Letter to an Experimenter with Truth

Dear Jane,

So the movie Gandhi touched and affected you to such an extent that you feel drawn to begin your own "experiment with truth." In your letter you ask, "Is there any Christian group participating in a Gandhi-like campaign against the arms race?" and you add, "I think I could devote my life to such an effort."

I'm enclosing a list of Christian communities engaged in nonviolent campaigns to rid the world of nuclear arms. Many of these people have been on the cutting edge of the peace issue for more than a decade. Their witness, writings, and lives have called many Christians, myself included, to deeper gospel commitment and courage. The debt we owe them is immeasurable.

When you visit these communities, however, go with an open and questioning heart. You owe it to yourself as part of your own experiment with truth to ask hard questions, to pursue the difficult, perhaps painful, answers.

Check first to see if masochism is the unspoken buzz word. Does the group use suffering, rather than love, to prove nonviolence? It's easy to spot: conversations will always bend toward civil disobedience and personal prison experiences. The value of any nonviolent action will be measured by the possible length of the jail sentence: the longer the term, the better the nonviolence. Whether the action communicates with the general public is secondary; the action is "serious," that is, "truthful," because "we could get six years."

Two years ago I read an interview with Jack Nelson that raised some disturbing questions for me. Nelson, while acknowledging the need for resistance and going to jail, added this qualifier: "I feel that in some instances, people are choosing the option of jail from a place of hardness of heart rather than a place of compassion.... They find it easier to survive in that atmosphere than they do in talking to their neighbors and in dealing with the discrepancy between where their neighbors are and the urgency they themselves feel."

His words rang true for me. It's easier and more glamorous for me to get arrested at the White House than to hold a house meeting on the Soviet threat in my Aunt Louise's living room.

While acceptance of suffering can be a proof of love, it can also demonstrate hardness of heart. Gandhi called it durgagraha, stubbornness, rather than satyagraha, truth force. Giving your all doesn't necessarily mean you're right. Witness the legions who plowed through hell for Hitler, the thousands who sacrificed themselves for Khomeini, the hundreds who died for Jim Jones. Look around to see if you can find a banner in the chapel, living room, or office that reads: "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3).

Second, you will know if the Christians love by the way they treat the so-called opponent. Gandhi was clear on this point: "[a satyagrahi] is never afraid of trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times, the satyagrahi is ready to trust him the twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of his creed."

Compare Gandhi's words with the following recounting of an interaction that took place while a group of resisters sat on the Pentagon lawn discussing the logistics of an action. A policeman on a motorcycle pulled up and the conversation immediately stopped. One of the group said to him testily, "If you want to join us, we'll give you ten seconds to take off your uniform." Another asked him sharply to leave. The group then gathered up their things and took off across a parking lot, with the explanation, "We don't talk in front of cops."

This distrust, and even disdain, for the supposed opponent seemed present at a trial for some resisters that I attended recently. I left the courtroom feeling great empathy for the judge who appeared to be struggling with personal sympathy for the defendants' position and the demands of the law. When the judge said, "I am agonizing over this case; it is the most difficult of my career," I believed him.

Yet to read an account of the proceedings in a movement newsletter made me wonder if I had been in the same courtroom - so negative, so smug and self-righteous was its interpretation of the judge's motives, words, and actions. He was not treated as a person, but as an "enemy." If this is an "experiment with truth," I am a stranger in my own home.

In contrast, a model "reconciler" was John Leary, a young friend in the peace movement who died unexpectedly a few months ago. Often John would go by himself to Draper Laboratories, a Cambridge nuclear weapons research facility, to distribute holy cards to employees, to "opponents." The 1980 Christmas leaflet written by John consisted of the familiar peace prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and a brief commentary concluding with this appeal:

We share this prayer with you in memory of Christ, the Prince of Peace. It has special meaning for us and we hope for you as well. Whatever disagreements we may have concerning the right path to peace, we know that it is a value and a dream you share with us. We hope this prayer will deepen our personal commitment to peace and help open ways for us to work together to eliminate all war, injustice and fear.

I think this is the spirit of reconciliation that Gandhi preached and lived.

Third, examine closely what actions and symbols are used by those witnessing. Actions and symbols should be so clear, simple, and truthful that the illiterate and the poor, as well as the educated and powerful, can grasp their meaning.

Keep Gandhi's "salt march" in mind - every peasant in India understood and could participate. One of my favorite examples of someone who has a witness that is simple and true is the fellow out in the Midwest who dances on top of a bomb site, crucifix in hand. His exorcism rite of the diabolical spirit of the bomb seems clear. Hammering on the nose cones of missiles in order to "beat swords into plowshares" also has strong symbolic possibilities. (We must be careful, though, not to fall into voodoo peacemaking, believing that repetition of a set ritual around a "temple of death," using prescribed costumes, chants, and symbols, will result in nuclear disarmament.)

But I am confused and bothered by the action of flinging blood on Pentagon pillars, pouring it on government files, splashing it on Trident submarines. Many nonviolent groups, many of my friends do this to....hmmmm, I'm not sure why they do it. And that's the problem.

Some protesters call blood pouring a baptism, a cleansing action; others see it as a staining with a symbol of guilt and shame; a few consider it "truth in packaging," an accurate labeling that the White House or missile base is a house of bloodshed. Among spectators it's even more ambiguous. I've heard it described as a liturgical act, an act of vandalism, the destruction of property, a sick cult rite. Is it disrespectful of the people with whom we hope to communicate to use a symbol whose meaning ranges from profound to obscure, to irritating, to obscene, to vaguely threatening, to terrifying?

During the movie Gandhi, I flinched and squirmed when he gave his first speech to the Indian National Congress Party. The following week I returned to the theater armed with a tape recorder. Perhaps every peacemaking strategy session should open with this quote from Gandhi's speech. "I know that what we say here means nothing to the masses," Gandhi told the movement heavies. "Here we make speeches for each other and those liberal English magazines that might grant us a few lines, but the people of India are untouched; their politics are confined to bread and salt." Substitute the words "perform symbolic actions" for "make speeches," and "radical peace magazines" for "liberal English magazines," and you could have a fair assessment of the current scene.

Finally, and most important, try to discern whether prayer is the bedrock of the nonviolent community. "The only time our community prays is before we commit a protest action," a visitor to Erie told us recently. The only time?

That could be an exercise in self-deception, using prayer to convince ourselves that what we do is inspired by God. Prayer should be regular and constant, always open to God's will.

If there is a flaw in the movie about Gandhi, it is that it missed the depth of the spirituality on which his nonviolence was built. Ashram community prayer was so integral to the daily schedule that Gandhi could say with authenticity, "My greatest weapon is mute prayer." And nonviolent communities should reflect that testament of faith.

Please let me know how your search for a Gandhi-like community is progressing. Don't expect perfection, but do expect an honest search for truth.

Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, was coordinator of the Pax Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, and national coordinator of Benedictines for Peace when this article appeared. Juli Loesch, who also contributed ideas to this letter, was coordinator of Prolifers for Survival when this article appeared.