Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The High Tory Position - Ron Dart on the Absurdist Podcast

Jim Forest's "Writing Straight with Crooked Lines" - Review by Ron Dart

Jim Forest, Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir (Orbis Books, 2020).

I first met Jim Forest in the mid-1980s when he was still general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and I was on staff with Amnesty International. We met, initially, the old fashioned way (letter writing). Jim and I have stayed in touch since then. Jim and I, working for two different Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in the area of peace and human rights, indeed, know what it means to be “Beggar-in Chief” (a chapter in Writing Straight with Crooked Lines). We are often expected to run like racehorses yet fed like beggars. But, to the book. The mid-1980s signaled a significant shift in the Cold War, March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in the former USSR. Who would have guessed the changes in the USSR and religion in Russia (an important topic and life changer for Jim and his wife Nancy) with Gorbachev coming to power? Many are the chapters in this Memoir of Jim’s trips to Russia, Orthodoxy, and Russian literature. Jim and I have had some lovely email correspondence recently of Boris Pasternak and Dr. Zhivago, 2020 being the 60^th anniversary of Pasternak’s death. Interestingly, as Jim noted in his missive when Nancy Reagan was in Russia with her husband, Ronald Reagan, she took the time to go to Pasternak’s grave. Jim sent Nancy Reagan a photograph of the grave and Nancy Reagan replied in a letter of gratitude. History is, indeed, replete with those small and often ignored acts of transcending the tribalism of ideological culture and political wars.    

Writing Straight with Crooked Lines, in the birthing chapters, dealt with Jim’s parents, parents immersed in Marxist thought and communism, and in McCarthy era America, knowing the paid price for such commitments. There is a poignant sense that Jim was gifted with parents who knew the cost of standing by convictions, convictions perhaps naïve and misguided, yet faithful to a vision. It was this underlying experience that, perhaps, partially, explains Jim’s turn, post naval job, to a form of public Christian faith that was also very much about faithfulness to Christian convictions (Jim’s father and mother, although Marxist, were not anti-religious or anti-Christian). The turn by Jim in the early 1960s to work with the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day certainly had left of centre tendencies, tendencies inherited from his parental past. Many of the initial chapters in A Memoir deal with Jim’s meandering journey (crooked yet moving in a discernable direction) to an Anglican then Roman Catholic ecclesiology with an engaged peace focus to it. Dorothy Day pointed the way, in time, to Thomas Merton (both significant models and mentors for Jim). Each of the insightful, fast-paced and anecdotal chapters in the autobiography are both a journey with Jim as he moves through time and history but also an overview of the terrain of the time, war, and peace ever at odds.

I might add that most of the black-white photographs in the book are keepers not to miss.

The 1960s-1980s brought Jim into contact with some of those most committed to peace but peace in a just manner: Dan and Phil Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, A.J. Muste, Joan Baez, Al Hassler, Jim Douglass, Adolfo Perez Esquival, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other women and men on the just peace train. The larger public and political issues of peace and unity, so the crooked lines go, took Jim to a variety of marriages that were not about peace but more discord and disunity, separations troubling and painful. It was the meeting with Nancy that brought, for Jim, solid and straight lines, a path to deeper life and love that shines clean and clear in A Memoir, in time, Nancy offering her kidney so Jim’s body could be more at peace.

The almost 70 short yet riveting chapters in this must-read beauty are more than worthy of multiple reads. Much is learned, of course, about Jim’s journey (and many of those he interacted with) but also the cost of being someone concerned for peace and acting on it. The transition of Jim-Nancy to the Orthodox church (given their trips to Russia in the Russian thaw) makes for a window into the glasnost-perestrioka years and, perhaps more importantly, dukhovnost (spiritual life of the people). It would have been interesting to hear Jim’s thoughts on Putin and the state of the Russian Orthodox Church these days. It was somewhat interesting how, in many ways, Henri Nouwen was a healing shepherd to Jim as he was living through a painful marriage crisis, and yet, when Jim/Nancy turned to the Orthodox Tradition,  Nouwen found such a move problematic. Jim’s reflections on this fuller ecclesiology are included in the autobiography with an oft-quoted passage by Merton on uniting the Eastern and Western forms of Christianity.

Writing Straight with Crooked Lines comes to an apt and fitting close with Jim tipping his grateful hat (replete with photographs) to his mentors: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Daniel Berrigan, Henri Nouwen and Al Hassler-Joan Baez (certainly high-level worthies of the 20^th-21^st centuries peace movements and various types of activism). The final photo (peace fingers held in a joyful way and full-face smiles) is fitting of Jim and Nancy (his decades-long wife who has brought him much peace and many a straight line) on, appropriately, the feast of St. Martha.

Ron Dart             

Jim Forest's "Writing Straight with Crooked Lines" - Review by Ron Dart

Jim Forest, Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir (Orbis Books, 2020).

I first met Jim Forest in the mid-1980s when he was still general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and I was on staff with Amnesty International. We met, initially, the old fashioned way (letter writing). Jim and I have stayed in touch since then. Jim and I, working for two different Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in the area of peace and human rights, indeed, know what it means to be “Beggar-in Chief” (a chapter in Writing Straight with Crooked Lines). We are often expected to run like racehorses yet fed like beggars. But, to the book. The mid-1980s signaled a significant shift in the Cold War, March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in the former USSR. Who would have guessed the changes in the USSR and religion in Russia (an important topic and life changer for Jim and his wife Nancy) with Gorbachev coming to power? Many are the chapters in this Memoir of Jim’s trips to Russia, Orthodoxy, and Russian literature. Jim and I have had some lovely email correspondence recently of Boris Pasternak and Dr. Zhivago, 2020 being the 60^th anniversary of Pasternak’s death. Interestingly, as Jim noted in his missive when Nancy Reagan was in Russia with her husband, Ronald Reagan, she took the time to go to Pasternak’s grave. Jim sent Nancy Reagan a photograph of the grave and Nancy Reagan replied in a letter of gratitude. History is, indeed, replete with those small and often ignored acts of transcending the tribalism of ideological culture and political wars.    

Writing Straight with Crooked Lines, in the birthing chapters, dealt with Jim’s parents, parents immersed in Marxist thought and communism, and in McCarthy era America, knowing the paid price for such commitments. There is a poignant sense that Jim was gifted with parents who knew the cost of standing by convictions, convictions perhaps naïve and misguided, yet faithful to a vision. It was this underlying experience that, perhaps, partially, explains Jim’s turn, post naval job, to a form of public Christian faith that was also very much about faithfulness to Christian convictions (Jim’s father and mother, although Marxist, were not anti-religious or anti-Christian). The turn by Jim in the early 1960s to work with the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day certainly had left of centre tendencies, tendencies inherited from his parental past. Many of the initial chapters in A Memoir deal with Jim’s meandering journey (crooked yet moving in a discernable direction) to an Anglican then Roman Catholic ecclesiology with an engaged peace focus to it. Dorothy Day pointed the way, in time, to Thomas Merton (both significant models and mentors for Jim). Each of the insightful, fast-paced and anecdotal chapters in the autobiography are both a journey with Jim as he moves through time and history but also an overview of the terrain of the time, war, and peace ever at odds.

I might add that most of the black-white photographs in the book are keepers not to miss.

The 1960s-1980s brought Jim into contact with some of those most committed to peace but peace in a just manner: Dan and Phil Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, A.J. Muste, Joan Baez, Al Hassler, Jim Douglass, Adolfo Perez Esquival, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other women and men on the just peace train. The larger public and political issues of peace and unity, so the crooked lines go, took Jim to a variety of marriages that were not about peace but more discord and disunity, separations troubling and painful. It was the meeting with Nancy that brought, for Jim, solid and straight lines, a path to deeper life and love that shines clean and clear in A Memoir, in time, Nancy offering her kidney so Jim’s body could be more at peace.

The almost 70 short yet riveting chapters in this must-read beauty are more than worthy of multiple reads. Much is learned, of course, about Jim’s journey (and many of those he interacted with) but also the cost of being someone concerned for peace and acting on it. The transition of Jim-Nancy to the Orthodox church (given their trips to Russia in the Russian thaw) makes for a window into the glasnost-perestrioka years and, perhaps more importantly, dukhovnost (spiritual life of the people). It would have been interesting to hear Jim’s thoughts on Putin and the state of the Russian Orthodox Church these days. It was somewhat interesting how, in many ways, Henri Nouwen was a healing shepherd to Jim as he was living through a painful marriage crisis, and yet, when Jim/Nancy turned to the Orthodox Tradition,  Nouwen found such a move problematic. Jim’s reflections on this fuller ecclesiology are included in the autobiography with an oft-quoted passage by Merton on uniting the Eastern and Western forms of Christianity.

Writing Straight with Crooked Lines comes to an apt and fitting close with Jim tipping his grateful hat (replete with photographs) to his mentors: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Daniel Berrigan, Henri Nouwen and Al Hassler-Joan Baez (certainly high-level worthies of the 20^th-21^st centuries peace movements and various types of activism). The final photo (peace fingers held in a joyful way and full-face smiles) is fitting of Jim and Nancy (his decades-long wife who has brought him much peace and many a straight line) on, appropriately, the feast of St. Martha.

Ron Dart             

Lessons from My Maple - Eden Jersak

I’m enjoying the show Maple is putting on these days, she features prominently from the window in my kitchen, dining room and living room.

She is glorious ... all those colours, and how she changes from day to day! How different light catches and highlights different shades and shapes and shadows.
What I’m appreciating today is how these two photos show us how black and white thinking is detrimental to our faith and to how we relate to God.

When we get stuck in ruts of judgment... black and white ... good or bad ... yes or no ... saint or sinner ... we lose the colour in life! We’re left with hard lines of varying greys, even though we believe we’re sorting things into black and white.
But Jesus put the colour back into faith when he taught his disciples and those who have ears to hear. He took the black and white law and starting messing with it. He summed up ALL the Laws that explained how we are meant to live and treat those around us by saying this ... “Love your neighbour as yourself!”

That summary of the Law puts all the colour back into how our faith is worked out, how we demonstrate it, and the personal touches each of us might put on how that looks.

It also allows us to relate to God in a much more fluid and creatively free way. No need to check the rule book, just a permission slip to engage in loving our neighbours which includes everyone on our planet!

Consider asking God how you might tag-team to share some love today. Put some colour back into our world!

Loitering with Jesus - Kenneth Tanner

Loitering with Jesus

The leaves of this Japanese maple in our front-drive are not “useful” to me but I love beholding them.

In the church we are in the habit of asking, “What difference does this make for me on Monday morning?” or “How can I make use of this in my day-to-day life?”

The contemplation of God and of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ is good for you and for the world. It does not need to lead to anything “practical.” Loitering with the person of Jesus is beneficial all by itself.

To behold Jesus, to hear his words, and attend to his actions in the gospels are enough.

Yes, taking a walk or riding a bike is good for your health but if you are only walking or riding a bike to aid your well-being, if you’re not enjoying these acts of being in and of themselves, you are missing out on the best part.

Trust leaders who invite you simply to ponder the Word made flesh, who beckon you to contemplate God and humanity by and in Jesus Christ without a to-do list. No applications.

What you can learn from such teachers is that God is present and at work in you, in the creation, and in your circumstances (that’s a very good thing); that God is the active agent in the world’s salvation; and that your gracious participation in his words and acts begins with dwelling in and with him in stillness of heart and mind.

Sometimes we need to trust that the sheer meditation on God that John (and the other gospel witnesses) grant us is enough; that there does not have to be a “So what?” or a “What now?”

Just ponder the mystery.

There can be an unhealthy fixation on utility that we need to recognize and address, in this and in many areas of our lives.

“Is this useful or instrumental” *can* deny the legitimacy of wasting time in the wondrous contemplation of God and humanity that the person of Jesus affords us.

Nothing could be more relevant to life and how to live it than contemplation of the person who is both God and human.

Servant Leadership in the Public Square - Ron Dart