms in order to get some kind of handle on the essential problem.  In this case a true diagnosis leads to a transformation of vision, not just elimination of symptoms.  Can’t confuse the symptom for the essence of the problem. Without a proper diagnosis of where we are and who we are, what Lent calls “repentance” becomes a stumbling around in the darkness of our world, and our focus gets reduced to keeping an “inner scorecard” to make ourselves feel better.  True repentance can be called a “return” of sorts to the unspeakable gift of our being, both deeply personal in our hearts and truly collective as we recognize we are fundamentally one; but it is perhaps best seen as a profound transformation of vision.  It is the journey from the “You are dust…” of Ash Wednesday to the Mystery of the Resurrection of Easter Sunday.  

A few examples of “diagnostic moments”:

1.  Been reading Wordsworth lately….always been a bit fascinated by the art and literature of what is termed “Romanticism.”  Given the times we live in this sure seems like a kind of escapism, right?   But consider their times and what was going on in their world about 1800:  the beginnings of industrialization, factories,  pollution and exploitation of nature emerging on a large scale, Adam Smith and the economics of self-interest, the dominance of materialism and rationalism, etc.  The latter affecting even religion and theology where God becomes envisioned and conceptualized as the “Great Clockmaker.”  All of creation is simply this mechanical clock made by God and wound up  Then He sets it aside and lets it run according to the rules of its mechanism…..the whole universe as a great clock.  In any case, the Romantic movement in art and literature is a kind of reaction to all this.  I am not a fan of all their ideas, but I am intrigued by their diagnosis of their times and the dominant themes of their culture.   They certainly picked up on the toxicity of the new economic and intellectual climate and the total ineffectiveness of institutional religion to deal with this; and their anxiety signals this full blast.   But their answers and solutions were not only inadequate but at times actually a part of the problem.  Compared with ancient Chinese Taoist poets, for example, who themselves had to often deal with a violent and suffocating social order, the Romantics seem shallow and at times introducing new problems.  But they do fulfill Ezra Pound’s famous criterion for the artist and thinker:  “A man with a sensitive nose living in a sewer is bound to say something.”  Getting back to Wordsworth, lets take a look at one of his short works (the man was way too wordy in his longer works), a sonnet called, “The World Is Too Much With Us.”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. —Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

I gathered from the internet a succinct explication of the poem:

“Composed around 1802 and published in 1807, the poem expresses the speaker’s frustration that people are overly focused on ‘getting and spending’(acquiring money and possessions), and in the process, they ‘lay waste our powers’ and lose their ability to be moved by nature’s beauty. 

• Disconnection from Nature: Wordsworth laments that ‘Little we see in Nature that is ours’ because we have ‘given our hearts away’ to modern, trivial concerns. We are ‘out of tune’ with the natural world, failing to appreciate the sea, the winds, and the flowers.
• A ‘Sordid Boon’: The poet calls this focus on worldly gains a ‘sordid boon’ (a wretched blessing), highlighting the irony that what society perceives as progress and advantage is, in fact, a corrupting loss of our deeper spiritual and emotional capacities.
• Yearning for a Simpler Connection: In the poem’s final six lines (the sestet), the speaker expresses a radical wish to be a ‘Pagan suckled in a creed outworn’. This is not an endorsement of ancient religion itself, but a desperate desire for a belief system that would allow him to feel a sense of awe and wonder toward nature again—to see mythical gods like Proteus or Triton rising from the sea—rather than the spiritual emptiness of his contemporary world. “

Yes.  Indeed.  And this reminds me of a 1981 book by historian and cultural critic Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World.  Berman’s main thesis:  the modern, Western worldview has been “disenchanted” by the rise of a mechanistic science that views the natural world as an object to be analyzed and controlled, a mechanical thing rather than a living system of which humanity is a part. He contrasts this with the earlier holistic and animistic traditions that perceived a vital, integrated connection between humanity and the cosmos, which he terms “participatory consciousness.”  (One could also mention here the authentic Native American vision of reality.)

In any case, the diagnosis of the Romantics  is definitely on target and impressive in its scope, but it is hard to see how to move from there toward a “cure.”  And what kind of transformation of vision do they bring to this problem and from where does this transformation emerge? What kind of social, communal metanoia will enable the healing of human fragmentation?  Is the best they have to offer nothing more than a kind of sentimental nostalgia for a fantasized past?   It is also interesting to note how the Romantics were early supporters of the French Revolution, but then they had no answer when the violence and terrorism emerged. 

2.  Now I would like to consider two movies.  The first movie is “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Ok, this is a classic Christmas favorite (and one of Pope Leo’s favorites), but I would like to reconsider it under the spotlight of Lent and this theme of Lenten diagnosis.  I don’t mean to belabor the obvious difference between the town of Bedford Falls and its possible negative transformation into Potterville or the crucial difference between Mr. Potter and George Bailey.  What I want to focus on is the transformation inside George Bailey.

When we first meet George as a young man, he is eager to leave Bedford Falls and seek out an adventurous life.  He has a certain idea, a certain vision of who he is, of what he should do, of what his personal fulfillment would be, of what the meaning of his life is.  George is a good man with a good heart, but he cannot see, to put it simply, the work that God seeks to accomplish through him…the movie of course does not put it this way.    Inevitably that work gets done with a lot of felt struggle and frustration on George’s part as he stumbles from one problem to another; but interestingly enough through all that he connects with the love of his life, Mary.  But he is still fundamentally blind at this point to the real meaning of his life, unable to even realize that he is afflicted in a manner of speaking.  A real crisis brings about a diagnostic moment that leads to a transformation of vision.  What was needed was a “transcendent perspective,” and that is provided in the movie by the instrumentality of that marvelous angel second class, Clarence.  Here the movie could have slipped into a mawkish, sentimental pop religiosity; but it manages to present it smartly and amusingly.  With a transformed vision George finally sees how grace and divine mercy and compassion flowed into his community through him….without of course any explicit religious language.  

An interesting sidelight:  given the underlying and unspoken spirituality of this movie, it fascinates me that there is also a total silence and absence of formal, institutional religiosity…..no “church moments”!  The movie is emphatically pointing at everyday ordinary life as the ground of our transformation.

The second movie is another old classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.”  A beautiful and powerful adaptation of Steinbeck’s Depression era novel.  It presents the Joad family, poor dirt famers in Oklahoma in the 1930s.  Depression and Dust Bowl and money interests back East lead to the loss of their impoverished farm.  They become migrants to California in order to find work in California’s agricultural fields.  Here I just want a brief focus on two characters:  Tom Joad, the eldest son, who has spent prison time for killing a man in a bar fight and has been released to come back home to find his family has to leave their poor home; and then  Jim Casy, a former preacher who also hooks up with the Joad family in their migration.  Here you find that the diagnosis and the transformation of vision takes place in a slow process, one blurred glimpse of a glimmer after another you might say.  But you catch it early in the movie and by the end you notice Tom sees the world around him and his own pain and feelings differently if not yet in full transparency.  He has been helped in this regard by that other remarkable character, Jim Casy, family friend and former preacher.  They reunite  very early in the movie, and move together through the story until Casy is killed by a goon squad attacking a California work camp.  At one point in the movie Tom recognizes his indebtedness to Casy:

“That Casy. He might have been a preacher but he seen things clear. He was like a lantern. He helped me to see things clear.”

Toward the end of the movie Tom attacks one of the goons who killed Casy and then flees; and now he knows they will be coming after him.  He has to leave the family in the middle of the night, and this is his final talk with his mother:

Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled…

Ma Joad: Oh, Tommy, they’d drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casy.

Tom Joad: They’d drag me anyways. Sooner or later they’d get me for one thing if not for another. Until then…

Ma Joad: Tommy, you’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.

Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…

Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.

Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom.

Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.

There’s a Christological feel to Tom’s emerging vision….”whatsoever you do to one of these little ones, you do to Me.”

But the person that Steinbeck definitely created as a “Christ-figure is Jim Casy…..his initials after all are J.C.!  And when the goons are about to kill him he tells them, “You fellas don’t know what you’re doin’” (And recall Rene Good’s last words: “I’m not mad at you, dude.”)  But Casy is a paradoxical and enigmatic stand-in for Christ—very easy not to see him that way.  In his recent past he was a preacher within a crazy, sick fundamentalist religiosity, and he was immersed in a totally distorted reality.  But at some point, and It’s hard to say if the social crisis was a catalyst for this, he begins a kind of inner and outer diagnostic journey, and you can see that it will lead him to a profound transformation until his murder cuts it short.  Here’s a sequence of quotes from Casy:

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say.”

“I gotta see them folks that’s gone out on the road. I got a feelin’ I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin’ can give ’em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain’t lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an’ sad? They gonna need help. They got to live before they can afford to die.”

“I ain’t gonna baptize. I’m gonna work in the fiel’s, in the green fiel’s, an’ I’m gonna be near to folks. I ain’t gonna try to teach ’em nothin’. I’m gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear ’em talk, gonna hear ’em sing.”

“Casy said gently, ‘Sure I got sins. Ever’body got sins. A sin is somepin you ain’t sure about. Them people that’s sure about ever’thing an’ ain’t got no sin—well, with that kind of a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I’d kick their ass right outa heaven! I couldn’ stand ’em!’”

“I ain’t sayin’ I’m like Jesus…But I got tired like Him, an’ I got mixed up like Him, an’ I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin’ stuff…Sometimes I’d pray like I always done. On’y I couldn’ figure what I was prayin’ to or for. There was the hills, an’ there was me, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that one thing was holy.”

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust

3. Let me start with a simple statement:  We are living in a very dark time.

Now the moment we say this we are immediately and implicitly called to two other statements:  1. Please clarify what this means.  2.  And what should we do about this?

Last month Rene Good, a mother of 3, was shot in the face and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.  A few days later I read an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter that really caught my attention.  It opens up the possibility of an authentic diagnosis of where we are as a people, and at least it points us in the right direction for what to do.  Here is a large segment of that editorial:

“There are moments in a nation’s life when the future does not arrive as a surprise. It announces itself slowly, unmistakably, through patterns we learn to recognize even as we hope we are wrong. When such a moment finally arrives, it feels less like shock than like confirmation: This is where we were headed.

We are living in one of those moments now.

Another life has been taken by the power of the state. The details of what happened in Minneapolis will be argued. ‘Process’ will be invoked. Investigations will promise clarity at some later date. We have learned this choreography well. What matters more than any single finding, however, is the broader realization that the ground beneath us has shifted — and that we are no longer sure who we are.

This is the question that presses upon us now, and it is not one that can be answered by courts, agencies or elections alone: Who have we become?

Not only as voters or citizens, but as a people. As communities. As moral actors living with one another in public space. What habits have we acquired that allow state violence to pass so quickly from outrage to explanation, from grief to acceptance? What has been dulled in us that once would have demanded pause, humility and restraint?

This is the question that presses upon us now, and it is not one that can be answered by courts, agencies or elections alone: Who have we become?

We have become efficient at absorbing what should disturb us….. This did not happen all at once. It happened through repetition. Through the steady expansion of fear as a governing logic. Through the quiet normalization of force as a solution rather than a failure. Through the constant suggestion that safety requires submission and that dissent is a luxury we can no longer afford.

In time, these messages do more than shape policy. They shape character.

From a Christian perspective, this is the heart of the crisis. The tradition we claim does not begin with the management of fear, but with the protection of human dignity. It does not teach that order justifies violence, or that power is vindicated by its ability to dominate. It teaches that every human life bears an inviolable worth that no authority may suspend for convenience or control.

When a society begins to treat lethal force as an ordinary instrument of governance, it has already surrendered something essential — not only justice, but imagination. It can no longer envision safety without coercion, or authority without threat. Violence becomes thinkable. Then acceptable. Then routine.

We keep saying: This is not who we are. But is that true anymore?

Many Americans now describe a feeling that is hard to name but impossible to ignore: estrangement. A sense of being out of place in one’s own country. Not because of disagreement or political loss, but because the moral language of the nation no longer sounds familiar.

It is as if our very souls have left us. Values once spoken aloud — restraint, accountability, the sanctity of life — now feel quaint, even suspect. Our vice president, who considers himself a committed Catholic of solid standing, calls the ICE shooting a tragedy of the victim’s own making.

That dislocation is not accidental. It is the predictable effect of a culture that treats conscience as an obstacle rather than a guide.

At moments like this, it is tempting to locate responsibility entirely ‘out there’ — in leaders, institutions and systems that deserve scrutiny and resistance. But that is only part of the truth. The deeper danger lies closer to home: in our growing belief that nothing we do can matter, that outrage is futile, that resistance is symbolic at best.

Authoritarianism thrives not only on force, but on resignation.

This is why the most urgent task before us is not simply political opposition, but moral recovery. We must relearn what it means to be a people capable of nonviolent resistance — not as a strategy, but as a way of being human together. Nonviolence insists that we remain morally awake even when power tries to numb us. It refuses the lie that cruelty is inevitable and that dignity is expendable.

Nonviolent resistance begins inwardly, with the refusal to let fear shape our vision. But it does not remain there. It takes public form — in witness, in solidarity, in bodies and voices present where silence is expected. It says, quietly and persistently, that there are lines we will not cross, even if the state does.

History offers no comfort to those who wait for perfect conditions before acting. Every meaningful movement toward justice has begun with people who were uncertain, divided, and afraid — but who chose presence over withdrawal and conscience over convenience…….  The problem before us is real, and it is exerting itself forcefully in public life. But the solution does not begin there. It begins in the recovery of belief — belief that conscience still matters, that community still matters, that what we do together can still shape the future.

A nation does not renew itself by force. It renews itself when enough people decide that moral exile is unacceptable — and that dignity, once reclaimed, must be defended in public.

We are, finally, at the crossroads — the one we all knew was coming long before Minneapolis.

What remains unknown is which direction we will take.”

This is good, very good.  And you can’t fault it for not going far enough; it is only an editorial of course.  But it misses something important by (understandingly) limiting itself to the Rene Good killing.  It says: “The problem before us is real, and it is exerting itself forcefully in public life.”  “The problem” is not only very real, but  it has been “before us” for a long, long time.  And where have we been all along, and who have we become in and through all this since…..?  It seems we have been at this crossroads many, many time and have done nothing or just shove  it under the historical rug.    But as even the editorial quietly hints, our diagnosis has to involve both the wide sweep of American history and a deeply personal journey into our own hearts.  From this “higher” vantage point the editorial calls for a response of nonviolent resistance to the darkness of our times.  Seems simple but it is extraordinarily challenging if you understand what it means.  This raises the whole issue far above the level of politics and economics—not that they are unimportant; they are very important.  But true nonviolent resistance seeks a transformed vision both of you and your “adversary,” and a transformed sense of our identity as a people.  In this sense true nonviolent resistance avoids the pitfalls of mistaking the symptoms for what really ails us.  Here on this ground the contemplative and the activist meet, and each contributes something absolutely essential to our common journey and vision.  

Since this is a critically important topic and there is much more that is needed to say, this reflection will continue in the next posting.  Here let us conclude this part with a quote from one of the master teachers of nonviolence in our era, Thomas Merton:

“We must be wary of ourselves when the worst that is in people becomes objectified in society,

approved, acclaimed and deified,

when hatred becomes patriotism and murder a holy duty,

when spying and delation are called love of truth and the stool pigeon is a public benefactor,

when the gnawing and prurient resentments of frustrated bureaucrats

become the conscience of the people and the gangster is enthroned in power,

then we must fear the voice of our own heart, even when it denounces them.

For are we not all tainted with the same poison?”

From “Emblems of a Season of Fury,” 1963

 

4. Julian of Norwich  

I would like to conclude this reflection by pondering briefly on this most remarkable person. Later this year we need to reflect on her at length….she is so amazing, and I am chagrined to see how I have neglected her.  

 Julian’s years were from about 1343 to 1416.  She seems to have lived a good part of her later adult life as a recluse attached to a town church.  What is important to our reflections here is that she is a profound exemplar of someone who has seen clear through the obscurity, the chaos, the pain of human misery in action and has come through this with a transformed vision that leaves one speechless.  

Julian’s teachings begin and end in joy;  she had a deep experiential realization that this was our origin, and this was our destiny.  Someone might think that she was simply a deluded religious fanatic, or at best a simple person blind to the “reality” of the world.  But she definitely knew the “dark side” of things; she lived in the middle of incredible suffering and instability.  Consider:  the Black Plague killed about 50% of Europe in those years, and her own town of Norwich suffered the same; the Hundred Years War caused enormous chaos and killed thousands; heretics were regularly burned at the stake, and as one commentator said, “Her cell was within smelling distance of her town’s stake”; economic depression was rampant, the Peasants Revolt, riots and unrest.   There is also good indication that Julian was a widow turned anchoress, that she had mothered children and lost both husband and children  during the Plague.   And she also alludes to the fact of some sort of personal illness  that afflicted her.  Certainly this was not a setting for an ordinary, cheerful optimism, and there is nothing ordinary about her!  

Some theologically trained scholars have said that she deserves to be honored as a “Doctor of the Church.”  Her teaching is profound, way beyond standard catechism statements, showing real intelligence with creativity and everyday insight into how people think.  Her “theology,” her spiritual writing and insights, comes from her experience and shows both amazing sophistication and comprehensiveness.  In her personal piety Julian focused on the Passion of Christ.  Modern Christians tend to avoid this in some ways….makes people feel a bit uncomfortable;  but for  medieval people in Europe it mostly became their main focus, beginning from about the time of St. Francis (recall the Stigmata) to especially the late medieval period.

Normally you would not think of Julian as a “Lenten figure,”….she is not crying out to us, “Repent,”….she does not sound like the Prophets, John the Baptist, or some of the saints.  What she brings to us is a transformed vision that transcends the very real limitations of her person, of her situation, of her times….and so also of ours.  Her vision encompasses all of creation:

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’  I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.”

And this:

“The Goodness that is Nature is God. He is the ground, He is the substance, He is the same thing that is Naturehood. And He is very Father and very Mother of Nature.”

But she peers into the darkness of human distortions as history unfolds and she is not afraid to question the Divine Work:

“Ah, good Lord, how could all things be well, because of the great harm which has come through sin to your creatures?” 

“…deeds are done which appear so evil to us and people suffer such terrible evils that it does not seem as though any good will ever come of them; and we consider this, sorrowing and grieving over it so that we cannot find peace in the blessed contemplation of God as we should do; and this is why: our reasoning powers are so blind now, so humble and so simple, that we cannot know the high, marvelous wisdom, the might and the goodness of the Holy Trinity. And this is what He means where He says, ‘You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well’, as if he said, ‘Pay attention to this now, faithfully and confidently, and at the end of time you will truly see it in the fullness of joy.’”

For many of us there is an understandable temptation to see our personal history and our collective history as a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”(Shakespeare’s Macbeth).  Not Julian.  She sees clearly the darkness; she does not say it is “not real.”  She knows intimately the reality of pain, suffering, human frailty.  But in all this she becomes an incredible beacon of divine light; she becomes the bearer of a transcendent divine gift, what some theologians have called the “eschatological secret”….but she is privy not to WHAT it is but simply that It Is.  

“AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.” 

“See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?”

“But Jesus, who in this Vision informed me of all that is necessary for me, answered and said: It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

“For this is the Great Deed that our Lord shall do, in which Deed He shall save His word and He shall make all well that is not well. How it shall be done there is no creature beneath Christ that knoweth it, nor shall know it till it is done.”  

“Do you want to know what your Lord meant? Know well that love was what he meant. Who showed you this? Love. What did he show? Love. Why did he show it to you? For Love. Hold fast to this and you will know and understand more of the same.”

Hints and traces of this eschatological secret can also be found in various Christian figures…. like Origin, Clement of Alexandria, Isaac the Syrian, Maximus the Confessor, etc.….even Merton and Karl Rahner could be included.  And for those of us who call ourselves Christians, this eschatological secret may be the whole point of turning/returning to a nonviolent life.

To be continued…..

Some Lenten homework:  Take a look at these two short clips on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE_Tl9ovDIo

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTHyAde49eg