Agape Community

October 7, 2006 10am-6pm

Does Our Life depend on OIL?
Conserve for Peace:
What is Peak Oil? Can crisis lead us to a building of community?

Members of Military Families Speak Out, Melida and Carlos Arredondo and Kevin and Joyce Lucey, will participate in a tree planting in memory of their sons Jeffrey and Alex, whose young lives were lost to Iraq.

Begins promptly at 10 am, come and experience
Rabbi Sheila Weinberg: Opening Comments and Reflection

• Kai Wu?Doctoral Candidate at Umass, renewable energy systems specialist
• Juanita Nelson?Tax Resistance and Forever War
• Kristen Brennan & Daniel Staub?Sustainable Living Family, Springfield- urban homesteading, radical simplicity
• College Student Panel of Agape Interns on Youth and Simple Living

Music–Raging Grannies of Northampton and Puppy Love,youth chorus from Bethany Hill School, Framingham.

Liturgy celebrated with Fr. David Gill, SJ

Vegetable Oil and Hybrid cars, Solar tours; Simple Living Tips

Please bring your own lunch-Begins at 10AM

by Suzanne Belote Shanley

?These many beautiful days cannot be lived again but they are compounded in my own flesh and spirit and I take them in full measure toward whatever lies ahead.?
Daniel Berrigan SJ

Time passes, and through the mystical power of memory, in summer?s twilight, I am cherishing ?the many beautiful days? of college-age youth from various parts of the country who spent the summer here at Agape. They tell their own stories of goodness, grace, laughter and exuberance in these pages.

The energy and enthusiasm for sustainable living, for morning Scripture study, among a host of other Agape activities, Joe, Casey, Anthony and Cat exuded are ?compounded in my own flesh and spirit? as indelible, holy. In this world of unspeakable violence and disintegration, such ?beautiful days? including our three-day fast from fossil fuels (shutting down electricity, no use of any fossil fuels), strengthened me for ?whatever lies ahead,? in the gathering oil addiction storm.
How will I ever forget these beautiful moments: the building of and cooking on our home-made solar oven, the luscious purple and green beans left to cook in the greenhouse oven at 200 degrees, blanched and tasteless, carting dirty dishes from Francis House to Brigid House with its solar water pump, celebrating Agape?s Beloved Bob Solari?s 80th birthday by candlelight.

While it is true that none of us will live again those days of raucous laughter, and serious resolve, of nonviolent study, greeting guests, hosting events, planning and planting seeds and trees, (one pear tree dedicated to the hundreds of college youth who have come to Agape), the community building, the joy of exploring and discovering personalities, music, prayer, bread-baking, and hundreds of stir-fry dinners, all combine to create a sense of enhanced well-being. Yes, community works. What joy. It cannot be lived again in quite this form; yet, we are all, no doubt, nourished for the days ahead.

Latino Youth Group Sal y Luz

Although not part of the summer brigade, what we jokingly referred to as ?The Agape Youth Hostel,? the Latino youth group from New York, Sal y Luz, infused Francis House in the late Spring, with the ?salt and light? of their vibrant faith, and oh what a faith it is?boundless, passionate, convicted. Many in the group expressed the sentiments of Ariel, of the ?wonderful experience ? away from the city.? Certainly, we could not have known as Joe, Brayton and I prepared for their arrival, what a love feast we were about to experience. Talk about ?beautiful days!?

A vivid memory is one of our circle, voices raised in unison, clamoring, ?Sal y Luz,? ?Sal y Luz,? twenty Latino youth, ages 16-28, hands clasped, and emotions soaring, in the Francis House living room. The arrival of our friends from Good Shepherd Parish in New York, corresponded with the ?The Great National Boycott? or ?Day Without Immigrants.? Though not the planned retreat focus, once the 13 men and 7 women, most from the Dominican Republic, bounded out of their cars with affectionate hand-shakes and hugs, we knew that we would powerfully claim them as they did us. The atmosphere was charged to say the least.

Prior to the arrival of Sal y Luz, brought to Agape through our long friendship with Fr. Joachim Lally, (Paulist priest whose life has been dedicated to Latino youth, building houses and baptizing the poor in Dominican), the word nonviolence (a rarity in the media) was in the air in as well as talk of Caesar Chavez. At a massive rally in Salinas, CA, twenty six thousand immigrants and supporters gathered to follow in Chavez?s nonviolent tradition of Boycott, now, all but forgotten.

As these national events unfolded, we at Agape were bonding in the deep woods, with 20 extraordinary Latino youth from the city who hadn?t been warned in advance what they were in for?vegetarian meals, silence, no cell phone reception, videos, DVD?s, TV or electronic devices?a virtual cultural detox. As Juan observed later: ?You can?t say that I wasn?t a vegetarian. I got proof for three days, but it?s okay.?

Full of stories about life in the city (Inwood section of New York) and their recent Passion Play attended by over 1,000 people, they proudly wore their white shirts with the group name, Sal y Luz, emblazoned in blue, periodically stacking hands in a circle, chanting ?Sal y Luz,? ?Sal y Luz.?

Elvis Valdez, the group leader, in his late twenties and a high school Math teacher, with his wife Ivelisa, and infant son Eric, set a powerful example as a role models whose presence lent a touching tenderness and trust. This trust was evident in our first circle when each member shared readily details of their cohesive community in the midst of a violence-riddled neighborhood where just a few days before, bricks had been menacingly thrown at them as they walked together in their white shirts to the Valdez home for a meeting.

?Why? they asked each other and us, ?would local youth, some of them gang members, be so hostile to our parish group?? As they spoke of their pain over the rejection, almost to a person, The Sal y Luz members were voices of compassion: ?These are broken, beaten, abused kids, resentful of turf intrusion, especially by a bunch of perceived ?do-gooders?.? ?How will we hold onto our integrity, our pride of purpose? they wondered, without courting danger in the risky streets of New York.

The women in the group ages 16-23, articulate, determined and strong, moved from child-care with Eric, to outspoken rage over the discrimination, the poverty, and the diminished prospects of young Latinos. With grit and determination, they voiced the need to reverse oppressive odds by their focus, determination, prayer life and trust in God. Solidarity.

As emotionally intense as our circle could become, we stayed equally focused on mindfulness and meditation, two of the retreat themes, listening to our breath, sitting in silence in our meditation circle as baby Eric?s cooing moved in and out of the stillness.

The stars, the silence, the remote Agape woods intrigued everyone as they compared the stillness to the clamoring noise, ceaseless talking and speed of New York. Some recognized their own addiction to busyness, (one of the retreat themes), and everyone agreed that they hadn?t experienced inner or outer peace in a long time.

As we explored the concept of ?staying awake?, of being counter-cultural, the youth recounted stories of their fast-paced world, of suspicion, cruelty, discrimination, the pressure to ?make it? economically, educationally and socially in the US.

The intimacy of our exchange and presence to each, creating an atmosphere of contagious affection and love, certainly impressed we Anglos with the expansiveness of the Latino heart. In this safe space, one young woman spoke of her cerebral palsy, her rejection over the years as a teen mother, and how her integration into Sal y Luz had changed her life. Fr. Joachim Lally, their pastor, mentor and friend, assisted in creating this atmosphere of acceptance with hands-on style of leadership and a lifetime of devotion to the Dominican Republic.

Themes of war and Conscientious Objection merged with those of staying awake to the seduction of the culture, and not becoming one of the walking dead, which none of these vibrant souls come close to resembling. Focusing on the ?forever war? and hearts conditioned to believe in the myth of redemptive violence, Sal y Luz members spoke of the well-documented exploitation of Latino youth by military recruiters. Not surprisingly, though all of the youth were Catholic, none were aware of the Catholic Church?s teaching on Conscientious Objection.

As a result, we studied the life of Conscientious Objector, Camilo Mejia, born and raised in Nicaragua, ?who moved to the US when he was 18 and joined the military a year later because he was not sure what to do with his life.? After being on leave from fighting in Iraq, Mejia said he ?could not return to battle? and became the? first veteran of the Iraq War to seek Conscientious Objector status.? (?AWLO Soldier Pledges to Wage No More War, Boston Globe, 3/17/04),

We considered courage and the role of faith in Mejia?s decision to turn himself in at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, ?wearing a large St. Francis of Assisi medal and carrying a backpack filled with clothes and a Bible.? Afterwards, in our small group discussions, many of the youth spoke of their anguish over the slaughter in Iraq, making it clear with stunning conviction and a grasp of political realities that they were not about to become pawns of the US government, affirming this. They recounted personal experiences with traumatized family members and friends who had returned from Iraq, haunted and helpless, unable to keep jobs, collapsing into drugs, alcohol and violence.

The evening coffee house consisted of a skit performed by almost all of the youth in which a Latino Conscientious Objector, accompanied by Cesar Chavez, meet with George Bush, both forcefully stating their position that ?this war is wrong and we won?t participate in it.? Fresh off of the acting skills honed in their Passion Play, the Agape thespians portrayed a young man caught in the trap of poverty, whose mother begged him not to join the military, but whose anguish at not succeeding in life, propels him to ignore her cries. Seduced by the money promised by the military and thrilled at the prospect of college, the character pleads for his mother?s acceptance: ?I?ll be somebody, Mama, I?ll finally be somebody.? The audience was transfixed as the scene ended with the youth?s bullet-ridden body being returned to his mother from Iraq. Quite a dramatic moment in Agape?s crowded living room.

Not all of the weekend was filled with heaviness. With the last rush of adrenalin, after many impromptu vitalla games (bottlecap used as ball and broomstick as bat?how Dominican boys learn how to be the best hitters in the majors), lots of laughter and spontaneous gestures of affection, the final group?s final circle was pierced by the news that Fr. Joachim and the Paulist Fathers would be leaving Good Shepherd Parish after their tenure of 90 years.

The many beautiful days of the April retreat are gone. Not forgotten is community building, the deepening awareness of nonviolent lifestyle. Wilson, of Sal y Luz, puts it this way: ?I think the best way to thank you is at least to practice one bit of what you?ve been teaching us for the last three days.?

Like Wilson, other members of Sal y Luz reassured us that friends had become ?family? captured in Elvis? final note reading: ?Dear Family.? Soulfully, and with ?full measure? we have begun a new relationship this extraordinary new family of Sal y Luz and with the summer interns, which will shine for some time into the future at Agape.

by Brayton Shanley

I look around our world and ask: ?Why are we always on the brink of armed conflict?? ?What is driving the threat of warlike violence in every major hemisphere?? Just as Iraq?s quagmired ?Civil War? is becoming an accepted fact, Israel bombs Lebanon. The gospel reminds us: ?There will always be wars and rumors of war.? War seems to be the inevitable consequence of our ignorance. But what is driving us?

The Buddha?s central teaching is a doorway of insight: ?Life is suffering.? This undeniable truth has a way of motivating human behavior and the experience of how we suffer begins to explain our tendency to wage war. We are all suffering to be sure, but we spend most of our time denying and opposing this pain. This can led to horrific violence.

Each day, every human experiences pain. We are uneasy with ourselves. We hurt. Should this suffering persist, it turns to anxiety and anxiety leads to a low-grade terror. Then we engage in a frantic attempt to protect ourselves. Our minds churn with escape fantasies as our worst fear is being trapped in pain. How we seek to escape our pain is telling.If pain persists, our minds respond. This is the embryo moment for all violent conflict. Our minds start to construct reasons for our pain. To protect ourselves, our ego, we construct self-righteous reasons for our suffering by blaming others. We unload all of our wrongdoing by projecting it on ?them?, convincing ourselves of our innocence. Because our pain, plus thinking about our pain equals anger, even our well thought-out positions can become rigid and self-justifying. Now we are trapped in self- righteous anger. But anger is always a secondary emotion, masking a deeply complex mix of fears?fear of pain, fear of others who can cause pain, fear of being trapped in pain, and reactive panic tendencies around my pain.

There is no mistaking that Jesus teaches, ?Fear not? at the most frightening moments in the gospels. He does so because ?perfect love casts out fear?(1 John 4:18), and conversely ?perfect fear casts out love?–the most lethal tragedy in the human condition. Self-justifying anger inevitably yields to blaming others for our suffering and to the pathological need for enemies.

We love enemies all right. That is, we need them. Because we can?t control or prevent our pain, life is therefore, inevitably unsafe, and we feel abandoned in this unsafe world. To survive, we turn to protect ourselves with aggression. The illusion we harbor is that self-justifying anger and the violence that directly comes from the panic underneath it will protect and release us from the trap of our suffering. Jesus has serious warnings for selfish, fear-driven anger as one risks ?burning in the fiery pit.? (Matt 5:22). This anger is a living hell.

But if we can get at the fear before our conditioned minds take over and transform this fear into angry aggression, we can discover the most powerful truth about ourselves which could vanquish war at its root: our thinking minds are habitually on hair-trigger. The violence-prone mind, driven by panic and threat, acts to escape feelings of powerlessness and abandonment. Awareness of the inner life is to notice our pain before the fear-conditioned mind reacts to pain with blame and retaliation.

The self-control of watchfulness is too often overlooked even in our peace work. Simple awareness softens the rigidity of anger and releases the grip of reactive violence and revenge. The mind of Christ seeks not to kill the enemy, which only multiplies enemies, but rather seeks to ?kill? the enmity with self-scrutiny, awareness and compassion.

The life of contemplation teaches us to guard the inner life and all good will follow. We guard by noticing, especially when fear begins to rise within us. We don?t need so much to study the world?s problems, but first to study ourselves, ?to dwell in the cell of self-knowledge? (St. Teresa of Avila). This watchfulness begins with watching where our minds lead us. Why is this so crucial? As the mind is thinking all day, it can lead us right off a cliff.

Conditioning of our Minds

Why are we so fear driven and inclined to protect ourselves with thoughts of violence? Quite literally we all have been taught to be afraid. Since our first moments on earth, we have been carefully taught–anger from our parents? impatience; revenge from almost every plot line of every TV show and Hollywood movie; justification for war and military violence from all our history books right up to the most current crisis. A careful life-long ?curriculum? teaches us that violence will resolve conflict and end our suffering. George Gerbner from the University of Pennsylvania, after studying TV and movies for the past 25 years, concludes: ?Heavy viewers of TV suffer from the ?mean-world syndrome.? Our minds are bathed in a euphoric charge of retaliatory violence weakened by carrying around thousands of hours of TV programs, media and movies.

History books record that one hundred twenty million people, the majority innocent, were killed in war in the 20th Century. What does that say of the collective conditioning of the human mind? The cruel insanity of human history can be reduced to the simple maxim: ?Sow a fearful thought, reap a violent action.? But it is not them and their war-mongering minds that cause war. I have met the enemy. It is my unexamined mind.

New Testament nonviolence begins with the teaching: ?Hypocrite, take the plank out of your own eye; then you will be able to take the splinter out of your neighbor?s eye.? (Matt. 7:5) The plank is that huge self-righteous blind spot. ?I am the righteous one. You are the evil one. I am the innocent victim. You are the oppressor. I will deny my sins and call you a murderer.? The reality is my neighbor has a splinter and I have a plank. My mind, conditioned by fear of pain and the ?mean world syndrome,? convinces me of my own innocence and the need to neutralize my adversaries? ability to make me suffer. ?They? now no longer have a mere splinter in their eye, but a plank.

Throughout our bloody history, what side in any conflict hasn?t fought more fiercely by denying their own complicity in armed conflict while scape-goating their enemies? behavior? The pattern is particularly evident in Israel and Hezbollah?s rationales for war in Lebanon. Both blame the other for causing the war; both determine that fighting is absolutely necessary. Meanwhile George W Bush blames Hezbollah for being 100% of the problem. ?They are the terrorists,? he claims. His statement is a classic case of self-righteous projection of his own murderous tendencies onto a group engaged in terrorist activities. This projection of his own wrongdoing onto ?them,? frees him from his wrong. Now we see all sides engaged in the tricks of the mind. Each side has convinced itself that it is the moral agent of good fighting evil. Justifying the killing of innocents by all sides easily follows. But terrorism finds its origin tucked away in the fear-filled mind of all those who rationalize killing as necessary.

A Zen Buddhist joke reads ?It is 10 pm. Do your know where your mind is? The humor uncovers an important piece of reality: the majority of us have very little sense of where our minds are at any time of day. Since we awoke this morning, our thoughts have been leading us around largely unchallenged. Many of these thoughts could be regarded as ?trigger thoughts,? a mind turned angry because of some annoyance. Our minds, like drunken monkeys, go from anxious thought to aggressive thought to irrelevant thought, and the behavior too often follows lead.

The awareness process begins with the simple commitment not to be convinced of everything our mind tells us. In short, not to let our conditioned thoughts control our lives. To know ourselves is to observe ourselves throughout the day, becoming vigilant guards of our behavior and emotional states. This awareness is being awake to the reality within and around us without a constant self-protective bias. The faith is that this steady process of self-awareness will, as the Buddhist Sogyal Rinpoche says: ?Bring the mind back home.? Watch the mind with the dedication of a loving physician and this compassionate awareness will loosen the grip of rigid anger that will ?bring us home.?

Where is Home?

Jesus teaches the way home. ?Enter the narrow gates, since the road to perdition is wide and spacious and many travel it. But it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life and only a few find it.? (Matt 7:13-14). Life is good. Life is meant to lead us home.
But the way to life that leads home is through a narrow gate. This implies difficulty and the skill to move through a narrow place. This journey will hurt. It will take time, and it will demand rigorous patience. Once the difficulty of making it through this restricted doorway into life is achieved, we are rewarded with a hard road.
Jesus command to love is the universal call to look within, to examine our inmost being. How will that introspection look on a daily basis? Like a narrow gate and a hard road. How long will the journey require self-scrutiny and awareness? The full length of our lives. Overwhelmed, we may be tempted to cry ?How long?? Yes to sleepwalk through life to avoid pain is a great temptation.

The mind?s conditioning includes a fear of struggle, as struggle is experienced as pain and pain is equated with failure. So, the preference in the human condition is to avoid a difficult struggle, and go instead for the wide, spacious, easy road. There is an immediate connection here with our life shaped by living in the US which relies so heavily on having things the way we want and ?happiness? through the elimination of suffering. We want to feel good, to enjoy our comforts, to live a happy life. Struggle so often feels like pain and pain leads again to a sense we are failing. So, we run from real struggle, taking refuge in our privileges and entitlements. American life is the ?good life? after all, the envy of the entire world.

The way of the American popular culture will assure us of plenty of companionship as ?many travel it.? These companions are those the early monastics call ?the herd.? Secure within the herd, we play by the rules: no alternative thinking, no real looking within, no breaking away and walking against the grain. A wide and spacious landscape and any anxiety that gets in our way is mowed down by obedience to authority and our credit cards. This is an internal climate readying for war.

And where does Jesus say this ?easy? road leads? To ruin. If the hard road leads to life, then the ?easy? road leads to death or worse, spiritual demise. The truth of the Christ-centered life is that the world of violence is difficult to overcome in the name of life. The first and most essential task is to move away from the influence of the herd. If ?only a few find it? then being with the masses won?t provide the truth about ?life? we are truly looking for.

St. John of the Cross warns: ?The truly spiritual person must seek in their actions what is unpleasant and disagreeable to their nature; otherwise, they will not destroy self love nor acquire the love of God.? Embedded in the hard road struggle that leads to life is a paradox. The struggle and suffering of looking within leads to the greatest prize?the reassurance of Divine Love. All spiritual disciplines aim at this sacred knowledge. The often ?disagreeable? discipline of guarding the inner-life cuts into our violent conditioning and prevents us from doing ?unthinkable? harm. This simple awareness of the mind transforms a sword into a flower, as we enter the blessed peace of new life. .