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Keynote Speech Delivered to first northern Nevada “Peace Summit,” 19 March 2005 “Earth-Birthing: The Hopes of Our Children to All Generations”Please stop me if you’ve heard this speech before. Seriously, I don’t want to be spieling the same old same old. The world cannot afford or abide it, nor can we. Thank you for inviting me to attempt this impossible part of the impossible thing we are all here to do. I, John Auer and a Half, am so rarely entrusted with 30 minutes to speak! I took the title from the quote on the leaflet by Dwight D. Eisenhower – “The world in arms is spending the hopes of its children.” Eisenhower is the first president I was fully conscious of. I remember at age 8 or 9 making a scrapbook of magazine/newspaper clippings about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. My worldview even at that time could not accept that we as a people, through our government, were going to kill, to execute, these persons if we had any choice not to do it. It horrified me that we knew and set the exact time and place and manner of their deaths, then expected ourselves to go on with our everyday lives until it happened. My parents say they helped me write a letter to the president, so he would know and would stop it. I am told that shortly after that mission failed, I appealed to Oral Roberts instead, whose evangelism I’d heard on the radio. He sent me a nice little cross to wear. I told my Uncle Bob that meant I was a Christian! He told me that was a very nice thing to be. Don’t believe it. It’s not a nice thing to be. It’s a pain in the ass, (or a pain on the ass, as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday!) -- in our own and in a few others’ asses as well. It’s not a nice thing to be a person of any organized, disciplined hope for this world to embrace its fragile createdness, its giftedness, as a place of joy and justice, life and love, peace and plenty, for all people. It’s a call to constant sorrow, constant struggle against all the odds of both state and church, political and religious faith, however we name them, whatever forms they take. I never got over my horror at state-sanctioned killing, organized willful violence of any kind. I cannot help but think of the children around the world today growing up against all the odds of violence, disaster and devastation of every kind, in their lives. It makes me more certain than ever that we are all in this together, parts of one body, as political as it is personal, -- congregational and communal, national and international, global and universal. We are here because we see “a world in arms” in both senses of the image, -- not only the armed camp of a world awash in weapons of every description, but also the tender new offering of a fed and nurtured world we know can different in every respect from the old one we now take for granted. The rallying words I offer for this day come from Indian artist and activist Arundhati Roy, “Another world is not only possible, she is on the way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” We are here to hear another world breathing, and to draw from the hope of her life with each of our own tiny breaths. Let us invoke a few ancestors, name a few unlikely saints, martyrs, and heroes. In this season we are aware how many have given their lives to labor pains for a new world. Every year begins with the anniversary of the nonviolent messiah Gandhi’s death. In February it was 40 years since the murder of Malcolm X, who along with Muhammad Ali helped us see Islam is world-wide and part of us. This month the deaths of Cesar Chavez and of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of the Americas, shot down saying mass 25 years ago Monday of next week. Among the words he left us – “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.” In the months before Romero had pleaded with our government to stop funding and training violence against the Americas, and with Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their arms against their own people. A month ago Sr. Dorothy Stang was gunned down with scripture in hand for her solidarity with protectors of the Brazilian rainforest. Next month is Dr. King’s death. And in the midst of it all we lost our own brother, tireless advocate for worker justice, Tom Stoneburner, to the struggle. Let’s do a few “Presentes!” to remind us of who and of whose we are – If you will repeat the name after me, then say “Presente!” to their continuing promise and presence, passion and power among us. After my names, feel free to add some more. Mohandas K. Gandhi! Jeannette Rankin! Abraham Heschel! Malcolm X! Dorothy Day! Harvey Milk! Cesar Chavez! Sarah Winnemucca! Martin Luther King, Jr.! Archbishop Romero! Sister Dorothy Stang! Tom Stoneburner! And let us acknowledge elders in the struggle as well – The Dali Lama! Nelson Mandela! Delores Huerta! Others? Living or dead? Who stand with us? I ask us to lift up our brother Fr. Chuck Durante today as he does even now a memorial service for a young person tragically killed. Ruth Barker who would be here but for emergency surgery. And those in witness this weekend at Nevada Test Site, including three United Methodist bishops -- one Latin-American, one African-American, one European-American, and all three women! “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Artist/activist Ossie Davis just died. March 27, 2003, a week after our invasion of Iraq, Ossie Davis spoke at Riverside Church in New York City, paying tribute to Dr. King and the passionate speech he gave in that place the year before his own death. Dr. King, at much personal and political cost, insisted that the moral and mental, as well as the spiritual, health of this nation depended upon ending the war in Vietnam and embracing the struggles for human rights and economic justice here and everywhere in this old world. I quote Ossie Davis at length –
Here’s how Ossie Davis concludes, calling us in this time, perhaps, to count the costs of our own commitments and to countenance the choice of our own “commanders in chief,” our own ancestors, saints, martyrs, and heroes –
We know we are up against overwhelming odds of ignorance and indifference, of apathy and apoplexy, that we would even suggest there is anything deeply troubled to this old world in which so few (relative to the world’s peoples) have invested so much. We are up against as well what scripture calls those “powers and principalities,” those fearers of the new world beyond mere flesh and blood, who conspire in high places for domination and control, -- of illusions and ideologies, of images and institutions. We can see hints of that in the passing of George Kennan, intellectual architect of “containment” as a way of expressing artfully the essential division, and conquest, of the world’s peoples into “have-nots” and “haves,” “terrorists” (nee “communists”) and “free,” “evil” and “good,” “unsaved” and “saved.” And in the transparent if not cynical desperation of recent appointments to shore up what vested interests intend to be or to become docile instruments of the empirical will – Director of National Intelligence (Excuse me?), Ambassador to the United Nations, President of the World Bank, and Undersecretary of State for Public Democracy (Excuse me again?). To me these matters seem far beyond what the dominant system defines as “democratic” choices between millionaire and preselected or incumbent candidates for election, or the ever-established and codependent parties they represent. There is a depth to these matters where superficial distractions around so-called “moral values” in “red states” and “blue states,” all states nonetheless, simply cannot reach. It will take an enduring minority of what Dr. King playfully calls “the creatively maladjusted” of us to raise the questions needed in such ways as may kindle imaginations, even literally as “images in nations,” – in what and whose image do we want this and other nations to be? It is idiomatic: our position gives us our perspective in life. What we see, what we value in life, depends upon where we are standing, who we are standing with! We have to fear that what is taken so much for granted as “the American way of life” and billed and sold and imposed around the world as second-comings of “freedom” and “democracy” becomes in the eyes of the poor, the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples, but another in the long grim line of empires who export a worldview of exception, exclusion, and exploitation. Our nation, the European nations, the nations of the global north, have been feasting forever off the resources of others. We have nationalized and globalized the old adage, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and the Africans had the land. When the missionaries left, the Africans had the Bible and the missionaries had the land.” Only today we pretend one “Constitution” fits all -- when that “one” began by terming a slave three-fifths of a person and denying a woman’s vote, not to mention its biases toward the landed and the wealthy. Over against such temptations to exception, exclusion, and exploitation, it seems to me we are called to repent, to repair (as in “reparations”), and to reposition ourselves in such ways as to stand with the poor – by whom we mean as well the very young and the very old, the very sick and the very weak, often the immigrant and the imprisoned, and those who sleep on the ground -- of this community, of this nation, and of this world. Again, it is axiomatic that before we are apt to discern the true “good” we could be doing, we have got to desist from the clear “harm” we are doing already. We have got to say “no” to belonging and being defined by a very small, select portion of the world’s people before we can learn to say “yes” to the rest of the world. Repent, repair, reposition. The whole world is ready and waiting for us! For an unrepentant idealist formed in the sixties, I am glad to recall such resilient rallying cries as “Power to the People!” “The Whole World Is Watching!” “Bring the War Home!” “Make Love, Not War!” Does any of those sentiments seem any the less world-urgent and -applicable now? Is Al Hesson here? Retired Navy veteran, public conscience to Reno City Council, and an indigenous resource to a broadly-based movement for peace and justice here. As part a recent testimony, Al reminds us the war will come home, one way or another: “Look at the tender ages of these dead service-people, half being ages 18 to 22. As a parent you have to witness your son’s buddies and their wives pushing their kids in a carriage, and that’s the grandkid you’ll never have. For those parents of the maimed, what does it feel like to shake the hand of your son [or daughter] except for the fact that it’s gone and you can’t shake a stub . . . The son you taught and want to go hunting with, but his life’s attachment is a mechanized wheelchair because he has no legs, and his wheelchair is useless in the vast wilderness, the scene where you taught him to hunt.” I think Al would say to us this day, the war is not just coming home. The war is home already. And we, our children to all generations, are going to pay for it by the billions -- again, and again, and again. Al, among others I hope are here today, can help us few “usual suspects” in the movement reach out to all the communities of Reno/Sparks, no matter what parts of the issues we face. We are such a young species compared with so many others. Creation has been in the making for billions of years. We “two-leggeds” have been making it pay for past few hundred thousand. We are such a young nation compared with so many others. We have so much growing-up to do. One of our national slogans is “E pluribus unum.” Out of many comes one. I am always suspicious of that. I think someone will try to decide who the “one” is in the end. I trust “E unum pluribus!” Out of one, one source, one origin, come so many -- and still counting! In fact, when the UN was founded, there were about 50 member nations. How many today? 192 – and counting! Life is not done with us yet! And we are such a young liberation movement within this nation. I know what an endless journey it has been for me personally to acknowledge that I am of but one species among so many, one color among so many, one language, one class, one creed among so many -- even one gender, one sexuality among more than we ever dreamed of! I am trying to be a lover of diversity – Somebody must love differences, they made so many of them! – but with respect for identity. A lover of complexity but with respect for integrity. I am trying to see life, our lives, and our life together, in the words of an old friend, not so much as a problem to solve, an answer to find, but as a mystery to embrace, a question to honor. My hope for us today is not only that we will choose networks, ideas, strategies, actions and reflections, but also that we will choose worlds, choose futures, choose lifestyles of nonviolence in every last part of life, and choose our children to all generations to be our “commanders in chief!” I hope we will not only love and serve one another but also actually come like and enjoy one another as well! I hope we all learn to travel more lightly, more playfully, more surprisingly on this journey together. I love being part of the community that recognized and celebrated and tried to support the gifts and callings of Tom Stoneburner. I love being part of the community that helped birth the awesome feminist/ suffragist/activist/pacifist drama “A Single Woman!” I hope we will take the arts to the streets, and bring the streets to the arts. I hope each one of us claims to be, artist and activist, poet and prophet, mystic and mover among us. Do we know that the word “heart” is a “whatchmicallit” for the word “earth?” They’re made up of the same letters? We’ve got to be the heart of the earth for the sake of our children. And the heart is the source of courage, of encouragement to us in times of doubt, defeat, depression, and despair. Cornel West calls upon us to be a “prophetic moral minority of all colors who muster” at least three kinds of courage: “the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances,” he warns, “we will be stepping out on nothing, hoping to land on something.” Stepping out on nothing, hoping to land on something. One thing I miss from our time in Marin County is the huge trees which are only able to stand so well for so long because their roots become all interconnected and interlocked with one another. And when one of them finally falls, it is not long before new shoots of new trees burst forth from the fallen trunks. And at Muir Woods the rangers tell volunteers, when a tree falls across the path we have made, we do not move the tree. What do we do? We move the path. We move the path. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Listen! And so be it.
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