President Obama’s decision to provide military aid to the Syrian opposition is incredible. The United States is barely out of Iraq. It’s still bogged down in Afghanistan. Obama insists on keeping the Iran war option “on the table.” Yet suddenly we are taking sides in a civil war in Syria. How many Middle Eastern wars can one superpower handle?

The most amazing thing is that the president has the audacity to even propose involvement in Syria to the American people. (Not that he is asking, just telling. If he asked, he’d know that 70% of American oppose aiding the rebels).

Since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson came up with a phony pretext to gain passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the Vietnam war, it has been one presidentially-initiated intervention after another: Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq , Libya. (This list does not even include the delivery of arms to the mujahideenin Afghanistan which brought us the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and the endless War on Terrorism).

    

Abbey Church at St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.

I’m just back from three days at the monastery with a working group on community-pastors, scholars, monastics and new monastics trying to understand what it is we mean when we say we want “community” and how this desire is cultivated and directed toward the common good in our society. One of my great heroes in the American pursuit of beloved community is Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement with Dorothy Day. He was a street teacher who distilled his message into “easy essays.” I’m not sure this is yet 100 proof (as we say in NC moonshine country), but I tried to do a little distilling of what we discussed in our time together.

Toward a Definition of Community

Community is not the crowd where we are together without being known (though a crowd is fine-unless it becomes a mob).
It’s not the club where we commit without encumbrance (though a club is fine-unless it becomes a clique).
Neither is it the clan where we find safety in shared history (though one’s clan is fine, too-unless it becomes a gang… or a military superpower).

Beloved community is, instead, that fellowship in which we know ourselves as we are known in mutual dependence.
It is the membership in which we learn to take responsibility for our future in mutual accountability.
It is the circle of trust in which we know our flourishing depends upon mutual welcome.

    

When a scribe asks Jesus which commandment is the first of all, think what he is after. Not in this story is he testing Jesus; that was Matthew’s theme when telling this story, because Matthew wanted to show how the religious officials feared and hated Jesus. Mark’s story is simpler. This scribe admires Jesus. He wants to learn from Jesus how all truth is organized. What is the first good? What is the purpose of reality?

This scribe is engaged in the quest that has animated all our forebears. We want to understand the cause and the meaning of our existence. The philosophers of science in ancient Greece peeled back the multitude of sensations trying to comprehend physics through the four elements earth, air, fire, and water. They invented the word “atom” to refer to the smallest indivisible component of any object. Aristotle put the pursuit of happiness at the pinnacle of human motivation. According to Luke, the Greeks in Athens were daily in the quest for unified meaning. We can hardly credit Luke with an open mind as he dismisses all the Athenians and the foreigners there as “spending their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” Perhaps Paul too thought them ignorant, but nevertheless he praised them for their hungering after an “unknown God.” Astrologers of ancient times sought one truth through the stars. In medieval times, the search for the Holy Grail captured the imagination of Europeans seeking that one thing above all. In our day, and for a century now, quantum physicists look for a “unified field theory,” a single, elegant explanation for all the forces at work in the physical universe. Every love song, sad or glad, is searching for the true one.

    

People in Kafranbel, Syria, protest the Assad regime. Credit: Creative Commons/FreedomHouse.

Syria, Syria – I spied you from the Golan decades back, caught site of Quneitra’s soft outline,

remembered then Damascus, city of rabbis, bishops, imams, of Paul’s blinding moment on the way.

Now I mourn with you as armed men contend for your soul,

    

During a press conference at the Pentagon on May 7, 2013, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gary S. Patton (Director of the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office) discusses the 2012 report on sexual assault in the military and sexual assault prevention initiatives. Credit: Creative Commons/Glenn Fawcett.

Last month, New York senator Kristin Gillibrand, flanked by several women Senate colleagues, unveiled a bill aimed at the sexual assaults that plague the U.S. military. According to a Pentagon report, approximately 26,000 sexual assaults took place in the military last year alone. It is widely believed that many victims of military sexual assault never report the crimes out of fear of retaliation from higher-ups in the chain of command. The Pentagon estimate is therefore likely to be an underestimate. Indeed, you know that sexual violence in the military has reached epidemic proportions when even the officer in charge of the Air Force’s sexual assault prevention programs is himself arrested for sexually assaulting a woman in a Washington-area parking lot.

Today, it was reported that Senator Gillibrand’s bill, which would have taken the decision of which sexual assault complaints to prosecute away from military commanders and give that authority to military prosecutors, has been axed in by the Senate Armed Services Committee chariman, Carl Levin, amidst growing pushback from the miltary’s top brass for such a reform. Senator Gillibrand is expected to press on with her bill in the full Senate.

    

At a training for trainers I recently co-led, an African-American woman, the only one in the entire group (another African-American was there for only three days), initiated and volunteered to lead an evening program about racial identity. With the support of another person, and within the space of less than an hour, she facilitated a discussion that surfaced a number of issues and questions for several people in the room.

In my experience, which is neither vast nor tiny, any time the question of how we relate to our own and other people’s race is raised, complexity and pain come to the room – before, during, or after the event. I myself have been in a major quandary about how to find useful ways of supporting these conversations, and am doing less than I used to in this area, because I have rarely seen the pain that arises, both for people of color and for white people, be engaged with in ways that supported significant transformation. I am grateful to a few colleagues of mine that are continuing to engage in the inquiry year after year, in the NVC and Diversity retreat, where I believe they are breaking ground in creating a space where radical honesty, complete care and respect for everyone in the room, and deep learning for all happen regularly. Slowly, I have some hope that their lessons will support others, as well as me, in conducting race dialogues that are truly fruitful.

Until then, I applaud any of us who tries, who engages, who says what we truly believe, who shares and invites others to share what we are afraid to say of our experience. However little I know, I am confident that not talking about race is not going to get us anywhere new.

After the end of the retreat, one person approached me in writing and asked a couple of pointed questions. These questions, and the topic as a whole, are so significant to me, that I chose, with that person’s permission, to answer them publicly. This is what today’s blog is about. I will call the person who initiated the evening Cassandra, and the person who asked the questions Julie.

    

Demonstrators protest the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) in Medellin, Columbia. Credit: Creative Commons/xmascarol.

Washington has devised a dual strategy toward Latin America. This involves a new set of ambitious imperial initiatives designed to undermine the principal anti-imperialist governments (Venezuela), social movements and armed insurgency (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), while dismantling Latin America-centered integration and regional alliances, such as ALBA, Petro-Caribe, UNASUR and MERCOSUR. At the same time the US seeks to establish an alternative US-centered ‘integration scheme’ through the Latin America and Asia-the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which encourages closer ties among neo-liberal states, like Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile with their energy and mining sector-dependent development strategies.

The involvement of Colombia is crucial to both of these ‘high priority’ objectives. In order to grasp the centrality of Colombia to current US strategy, it is essential to analyze the interplay of military, economic and political interests of the White House and Bogota.

    

In the summer of 2006, I was teaching eighth-grade social studies in a Seattle public school. I was 26 years old, on a career path, in a long-term relationship, and a new homeowner. Life was good, and it was time for a summer vacation. So I signed up for a weeklong retreat at the Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center in Accord, New York. I thought I was getting away after a busy school year, going on vacation, learning a little, but basically relaxing and rejuvenating. All of that happened. But while I was getting away, I was getting into new possibilities for my work, my ideas, my spirituality, my social connections, and my life. Fast-forward seven years, and I’ve dedicated my work and life to the power and potential of Jewish retreats. I’ve connected with a sense of purpose within the Jewish community and the wider world that places the model of retreat – the temporary autonomous zone designed for transformation – at the center of a vision for how religion and society are evolving today.

    

The month of March 2002 was a terrible time in both Israel and the West Bank. Some 100 Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched a military operation in the West Bank killing some 500 Palestinians. Children made up a significant number of the victims on both sides. The prospects for an end to violence, let alone peace, appeared lower than at any time previously.

It was against that background that Harvard professor, Samantha Power, now President Obama’s nominee to serve as U.N. ambassador, spoke of the need for U.S. intervention.

    

A long long time ago, I stayed two months with a commune in Copenhagen whose members aspired to hold all things in common and to decide all matters together, much like the practice in the earliest church, according to Acts 4. At the commune, holding things in common meant that one morning, my belt and jeans showed up on someone else’s body. That was nothing important. After a while, however, I noticed that access to the best clothes and money and critical decisions was retained by the three members who had the greatest personal appeal and energy. Political intentions notwithstanding, only these three had real power, yet no one was bold to disturb the communitarian experiment with serious political reflection. Being one did not work there and the commune soon broke up.

A few years later, I served as communications coordinator for a liberal non-profit organization whose membership aimed to decide everything by consensus. Far from strengthening the voice of the people, however, the pretense of arriving at consensus actually shut speech down. Emotionally needy members sucked all the time and oxygen out of a meeting, but no means existed for the body to hold them to account. No vote could say “Stop!” More-balanced members ceased discussing things altogether, hoping to get the meetings over with. The principle of majority rule would have better served the value of free speech; as it was, unity eluded them. “One” did not work.