The Passing of Rev. Daniel Berrigan

Reverend Daniel Berrigan has died.  His life makes cowards of us all.  When he came to prominence, burning draft cards with his brother, Philip in Cantonville Ohio, it barely made a blip on my teenage radar.  I was 13.  But having just read about him in conjunction with Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton in An American Pilgrimage, I can't say there is renewed interest but there is interest.

He spent his life in writing books, poetry and activism.  He said during his trial in Philadelphia for destroying government property after he and six others took hammers to the (unarmed) nosecones of nuclear missiles:  "The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly...It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, “Stop killing.” There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can’t do them. I cannot. Because everything is endangered. Everything is up for grabs. Ours is a kind of primitive situation, even though we would call ourselves sophisticated. Our plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that — everything."   Italics mine.

Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it - or words to that effect.  Maybe humans just haven't been human long enough to evolve past their reptilian hindbrain.  But that statement is a sham for we have free will, we can and do learn from our mistakes, we are capable of creating the most sublime beauty, of deliberate selflessness.  We can laugh at ourselves, we have a sense of humour, we experience gratitude..  We experience awe.  I'm certain other creatures have a sense of humour, can love, can even create despite their lack of opposable thumbs, but is any creature capable of awe?   Rather than repeating our doleful violent murderous history, why do we not replicate situations where we are likely to feel awe or, as Jung described, that 'oceanic feeling'? 

Finished reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.  She was a Russian half-Jew whose family escaped nearly penniless from the socialist revolution in Russia and resettled in France.  She was a writer and Suite Francaise is the first 2 of 3 books she had planned to write describing the French experience through the eyes of several families under Nazi occupation.  Unfortunately she was gassed at Auschwitz before she could complete them,  She was a well known writer.  Her husband, her publisher and others tried in vain to rescue her, even just to contact her, to send her some food and blankets not knowing even as they tried she was already dead.  She had a brief respite at Auschwitz (while she was part of a slave labour force?) before she died.  Her husband was picked up, transported to Auschwitz and gassed straight away. 

When her voice came through S. F. so clearly it was difficult to read the appendices at the end.  In fact, I couldn't finish them.  When I watch the evening news and hear 27 people were killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan I feel a frisson of regret but then wonder how I'm going to prepare that eggplant we're having for dinner.  Rev. Daniel Berrigan never let go that regret over innocent deaths.  I, a woman sitting safely at a desk where I sign petitions and write politicians, well fed in my middle class WASP-ish existence, salute him.