Pilgrimage into Nonviolence: The Pearl of Great Price

Originally published in The Wolf, Fall 2000

Featured in Living With the Wolf: Walking the Way of Nonviolence (Pace e Bene Press, 2009)

Since joining the Pace e Bene community a year ago, I have had the privilege of exchanging personal journeys with colleagues on staff and with friends. I am honored to offer my story here, and I hope I can be in dialog with many of you to hear your story also.

I grew up in Queens, New York, the oldest of four boys. I attended St. Francis Prep High School and strongly desired to go to college. I applied for several scholarships, and with many members of my family having been in the military, also applied for ROTC scholarships. I was offered a full-tuition Navy ROTC scholarship and was off to Jesuit-run Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Nonviolence allows me to integrate my spirituality with my social justice work… As I undergo my inner nonviolent healing I hope I can offer that nonviolent healing to the worldAt Holy Cross I excelled academically, got involved socially in activities and spiritually with campus ministry. I struggled with my decision to stay in the ROTC program. I prayed about it and consulted some Jesuits, including one I respected highly who said I should stay in the program. In the end I knew that I wanted to finish school at Holy Cross.

I remember one incident at Holy Cross when I brought my pacifist friend Jason home for Thanksgiving. At supper, he had an intense discussion with my conservative father and two uncles, one of whom was a colonel in the Air Force. They disagreed on self-defense: Jason argued that Jesus said to turn the other cheek while the others claimed self-defense was permissible. Looking back, I believe Jason helped to plant the seeds of peacemaking and nonviolence in me.

I graduated in 1985 and served five and one-half years in the navy. The most difficult times were the first year of training in the Navy nuclear propulsion program and the four months my ship was in the Persian Gulf. In 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War we escorted reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and avoided minefields. Several times I feared for my life. I seriously considered becoming a conscientious objector, but decided to fulfill my commitment. Little did I really know what the US military was doing around the world. That awareness would come later.

After leaving the navy in 1990, I moved to San Francisco and began studying psychology at San Francisco State University. I worked with severely emotionally disturbed children and adults with mental illnesses. I did psychological research and made all preparations for Clinical Psychology Ph.D. programs. But in the end, something in my gut told me that psychology wasn’t to be my vocation. So, I decided to join the Francis House lay volunteer community in Baltimore, MD, run by the Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore.

At Francis House I worked as a case manager at a homeless shelter. It was there that I met the shelter manager who soon thereafter, in a Plowshare Action with Phil Berrigan, John Dear and others, disarmed an F-15E bomber used in the Persian Gulf. Attending the trials and visiting Jonah House was my entree into the radical Catholic Peace community in particular and social justice in general. After Francis House I joined a community of homeless activists. I continued to work as a case manager of homeless people with addictions coming out of jail. During this time I realized I wanted to work at the systemic/structural vs. individual level to change things.

I moved back out to the Bay Area and joined the staff of the Oakland Catholic Worker, a sanctuary house for refugees and immigrants from Latin America. I also started working at Global Exchange, organizing U.S. speaking tours for human rights activists from around the world. These two jobs taught me about social injustices around the world.

In 1997 I left the Oakland Catholic Worker to study Spanish and travel in Mexico and Guatemala for four months, and then returned to study theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. In Spring 1999 I took three classes in nonviolence and pacifism, including Liberating Nonviolence with Louis Vitale and Ken Butigan.

After many conversations with Ken Butigan he invited me to consider working with Pace e Bene which greatly excited me. I’ve been here for a year and am more passionate about the work every day. We are at a kairos moment with nonviolence and the UN Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. And I resonate with the way we are spreading nonviolence at Pace e Bene. We are a community, not a group of colleagues. We are trying to put nonviolence into practice individually and organizationally, as well as in the world.

Learning about the principles of nonviolence from Gandhi and King greatly interests me. But the stories of nonviolence showing its power and creativity, its courage and humor, compel me the most. Nonviolence allows me to integrate my spirituality with my social justice work. It coalesces all my work experience and many of my life experiences. Nonviolence also brings together working at the personal and social levels. As I undergo my inner nonviolent healing I hope I can offer that nonviolent healing to the world. I constantly thank God because I believe I have found the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price.

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