Advice to Prophets--a short poem

Advice to Prophets

Today the prophets weep,

Victory always seems to go to Evil.

But in the long arc,

If we help bend it,

It turns toward justice.

Weep not, prophets,

Just get to work!

Bob Coughlin

July 4, 2018

[Theodore Parker, Unitarian/Transcendentalist, in his 1853 book “Ten Sermons of Religion”--”The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”]

 When I wrote this poem yesterday, I was thinking of some prophetic voices that I have known--Mike Rivage-Seul, Kathy Flora, Brian Rice, Dave Lima, Dolly Mikula, Fr. James Martin, Maurice McCrackin, Marion Bromley, Ernest Bromley, Chuck Matthei, Daniel Berrigan, and many others. What keeps them going in times of such discouragement? Or is that the wrong word? There's a line in Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie: "I am disappointed, not discouraged."

I also thought about the famous line, seen above, that Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed from Theodore Parker, about the arc of the moral universe. What I wanted to add is that we have to do the bending--I'm not sure that it bends by itself. We have to get to work!

I Just Paid My War Taxes--Mea Culpa!

Paying My War Taxes

Today I filed my federal war taxes. I am almost ashamed to admit it. Many friends of mine risked their freedom, their careers, their homes—really, almost everything, by refusing to pay war taxes. Many of them went to jail for this. Others had to live below the taxable poverty line, in other words, very simply, with an extremely low income threshold. I’m thinking of people like Chuck Matthei, Marion and Ernest Bromly, Juanita and Wally Nelson., the Berrigan’s, Phil and Dan, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy (The One-Man Revolution), Maurice McCrackin. Many folks in the Peacemaker Movement and the Catholic Worker Movement. Many Quakers and Mennonites. I appreciate their enormous sacrifices.

 

Chuck Matthei

I am not against all taxation. I am happy to pay my taxes and share my resources for many things having to do with the health, welfare, and cultural resources of our country. I am also happy to share my resources with those in need outside my country, the poor, needy, refugees, the hungry.

Wally and Juanita Nelson, Ernest and Marion Bromley, Maurice McCrackin

But I strongly object to the use of my taxes for war and for imperialism. Our tax dollars have done so much damage in the world. And lately, the sabers have been rattling again—at people and groups in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and many other places. And most ominously of all, in North Korea, where “all options are on the table.” Well one of those options is the use of nuclear weapons. If it comes to that, then the future of the world, the entire future of civilization, is put at great risk. The world could essentially end. All our own hopes and our hopes for our families, friends, children, and grandchildren could be dashed—incinerated.

 

Ammon Hennacy (right)

Can we trust our leaders not to use these weapons of destruction—in fact, weapons of mass destruction. We have them at the ready. They could be launched at any minute.

Dan Berrigan and Thomas Merton

New Poem: "The Prophet"

The Prophet

(Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice. . .Matthew 5:6)

Sometimes the rage, anger, unresolved mourning under the skin

erupt in sudden violent spasms--

surprising yourself and the people who love you.

Often it is just anger and you feel like Jeremiah

with a truth to tell--one you cannot but yell out

to the world.

Speak your piece, o friend,

share the vision,

whether it be terrible,

     or beautiful--

Your job is to tell the truth!

[Bob Coughlin November 19, 2014]


As I composed this poem, I was thinking about prophetic people I have known or encountered over my lifetime. Some achieved a degree of fame (or notoriety), like Maurice McCrackin, Marion Bromley, Ernest Bromley, Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Chuck Matthei, Mike Rivage-Seul. But most are known only to a few people (these names I will keep in my heart). During the Vietnam protest era, the government thought many of the protesters to be mentally ill. Ha! Who's mentally ill??

I'm a "Gray Panther" Now! Living My Life Like Maggie Kuhn

Yesterday I went into a Mentor-on-the-Lake Subway shop, ordered a sandwich, and as I took out my wallet to pay, I noticed the woman serving me gave me a 10% senior discount--without my asking. She winked at me and I said, "Thank You!" And lately if I run into a McDonald's and order a cup of coffee, I automatically am given the "senior discount." There's no getting around it--I look like a senior citizen, though I feel only 17 years old (sometimes!).

When Judy Bechtel Blackburn and I co-wrote the biography of Maurice McCrackin (Building the Beloved Community: Maurice McCrackin's Life for Peace and Civil Rights), we borrowed a quote by one of Mac's friends, Maggie Kuhn, one of the founders of the "Gray Panther" movement. Maggie said,

 "Old age is not a disaster or a disease. It is freedom to innovate. It is freedom to build upon your own past and to get a historical perspective on what you have seen and known and suffered and lived through. It is a marvelous state of being. Old age is the time to engage in a new life style of outrage and to go down swinging. And with that kind of agenda ahead of you, you know nothing 

will keep you in bed."

Well I won't yet admit to being "old-aged," but I will stand up, like Maggie Kuhn, Maurice McCrackin, Ernest Bromley, Marion Bromley, Wally Nelson, Juanita Nelson, Chuck Matthei, Kathy F., Pat D., Linda C., Bill Wahler, Tim Musser, and so many others that I have been blessed to know . . . I will stand up for peace and justice. My voice will be heard. My presence will be felt. I will not be silent!

Bob-Gray-Panther

Beloved Community--graphic for Maurice McCrackin

Memorial Day. And Dad's 92nd Birthday.

Today my Dad would have been 92 years old. He was born in Cleveland on May 26, 1922, to Cora Esther Bowers Coughlin and Cornelius (Connie) Francis Coughlin. Both my grandparents were first generation Americans. In 1922 they lived around East 87th Street, between St. Clair and Superior. My Dad was the third child, after Fran and Jack. Bill was born about a year and a half later. And Bernice followed Bill. My grandparents' marriage seemed a little odd--Connie was a rough and ready Irishman and a great semi-pro baseball player. My grandmother was the daughter of a bridge engineer, Frank Bowers (changed from Bauer) and Mary Voelker. My impression is that they were upper middle class. So Cora married a guy who was in a lower social class. But Connie had charm and smarts. He was funny, affable, a great athlete, with lots of friends.Their marriage lasted about 43 years, until my Grampa's death in 1960.

During World War II, their 4 boys were all in the service, all over seas. My Dad was a signalman in the Navy, and spent most of his 4 years in the South Pacific, on very small ships (including wooden Subchasers!). We honor him today, his birthday, and Memorial Day.

Today I also think about my cousin Tommy Fitzpatrick, who was just 6 months older than me. Tommy was killed in Vietnam in 1969, just 21 years old. His death is an unending ache to his family and friends.

I also think about my Notre Dame/Innsbruck friend, Steve Shields. I studied with Steve in Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria in 1967-68, and we graduated from Notre Dame together in 1970. Just a couple years later, around age 23 or 24, Steve's helicopter was shot down in Vietnam and he was killed. Rest in Peace, Tommy and Steve.

I also think about some of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights and Peace Movement on Memorial Day. There is no official holiday for them, but they are also heroes for our country and our world. Names that come quickly to mind are Ernest and Marion Bromley, Maurice McCrackin, and Chuck Matthei. But there are many more, many whose names are totally lost to history.

So to all the heroes, both of wars and of the struggle for peace and justice, we say Thank You!

Tommy Fitzpatrick in Vietnam (center)

Dad and Mom, August 1947, Willoughby

Steve Shields (left)--Salzburg, Austria
[Also, Charlie Bradley, Brian Wilson, me, Mike Gerrity]

How We Got the News about the Vietnam War

My niece Rachel Sanders asked this question:

7.  How did you receive most of your news about what was going on in the US and world during the time?

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, I heard some news on the nightly network news programs--CBS with Walter Cronkite, NBC with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and less so, ABC. I also watched some of the Today show on NBC back then. There were 3 TV stations in those days--at least on my TV. All programs were broadcast, received over antennas. There was no cable TV and no internet. The internet was not even dreamed about. Of course there were no cell phones (though the Dick Tracy comic strip imagined such a thing).

I also read the Cleveland Plain Dealer (and delivered it!).

While a student at the University of Notre Dame, I saw almost no television until about 1969-70. Almost no students had televisions in their dorm rooms and even radio broadcasts were hard to pick up in the dorms. I often did see the South Bend Tribune and sometimes the Chicago Sun Times. At lunchtime we could sometimes hear the Paul Harvey's radio show broadcast over the PA system. For the most part these were very conservative sources of news, pro-war, super patriotic (in one sense of the word). To be against the war was to be both a traitor and a coward.

Gradually the reality of the war began to sink in, even to the point where Walter Cronkite could no longer echo the Pentagon line--and he started telling it the way it was.

One odd dimension of the news on Vietnam were the body count statistics. It was like keeping score. We heard of hundreds or thousands of Viet Cong deaths every week, and far fewer American deaths (though even these eventually added up to over 55,000--including my cousin (Tommy Fitzpatrick), my Notre Dame friend and classmate (Stephen Shields), and a St. William's classmate (Buddy Chasser).

Toward the end of the war there were many other sources of news--alternative newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and journals. The truth was getting out there, slowly but surely. I helped with one of these newsletters, The Peacemaker, published by Ernest and Marion Bromley, out of the village of Gano, north of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dorothy Day Article on Ernest and Marion Bromley and the Cincinnati Peacemakers

I've been reading Patsy Harman's book "Arms Wide Open," and it made me think about some of the characters in the book that I knew who were involved in a historic victory for the peace movement. Dorothy Day wrote about it:

 
"Bromley Eviction Halted"
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, September 1975, 3. 

As we go to press it gives me great joy to write of a victory on the peace front, a victory achieved by the valiant work of the younger members of the peace movement in the United States, which has long known the patient and long-suffering work of such bodies as the War Resisters and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, not to forget, to speak modestly, of the Catholic Worker. As of now, it looks as though our friends, the Bromleys, will not be evicted from the Gano Peacemaker house in Cincinnati, and that the sale of the house, which took place this last summer, will be annulled. Among others, credit can be given to Peggy Scherer, who, in addition to her manual labor here at the farm in Tivoli this past year, had continued her close collaboration with Chuck Matthei in Washington and other Peacemakers around the country. And Lee LeCuyer, who is a tireless worker at First Street, has also leafleted and picketed both in Cincinnati and New York. These are the ones who helped lead the movement which achieved this victory. Ernest and Marion Bromley's patient hard work--picketing, leafleting, resisting, speaking the truth--has not gone unnoticed.

It is a lesson for us all in the peace movement that gentle pressure, constant hard work, a faithful, straightforward--one might even say respectful--adherence to the Scriptural command to love our opponents and to exercise the virtue of hope even when all seems hopeless, offer a great example of the pure means to achieve our ends. Jacques Maritain impressed this use of pure means upon us as in the earliest days of the Catholic Worker. This victory also gives us all a sense of joyful gratitude, not only for the hard work of the young people, but even for those in government office who can respond, as they seem to have, to these persistent, though gentle pressures. Let us pray that this "little" victory will give courage to others around the country to take a stand, which involves a real commitment to the "voluntary poverty" we all talk so much about.

[This text is not copyrighted. However, if you use or cite this text please indicate the original publication source and this website (Dorothy Day Library on the Web at http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/). 

Suggested citation:
Day, Dorothy. "Bromley Eviction Halted". The Catholic Worker, September 1975, 3. The Catholic Worker Movement. http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=556]

The Death of Peacemaker John Leininger

Yesterday I received the shocking news that an old friend and fellow Peacemaker, John Leininger,  has died from an aggressive cancer diagnosed just weeks ago. Left behind is Alice Ann Carpenter, his partner for some 38 years, step-children Maureen and Jenny, grandchildren Jocelyn, Alaina, and Devlin, sons-in-law Chris and Donal, and so many other relatives and friends.

John was a courageous and active peacemaker and will be memorialized later this summer at a Cincinnati Unitarian church.
I first met John around 1973 at Peacemaker "foldings" (where the Peacemaker newsletter was folded and mailed) at the home of Marion and Ernest Bromley in Gano, Ohio. These foldings later moved to Alice Ann and John's home in the North Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati.

I have wonderful memories of these Peacemaker foldings (and other activities like the conferences and "gatherings").  A lot of courageous people came to these foldings: Greg Haas, John Luginbill, Kenny Przybylski, Mary Alice Shepherd, Chuck Matthei, Peggy Scherer, Chris Cotter, Annie Weinkam . . . .[I'll mention more people in further postings].

Here is a website that John Leininger and Alice Ann Carpenter maintained for their crime and murder mystery books business: http://gravematters.com/ Photos of John and Alice Ann can be found at that site.