What Good Does It Do?

Last weekend we held our closing retreat for our parish JustFaith program -- a dinner on Friday, with prayer and discussion, and an all-day gathering on Saturday. It was a beautiful day, and if the retreat hadn't been really meaningful to the folks present, I'm sure we would have had a few defections along the way, with people leaving to enjoy other pursuits. But we had a few of our retreat sessions outside, and the pace was very relaxed so that our retreatants could walk outside and enjoy the sunshine.

During one of the discussions the topic of nonviolence/peace came up, and one of our retreatants expressed the sadness that the world's military urges are so huge, well-funded, and seemingly popular that she felt a bit overwhelmed and hopeless about any efforts to move things in another direction.

I had read a very hopeful-in-spite-of-the-world column in the National Catholic Reporter blogs from Fr. John Dear SJ recently, entitled Marching for Peace in New York City, but I didn't have a copy of it (I have sent it to her since). He points out that that sense of hopelessness isn't new, and it shouldn't stop us. Excerpts follow:

I’m often confronted with the question, what good do these actions do? Why bother marching? What’s the use of singing? Does anyone really pay any attention to your leaflets, your unfurling of banners, your staged die-ins?

Such questions are misplaced, arising as they do from our culture’s obsession with command and control and effectiveness. I operate from another ethic, the one that calls us to speak out against the odds, to puncture pretenses, to break the unanimity.

Such was much of the busyness among the pages of the Acts of the Apostles, often read during our Easter and Pentecost seasons. Each day the apostles and the early community gathered near the Temple , in the heart of Jerusalem . And there they spoke out -- and faced arrest. Even though they seemed to make little difference. Even though the system barreled on.

But they had resolved themselves. They would “witness to the resurrection,” in their words. They would speak of the defeat of death. As for the chips, let them fall where they may.

Here’s Peter and one typical day in the Life: “‘God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways.’ While they were still speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the guard and the Sadducees confronted them, disturbed that they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They laid hands on them and put them in custody ...” (Act 3:26, 4:1-3).

This is the story of the early church. In our own clumsy way, we tried to do the same. In Grand Central Station, in Times Square. We witnessed to the resurrection. Which today translates to mean: “No more nuclear weapons, no more wars, no more killing, no more violence. Stop planning the global crucifixion of Christ. The days of engineering society by Death are over.”

We who participated in these events were inspired to carry on, and in these cynical, despairing times, that in itself is a great accomplishment.

The Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will, and we never know the outcome of our witness. What we do know is our vocation -- to stand up, speak out boldly, and announce Resurrection to a troubled people mired in a culture of death.

I've gotten away from that kind of participation, though there was a time when both Joan and I were involved in demonstrations and civil disobedience at the Trident Missle Base, the IRS building in downtown Seattle, and other places. It does feel hopeless sometimes, but Fr. Dear's example of the early Church is a good one. I shouldn't feel like "my" action or protest is somehow going to change the world through the force of its purity of purpose! Someone at our retreat on Saturday quoted Mother Teresa: "We don't build the whole building, we lay a brick."

It's obviously not only true with activities against war and in favor of peace. It's true in working to help the homeless or in cooking at a free soup kitchen or working for just immigration laws. We do these things not because we expect we will overcome the world's problems in our lifetime.

Archbishop Oscar Romero put it this way: "The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. ... We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. ... We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker."