Reflections on Daniel Berrigan for the launch of “The Folly”

Daniel Berrigan was born in 1921 on May 9th. He died in 2016, just a few days before he would have turned 95.

 

In that long lifetime, Dan experienced and was changed by so many world events—

 

●      The Great Depression which turned millions of people out of their homes.

●      World War II, in which three of his brothers fought, and as many as 85 million people were killed.

●      The beginning of the nuclear age and the United States nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago. The establishment of nuclear hegemony and the perfecting of the technology to destroy the world while devastating the indigenous communities where nuclear mining, testing and waste storing occurs. Dan lived under the existential shadow nuclear weapons cast over the whole world.

●      The Cold War that was so hot and deadly in so many places around the world.

●      The Vietnam War and its spread into Laos and Cambodia and into our own streets.

●      The execution of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the popular uprisings that followed.

●      The asssassination of Malcolm X and RFK. The Attica uprising. The overthrow of Allende.

●      The AIDS epidemic, which killed nearly 40 million people worldwide, an estimated half million of whom lived in the U.S.

●      Apartheid in South Africa and its analogue of racism and segregation here in the US.

●      The greed of El Catorce Familias in El Salvador and the United States’ support for their brutal regime, which resulted in a civil war that killed 75,000 people, mostly poor civilians. He also witnessed the rebirth of the Catholic Church in El Salvador and throughout Central America and the radical embrace of liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor. He grieved the assassinations of Father Rutilio Grande and then Archbishop Oscar Romero, the four US churchwomen, and the execution of his Jesuit brothers years later, whom he knew.

●      The war on terror and the war on the poor, both of which were fought right outside his door. And the war on Mother Earth.

●      Israel’s long state of siege on the Palestinian people– although he died before that dehumanizing regime cohered into the genocidal campaign the world is now witnessing.

 

So much loss. So much war. So much injustice.

 

In rage, in sorrow, in relationship with others– grounded in the radical understanding that we are not meant to kill one another– Dan responded to all — and countless more that I didn’t list— these affronts on creation, these assaults on the human.

 

He marched, he picketed, he held signs, he sat in, he died in, he threw blood, he spread ashes, he trespassed, he ministered, he burned paper, he hammered nose cones, he preached, he “harangued” and “incommodo-ed” (actual violations of the law), he lectured, he transubstantiated, he baptized, he married, he blessed, he taught…. and he wrote– more than 50 books and who knows (maybe Father John Dear) how many articles, poems, essays, and contributions to other people’s work.

 

And he travelled– oh how he travelled to do all these things! And to show up for his friends, family, and fellow resisters.

 

And he was often exhausted, worn down, run ragged, rubbed thin.

 

Once here at Kirkridge, [www.kirkridge.org], he quipped at the beginning of a Sunday morning session (after the Saturday evening session of jokes and Vodka had gone too late)– “Yesterday you heard my brother Phil talk about Depleted Uranium, and now this morning, you are getting Depleted Berrigan.” The whole crowd laughed and then Dan launched into an extraordinary Bible Study. It was like the laughter and commiseration were the fuel he needed to get going that morning.

 

When we gathered as family or community, he would often pull us from our chatting and catching up and have us “do a go-round” of listening to one another share “what was giving us hope” in that moment. Whatever global heartache or personal tragedy was on our minds and in our hearts, we were invited to dig beneath the specificity of our despair and grasp the shape of our hope– our keeping on.

 

It was– invariably–  other people, our friends, our community, our siblings, our kids, hopeful people doing hopeful things, who were keeping us going, keeping us from giving up. And listening to each person share strengthened the rest of us!  Those were tearful, deep sharings… and reminded us that we are not alone in this work for peace, for justice, for creation, for one another!

 

These are small examples of how Daniel Berrigan was sustained, buoyed, nourished, brought back to wholeness by friendship and prayer– again and again and again.

 

The friendship part was pretty easy. He was present, he was compassionate, he was wise, he was a trained pastoral counselor. He was funny and wry and people were drawn to him. He was known to observe that “friendships are stronger than battleships.”

 

The prayer part was harder– because it required solitude, it required separation from other people and from his daily business and busy-ness, it required time. But Dan had “done time.” He knew how to do it. Dan had spent time in jails and prisons, in solitary confinement, in serious illness– and of course in the seminary!

 

He had been trained to sit still, to meditate, to recall and draw meaning from his dreams, to pray. He knew how to engage in dialogue with and deep listening to the prophets and ancestors and the Holy Spirit. And he knew that for all these disciplines, he needed retreat, rest, and recharge… he needed Kirkridge. And so he came to the mountain, again and again.

 

We have established “Berrigan’s Folly,” the little hermitage where he used to stay for many decades, as a place and a space to ensure that more people can access what Dan experienced here– the sweet solitude and abiding quiet needed for genuine rest, the gift of insight that comes from being able to see the horizon, and the confidence and security that comes from the gentle embrace in the arms of the mountain.

 

I’ll finish with one of Dan’s Psalms from The Book of Uncommon Prayer. This is “But God is Silent/ Psalm 114.” It reads like it was written at Kirkridge!