Mark Johnson's blog

I gave this talk last Saturday at the Leadership Forum at Silver Bay.

It is a bit presumptuous to arrive on Saturday morning to offer reflections on the life of a community that has been intimately engaged with this year’s work for three days already. I am grateful for this privilege and the access that a 25 year history with the Forum affords me. I would like to open with a poem by Mary Oliver.*

Some of you know that I am currently in the middle of a radiation regimen for prostate cancer, sharing the fate of an estimated one third of my fellow males in our lifetime. No great consequence; not something one would willingly choose, but hardly worthy of the frame of fate; but how much of our lives do we live, willingly chosen? Few of us are so brave and free. But few of us would label this life as fated either. For there are choices we made and those we did not make. Letting go of the choices we didn’t make is part of growing up (growing old?). Letting go.

The nexus of the coming summer Olympic Games and the weather catastrophes of recent months in China and Burma have opened a new window of curiosity and interest to the issues of Buddhism, Democracy, Globalization, Compassion and Spiritual leadership. Few are bettered positioned to provide insights than Iyer who met the Dalai Lama through visits with his father when a child and whose curiosity about the “East” has sustained him as a writer for decades, include frequent circlings through the presence of the Dalai Lama and Dharmasala.

I am particularly impressed with the passion, dedication, and capacity of so many FOR members to invest themselves in research and publication at their own expense. I look forward to reviewing a number of such pieces over the summer.

As someone personally entering treatment for cancer (prostate, early detection, virtually fully curable), I was perhaps more readily drawn to Mott’s metaphor than I would have been otherwise. But our culture and times, between the aging of boomers, the advertising empire of pharmaceutical companies, and the political issues of health care, mean we are all familiar with much medical terminology, so the language works to make Mott’s case.

This is a voice from the beyond; a collection of speeches, stories, sketches of Vonnegut’s on war and peace, never before published. That Vonnegut survived the fire bombing of Dresden, but was required to clean up after it, as a prisoner of war certainly offers a contextual frame for his contributions to literature and his lifelong, self-proclaimed “disgust with civilization.” With good reason, and much evidence to support his case.

Russell Banks, a novelist I have long admired and enjoyed reading, makes a bold and stunning entry into the field of political analysis and progressive prophetic voice with Dreaming Up America. The text is a series of commentary on classic American films, collected for a French audience initially, and now issued as a collection of essays rather than a script. Two extended quotations may whet your appetite enough to acquire a copy for yourself, read, and pass on to others.

I generally do not start the day with a newspaper in my hand, but travels and hotels can occasion such moments. Thursday’s USA Today headline was as bold as the banner on the aircraft carrier that announced, prematurely, closure to the Iraq invasions in 2003. The Iraqi government will buy $3 billion of US weapons and equipment: Humvees, 40,000 – 60,000 M-16 rifles, aircraft and helicopters. Half of the purchases have already been made. “Give it another five, six or eight years and you could be talking about deals that put the Saudis to shame,” one U.S. official was quoted as saying. Enough said.

Cindy Sheehan, now a candidate for Congress, was in Charlottesville during my recent visit and I was invited to extend a welcome to the community on behalf of FOR at an event where she was speaking. David Swanson, member of Charlottesville’s Center for Peace and Justice had invited Sheehan to join him at last weekend’s “Building a New World Conference” at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Cindy Sheehan for speaking truth to power, calling in to question the commitment of political leadership to their public promises to act to bring the occupation of Iraq to an end and to stop the killing. She has stepped in to the space of citizen leadership herself by running for public office.

A small group of FOR members in Charlottesville, Virginia, are active in a variety of areas from interfaith dialogue to issues advocacy. Judy Sayed has helped convene a dialogue group of Christian and Moslem women who have been meeting for more than a year. Bill Anderson, a long-time National Council member, stays involved through the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice that will celebrate its 25th anniversary this June. Their annual report is three pages of small type, single spaced recounting of activities over the past year: lectures, films, salons, vigils and demonstrations, picnics and art’s festivals, newsletter and website, tabling and simple community presence.

Congratulations on 25 years of Presence for Peace.

Poetry shouldn't finally have to come to this, though the Old Testament prophets, the chronicler of the Bhagavad Gita, the Psalmists, all form a line as long as the parade of saints who have lost their lives to violence and who, when they finally come singing, sing a song we had best listen to at last. It was Walter Brueggemann, among others, who argued (in Finally Comes the Poet), that the voices that best bring us to attention to the issues of the day may be the poets. Occasionally allow me to lift up a poem which will direct you to the poets and their most recent book of poems. Have you noticed how, with increasing frequency, poets are singing such alarms?

During this Earth Day week we offer the following contribution to creating a culture of appreciation and commitment to an alternative future; one that respects life and community in important and universal ways. We invite you to begin each day as an individual or family in repeating together this pledge. It was written by two individuals in Champaign/Urbana Illinois and is to be shared freely and widely as you will.