The past few weeks I have spent thinking and praying about nonviolence, and especially this weekend, which in Catholicism is called the Triduum. This is the time between Holy Thursday, with the Last Supper, Friday with the Crucifixion of Jesus, Saturday with the older title of “the harrowing of hell”, and Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, and Mary Magdalene’s meeting of the Risen Jesus outside the tomb,. We urgently need a cease-fire, to limit the damage being caused by this terrible and ill-conceived war, which is both illegal and immoral. The Pope has made it very clear that there is no “just war” criteria to give it, it is simply an act of aggression and cruelty in the ongoing power plays for political dominance. As a country, we have abandoned our friends and courted our enemies, and allowed the belligerent voices to outnumber the voices of the peacemakers. Through the 20th century, from the Russian revolution to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was expanding awareness that we have to curb our violence. We were able to get every nation to sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This was a true miracle. The question always was, is it possible for humans to become nonviolent? Is it built into our consciousness that we will always lash out when we don’t get our way? Can we begin to be meek and humble of heart? Yes, there have been saints and martyrs, but they are rare. We hardly want to take them seriously or follow them, their heroism seems too unnatural to many people, and most of us are cowards, when it comes to what they endured. Ghandi said that the strongest model of nonviolence is Jesus. He said everyone in the world knows this except the Christians. He went to the cross, without condemning his murderers, without answering Pilate, without rebutting the Sanhedrin. He was an innocent victim, in a complicated act of consent, as He said he was giving his life for us. He said He was going to the Father, and that he had always done the Father’s will. And that He wanted to enfold all of us in that Father’s love. For many of us, he is the Lamb of God, for the Passover. God told the Jews in Egypt that they must celebrate the liberation from being slaves in Egypt, in the Exodus story, by having an innocent lamb slaughtered for the Passover meal, and putting the blood on the doorway, so their children would not be slain by the final plague God was sending to make the Egyptians let the Jewish people go. By giving us Himself, as bread and wine transubstantiated, Jesus substituted His own being for the lamb; for that which can help us not continue blood sacrifices, and the cycle of unforgiven sins piling on to scapegoat after scapegoat. At Passover, the Temple was filled with butchery, and blood ran down from the altars in rivulets. What could undo this ongoing ritual of killing in order to please God? What could create a clean heart in us, and renew our hope and faith, and give us the joy of forgiveness?Fr John Dear was a Jesuit, and he is around my age, and has been talking and writing about nonviolence since I was in college. He is very, very articulate about Jesus being the model of nonviolence, and Forgiveness being the answer to our constant need for “doing better next time.” The pathway to this self-discipline is not easy, it requires self-transcending effort. As we see that Jesus is trying to fold us into His life and love of the Father, we begin to understand the unfathomable mercy of God. The depth of God’s love is the proof that nonviolence is what we need to practice with each other. This means we need to be patient, and to try to forgive, and to ask for forgiveness. First of all, we have to recognize we NEED forgiveness, each of us, and that God is offering it to us! We have been in a slow movement toward understanding this need for nonviolence, toward recognizing that there is something very special about pouring out your life for others. Not being selfish, but aligning our will with God’s will. Recognizing that loving our neighbors is how we show God our love of God. It is how to be joyful, how to abundantly show the fruits of the spirit in our lives. It is a very practical path. It starts with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Quakers have been practicing this for over 200 years, and are also very good at it. They understand that they must listen to the still small voice of God in their consciences, and align their will with the will of God. We are also in a time in interfaith dialogue when we see the saintly people in other faith traditions doing the same thing; exhorting us all to nonviolence, to being peacemakers, as a response to God’s loving us. We are beginning to form coalitions of people who earnestly want to solve problems without war. To find ways to make peace. This demands self-discipline, and a recognition that we don’t always know what is good for us— we need to try to do the will of the Father. It means really listening and sharing, and recognizing what others in our communities need. Many of us have come to understand that war takes away needed resources which could help all humans live a better life. I have a bumper sticker which says “Peace begins when the hungry are fed.” I added “Send food, not bombs”. When we try to meet the needs of others, instead of “getting our own way”, peace results. In our own country we are spending so much money on the military-industrial complex, and it is our hard-earned wages which are the source of that tax money. The money is supposed to help the government keep us safe. Many of us know that bombing people does not make us safer, it increases the hatred and suffering and agony for at least another generation or two. We are sliding into WWIII. Pope Leo has been crying out for a cease-fire. He is begging for diplomacy, for actual conversations and problem-solving. I think this is a good example of WWJD. We need to beat the swords into ploughshares, we need to retire the whole nuclear arms race, we need to help our neighbors also have clean air and water, food, healthy land and honest work, schools and medical care. Maybe this cannot come to be in my lifetime, which is now short. But there is a verse in the Torah which I love, about Tikkun Olam: “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are you permitted to abandon the effort.” Our job as humans now is to build communities and international relationships which help bring about lasting peace, with love and respect and community well-being. We will have frictions and difficult problems, but if we keep our “eyes on the prize” and try to “bend the arc toward justice,” our grandchildren or great-grandchildren may live in a a world at peace, not in a dictatorship, but in freedom and cooperative efforts. And meanwhile, we all must keep trying to align our will with the will of that benevolent source of all life, which will not let us fall into despair, which forgives us, which pours out mercy beyond all telling. As Elizabeth Johnson has said, no words can adequately encompass that Being, but all language we use is like pointing a finger at the moon. We use images and symbols to describe that source. And God knows every language and hears every prayer. God knows our hearts. And Jesus said “Come, follow me.” He met them in Galilee after the Resurrection. They found him cooking breakfast on the beach. He never chastised them for scattering and hiding, when he was being crucified. He said “Come and eat.”
If anyone wants a good set of poems coming to your inbox through wordpress, I recommend Jan Falls. Her choices of poems are wonderful.
Some thoughts on sex trafficking
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. When someone ignores this, thinking you are just a body, detachable from spirit like a shadow, you demean the core sacred center of the life of this person, a multifaceted human being. Making them into a thing. Disposable, like kleenex. To take lovemaking and turn it into a crass use of someone’s body, often not even to give pleasure, and certainly not intending that this person receive tenderness, compassion, or love, but simply to exercise power over them, ensnared like a trapped animal, is extremely destructive. Often it is exacerbated by even more violence and cruelty. For many of us, it would instinctively be better to be murdered than raped. Rape incurs deep shame, feeling abased. It never goes away. The scars last for decades, even in healthy relationships; sexual abuse suddenly may rear its ugly roots of torment and emotional scarring. The body remembers, and shrivels down into fear and wanting to find safety, even after successful therapy. As a gynecologist, I have known this, I have seen it in women even into their 70s and 80s.
To sell a person into slavery is a terrible thing. To sell them to do manual labor, dangerous and unrecompensed work, is hard enough; but to make their body feel so abused and their personhood so corrupted, is soul-destroying.
The Epstein sex-trafficking ring lasted for 30 years. There were at least a thousand identified victims. Many have told their stories in court, and won their cases. The majority of women who were used by this ring came from Eastern European countries. That is probably how the tracks got covered for so long. The monetary value of that ring was 1.5 BILLION dollars. In early reports, it was said that 1.1 billion came from Trump. I don’t have the attribution to that, but maybe this week, when Congressman Ro Khanna allows the victims to tell their stories to Congress and the public, we will get more details about the way the money was hidden. But this is not just about money. It is about a long-standing practice of abuse of children and women, and we need to have good men and women rise up and share OUTRAGE, and promise to tighten the laws, to not let it happen again. And to bring the perpetrators to justice. Certainly not to allow access to children; girls and young women, but also young men. Jesus had heavy words to say about those who hurt children (Matthew 18:6). For those who want our country’s ethics to be based in Christian thinking, it is worth pondering that.
Martina Nicholson, MD
retired gynecologist
Rerum Novarum
In the wake of Trump’s attack on Harvard and the 25% of the students who are foreign:
this is what Pope Leo XIII said in Rrum Novarum, the Catholic Social Justice critique of the Industrial Revolution:
“Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, addressed the social issues arising from the Industrial Revolution, primarily focusing on the relationship between labor and capital. Five key points include: the need for a just wage, the right of workers to organize, the importance of private property, the role of the state in protecting the common good, and the moral responsibilities of both employers and employees. “
This is an important critique of both capitalism and communism.
A just wage is what Bernie Sanders and many others have been fighting for for decades. The rights of workers to organize, to have representation with big business through unions, is another big point, which Joe Biden consistently pointed to as a major contributor to the 40 hour week, and protections against dangers in the work place, and in protection of retirement for workers.
The right of private property is a caution against communism, or state-mandated control of everything.
The role of the state in protecting the common good is a direct flag to our Constitution, to consider the needs of the people in the country, not just the big employers, or corporations.
Moral responsibility of both the employers and employees gives us the necessity of working together for “best practices” and the best working relationships.
Our government needs to stay on course between the two extremes of capitalism and communism. After WW2, Europe made great headway with Democratic Socialism, which is also an attempt to provide for the general welfare, to buffer the costs of medical care, the housing costs, the retirement needs of the elderly, the needs of families raising children, the needs to have a well-educated workforce, and to have good laws which protect the peace and well-being of the people in the society.
Recently Paul Krugman again recommended that we have appropriate taxation of corporations and billionaires, to help fund the needs for meeting the common good, in our time. Instead of passing a massive tax cut for them, we should be increasing it. After WW2, in the Eisenhower years, the tax rate for the top bracket was 90%!. This money helped make America great. We need to put a reasonable tax burden on the corporations, and on the billionaires. This will help us meet the needs of our people over this century. We CAN be moderate in this way– helping make our nation great, as we also provide for the vulnerable in meaningful ways. It gives me great hope that Pope Leo XIV, our new American pope, decided to use the name Leo, perhaps pointing to this great insightful “middle way” of his predecessor with the same name. We need to support Harvard, and all institutions of higher learning, and we need to protect due process of law. We need to help working families to be able to raise healthy children. And we also need to recognize that these goals do not exclude human spirituality and love of God.
Today, beware the Ides of March
I have been really absorbed in substack, the Contrarian, and various thinkers who are educated people. I have really enjoyed and learned from Paul Krugman’s posts, and Robert Reich. And my favorite is Andrew Weissmann. I have enjoyed the posts by Robert Hubbell, also. People who are deeply cultured, and well-informed, and who think clearly and carefully about each issue. Every day I read Heather Cox Richardson first. Context is so important!
I am really worried about the government shut-down. It closely follows the model of Hitler’s destruction of the Weimar Republic in Germany. I believe DT wants to destroy the government and set up a dictatorship. I do not understand why the Republican Congressional reps are trying to give away their power to help him do this. I am grateful for the lawyers and judges who are trying to uphold the law. I am appalled at the hubris of a president who shutters the State Department, and destroys the attempt at diplomatic relations and attempts to eliminate diplomats, as well as judges and heads of agencies. The brutality of the coup and the blitzkrieg with which it has been enabled, is really terrifying. I cannot see how we are going to get past the Ides of March, but I am sending a postcard to the occupant of the White House. I am praying. Perhaps that is the most important thing I am doing, besides letters and posts and emails to the Congressional reps, just to pray for our country, for the courageous men and women of honor who are trying to uphold the rule of law. For those who are trying to protect the Constitution from the wrecking ball of Musk and his people, and DT. May God help us, and somehow, help us to preserve the nation.
Techtonic plates in Government
Substack has been very helpful in offering us people who have been kicked off the WaPO and the NYT. People who have expertise and informed opinions are what I feel the deepest need for. There is a mountain of toxic waste building up in cyberspace.
This morning there is a substantive conversation between Paul Krugman and Kim Schappelle, called “From Orban to Trump, part II.” They are discussing the way we are being manipulated and turned from democracy to autocracy. One of the scary parts is how each inroad makes return to full democratic function less possible. We have to keep staying aware and pushing back. In my opinion the right-wing under DT is attempting to destroy the government. I think a lot of people think he is just trying to maneuver and build a kleptocracy, but I think he truly wants to be a dictator, and has henchmen who want to help him do it. The Project 2025 agenda is being executed very clearly. There is a lot of distraction, and smaller but significant issues, losses. and moral injury to important people who are being fired without cause, to take away responsibility and accountability from each agency!
What I think is happening is that DT is orchestrating the chaos, talking wildly, not substantively, to distract people from the main issue we face. If the Congress fails to refund the government on 3/14, we have been erased as a democracy, and the Constitution lies fallow. Trump the dictator takes over. The corporate taxes are due 3/15. The personal taxes are due 4/15. Trump and his henchmen are simply going to empty the coffers and put our tax money to their own uses. Including transferring wealth and power to Russia, which is already probably almost done, through the computers they have forced the State Department to open to Russia, and close to Ukraine. None of our allies can trust us, as long as this is the situation. DOGE has locks and surveillance keys on the computers of the IRS, and the Treasury. They have taken away as much oversight as possible for each of the agencies, and reduced the power of the supposedly “in charge” heads.
How can we put appropriate pressure on DT and these treasonous people? Not pay the taxes. If we all do not pay the taxes, and Congress then says that we can impeach him, we can get the government back. This is a huge long-shot.
A reflection on blooming
I have been thinking that it would be good to share short reflections on very meaningful things I have forgotten, but once knew. This story in Kitchen Table Wisdom, by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, called Remembering, is about a woman who sees herself as selfish and ruthless.
Rachel starts the story with “What we do to survive is often different from what we need to do in order to live.”
I find this really a profound story for now, as the world melts and shrinks, and what we thought were safe walls begin to crumble like a sandcastle at high tide, or in a time of such dryness that it is impossible for the grains of sand to hold together: things fall apart.
At her birthday party on zoom, Rachel reminded me that when we met, I told her I am a medieval Catholic in a postmodern world. I just heard a talk about St. Therese of Lisieux, who is named a doctor of the church, for her “little way”. I had read her book “Journey of a Soul” just before meeting Rachel. She died of tuberculosis in a Carmelite convent in France, when she was 24. But the book has helped many others on their spiritual journeys, which so often are like the book of Exodus— we wander in the desert for 40 years before we get to a sense of belonging and coherence, although we may have glimpses as we go. St. Therese was a model of studying one’s own feelings and coming to terms with them and how they affect our actions, while trusting in a loving God. It is that trusting in a benevolent source of love and energy which most helps me have hope, in spite of things falling apart. The person speaking about St. Therese said she maintained a “non-adversarial stance” toward difficult, damaged and disturbed people, often people who were in chronic pain, and bitter and angry, small-minded but struggling to “be good”.
This is a lot like the virtue of “detaching with love” — to not take personally a person’s cruelty and stupidity, but to try to hold in compassion, these difficult people. It is not naive. It also helps us face our own poverty and imperfection, to try to hold ourselves in this same compassion toward ourselves. This is a very Buddhist kind of thinking, and helpful to me now. “May all beings be free of suffering.” Perennial wisdom.
The story is great, as the woman begins to bud, and bloom, as she is healing and learning to have compassion for herself.
My theatre experience
In high school, at Marymount in Santa Barbara, I was in a small class of young women. Our teacher-nuns decided to put on the play “The Lark” by Jean Anouilh. I was given the role of Warwick, who was the British supervisor of the trial of Joan of Arc, in the mid 1400s, in France.
Just recently, I found a cache of letters my sisters and I had sent to our parents, who were on a trip in Europe. I mentioned my theatre practice, and that the sister in charge of us was asking me to be more masculine and to show more authority. I loved that play, and the words I got to say contained the title. “The girl was a lark over the skies of France.” I grappled with being from an all-girl family (admittedly the bossy older sister) playing the role of Warwick, with masculine energy and authority.
Many years later, (about 20 years ago, I think), someone brought forth a copy of the silent film of the Passion of Joan of Arc, made by the Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer, in 1928. It was so intensely beautiful, and hard to watch, but then a musician at the Cabrillo music festival set the movie to music. Our local choral people got to sing it, and I was present at the local premier. The composer, Richard Einhorn, did a marvelous job. It is profoundly moving, to hear fabulous and complex choral music paired with a classical silent film based on the innocent suffering of a saint. It deepened my awe for Joan of Arc, for what she did for France.
After “The Lark”, to which we won a small bonfire of acclaim, as a senior in High School, I was in a single act play for one actress, called. “Sorry, Wrong Number” by Lucille Fletcher. This play starts with a woman in her bed at night answering the phone and overhearing a plan to murder someone. Slowly and fiercely the tension is turned up, as she realizes she is the target of the plan. I got much critical acclaim in our little community for this role, also, though it was somewhat emotionally draining, and very intense.
So when I got to college, I thought it would be fun to join the theatre for a play, and the play that I auditioned for as a freshman, in 1968-9 was “Marat-Sade”. This is the short name for the whole name of the play, which is “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Charenton, under the direction of the Marquis de Sade.” by Peter Weiss. Our theatre director had really wanted to work with this play, and none of us had any idea of what it was about. When we got to the rehearsal room, he told us that it was a play about the French Revolution, as acted by inmates of an insane asylum to which the Marquis de Sade had been committed. The themes of the play were grappling with the revolution, and the murder of Marat, who had been the head of the reign of terror, as he tried to eliminate all the aristocrats who they thought had been the root cause of the revolution. The sung refrain in the play is “Marat, we’re poor, and the poor stay poor. Marat don’t make us wait any more. We want our rights, and we don’t care how: we want our revolution NOW.” SO our theatre director’s way of choosing the “chorus” for the play was to ask us to practice being theatrically insane, such that we could each be seen in our own little boxes, at the back of the stage, (very like what a zoom screen looks like now), with about 20 people in little boxes like cages, about 4’ by 4’, sitting cross-legged, or kneeling, or dangling their legs over the edge, where each one is in his or her own world of insanity. All of the actors in the play, when we performed it, wore white padded long tunics for clothing and white padded long, over-the knee boots, and their faces were a mask of white make-up.
In the room where we were practicing acting insane, some were howling, some were groaning, and many were writhing. Some got down into a fetal position and curled up in a posture of acute paranoia and almost catatonia. A few were lashing out. One guy was dramatically lascivious toward the women. One woman sat in the corner drooling, with her arms going up and down like she was trying to draw out spirits from a dream-hole we couldn’t see, in a sort of slow balletic rhythm.
My response to this was to walk around wringing my hands, saying to myself and to anyone listening “Oh, my God, what can I do to help here?” It was beyond endurance. I think we stopped this acting after about 2 hours. I think the director was trying to see if we could keep it up for the actual length of the play.
I was accepted into the cast. The director continued to work with each of us, to polish our spontaneous acting. My role was to be a Sister of Mercy, with the wide white winged-headdress of the nuns, a grey loose robe, and a long big wooden rosary at the waist. My hands were to be continually wringing, in between tasks, or tolling the rosary beads; and every once in a while I was to say, somewhat Sotto Voce, “Lord, forgive us for we know not what we do.” This was not hard to say, in the context of the play. My main task was to try to keep the lascivious hands of the lecher off of Charlotte Corday. Also, I was on the side of the stage folding laundry, maintaining a small rhythm of sanity in the madhouse. The play began with a woman screaming a long blood-curdling scream in one corner, while I folded the laundry and acted like this was normal. It was electrifying, and gut-punching. Occasionally someone in the patients group would climb down from their box, and I was to carefully and tenderly guide them back. Meanwhile Marat was in his bath in the center of the stage, and occasionally he would get out to go to his desk, or have a board brought to set across the bathtub, to give him a surface for writing another edict or order for execution. The bathwater was imaginary. We even had real wooden tumbrils for the king and queen, rolling across the stage to their executions; manned by the patients like big wheelbarrows.
We got rave reviews across the Bay area. No one could believe the college players could do such a rivetingly intense job, and the theatre was packed for all the performances.
Our school work was like eating oatmeal after doing this play day after day, night after night. I was emotionally overwrought by it, and when it was over, I decided I could not stay in theatre, and successfully do my college work.
So that was the end of my theatre career. It also occurs to me now that I am in my 70s, that the lines I said in the play have still been very easy for me to say often, and my hands often reach for a rosary. My faith has been tested but has held through all these decades. I tried to take care of the people who are suffering as well as I could; and I am very afraid of both madness, and revolution. There is also a weird resonance with the play about Joan of Arc; and the question of saintliness, martyrdom, and a calling that to many seemed not only extraordinary but insane. Archetypes who are both realistic and mystical still hold my attention. Intense and contradictory emotions and ideas which don’t fit easily into neat categories seem most real to me.
Teatro Campesino and the pageant called “The Virgin of Tepeyac”
On Thursday before Christmas, I went with friends to the theatre in San Juan Bautista, of Teatro Campesino’s production of “La Virgen de Tepeyac”. This is the story of Guadalupe. For 50 years, the local players have re-enacted the Christmas story. It was much more old-fashioned and charming 10 years ago. Now it is riveting, intense and super-dramatic, as the confrontation with the bishop and priests who show disbelief and distain is so realistic. The old gods are angry and do not want to be replaced. The people who worship them are called witches. Forced Baptisms are happening. There is a huge power differential. The dramatic energy rises, the tension stays just taut— the dancing with drums and guitar music, and costumes with big feather headdresses is wonderful. Juan Diego’s visits with the little Mexican mother/virgin on the mountain are tender and marvelous, and she sings to him with a clear and high soprano voice which is mesmerizing. It is a wonderful production! I immediately wanted to film it, and share it. i recently read Michener’s book, Mexico, which helps me see those old murderous gods as vile, who constantly demanded more and more cut-out live hearts from the sacrificed victims, and the people who saw the image of Mary and the baby as life-giving, joyful, and peace-enhancing. She sings to Juan Diego that all the people are her children, and she wants to save them too, from abuse and slavery. The resolution at the end, with joy and goodwill, is huge. It was very moving, and I hope it will get more attention. It is full of color, and great lighting and acting, dancing and drumming, and guitar music and high energy!
The winter catalog from the Southwest Indian Foundation has a book offered, about the prophesy to the people, before Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. It is called Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy, by Joseph and Monique Gonzalez. I am going to read this book!
The Mother of God
1/1/25
The Sanga Shantivanam Peace Vigil last night was beautiful– the hall is softly lit with candle light and white icicle lights, and they bring the cloth labyrinth for people to walk. I love to do this, and it gives me joy each time I get to experience it.
Each of the speakers was wonderful, and the time for contemplative quiet between speakers was companionable and peaceful.
The topic was Return to the Mother, for this year’s focus. It made me think of the book I just got, about “Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy.”
It is fascinating that there are records in Nahuatl, from centuries before, about a person very like Juan Diego, picking beautiful flowers on the mountain, for the Mother of God. The people who wrote the book, and Mexican history scholars currently are considering this as a prophesy, similar to what Isaiah says about the Messiah, which prepared the way for Jesus’ coming. Something like 10 million people came to the Missionary Spanish priests, begging for baptism! Begging urgently for baptism and conversion! The appearance of Guadalupe herself on the “tilma” or cloak, of Juan Diego is still considered miraculous– there is no explanation for its presence, its continuity in time, as the cloth would normally have disintegrated since 1531; its graphic depth— they have done studies of the eyes in the image of Guadalupe, and the image of Juan Diego is reflected in her eyes! To recognize her as the Mother of God, and the protectress of all the children of God, especially the abused and oppressed, made the Spanish missionaries really understand the Gospel more deeply. The Buddhists call the mother of Buddha or “all” of us, Prajna paramita. Perfect wisdom. The mammalian brain, which is 50,000 years old, is superimposed in our brains on the reptilian brain which is 100,000 years old. The older reptilian brain covers the body’s actions which are unconscious, and regulates our metabolism. The cortex (mammalian brain) is about thinking, dreaming, imagining, putting things together in meaningful ways. But above all, there is compassion. Mercy and understanding, and connection and communion are possible because of this compassion. To my mind, this is the great achievement of the mammalian mind. For the Mother of God to appear in each part of the world, in culturally appropriate ways, simply and purely to show compassion, and to assure people of her love and protection, is to prefigure humanity’s potential for love, tenderness, forgiveness, unity and hope. I came away with an even more profound love for Our lady of Guadalupe, and for the wonderful attempts of this interfaith group sharing, respectfully and joyfully praying for peace together, from every faith tradition and culture!
martina2b 