FOUR DECADES AGO, when I was a young editor at Sojourners, Daniel Berrigan wrote a poem for a special edition of the magazine. The note accompanying it read: “Here’s the poem—my first on a word processor. Seems a bit jumbled. Might have got a food processor by mistake.”
Berrigan has been described often as poet, prophet, and priest. The note reveals another alliterative trio that marked his life: humor, humility, and hospitality. Though I never saw him use a food processor, over the years I enjoyed several delectable dinners he whipped up in his apartment in New York City and his cottage on Block Island, accompanied by his droll wit. Berrigan was engaged in an unflinching, lifelong facedown with the world—observing its worst inhumanities and fully understanding its unlimited capacities for destruction—but he also knew how to be tickled by joy.
Bill Wylie-Kellermann is among those in Berrigan’s close circle who feasted regularly at his table, drawing sustenance from the food, lively conversation, and prophetic insights. Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection (Cascade Books) is Wylie-Kellermann’s moving tribute to the man who was first his professor, then his mentor, and ultimately his beloved friend. It is a treasure trove of poems and letters, sermons and speeches, reflections and court testimonies, even a seminary paper—a patchwork sewn into a beautiful whole.
Any book about Berrigan must necessarily address the realities that seared his soul: nuclear weapons, racism and poverty, South Africa’s apartheid and Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the Vietnam War and its many successors. The gift of Wylie-Kellermann’s book is that it weaves among these the touches of humanity and humor that made Berrigan such good company. My favorite is a series of questions from one of Berrigan's early “final exams” as a Jesuit professor, a whimsical jab at academia. A brief sampling:
How many different ways can you spell Schillibex?
Reflect on the Seven Deadly Sins. Describe how you have integrated these in your life.
If the headquarters of the western church are at Geneva and Rome, where are its hind quarters? Illustrate.
Wylie-Kellermann has arranged Celebrant’s Flame to reflect the wholeness of Berrigan’s life, each chapter devoted to one of the gifts he offered to the world. These embrace the familiar, above-mentioned identities of poet, prophet, and priest—and of course, prisoner. During one of many stretches of incarceration for acts of conscience, Berrigan wrote that he had been “appointed Laureat[e] in Residence at the Imperial Madhouse, Woebegone Acres.” And he once commented to his friend and biographer Jim Forest, “I should have gone to prison sooner. It’s a pressure cooker of poetry.”
The book also delves into his more personal roles as friend and sibling, particularly the mutually inspiring relationship between him and younger brother Philip. It includes lesser-known aspects of his life as well, such as his faithful, compassionate presence with people suffering from AIDS and terminal cancer (see the May 2021 issue of Sojourners). And it explores what Wylie-Kellermann calls Berrigan’s discipline as a “biblical contemplative,” meditating “with one eye on the book and the other on the world.”
Berrigan’s place of retreat was the Block Island cottage, perched on a bluff high above crashing waves off the coast of Rhode Island. It sat at the edge of the property of his dear friend, lawyer-theologian William Stringfellow. After being convicted for burning draft files in Catonsville, Md., in 1968, Berrigan slipped away under the noses of federal marshals who were poised to take him to jail—making his getaway during a public festival inside an 8-foot-tall puppet of one of Jesus’ disciples. For five months he eluded the authorities, earning a place on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, until he was picked up on the island by FBI agents posing as birdwatchers.
Berrigan was generous with the cottage, making it available to family members and friends, as well as people just released from prison or suffering from illness. I happened to be there when Hurricane Bob hit Block Island in August 1991. Salt spray lashed the shore, and pelting rain washed away a piece of the bluff. I feared the gales would break the windows—or blow the little cottage into the sea. It seemed fitting that this was Berrigan’s refuge: a place of rest, prayer, and inspiration, sitting on the edge of the world, taking whatever blasts came its way. Like Berrigan, steadfast. And humble.
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Sprinkled throughout Celebrant’s Flame are letters and thoughts from some of the multitude of people whose lives he changed. A particularly lovely touch is that the book is framed by reflections from Frida Berrigan, a beloved niece, and Kateri Boucher, a young Catholic Worker who never met Berrigan. Their eloquent tributes remind us that the legacy of Berrigan endures. “How many people and communities around the world continue to feel the ripples of his presence?” writes Boucher. “I surely feel his here today, still calling me and us to meet the moment we are in, uncertain as it is, and root ourselves firmly and joyfully in the promise of resurrection.”
One of the most enjoyable assignments during my time at Sojourners was editing Berrigan’s journal from his brief acting career on the set of The Mission. The 1986 film depicts a South American Jesuit mission’s resistance to the enslavement of the indigenous Guaraní people in the mid-18th century. Berrigan spoke just one word in that movie: “No.”
That “no” began many years before when he burned draft files in Catonsville. He followed that liturgy of resistance with decades of saying no to injustice, to despair, to war, to death. But even more moving to me is what he said yes to. Against all odds, Daniel Berrigan spent a lifetime saying yes to community and compassion, to peace and possibility. Celebrant’s Flame is a bold and compelling invitation for us to do the same.
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Joyce Hollyday is a pastor, activist, and author. Her most recent book, Pillar of Fire, is a historical novel that celebrates the extraordinary mystics known as Beguines.
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