Love confronting death

Catholic New Times, April 9, 2006 by Leonard Desroches

"Brutality engenders brutality," I heard myself utter when I was first told that Jim Loney and his companions had been abducted in Iraq. The brutality of war engenders more brutality, such as abduction.

"A shoot will sprout that can only be watered with tears." These exact words tumbled out of my perplexed heart the very first time I gathered with others to pray for Jim, Harmeet, Norman and Tom. I did not know then what these words meant. Now that I've been asked to write a guest column in the space that Jim would have occupied, I still don't know what exactly these words mean.

There certainly have been tears: tears of grief at Tom's execution and tears of fear and anger at what could happen to Jim and his two other companions. There have also been tears of re-commitment in faith by many people.

Others have shared with me their painful crisis of faith. "I hate the abductors," declared one of Jim's friends. It was not the time to explain how, if I lived under brutal, foreign occupation and knew nothing about the transformative force of active non-violence, I too, would certainly turn to the tactics of counter-violence available to me, such as abduction and suicide bombing.

I can say this without hesitation, because even here in Canada, had I not come to understand the power of non-violence, I could have definitely killed a number of times. I recall leading a retreat on non-violence in Stoney Mountain Prison with about a dozen men, many who had committed murder. I did not feel the least bit out of place: when one is denied access to the healing power of nonviolence, one's extreme rage and fear can easily turn into extreme violence.

This terrible waiting for our loved ones has lasted so long n long enough to begin to imagine the suffering of those who wait much longer. For many years, I have been ready to die against war, but I have never readied myself for the very different pain of the possible war-related death of a loved one.

(I only intuited this other suffering when I was locked in solitary during one of my prison sentences related to war resistance. Even though being put in the "hole" is not a rare prison experience, I realized it was causing my loved ones real suffering.)

The raggedness of important family chores postponed, of wage-earning work lost and the rawness of hearts that can neither mourn nor celebrate, remind us of the traumatized lives of those living under military occupation with its intensified sectarian violence.

We have tried to support one another as by holding vigil as a community of faith. We have been drawn much deeper into Christ's words about the breadth and depth of love confronting death: "Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul."

Many shoots have definitely sprouted, all of them watered by sacred tears: One of the shoots is the radical freedom with which Tom Fox gave his life long before it was physically taken from him as was evident when he wrote, "We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanking any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls ... if Jesus and Gandhi are right, then I am asked to risk my life, and if I lose it to be as forgiving as they were when murdered ..."

Another shoot is the tremendous compassion of Muslim leaders who continue to pray and speak out for the release of the captives.

Yet another shoot is the deepening of bonds within the many communities that have been holding vigil with our beloved brothers in captivity, and the consequent deepening awareness of the suffering of the 16,400 Iraqis illegally detained in the U.S. prison system in Iraq.

The longest, most demanding spiritual journey is never to another country. The greater spiritual journey for all of us is the journey from brittle ego to a strong, purified self capable of risking compassionate love for others, including enemies. My yearning is that Jim be released and that he and we together will have gone some distance with God in that great spiritual journey of transformation n enough to celebrate together liberating humility and indestructible joy.

I write the last words of the above sentence at about 4:30 in the morning, Thursday, March 23. I go back to bed for an hour's final rest. The phone wakes me. It is Dan Hunt: "I have good news. Jim has been released!"