We all come from someplace, right⸮ Well, I was born of vegetarian, pacifist parents in a quonset hut
on a ridge overlooking the blue Specific Ocean in clamsville Pismo Beach. Following a deal my folks made with the
city, there's a park there now. Wanna meet them? Here are thumbnail sketches of these totally remarkable individuals.



Click on “20 Names”

Appendix to “Puebla”—even the Nazis caved in to the application of nonviolent action! “Let Our Husbands Go!” Excerpted (pages 236-238) from “A Force More Powerful – A Century of Nonviolent Conflict” by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall On February 27, 1943, SS soldiers and local Gestapo agents began seizing the Jews of Berlin in an operation called “the Final Roundup.” They were loaded onto trucks and taken to the Jewish community’s administration building at Rosenstrasse 2-4, in the heart of the city. The goal was finally to make the city judenfrei (free of Jews), necessitating the forcible collection of Jews with German spouses and their Mischling (mixed ancestry) children. For two years these Jews had escaped the jaws of the Holocaust because they or their German spouses were essential for the war effort, and the regime wanted no unpleasantness on the home front. But the stunning military defeat at Stalingrad earlier that month shattered German morale and led Hitler to call for “Total War,” against Jews inside Germany as well as Allied armies. Word spread quickly about the abductions in Berlin, and before long a group of non-Jewish German women had gathered on the Rosenstrasse with food and other personal items for their Jewish husbands, whom they believed were being held inside. One of the women, Charlotte Israel, arrived and found 150 women already huddled outside. She asked on of the guards for her husband’s potato ration cards, which he went to get. On the back of a card, her husband Julius wrote, “I’m fine.” Other women began asking for personal effects to confirm that their husbands were inside and soon after, began demanding their release. One woman’s brother, a soldier on leave, approached an SS guard and said, “If my brother-in-law is not released, I will not return to the front” The crowds grew considerably despite the winter chill, and soon women waited outside day and night, holding hands, singing songs and chanting, “Let our husbands go!” By the second day of the protest over 600 women were keeping a vigil on the Rosenstrasse. This was not the first time many of these women had voiced dissent. For over a decade they and their families had challenged Nazi racial policies through letters and small demonstrations, insisting that the regime would be hurting fellow Germans by persecuting their Jewish spouses. Hitler and his circle had always tried to minimize unrest and avoid the kind of domestic opposition that German rightists saw as the “stab in the back” that had crippled the German efforts during World War I. Until this point the regime had largely managed to keep the genocide against the Jews a secret. But when it affected a group who were unafraid to speak out against Nazi policies that secrecy was jeopardized. What gave further resonance to the wives was that it was happening in the heart of Berlin, a city that had never been enthusiastic about Nazism. Cosmopolitan Berliners had always seen it as a crude Bavarian aberration. Moreover, Berlin was the German base for foreign news organizations that still operated during the war. If political malcontents or the wire services were to get wind of the protest the myth of the omnipotent Nazi state would be exposed. In fact, London radio did report on the demonstrations. By the third day SS troops were given orders to train their guns on the crowd but to fire only warning shots. They did so numerous times, scattering the women to nearby alleyways. But the wives always returned and held their ground. They knew the soldiers would never fire directly at them because they were of German blood. Also, arresting or jailing any of the women would have been the rankest hypocrisy: According to Nazi theories women were intellectually incapable of political actions. So women dissenters were the last thing the Nazis wanted to have Germans hear about, and turning them into martyrs would have ruined the Nazi’s self-considered image as the protector of motherhood. The campaign soon expanded to include women and men who not in mixed marriages. The ranks of protesters bulged to a thousand, with people chanting to let the prisoners go and taunting the SS soldiers. Joseph Goebbels, seeking to stop more from arriving, closed down the nearest streetcar station, but women walked the extra mile from another station to reach Rosenstrasse 2-4. By the end of the week Goebbels saw no alternative but to release the prisoners. Some thirty-five Jewish male internees, who had already been sent to Auschwitz, were ordered to gather their belongings and board a passenger train back to Berlin. Without fully realizing what they had done, the Rosenstrasse women had forced the Nazis to make a choice: They could accede to a limited demand and pay a finite cost—1,700 prisoners set free, if all the intermarried Jewish men were released. Or they could open a Pandora’s box of heightened protest in the center of the capital and brutalize German women in the bargain. For the Nazis, maintaining social control was more important than making sure every last Jew made it to the gas chambers. The regime that terrorized the rest of Europe found itself unable to use violence against a challenge on its very doorstep. The Nazis were savage but the were not stupid. As it happened, many more than thirty-five Jewish men were eventually set free. The protest confronted Nazi officials with an unresolved question: What to do with the other intermarried Jews. Goebbels wanted them deported from Berlin so he could tell Hitler the city was judenfrei. Himmler prevented the deportations, but Goebbels lied and told Hitler that it had happened—and then tried to get Jews still in Berlin to stop wearing the Star of David. A month later Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in Paris wanted to know what he should do about French intermarried Jews. On May 21 Himmler’s deputy released them all, everywhere, from the camps. Five years earlier Gandhi had been asked about the Nazis. “Unarmed men, women and children offering nonviolent resistance,” he predicted, “will be a novel experience for them.” In February 1943 Ruth Gross was a ten-year-old girl who went down to the Rosenstrasse so she could catch a glimpse of her father, one of the Jewish men interned there before being shipped for a time to the camps. One day she saw him, and he waved back. “This thing with Rosenstrasse,” she said years later, “that was always a bond between us, my father and me.” When she would visit him in the hospital at the end of his life, each time she left he would stand up and wave at her. “I have always been convinced, that he too was always thinking about this scene there on Rosenstrasse. About how he stood there and waved.” When love comes to rescue life, no one forgets. Postscript: I have composed a jazz piece for clarinet quintet, titled “Rosenstrasse”, inspired by this account. I am attempting to have it recorded, however it is currently available online in both PDF and Finale 2002 format (for those of you who have, or have access to, that program.) Just click on either of the logos below:

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan 1890-1988 Nonviolent Soldier of Islam Badshah Khan, A Man to Match His Mountains by Eknath Easwaran [Book ordering information below] Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988), a Pathan (or Pushtun) of Afghanistan, a devout Muslim, raised the first nonviolent army in history to free his people from British imperial rule. He persuaded 100,000 of his countrymen to lay down the guns they had made themselves and vow to fight nonviolently. This book tells the dramatic life-story of this heroic and too-little-known Muslim leader. It gives at the same time a glimpse of the Pushtuns, their society, 100 years of their recent history, and describes the rugged terrain in which they live. Khan’s profound belief in the truth and effectiveness of nonviolence came from the depths of personal experience of his Muslim faith. His life testifies to the reality that nonviolence and Islam are perfectly compatible. Nonviolent Soldier of Islam tells Khan’s life-story through narrative, 58 photos and Khan’s own words. Excerpt from Nonviolent Soldier of Islam From Chapter Nine of Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, Badshah Khan by Eknath Easwaran They called themselves Khudai Khidmatgars, “Servants of God.” Their motto was freedom, their aim, service. Since God himself needed no service, they would serve his people. The Khudai Khidmatgars, under the leadership of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, became history’s first professional nonviolent army – and its most improbable. Any Pathan could join, provided he took the army’s oath: I am a Khudai Khidmatgar; and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God. I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty. I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity. I promise to treat every Pathan as my brother and friend. I promise to refrain from antisocial customs and practices. I promise to live a simple life, to practice virtue and to refrain from evil. I promise to practice good manners and good behavior and not to lead a life of idleness. I promise to devote at least two hours a day to social work. For a Pathan, an oath is not a small matter. He does not enter into a vow easily because once given, a Pathan’s word cannot be broken. Even his enemy can count on him to keep his word at the risk of his own life. Nonviolence was the heart of the oath and of the organization. It was directed not only against the violence of British rule but against the pervasive violence of Pathan life. With it they could win their freedom and much more: prosperity, dignity, self-respect. Khan drew his first recruits from the young men who had graduated from his schools. They flocked to him. Trained and uniformed, they snapped in behind their officers and filed out into the villages to seek recruits. They began by wearing a simple white overshirt, but the white was soon dirtied. A couple of men had their shirts dyed at the local tannery, and the brick-red color proved a breakthrough. It did not dirty easily, the dye was cheap, and – best of luck – it had style. Villagers dropped their plows to see who these glowing figures were. Recruits did not come easily, but Khan and his eager young volunteers persisted. Within a few months they had five hundred recruits – not enough for a Raj-shattering holy war, but a beginning. Volunteers who took the oath formed platoons with commanding officers and learned basic army discipline – everything that did not require the use of arms. They had drills, badges, a tricolor flag, the entire military hierarchy of rank – and a bagpipe corps. Khan set up a network of committees called jirgahs, named and modeled after the traditional tribal councils that had maintained Pathan law for centuries. Villages were grouped into larger groups, responsible to district-wide committees. The Provincial Jirgah was the ultimate authority. Since all the committees were filled by elected officers, the Provincial Jirgah became a kind of unofficial parliament of Pathans. Officers in the ranks were not elected, since Khan wanted to avoid infighting. He appointed a salar-e-azam or commander-in-chief, who in turn appointed officers to serve under him. The army was completely voluntary; even the officers gave their services free. Women were recruited too, and played an important role in the struggles to come. Volunteers went to the villages and opened schools, helped on work projects, and maintained order at public gatherings. From time to time they drilled in work camps and took long military-style marches into the hills. As they marched, they sang: We are the army of God, By death or wealth unmoved. We march, our leader and we, Ready to die. We serve and we love Our people and our cause. Freedom is our goal, Our lives the price we pay. Watching the narrow columns threading a curving mountain pass, one could easily imagine that some angry mullah was unleashing another holy war against the foreigners. But these Pathans, who for years had carried rifles and tucked small armories of revolvers and knives inside their waistbands, now carried only a stick for walking. They armed themselves only with their discipline, their faith, and their native mettle. “The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us ‘That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures.’ Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan “There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Khan and Mahatma Gandhi worked closely together with great mutual respect using and shaping the practical tool of nonviolence to gain independence for their people. They both believed that the uplift of their people was essential preparation for independence. Khan opened schools, brought the women out of the home into roles in society, and included a vow taken by his nonviolent soldiers to do at least two hours a day of social work. “To me nonviolence has come to represent a panacea for all the evils that surround my people. Therefore I am devoting all my energies toward the establishment of a society that would be based on its principles of truth and peace.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan “Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people.” – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to an interviewer in 1985 From the Introduction: “It my inmost conviction,” Badshah Khan said, “that Islam is amal, yakeen, muhabat” – selfless service, faith, and love.” Yakeen, faith, is an unwavering belief in the spiritual laws that underlie all life, and in the nobility of human nature – in particular, in the ability of every human being to respond to spiritual laws. It implies a profound belief in the power of muhabat, love, to transform human affairs, as Badshah Khan, like Gandhi, demonstrated with his life. This is not the sentimental notion of love portrayed in films. It a spiritual force which, when drawn upon systematically, can root out exploitation and transform anger into love in action. Badshah Khan based his life and work on this profound principle, raising an army of courageous men and women who translated it into action. Were his example better known, the world might come to recognize that the highest religious values of Islam are deeply compatible with a nonviolence that has the power to resolve conflicts even against heavy odds. The Shahur Pass in Waziristan Badshah Khan and Mahatma Gandhi during Gandhi’s tour of the Frontier in 1937. Badshah Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru, 1946 Badshah Khan with Mathama Gandhi bringing people together in Bihar during the riots of 1947 Badshah Khan working with a tribal council in the 1950s Badshah Khan, shown here at age 95 in 1985, continued to campaign for human rights in his last years Praise for Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: “Eknath Easwaran’s great achievement is telling an international audience about an Islamic practitioner of pacifism at a moment when few in the West understand its effectiveness and fewer still associate it with anything Islamic.” – The Washington Post “A vivid portrait of a too-little known associate of Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a charismatic pacifist Muslim who led the Pathans of India and Pakistan in a nonviolent resistance to British rule.” – Booklist “By his example, [Khan] asks what we ourselves, as individuals made from the same stuff as he, are doing to shape history.” – The New Yorker “He was a Muslim voice for tolerance. He was revered by Gandhi, who viewed Khan and his Pathan followers as an illustration of the courage it takes to live a nonviolent life. This book opened me to a perception that Islam can be in harmony with nonviolence.” – Friends Journal “Few are aware of the nonviolent tradition in Islam. Fewer still know the story of its greatest modern exemplar, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, better known as Badshah Khan. Easwaran’s excellent biography deserves the widest possible reading.” – Fellowship “In these days when one tends to associate the Islamic world with violence, it is refreshing to read the life of a great nonviolent Muslim. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ as he came to be known.” – The Friend You may order this book (I did!) by clicking on the box below: © 1997–2002 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation*

Folks, here’s why we musicians do what we do. Monday, March 02, 2009 Karl Paulnack’s Speech to Boston Conservatory Welcome address to freshman class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory: One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works. The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works. One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire. Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.” On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost. And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night. From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds. Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heartwrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does. I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching “Indiana Jones” or “Superman” or “Star Wars” with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in “ET” so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects. I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation. Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece. When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself. What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me? Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters. What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft. You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevys. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

Composing During Wartime By Derek Bermel Tuesday, September 05, 2006 [SOURCE] I sit at my desk with a pencil poised on the manuscript paper, trying to sort and sift ideas. I close my eyes, attempting in vain to keep my brain focused on the music, but I feel overwhelmed by the events unfolding around me. Back in February 2003, I marched through the streets of New York City, one of a million people who demonstrated to express outrage at our militaristic U.S. foreign policy. The entire East Side of Manhattan shut down; buses, taxis, and police vehicles were rendered helplessly immobile in a sea of people waving signs and chanting for judicious restraint. Now, three and a half years after the Defense Secretary predicted a quick victory that would take “a matter of weeks, not months”, American soldiers are caught in a bloody civil war with violence on the rise. 3,500 Iraqis died just this month, more than the total number of Americans who died on Sept. 11, 2001. Our own military casualties will soon surpass that number as well. Each day, mothers and fathers – Iraqi, Afghani, and American – lose their children, and an endless war is raging, on my behalf – on our behalves as U.S. citizens. In the wake of John F. Kennedy’s murder, Leonard Bernstein wrote “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before…Sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same.” This statement, an artist’s sincere and earnest attempt to find a response to national crisis, has been used to promote the notion that creating music is powerful enough to overcome violence. For artists, the notion that creative acts are a valid and equal response to destructive ones, is an attractive idea. At times it has helped me to feel heroic simply by going about my daily business of writing, playing, and generally making music. And yet the violent acts continue. How can I continue to scribble sixteenth notes under those circumstances? Is it possible to respond to such violence simply by making music? How deeply is this war dehumanizing us all, little by little, hour by hour? A friend recently bolstered Bernstein’s pronouncement by pointing out that if we all played violins continually, we wouldn’t be able to kill or inflict pain (unless, I suppose if we all played violin as badly as I do…). This is true, but as the fighting goes on, that hypothesis seems more and more irrelevant. I write and play music passionately; others wage war passionately. I pick up a clarinet; someone else picks up a gun. The two acts are essentially unrelated, yet unfortunately, in the end, the guns are more plentiful. It’s not only easier to learn how to shoot than to compose, it’s also cheaper (join the army!) and it’s the path to greater glory. Making music may have been heroic to Lenny, but to most Americans the soldiers are the heroes. Of course, the very story of Bernstein’s life is a rejection of passivity. It is only the frequent citation of this statement in times of war that irks me. For it reveals a troubling implication about the American psyche: that we profess to conquer violence while refusing to acknowledge its deeper roots in cultural conflict, poverty, imperialism, and turf battles over control of natural resources. John F. Kennedy’s assassination was no accident; nor was 9/11. Both events were part of an opposition’s calculated political agenda, and both events were responses – however unjust and cruel – to U.S. policy. If therefore, as individuals, we abhor violence, we cannot bury our heads in the sand. Protesting it cannot be left to our elected representatives. The government will always indicate that our sole role is to ‘keep living our lives’, continuing to be productive taxpayers, ‘stimulating the economy’; in short, during a time of war we should do what we always did, only with more conviction and sense of purpose. Those who make music play more devotedly, farmers farm with greater fervor, bankers bank even more intensely. And of course, shoppers shop with renewed vigor and determination. Remember how, in the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush commanded us to go shopping? That would be our victory over the terrorists. “Shop!” we were fitfully instructed, as if carrying out that sacred command would prove that we hadn’t given in, that our lives hadn’t been disrupted by terrorist tactics. Dubya suggested that we answer violence thus: “Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” In the meantime, the federal government would respond to the violence for us, with a brutal ‘shock and awe’ preemptive war. Bush’s spokesperson Ari Fleisher had an additional, slightly more sinister, piece of advice for us citizens: “Watch what you say.” Accept the collective response of war. And accept the costs, the priorities. Our government spends more each day for the war in Iraq than we spend each year funding the arts. What’s the difference whether we shop or make music? Either choice constitutes a Pyrrhic victory if it is accompanied by political passivity. I worry that Harold Pinter uttered a great truth in describing America as “a salesman…out on its own, and its most saleable commodity is self love.” How can we be so smug as to believe that the proper response to cataclysmic events is to continue with ‘business as usual’? In a democracy, how can we be so unmotivated to excoriate the policies of our own government and the conduct of our elected representatives? Has our lexicon become so distorted by Karl Rove’s doublespeak that we actually believe that doing nothing is equivalent to taking bold action? The question becomes not merely whether – but when and how – we should stand up and say ‘enough!’ War is a confusing situation, because withdrawal seems as fraught as “staying the course.” As predicted by many analysts from the start, a civil war has now broken out in Iraq, and the situation is now far beyond our control. What remains is a hopelessly anarchic unrest, its graveness ignored by the warmongers of this administration, whose corporate and political interests benefited from the onset of hostilities. In all the hand-wringing over what to do next, it is easy to forget that the pretexts of self-defense under which we attacked Iraq have long since faded into the sunset. The only remaining excuse for continuing to occupy Iraq is to retroactively justify our misguided invasion. I often muse over the complex and intertwined relationship between art and politics. I once brought a newly finished piano work to my very ‘political’ teacher Louis Andriessen. He looked at the dedication and grinned wryly. “What‘s this?” He pointed to my inscription, which read, ‘For Yitzhak Rabin.‘ It was the week after Rabin had been shot, and I felt pained by his death. “I wanted to do something,” I said solemnly, “to express something … about his death… .” “Did you know him?” he queried, amusedly. “No… ,” I replied. “Then you shouldn‘t use his name,” he snapped. “This is silly.” At first I thought he was just being deliberate and contrarian, but now I think he was probably right (and he is Dutch, after all… .) Our politics doesn‘t always belong in our art, at least not in that way. It‘s tricky. One book that had a profound effect on me was Antonio Tabucchi’s novel ‘Sostiene Pereira’ (there’s also a movie version, with Mastroiani). The story begins as fascism creeps slowly into Portuguese pre-war politics. The protagonist Pereira is a middle-aged newspaper editor who begins to encounter violence more and more in the headlines; he finds his conscience torn, and one day he decides that he can no longer calmly go about his daily routine; he is drawn inextricably toward the only possible effective response – activism. Around the same time, in 1936, Llorca, the great Spanish poet and playwright, lost his life fighting with the Communists; his body was dumped in a ditch. Should he have balked at fighting for a cause in which he believed, and instead continued to write more and more beautiful poetry? Did he accomplish more through his ‘heroic’ death than he would have through his writing? It’s hard to know. For who is to say that composing – or making music of any kind, for that matter – isn’t itself an act of violence? Why romanticize and tranquilize creativity? Composing, it seems to me, is largely about upheaval, about disturbing the status quo. The transfer of sensation, information, and emotion from one person to another may feel profound, even spiritual, but it is certainly not peaceful. Artaud, in fact, was convinced that our most violent urges could be quenched and quelled by means of art. His “Théâtre de la cruauté” supposed live theatre to be the medium by which we might exorcise our antisocial instincts, returning home thereafter to properly behaved homes. In his world, art would not attempt to erase violence, but would instead serve as the catharsis by which violence could be experienced in a transformed – and physically harmless – form. Being an artist demands a temperment that is sensitive to the joys and cruelties of the outside world. Ironically, artists sometimes seem desensitized to what goes on around them, but I believe that this remoteness – sometimes even manifesting itself in outwardly hostile behavior – can be a self-defense mechanism employed by extraordinarily vulnerable souls who decry injustice and tyranny. In 1988, shortly before his death, Bernstein offers an eloquent – and now eerily prescient – rant against tyranny. In a New York Times essay he enumerates the dangers of fascism lurking within our own political system, especially during election years. “To call for war at the drop of a pipeline (while secretly dealing for hostages); to teach jingoistic slogans about armaments and Star Wars; to prescribe the weapons industry for the health of our doped-up credit card economy; to spend a dizzying percentage of the budget on arms at the expense of schools, hospitals, cultural pursuits, caring for the infirm and homeless – these are all forms of tyranny.” The tyrant to whom he referred of was none other than George Bush the First. One could argue that the ‘tyrant’ neocons have in fact taken a rather artistic approach to foreign policy, though it is played out in the theatre of war rather than the theatre of cruelty. They imagined a world as they’d like to see it, and they have been trying to fit the real world – our world – into that fantasy, inconsistencies notwithstanding. Or as the Downing Street Memo illuminated it: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. Artists must likewise believe in the world that they manufacture out of thin air. When our faith wanes in the fabricated worlds of our making, the ‘vision’ is lost. So Dick Cheney, too, is a dreamer, albeit a tyrannical and authoritarian one. At the end of his essay, Bernstein strikes a hopeful note. He writes: “I love my country – so much, in fact, that I am putting all my energies into seeing it to a better day, a more tranquil night, a shining and limitless future. And I abide by the words of that splendid liberal Thomas Jefferson that are inscribed on his monument in Washington: ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’” Time to write some music. Posted by Derek Bermel at 7:24 AM

The ruins of the cathedral at Nagasaki From Blessing Bombs to Preaching Peace: Fr. George Zabelka by Daniel Nichols June 1, 2012 http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/from-blessing-bombs-to-preaching-peace-fr-george-zabelka/ God, Christ, lives in every human being. Our Lord tells us that what is done to the “least” is in fact now done to Him (Mt 25). I believe that! That is the only kind of God that I could adore and love, a God who lives in human history and suffers with people. I could only fear a god that sat as a depersonalized king above the anguish of humanity. This is part of what the Incarnation is all about. Christ suffers and dies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Therefore to condone or support war is to condone or support the call to “Crucify Him.” To kill in war is, in fact, to be a “Christ-killer.” I’m sorry I can say nothing else —if Calvary is a holy place, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are holy places. -Fr George Zabelka I was baptized in Sacred Heart church on the north side of Flint, Michigan. My family attended the parish until we enrolled in nearby St Agnes school, but my grandparents remained parishioners of Sacred Heart for the rest of their lives. When I was two, Fr George Zabelka became pastor of Sacred Heart. I had no idea at the time, but Fr George was not your typical priest. I knew him only as a kindly pastor. I had no idea until many years later what a burden he carried. Fr George Zabelka, you see, had been a military chaplain in the Pacific during World War II. He had been with the crew of the Enola Gay, the plane that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, he had blessed the bombs. Fr George Zabelka as a chaplain He did so, apparently, as an unquestioning American nationalist, blinded at the time to the enormity of what he was participating in. Gradually, through counseling men who were tortured by the horror of what they had done, and by a later visit to Nagasaki, where he came to understand that a Catholic pilot, blessed by a Catholic priest, had bombed the most Catholic city in Japan into oblivion. He saw the ruins of the cathedral and of convents; he found not a single nun left where there had once been flourishing congregations. Father George spent the rest of his life repenting for his cooperation in total war, and preaching and practicing peace. But he always, until his death in 1992, spoke with courage and honesty. Here is an interview with him by Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy THE LIE OF CHRISTIAN WAR: ON THE 66th ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI A Military Chaplain Repents by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy http://shirtofflame.blogspot.com/2011/08/lie-of-christian-war-on-66th.html In August of 1945 Rev. George B. Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Force, was stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. He was assigned to serve the Catholics of the 509th Composite Group. The 509th Composite Group was the Atomic Bomb Group. He served as a priest for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After 22 years as a military chaplain he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. What follows is an interview with him by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy. Rev. George B. Zabelka went to meet his God on April 11, 1992. Fr. McCarthy: Father Zabelka, what is your relationship to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945? Fr. Zabelka: During the summer of 1945, July, August and September, I was assigned as Catholic chaplain to the 509th Composite Group on Tinian Island. The 509th was the Atomic Bomb Group. Q: What were your duties in relationship to these men? Zabelka: The usual. I said Mass on Sunday and during the week. Heard confessions. Talked with the boys, etc. Nothing significantly different from what any other chaplain did during the war. Q: Did you know that the 509th was preparing to drop an atomic bomb? Zabelka: No. We knew that they were preparing to drop a bomb substantially different from and more powerful than even the “blockbusters” used over Europe, but we never called it an atomic bomb and never really knew what it was before August 6, 1945. Before that time we just referred to it as the “gimmick” bomb. Q: So since you did not know that an atomic bomb was going to be dropped you had no reason to counsel the men in private or preach in public about the morality of such a bombing? Zabelka: Well, that is true enough; I never did speak against it, nor could I have spoken against it since I, like practically everyone else on Tinian, was ignorant of what was being prepared. And I guess I will go to my God with that as my defense. But on Judgment Day I think I am going to need to seek more mercy than justice in this matter. Q: Why? God certainly could not have expected you to act on ideas that had never entered your mind. Zabelka: As a Catholic priest my task was to keep my people, wherever they were, close to the mind and heart of Christ. As a military chaplain I was to try to see that the boys conducted themselves according to the teachings of the Catholic Church and Christ on war. When I look back I am not sure I did either of these things very well. Q: Why do you think that? Zabelka: What I do not mean to say is that I feel myself to have been remiss in any duties that were expected of me as a chaplain. I saw that the Mass and the sacraments were available as best I could. I even went out and earned paratrooper wings in order to do my job better. Nor did I fail to teach and preach what the Church expected me to teach and preach ? and I don’t mean by this that I just talked to the boys about their sexual lives. I and most chaplains were quite clear and outspoken on such matters as not killing and torturing prisoners. But there were other areas where things were not said quite so clearly. Q: For example? Zabelka: The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the Church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child?s head, I would have told him absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute would take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands of children and civilians ? and I said nothing. Q: Why not? You certainly knew civilians were being destroyed by the thousands in these raids, didn?t you? Zabelka: Oh, indeed I did know, and I knew with a clarity that few others could have had. Q: What do you mean? Zabelka: As a chaplain I often had to enter the world of the boys who were losing their minds because of something they did in war. I remember one young man who was engaged in the bombings of the cities of Japan. He was in the hospital on Tinian Island on the verge of a complete mental collapse. He told me that he had been on a low-level bombing mission, flying right down one of the main streets of the city, when straight ahead of him appeared a little boy, in the middle of the street, looking up at the plane in a childlike wonder. The man knew that in a few seconds the child would be burned to death by napalm which had already been released. Yes, I knew civilians were being destroyed, and knew it perhaps in a way others didn?t. Yet I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to men who were doing it. Q: Again, why not? Zabelka: Because I was “brainwashed”! It never entered my mind to publicly protest the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary; told openly by the military and told implicitly by my Church?s leadership. To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters, especially by a public body like the American bishops, is a stamp of approval. The whole structure of the secular, religious, and military society told me clearly that it was all right to “let the Japs have it.” God was on the side of my country. The Japanese were the enemy, and I was absolutely certain of my country?s and Church?s teaching about enemies; no erudite theological text was necessary to tell me. The day-in-day-out operation of the state and the Church between 1940 and 1945 spoke more clearly about Christian attitudes towards enemies and war than St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas ever could. I was certain that this mass destruction was right, certain to the point that the question of its morality never seriously entered my mind. I was “brainwashed” not by force or torture but by my Church?s silence and wholehearted cooperation in thousands of little ways with the country?s war machine. Why, after I finished chaplaincy school at Harvard I had my military chalice officially blessed by the then Bishop Cushing of Boston. How much more clearly could the message be given? Indeed, I was “brainwashed”! Q: So you feel that because you did not protest the morality of the bombing of other cities with their civilian populations, that somehow you are morally responsible for the dropping of the atomic bomb? Zabelka: The facts are that seventy-five thousand people were burned to death in one evening of fire bombing over Tokyo. Hundreds of thousands were destroyed in Dresden, Hamburg, and Coventry by aerial bombing. The fact that forty-five thousand human beings were killed by one bomb over Nagasaki was new only to the extent that it was one bomb that did it. To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and a priest as I see it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian Church that had asked for it ? that had prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and to justify the unthinkable. I am sure there are Church documents around someplace bemoaning civilian deaths in modern war, and I am sure those in power in the church will drag them out to show that it was giving moral leadership during World War II to its membership. Well, I was there, and I?ll tell you that the operational moral atmosphere in the Church in relation to mass bombing of enemy civilians was totally indifferent, silent, and corrupt at best ? at worst it was religiously supportive of these activities by blessing those who did them. I say all this not to pass judgment on others, for I do not know their souls then or now. I say all this as one who was part of the so-called Christian leadership of the time. So you see, that is why I am not going to the day of judgment looking for justice in this matter. Mercy is my salvation. Q: You said the atomic bombing of Nagasaki happened to a Church that “had asked for it.” What do you mean by that? Zabelka: For the first three centuries, the three centuries closest to Christ, the Church was a pacifist Church. With Constantine the church accepted the pagan Roman ethic of a just war and slowly began to involve its membership in mass slaughter, first for the state and later for the faith. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, whatever other differences they may have had on theological esoterica, all agreed that Jesus? clear and unambiguous teaching on the rejection of violence and on love of enemies was not to be taken seriously. And so each of the major branches of Christianity by different theological methods modified our Lord?s teaching in these matters until all three were able to do what Jesus rejected, that is, take an eye for an eye, slaughter, maim, torture. It seems a “sign” to me that seventeen hundred years of Christian terror and slaughter should arrive at August 9, 1945 when Catholics dropped the A-Bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. (Three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn?t bomb Catholic children. I didn?t. I, like that Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power and prerogative and violence, all in the name of our Lord. I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of a censer from the rubble. When I look at it today I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ?s teaching and destroyed His world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process, which began with Constantine, reached its lowest point — so far. Q: What do you mean by “so far”? Zabelka: Briefly, what I mean is that I do not see that the moral climate in relation to war inside or outside the Church has dramatically changed much since 1945. The mainline Christian Churches still teach something that Christ never taught or even hinted at, namely the Just War Theory, a theory that to me has been completely discredited theologically, historically, and psychologically. So as I see it, until the various churches within Christianity repent and begin to proclaim by word and deed what Jesus proclaimed in relation to violence and enemies, there is no hope for anything other than ever-escalating violence and destruction. Until membership in the Church means that a Christian chooses not to engage in violence for any reason and instead chooses to love, pray for, help, and forgive all enemies; until membership in the Church means that Christians may not be members of any military, American, Polish, Russian, English, Irish, et al.; until membership in the Church means that the Christian cannot pay taxes for others to kill others; and until the Church says these things in a fashion which the simplest soul could understand — until that time humanity can only look forward to more dark nights of slaughter on a scale unknown in history. Unless the Church unswervingly and unambiguously teaches what Jesus teaches on this matter it will not be the divine leaven in the human dough that it was meant to be. “The choice is between nonviolence or nonexistence,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, and he was not, and I am not, speaking figuratively. It is about time for the Church and its leadership in all denominations to get down on its knees and repent of this misrepresentation of Christ’s words. Communion with Christ cannot be established on disobedience to His clearest teachings. Jesus authorized none of His followers to substitute violence for love; not me, not you, not Jimmy Carter, not the pope, not a Vatican council, nor even an ecumenical council. Q: Father Zabelka, what kinds of immediate steps do you think the church should take in order to become the “divine leaven in the human dough”? Zabelka: Step one should be that Christians the world over should be taught that Christ?s teaching to love their enemies is not optional. I?ve been in many parishes in my life, and I have found none where the congregation explicitly is called upon regularly to pray for its enemies. I think this is essential. I offer you step two at the risk of being considered hopelessly out of touch with reality. I would like to suggest that there is an immediate need to call an ecumenical council for the specific purpose of clearly declaring that war is totally incompatible with Jesus? teaching and that Christians cannot and will not engage in or pay for it from this point in history on. This would have the effect of putting all nations on this planet on notice that from now on they are going to have to conduct their mutual slaughter without Christian support ? physical, financial, or spiritual. I am sure there are other issues which Catholics or Orthodox or Protestants would like to confront in an ecumenical council instead of facing up to the hard teachings of Christ in relationship to violence and enemies. But it seems to me that issues like the meaning of the primacy of Peter are nowhere near as pressing or as destructive of Church credibility and God?s world as is the problem of continued Christian participation in and justification of violence and slaughter. I think the Church?s continued failure to speak clearly Jesus? teachings is daily undermining its credibility and authority in all other areas. Q: Do you think there is the slightest chance that the various branches of Christianity would come together in an ecumenical council for the purpose of declaring war and violence totally unacceptable activities for Christians under all circumstances? Zabelka: Remember, I prefaced my suggestion of an ecumenical council by saying that I risked being considered hopelessly out of touch with reality. On the other hand, what is impossible for men and women is quite possible for God if people will only use their freedom to cooperate a little. Who knows what could happen if the Pope, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the President of the World Council of Churches called with one voice for such a council? One thing I am sure of is that our Lord would be very happy if His Church were again unequivocally teaching what He unequivocally taught on the subject of violence. Q: Fr. Zabelka, why after 39 years did you now decide to return to Japan and join in a peace pilgrimage that will culminate for you in Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1984? Zabelka: I am old now. Soon I will go to meet my God. When the invitation came to join this peace pilgrimage, I felt that God had offered me “a great grace,” as we used to say. So, I accepted. Q: What do you mean, God has offered you “a great grace” by an invitation to join a peace walk? Zabelka: I do not mean to quibble about words but I did not experience the invitation as a request to join a peace walk. The invitation entered into my soul as “pilgrimage” not “walk.” A pilgrimage is a journey one undertakes to holy places for holy reasons. Q: But what holy places are you going to visit in Japan? My understanding was that you were going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka: Calvary, the place where Christ suffered and died at the hands of the civil and religious politicians of His day, is the holiest shrine in Christianity. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Calvaries. For here, Christ in the bodies of the “least” was again tortured and put to death hundreds of thousands of times over by exactly the same dark and deceitful spirit of organized lovelessness that roamed Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Q: But Calvary is where Christ suffered. He did not suffer in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Zabelka: God, Christ, lives in every human being. Our Lord tells us that what is done to the “least” is in fact now done to Him (Mt 25). I believe that! That is the only kind of God that I could adore and love, a God who lives in human history and suffers with people. I could only fear a god that sat as a depersonalized king above the anguish of humanity. This is part of what the Incarnation is all about. Christ suffers and dies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Therefore to condone or support war is to condone or support the call to “Crucify Him.” To kill in war is, in fact, to be a “Christ-killer.” I’m sorry I can say nothing else — if Calvary is a holy place, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are holy places. Q: You said that a pilgrimage must not only be to a holy place but for holy reasons. What are your reasons? Zabelka: Peace! Peace is the fruit of communion with God. It is obvious to me that I, as well as humanity in general, are not in full communion with God, that we need to be reconciled with God. Jesus tells us that the condition now for reconciliation with God is reconciliation of human beings with each other. The Christian is explicitly called to be an agent of reconciliation. The first step in the reconciliation process is repentance for one?s sins, for what one has done to separate people from each other and thereby separate humanity from God. The reason I am going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is to repent and to ask the forgiveness of those living and dead whom I have damaged by my failure to love Christically. Q: But you were not actually on the planes that dropped the atomic bombs on those cities, were you? Zabelka: No, but that is irrelevant moral thinking in the 20th century. Modern war and oppression are carried out by a long chain of individuals, each doing his or her job meticulously while simultaneously refusing to look at the end results of his or her work. There is no state or corporate evil that is not the result of personal sinfulness. In August of 1945, I, as a Christian and as a priest, served not as an agent of reconciliation but as an instrument of retaliation, revenge and homicide. My explicit and tacit approval of what was being done on Tinian Island that summer was clearly visible for anyone to see. Beyond this, I was the last possible official spokesman for the Church before the fire of hell was let loose on Hiroshima on the Feast of the Transfiguration 1945 — and I said nothing. I was the officially designated Catholic priest who by silence did his priestly patriotic duty and chose nationalism over Catholicism, Caesar over Christ, as the “Bockscar,” manned! by Christians in my care, took off to evaporate the oldest and largest Christian community in Japan — Nagasaki. No, the fact that I was not physically on the planes is morally irrelevant. I played an important and necessary role in this sacrilege ? and I played it meticulously. I am as responsible as the soldier who stuck the spear in the side of Christ on Calvary. I come to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to repent and to ask forgiveness from the Japanese people, from my faith community at Nagasaki and from God. Q: Isn’t it a bit of rhetorical exaggeration to say you were a priest that played a role in a sacrilege? Zabelka: Not at all. I mean it literally. If someone walks into a church and destroys the altar and statues, etc., it is called a sacrilege. A sacrilege is the desecration of what is considered holy. But for the Christian, the ultimate place of the holy is the human person. We are the “temples of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, every act of violence toward a human being is an act of desecration of the temple of God in this world. War for the Christian is always sacrilege. There is no such absurdity as a Christian ethic of justified sacrilege. I am a priest who played a role in a sacrilege and that must be said by me and others like me without equivocation or else the future is a nightmare. Q: What do you mean that the future is a nightmare unless you and others like you acknowledge your role in the sacrilege of war? Zabelka: Look, I am a Catholic priest. In August of 1945, I did not say to the boys on Tinian, “You cannot follow Christ and drop those bombs.” But this same failure on the part of priests, pastors and bishops over the past 1700 years is, I believe, what is significantly responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for the seemingly unceasing “Christian” blood-letting around the globe. It seems to me that Christians have been slaughtering each other, as well as non-Christians, for the past 1700 years, in large part because their priests, pastors and bishops have simply not told them that violence and homicide are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. On the contrary, I would say that the average priest, pastor and bishop communicates that violence and homicide can be compatible with Jesus. After all, a machine gun is no more lethal than a broomstick without the will to kill and the fact is that we so-called Christian “leaders” by commission and omission, for 1700 years,! have been guilty of supplying a significant piece of the motivational apparatus necessary to execute the mass slaughter of war. Let?s be honest, to justify an evil is to promote an evil. And let?s face it, we priests, pastors and bishops have been justifying the butchery of war in the name of Christ for a long time. I might also add here that where more is required priestly silence is sinful, because silence gives consent and consent motivates toward the evil. Q: What do you think must be done to begin to address this situation, Father Zabelka? Zabelka: Unless the legitimate successors to the apostles proclaim fearlessly what the apostles proclaimed fearlessly, that is, that Christ?s teachings are teachings of nonviolent love and mercy ? and unless they unequivocally repent of their failure and the failure of their predecessors to explicitly teach this, then a long night of high-tech terror, torture and desolation is assured all humanity ? first world, third world, East and West. What has to be done is that we Christian “leaders” have to admit openly that we have been engaged in propagating a bloody moral blunder for the last 1700 years: the Just War Theory. Q: Specifically, how does your pilgrimage to Japan for this August 6th and 9th in 1984 respond to this need? Zabelka: If my priestly silence spoke for the Church in 1945 to the fellows on Tinian, perhaps my priestly request for forgiveness at Hiroshima and Nagasaki can speak for the Church in 1984. You see, I want to expose the lie of “Christian” war. The lie I fell for and blessed. I want to expose the lie of killing as a Christian social method, the lie of disposable people, the lie of Christian liturgy in the service of the homicidal gods of nationalism and militarism, the lie of nuclear security. I want to expose it by looking into the faces of the hibaksha and saying, “Brother, forgive me for bringing you death instead of the fullness of life. Sister, pardon me for bringing you misery instead of mercy. I and my Church have sinned against you and God.” It is hope in the Power of that small moment of truth, repentance and reconciliation that moves me to pilgrimage East by the grace of God. A one hour British documentary on Rev. George Zabelka, THE RELUCTANT PROPHET, is available in a DVD or VHS format from the Center for Christian Nonviolence. Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy is a priest of the Eastern Rite (Byzantine-Melkite) of the Catholic Church. Formerly a lawyer and a university educator, he is the founder and the original director of The Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution at the University of Notre Dame. He is also co-founder, along with Dorothy Day and others of Pax Christi-USA. He has conducted retreats and spoken at conferences throughout the world on the issue of the relationship of faith and violence and the nonviolence of the Jesus. He was the keynote speaker at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee for the 25th anniversary memorial of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. there. He is author of several books, including these: All Things Flee Thee because Thou Fleest Me: A Cry to the Churches and their Leaders to Return to the Nonviolent Jesus and His Nonviolent Way; Christian Just War Theory: The logic of Deceit; August 9: The Stations of the Cross of ! Nonviolent Love. He has also authored innumerable articles on the subject of violence, religion and the nonviolent love of friends and enemies taught by Jesus by word and deed. His audio/video series, BEHOLD THE LAMB, is almost universally considered to be the most spiritually profound presentation on the matter of Gospel Nonviolent Love available in this format. BEHOLD THE LAMB is now available on mp3CD through his website, either at the cost of $5.00 for a disc or it can be acquired directly by an mp3 downloaded from the website for no cost. Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his life‘s work on behalf of peace within people and among people. He may be reached and his work may be accessed at the Center for Christian Non-Violence.

WARNING: This is pretty scary stuff, though I should be safely dead by the time Gaia turns into Venus. —Daniel Pogo got it right. On 10 September 1813, after defeating the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry, commander of the American fleet, dispatched one of the most famous messages in military history to Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison. It read: “Dear Gen’l: We have met the enemy, and they are ours, two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem. H. Perry.” In 1970 cartoonist Walt Kelly famously paraphrased the statement as “We have met the enemy, and he is us” in a poster for the first Earth Day that featured characters from his long-running strip Pogo gazing on a garbage dump and mourning the sad state of the environment. Those of us who grew up reading science fiction were heartened by stories of alien invaders uniting humanity against a common enemy. Well, those prophetic words of Walt Kelly ring true once again. For millennia, homo sapiens has been getting under the skin of Mother Earth. Then, in what amounts to microseconds in geological time, the depths of our intrusions went from feet — to miles. We know how the body reacts to intruders, kiddies, don’t we: A foreign object is surrounded by pus, then expelled. Foreign agents are attacked by antibodies. Then there’s … the fever. Friends of mine have recently been battling an infestation of bedbugs. The solution? Heat each room to 152o Fahrenheit. That’ll get the little buggers! Same thing with flu and fever, except that if you get hotter than what’s needed to kill what need eliminating, it’ll kill you. I have heard that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) an esteemed panel of climate scientists, conservative, mind you, not folks prone to flights of fancy, but sober, God-fearing folk, have determined that within fifteen years of exponential environmental degradation, Planet Earth will be terminally choked by methane and Life As We Know It will be royally fricasseed. The atmosphere will de-stabilize and all Creation will go topsy-turvy. To paraphrase Pete Seeger quoting Robert Fulgham, “There’s no hope but maybe I am wrong — not.” Suck it up. We may be history and cockroaches will rule the earth. Okay, maybe that’s just wishful thinking on Gaia’s part. But consider the fellow in “the Graduate” who goes up to Benjamin Braddock and whispers, “Plastics.” Well, the word is actually … methane. “Essentially we have passed the methane hydrate tipping point and are now accelerating into extinction as the methane hydrate ‘Clathrate Gun’ has begun firing volleys of methane into the Arctic atmosphere” The Earth is a giant convecting planet, the underlying molten magma being heated by deep-seated radioactivity and the oceans and atmosphere are its cooling radiator which allows the Earth the facility to vent this heat into open space. Mother Earth has carefully held the atmospheric temperature within a stable range necessary for oceans to exist for at least 4 billion years and nurtured the earliest bacteria to evolve into today’s space-faring humans. The fouling up of the Earth’s cooling radiator from Human emissions of greenhouse gases derived from fossil fuels will be counteracted by Mother Earth in her characteristic fashion by emitting vast volumes of deadly methane into the atmosphere from the Arctic regions. This will lead to the total extermination of all harmful biological species that produce greenhouse gases in the same way that Mother Earth did during the Permian and other extinction events. In this case, however, we have totally tipped the balance with our extreme carbon dioxide and methane emissions so that there will be no chance of recovery for the Earth in this time-frame. —The Non-Disclosed Extreme Arctic Methane Threat Malcolm P.R. Light, December, 2013 Let me put it this way: I wrote this tale close to the anniversary of the 6.9 San Francisco Bay area Loma Prieta earthquake. Personally, I think Gaia was just warming up, maybe suggesting a game of ten-pin with the cosmos, like, send a squirrely gutter-ball whizzing past us with enough gravitational mass to treat Planet Earth like a global martini, James Bond-style, shaken, not stirred. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tornados and hurricanes, flip it on its axis and adios muchachos y muchachas. Think about it. How long, in geological time, have we been pricking the earth? We’ve not been miles-deep shafting, uranium-mining, global warming for that very long. The human body can ignore mosquitoes, but takes a dim — and serious view of massive infection. How do you think Gaia will deal with us as a species, realizing that we pose a real, credible threat to her health, her very existence? The only question, really, being, will we be given a second, stone-age chance, or will we be traded for a player to be named later, like, say, Cockroach? Enquiring minds want to know. —Daniel, May 12, 2013   ne day God and the Dragon were hoisting a few, talking about Things (they didn’t just talk about “things”—they talked about THINGS— and there’s a lull in the conversation. Then the Dragon speaks: “Say, yer G’ness, this Universe jazz—how did it all come about, anyway. Like, how long have you been around?” “Forever, Jack, and that’s a fac.” God belched and raised a glass for the barkeep to refill. “Landlord,” the Dragon added, in a reasonable W.C. Fields impression, “while you’re at it, pour me another one, too. And raise the octane a tad. I’ve barely got enough flame to light my ceegar. Come on, God. You can do better than that. Anyone who can write something as convoluted as the Bible’s got a hell of an imagination.” “Okay, squirt, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you the beginning if you can answer a simple question.” “’Kay.” “Which came first–the dragon or the egg?” “Scheisse … merde … Griffin pucky,” growled the dragon. “Do I look like an egghead to you? Okay. There were fish eggs before there were dragon. No, that’s not quite right. the answer is … Dragon.” “Elucidate.” The Dragon chuckled, adjusted his scales (ran through an E flat Dorian to scratch an itch), flicked his tail (a couple dozen shooting stars that evening!) and put another cushion under his rump. Brushing an ash from his considerable belly he began. “It was a dark and stormy night,” he rumbled in dragon baritone. “Hoo!” God interjected. “How original.” “Hey. My story.” child was sleeping, dreaming fantasy and science fiction, and its dream-mind wandered through myriad universes when it came to one that was simply quite … empty. And it dreamed a dragon—a tiny one, really, just this small. The dragon squeaked and that Universe turned just so and the little child winkled out of the creature’s existence, leaving it all alone with nothing but emptiness surrounding it. Her eyes gazed all about, looking for something to grasp onto, but there was nothing there. And so she began to cry diamond tears and those tears were sprinkled across the heavens and became the stars. They twinkled and jingled crystalline starry-bell sounds. And winked at her. ;-) A gleam shot across her miniature orbs and she puffed a tiny dragon puff and out shot inter-stellar debris. “Oo!” she cried and reached into her belly and drew some fire together, rolled it around, pulled it stretched like salt-fire taffy and shot it up and around and through her tiny dragon teeth. The flame swirled around her head and fell into itself, rolled into a ball. “Sun!” she cried in baby dragon-talk, choked a bit on the word and coughed up the moon for an encore. All this was very exciting, but abruptly, Nature called and out the other end plummeted a great fertile gob of Dragon-doo. Turning about she singed it an oven-broiler singe and barbecued it good. It cooked and ripened and sprouted. Dragon-piss splashed into lakes and rivers and seas. Microscopic creatures split into multitudes, Time grew wings and creatures Changed and Changed and there were seven and twenty-nine and one hundred and two of them and then in two and several blinks of her ever-widening dragons’ eyes, vast quintillions of different kinds, all frolicking and eating and shitting and great grand rutting and over-all plentifying the earth. And the sounds! “Cahyee!” “Gehh!” “Yayayaya!” “Cooy, Cooy!” “Hootnhoot!” all rumbled and splattered around her dragon ears and mixed themselves together. “Gaia. Gaia. Gaia.” “Gaia. I am Gaia.” And so, quite satisfied with herself and ready for an afternoon nap, she stretched and rolled and turned around and around, dropping planets and moons and comets and such as she moved, outward, outward. And just beyond the orbit of Pluto she yawned, belched a volcano, smoked and simmered and drifted off to sleep. “Where the hell am I while all this is going on,” mumbled God, scratching her left tit and taking another swallow of Ambrosia Lager Dry Lite (even God has to watch Her weight.) “You were always here, don’tcha know. Always the impartial observer. Least ‘til you sent down that Jesus jerk. Somebody should’ve taught you the Prime Directive.” “That’s my Son you’re talking about—” “Son, schmun. Why couldn’t you have sent a Daughter. Maybe a couple dozen less wars. Who knows.” “Asshole. Talk to Allah next door about that Mohammed error-in-judgment.” “Hey, that’s You! Yahweh, God(ess), Allah … same dif‘. ’Sides, the Prophet (peace be upon him) was cool. It’s the pricks who took their cue from the Crusaders’ playbook that gave Islam a bad rep. Petty human expletive-deleteds,” grouched the Dragon. “Should learn to worship the message and not the messenger. Where was I, anyway?” “Gaia in Lullaby Land.” “Oh. … Landlord! (W.C. Fields again.) Another shot of Vulcan’s finest. My throat’s too damned dry and cool.” “Right away, your Scalyness.” “Lovely man. An angel of mercy to the parched of Paradise.” And she slept, dreaming of innocence, and ah, what mischief idle planets doth … . “God, what’s the third person present of ‘wrought’?” “Sorry. I lost interest in grammar after Aramaic.” (Dragon gives Her a quizzical sneer.) “Whaaat. Do I look like a fucking high school English teacher?” “We’re talking in Dragonish.” “Mono-lingual puppet-slave down there at the word processor’s stuck in English. Forget it. Pick another word.” “If you say so.” While little Gaia slept, Evil was born. From the Primordial Soup kitchen a creature emerged and was called Man. “Whoa, whoa, Whoooaaaa! In My image we’re talking here. And this ‘man’ shit. It’s the 90s downstairs and I don’t mean 18.” “‘Man’s deliberate and, hey, I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. Buddhas and Gandhis are well and good, but, hey, from balls-the-size-of-Outer-Mongolia Ghengis Khan to prissy-smarmy ‘Read my lipshit’ George (don’t remind me it’s the 90s) Indira, Maggie and Imelda were outclassed beyond redemption in the `Let’s go to Hell and take the world with us’ department. And I’m a nominal male. … Sheesh. Put me on a fucking menstrual cycle and join me on Your Harley. … Saint fucking George! Heard of him? Of course. Poor Gaia. Busted a nice frolicky dream about Puff on Hanalei beach, woke up and had to deal with that prick. Gaia awoke and sensed something was wrong, tippy-toed back to Planet Earth and gazed below in dismay. Darkly-glowing fires with a homo sapiens cast dotted the landscape. Wheels and machines and roads. And weapons. “No, no, no!” she cried and flew in a streak through the clouds below. Down, and down, and down she plummeted, past mountain peaks and eagles and sparrows. Past clean, blue sky into brown, choking air saturated with the evil of civilization. Across the land she raced, guided by instinct to a village to a forest to a clearing where stood … “I am Saint George and I deny you!” he challenged. “What have you done?” she cried, meaning ‘you of sword and longbow and instruments of torture.’ “I?” he shouted in his blind arrogance. “I have called you, and you have answered my summons and today you shall die.” “You!” she pleaded in dismay. “From my guts I bore you, gave you heat and light, pissed a gentle rain to green your lands. You mock me and know not what you say. You would kill your own mother?” “You are a whore,” blathered the saint, “and I shall part you in twain from your hole to your larynx.” Dragon snorted in aggregation, tossed back a few lingering drops of nectar and continued. “Never one for logical process this paragon of intelligent life, Saint Georgie girded his polluting loins, dropped his visor, dug his sharp-shod heel into his charger-accomplice’s flanks and launched himself into history. Unused to air current and thermal dynamics, poor Gaia slipped on a wind sheer and dropped like an unlucky parachutist onto the speeding point of George’s iron prick, not a messenger of fuck but of hot gushing death. “Or nearly so. You cannot slay the dragon. You cannot slay your mother. You can flay her in strips of mining, render her asthmatic and scald her tender skin with acid rain. “You cannot slay the Dragon. You cannot slay your mother. You can disease her seas and brand her land and dry her sky but she lives and breathes. And waits. And waits.” Up and up and up she spiraled, spied with sharp of eye a welcoming, beckoning fissure, blew a blessed passage into herself and plunged. Into the heart of the ball and made herself at home. Rested, breathed, drank of the cool, deep wells, warmed by the fires of the molten core. And slept. And dreamt. And healed. And waited. Dragon is merciful, Dragon is kind. Dragon is compassionate and loves her children, loves her brats, listens to their squalls, feels them grow, senses their learning, feels the joy of their Worshipness, those who love their Mother, love their Dragon. And waits. And balances. And says to herself, “Maybe I should start all over again from scratch.” And it is October 17, 1989. “Last year, right?” queries God, never at a loss for observation. “Quite the cock-up, that Loma Prieta.” “Never was an egg, your Throneness. I am her doppelgänger, her eye in the sky, so to speak. I am a cellular phone call from Hell, to abuse the vernacular. “Who do you represent, God?” he sneers, “The Christians? Got you outnumbered. I’m the whole enchilada, amigo. I’m the Earth entire and I’m hoisting a few with you, well, because it amuses me. I can make you disappear. One good fart from my Dragon bowels, a tectonic shake, rattle and roll and Christianity goes out the window with civilization and learning and monks and quills and you’re non-history and all our kiddies down there have to learn to make matches all over again. “Hey, baby, who loves ya? Happy Anniversary, San Francisco.” Daniel B. Zwickel Pittsburg, California 2:51 am, Friday the 14th, September 1990 One month, three days, fourteen hours and sixteen minutes to go.

In case you missed it, I am a Unitarian Universalist as well as a Jew. Why this is pertinent is because I am also An American. And that’s not all. My name is Shakur Daniel Beck Zwickel ben Avrám ben Chayim MacJean of Hoss-Winter & Wicks: which is to say, Shakurallah (grateful for the many blessings of Allah) Shakur (Gratitude), my Sufi name, being one of the ninety-nine names of Allah; Dani-El, meaning God (El) is my judge (Dan), and matriarchally descended from the Becks, who begat the mother of my grandmother, Lula Beck Hoss; son of Abraham, son of Chayim (meaning ‘life’, called Charles) of Brooklyn, of Tailor clan Zwickel of Galicia, and husband of Rebecca Winter; and of Jean, clan Campbell, of St. Louis, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Scott Corey Wicks of Indianapolis and a namastëan life-affirminist rationalist mystic ovo-lacto activist-pacifist eco-feminist Zen-neo-pagan non-Abrahamic Judeo-Christian religious humanistic Unitarian bio-theistic Trinitarian pan-theistic existentialist Universalist trans-gender/generationist troubadour of jazz and a birthright Jewnitarian, member of the Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church of Walnut Creek, Mt. Diablo Bio-region, Pacific Central District of the Unitarian Universalist Association, since April of 1976 and a damn good musician and composer and renaissant jazz violinist. Daniel ben Avrám Vallejo, California 13 August, 2014 Addendum: This just in! Unitarian Universalism may well be the most psychologically healthful church in America. We welcome the marginalized, the non-conformists, the queer community, particularly youth. If not outright condemned, queer youth are made to feel out of place in many churches. The fact that they are welcomed and respected as individuals is not just a healthy thing — it can be a preventative to those who are prone to suicide, which is epidemic among queer youth throughout the nation. We teach our children, from early on, about other religions and faith traditions — how many churches to that! Knowledge of others, understanding and respect fosters goodwill and lessens fear of “the other”, which is the cause for so much hatred in the world. We have a curriculum called “OWL” (Our Whole Life), which teaches age-appropriate sexuality, fostering a better understanding of the students’ bodies which also leads to healthy relationships. Above all, we treat our youth as people, encouraging their growth and integrating them into the decision-making process in our church governance. We grow healthier, well-adjusted adults, and how cool is that!