by Suzanne Belote Shanley

The poet Wendell Berry urges fellow poets to "live a three dimensional life." "Silence," writes Berry, allows the poet to "make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came." ("How To Be A Poet"–to remind myself"). For we poets and non-poets alike, disengagement from the grim first-dimensional realities all around us and deciphering means for accessing other levels of consciousness, is a valid artistic and spiritual search in the midst of our current darkness and depravity. Otherwise, how can the human psyche integrate news of daily decapitations, kidnappings, mayhem and mutilation unabated in Iraq?

It is no surprise that we Americans, like post-traumatic stress disorder veterans in search of medication to ease the pain of war, dull our senses in flight from its grotesqueries by staggering from one poll to another, searching for a candidate who will deliver us from fear, guilt, and confusion.

We are addicted to lots of things in this country, but fear is certainly among the most existential. The result is that our minds, bodies, souls–shut down, freeze out–the endless bad news. We seek comfort in denial rather than experience the dread, a spiritually and psychologically healthier response.

George Bush, the archetypal one-dimensional man, a prototypic purveyor of denial for public consumption, takes lying to a high art, thereby tightening the grip of dread and death around the world. The crucifixion of the Iraqi people, impossible to deny, is nevertheless denied, with the resulting descent into the quicksand of dread by those of us in America even awake enough to be depressed.

Nevertheless, the dirge of denial plays on, drowning out a direct confrontation with the reasons for our despair–our complicity in the horror we flee. Facing dread, writes Thomas Merton, offers a chance to "repudiate the idolatry of devout ideas," those spun daily from pulpits across the land. Case in point is the American Catholic Bishops whom Merton might depict as fixated on "infallible ritual against every risk and every demand of dialogue with human need and desperation." While keeping a scandalous silence over the blood-letting in Iraq, some bishops have explicitly endorsed the candidacy of George Bush. Others have turned withholding Communion from pro-choice candidates their Bush endorsement. At a "Catholic Outreach" rally on the closing day of the Republican National Convention, "retired Bishop Rene Gracida of Corpus Christi Texas, offered the benediction" reports Joe Feurerherd of The National Catholic Reporter (9/17/04): "Help them," Bishop Rene Gracida asked God, "to achieve the election of George W. Bush as president of this great nation."

In recent months, the bishops have been splitting hairs over details of cup washing, kiss of peace etiquette, and bowing before receiving. Add to this, bland and irrelevant homilies on the parish level, with virtually no mention of war, except, prayers for "our troops" and the "idolatry of denial," begins to have grave implications for our Catholic faith.

Jesus is banished from weighty matters of war and peace, while congregants, complicit in their silence, fail to challenge their pastor’s failure to present Christian teachings on war. The "pacification" of Iraqi towns like Fallujah, by dropping 500 pound bombs on so-called "insurgent hide-outs" inflicting death on civilians, including children, remains unaddressed. "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain starkly portrays this situation–the abdication of conscience by the rank and file faithful–in their prayers for victory, or in our case, "support our troops". If we plunged into the deeper dimension of our prayer, we would recognize, says Twain, what we are asking God: "Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shouts of their wounded, writhing in pain. Help us to lay waste their humble homes with our bombs. Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief."

New York Times Reporter Neela Banerjee bluntly describes the aftermath of an insurgent attack in Iraq: "The hospitals of Yarmonk and Al Karama are tattooed with blood,"( NY Times 1/19/04) Trapped in fear, how do we respond? How will we ever wash the blood from our hands, except to crawl out of the ditch of denial and head for the nearest ritual of repentance? Such a cleansing ceremony was held in our town of Ware and other towns along the pilgrimage route by the Veterans for Peace, Wally Nelson Chapter of Western Massachusetts, led by Eric Wasileski, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s ‘98 bombing of Iraq. The veterans and walkers, en route to the Democratic National Convention, symbolically washed the bloodied American flag in the cities and towns they visited.
The inferno of war is captured in headlines from Najaf, Fallujah, Baghdad, where Iraqis bear the brunt of American barbarity. With over 1,000 American military deaths in the murderous mix, we receive second and third hand accounts of the maiming and disfigurement of countless thousands of the wounded on all sides. No words will convey the real repulsive enormity of such carnage, yet we must try to approximate language to convey the true insanity of war as sanitized and euphemized for public consumption.

How do we communicate all of this pain–personal and societal–that we try so desperately to hide? Some of us may try to avoid at all costs mention of the "war" word with the "d" words–dread, death, depression–absolutely forbidden. Yet, our psychological health requires that we uncover the reality of what we feel in response to the images we are allowed to see. If the full reality of the atrocities we as a country have committed does not enter into our collective consciousness, then we are doomed citizens, following blindly an emperor with no clothes, in an empire bathed in blood.

We are called by Christ, at a devastating cost, to live on another plane, that of self-knowledge, recovery from our addiction to self-deception. Jesus is all about truth-telling and truthful living. He wept, showed compassion, consorted with thieves and murderers, yet this does not, in any ultimate way, seem to matter. "They did not understand." (Luke:9:45) Jesus presses us towards deeper dimensions, to the landscape of eternity, not empire, when he asks: "What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his/her very self? " (Luke9:25)
Instead of choosing repentance and self-knowledge over occupation and domination, we Christians too often seem ashamed, says Jesus, "of me and of my words." (Luke 9:26). Alliances of shame have emerged between evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, heralding the "Warrior Jesus". Armageddon is near, warns this coalition of the deceived and "the gentle, pacifist Jesus of the Crucifixion is sharing the spotlight with a more muscular warrior Jesus of the Second Coming, the Lamb making the way for the Lion." (NY Times–4/4/04) As the American Christian empire implodes, even the nature of God is blasphemed.

We can refuse to live such lies, says American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, in her book When Things Fall Apart: "Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing," which comes "from letting there be room for all of this to happen, room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy." Chodron suggests that the Buddhist practice of Tonglen "awakens our compassion and introduces us to a far bigger view of reality," broadening our one-dimensional thinking. By breathing in and out, "we can use our personal suffering as a path to compassion for all beings." We must first acknowledge the suffering we impose on ourselves and others by our action and inaction. With such recognition comes awareness of the societal dimensions of the epidemic of dread and addiction to violence.

Arriving at a place where such soul work can begin means making our minds so like "still water that beings gather about us that they may see it." (William Butler Yeats). Do people with whom we disagree about the war gather about us because of our stillness, our openness to their concerns? Or do we peacemakers, by succumbing to anxiety and self-righteousness, send those in turmoil and conflict, running away from our agitation and judgment.

Jesus is a "still water" Presence, his mindful attention to the moment, to the transcendent, drew people to him. "Everyone was full of admiration for all he did." (Luke 9:44) Jesus’ message electrified an occupied people who responded by wanting what he had. Yeats suggests that our attraction to "still water" people like Christ, is because they mirror our "own image," and allow us to "live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even fiercer life because of our quiet."

Attaining such peace is painstaking work. Who wants to sit alone in a room, breathing in and out, when demons lurk, and our thoughts torment us? Isn’t this just another form of "idolatry of devout ideas"? This tension between action and contemplation is an age-old spiritual anguish which is fundamental to the nature of our witness.

Certainly, to live on the Jesus plane requires a fierce discipline beyond the media anesthetizing of daily death tolls minutes before or after the latest political sound-bites. Acquiring Buddha or Christ-like hearts when we are revolted and riveted by the bombings in Baghdad requires an often elusive spiritual discipline.

What would happen if, practicing Tonglen, we allowed Neela Banjeree’a portrait of atrocity to penetrate our psyches? "Those who could walk roamed about, crudely bandaged and dazed. Families raced in looking for a face they could still recognize. Police officers loaded the dead, bundled in plaid hospital blankets, into the beds of their white pick-up trucks to take to the morgue and raged against how routine such tasks had become over the last few months."

What should we feel? Shock, grief, paralysis, or sad resignation to what some might see as the inevitable by-product of protecting our security, theirs–unleashing reciprocal brutality to "smoke out" insurgents, to "win the peace". With laser precision, Banjaree uncovers the obscene lie of justified violence.

What happens when we sit with these words? Will our despair transmit more toxic energy to the planet or will it open in us a Christ heart of anguish, drawing us to the suffering victims?" Whosoever does not bear his/her own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:27)

As much as we might not want to admit this–fear, anger and action without contemplation, are more familiar zones than silence, stillness, prayer. "Sit down. Be quiet." Our first dimensional instinct cries out: "There’s too much to do. Sitting down, being quiet in the midst of carnage, makes a mockery human misery." Yeats tells us, nonetheless, that we can live a "fiercer life because of our quiet." Disciplined stillness transforms our negativity to equanimity, a least opens up that possibility.

Will our head-pounding, stomach churning lament over the human condition and our propensity for war be eased by silence, leading us to a creative space where poets and non-poets alike, begin to construct a poem of peace with their lives? "A feeling towards it,/dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have/until we begin to utter its metaphors,/learning them as we speak." (Levertov, "Making Peace")

Although not a panacea for our psychological angst, silence may momentarily lift us out of dread and anoint us with the gift of creative dissonance. We may learn to live with our anger productively, imaginatively, through the discipline of quiet, so as "not disturb/the silence form which it came?" (Berry). We may then proceed, to find "a line of peace" writes Denise Levertov, "if we restructured the sentence our lives are making."

Peacemaking is an active restructuring of our lives, built on the interior work of contemplation. Neither provides an easy exit from despair: "There will never be that stillness/within the pulse of flesh, /in the dust of being, where we trudge, /turning our hungry gaze this way and that." ( Levertov; "Variation and Reflection on a Theme by Rilke"). Total stillness, outside of death is an illusion, but finding God in the midst of our deepest misery may bring consolation that we are protected by a mysterious life-force, allowing us to move forward in courage, out of the deepest level of our being.

Levertov suggests "In California During the Gulf War," that we must weigh in "on that different fulcrum, peace, a presence" which comes, in part, from nature and "certain airy white blossoms," which both irritate and annoy her "like joyful guests not aware of the year’s events and the sackcloth others were wearing." No cheap, risk-free bliss-outs in the midst of a funeral. No joyful guests with airy chatter and banal talk, or nature as another drug to dull the pain. Resentment is human, a consequence of our diligence in facing dread. Silence, meditation, Tonglen, may lead us to a multi-dimensional life, but not one free of contradiction or emotional devastation.

A group of women, including friends Jeanne Gallo, Carrie Schuchardt, and Pat Ferrone, donned sackcloth in he midst of the "airy chatter" of the Democratic National Convention, their black robes signifying "Women Weeping." Their silent funeral procession, highlighted the devastation of war, as they trailed their sorrow through the streets of Boston with wounded and dying children represented by tiny white cloth figures they cradled. Creating their own "energy field more intense than war" (Levertov) beyond meaningless verbal constructs like "pre-emption," they became a witness to the savagery of war–children–scarred, limbless, lifeless.

We took our mourning and outrage to the the Republican National Convention, joining with the illegal "Poor Peoples’ March"– "And Still We Rise". Led by the poor, homeless, victims of Aids and other disenfranchised of New York, throngs of thousands, loudly proclaimed "NO" to a convention about to nominate a war criminal for President. The largely youthful protestors drummed, sang and yes–from time to time–taunted the police, who lined 3rd Avenue. The energy and pain of the young were palpable and moving; yet their stridency struck a discordant note.

Although we heard early calls for nonviolence, its principles were not articulated, causing tension to escalate in the steamy summer heat, even as we were heartened by people waving sheets and peace signs from windows. Nevertheless, apparently without provocation, the police intermittently rushed the crowd, arresting many, in random displays of ruthlessness.

The question persists: How do we take our fragmented lives into a large, unwieldy protest with people in various stages of despair and anger, unfamiliar with the principles of nonviolence, and practice peace? Integrating deep stillness with our resistance, is a worthy discipline in for witness. Although it didn’t happen here, we were moved nonetheless by the camaraderie, the closeness of bodies moving in unison, the sense of solidarity, of possibility, of our brokenness and bravery.

The actions we choose, coming out of our dread, steeped in silence and emerging from our poet consciousness may require a script which has yet to be written, as we grapple in our communities with "peace, a presence. each act of living/one of its words, each word/a vibration of light-facet/of the forming crystal." (Levertov; "Making Peace")
What is our fiercer life to be in these fierce times? What new dimension of wordlessness will emerge from the center of our poet’s lives? Let us begin to write and speak the sentences of our lives as poet-peacemakers.