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True Forgiveness

Forgiveness takes forms as diverse and unpredictable as human beings themselves. For some it comes naturally and spontaneously, while others may find that it has to be cultivated with effort in the hard soil of their nature.

A Partial Inventory Of The Great Mistakes I Have Made

Burning the teakettle to a crisp because the whistle was broken and I forgot I’d turned it on.

Going The Distance

Rubin Carter’s Long Journey From Convict To Crusader

When you spend a great deal of time in darkness, in solitary confinement, where everything blends into one, if you’re fortunate, you’ll begin to see things more vividly than you’ve ever seen them before. It may take days, weeks, months, years, but you’ll begin to see things as they really are. You’ll begin to see yourself as you have never seen yourself before. Because when you can’t see outside, you can only look inside.

Bible Hockey

Jail seems like a metaphor for the human condition: we all have life without the possibility of parole. And, as in life, some people serve their sentences in nicer places than others. Foxtrot — or “the hole,” as the inmates call it — is the worst place to be. It is like the underworld, a frightening and remote region where everything is cement or metal.

Acts Of Faith

Philip Berrigan On The Necessity Of Nonviolent Resistance

Faith is a major component of Plowshares: You have to believe that hellish weapons are not the will of God. You have to believe that, with God’s help, you can get to these weapons. And, finally, you have to believe that you can do both symbolic and real damage to them. “Hellish weapons” means battleships that deploy Tomahawk cruise missiles; it means Aegis destroyers, B-52 bombers, and B-1 bombers; it means the whole array of nuclear first-strike weapons.

Dispatches From The Lamb’s War

Vietnam, we discovered, was not only a war on people. It was a war on the very meaning of human communication. Manipulating language was just one more means to achieve their nefarious end. Words were merely rhetorical devices, as expendable as eighteen-year-old American boys, as destructible as the Vietnamese people.

Among The Lillies

At the ranch we used to pray that God would break us so we would become humbled, willing to do his bidding. I didn’t realize then that prayers weren’t necessary to hurry this request along: life will break the proudest heart, bring us to unrecognizable versions of ourselves, like it or not.