This morning reflection was given on January
15th, 2010 as part of the Witness Against Torture "Fast for
Justice." We offer it today to mark Martin Luther King Day. Later on the 15th, we created a
silent vigil at and disrupted John Yoo's book signing. Our fast and presence around Washington D.C.
began on January 11th, the eighth anniversary of the opening of the
Guantanamo detention center. More than 150 people around the country will break
the fast on January 22, the day by which President Obama pledged to shut down
Guantanamo. The 18th is day eight of the WAT Fast.
Today is our
fifth day of fasting and we have, potentially, a stressful day ahead. As you are all well aware, we will be at John
Yoo's book signing. Mr. Yoo is former
lawyer of the United States Department of Justice and now professor at the
University of California, Berkeley. He co-authored legal memos for the Bush
administration pertaining to the men detained at Guantanamo that rejected the
Geneva Convention, denied Habeas corpus
and legalized torture.
John Yoo also
legally argued that the president should gain almost dictatorial power in time
of war, even, we can infer, during this perpetual war on terror. If the video
of the January 13th demonstration at Mr. Yoo's New York City book signing
is any indication, we should prepare ourselves for a rough time.
That being
said, I would like to offer two points of focus for reflection. I believe we can be encouraged and challenged
by the fact that today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. And so I offer a mantra for us to use that
Dr. King developed in his work Strength
to Love, "tough mind and tender heart."
The second point of focus is a poem from a Pakistani man, Shaikh
Absurraheem Muslim Dost, who spent three years detained at Guantanamo with his
brother.
According to
the collection Poems from Guantanamo:
the Detainees Speak, after their release, Dost and his brother co-authored
a memoir of their time there, and Dost was subsequently arrested by the
Pakistani police. He has not been heard
from since. I would like to read the
poem now to you:
"They Cannot Help"
In
the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Most Merciful,
a
poem written in Camp Delta, Guantanamo, Cuba
Those who are charitable
Cannot help but sacrifice for others.
They cannot help but face danger
If they wish to remain true.
When they face injustice, dishonesty, and iniquity,
They cannot help but be under the power of traitors and the notorious.
Consider what might compel a man
To kill himself, or another.
Does oppression not demand
Some reaction against the oppressor?
It is natural that a man is driven to invention
And to creation in times of duress.
The evildoer will be punished.
He cannot avoid making amends, and must apologize eventually.
Those who foolishly dispute with Dost the Poet
Cannot help but surrender, or else run away.
In many ways,
this poem is addressed to us. And I believe it responds to one of the questions
we have repeatedly asked ourselves during our fast and daily demonstrations:
what can we do together to give hope to the men at Guantanamo that change will occur? I am tempted to read the poem as: we cannot help. We cannot help, but give of ourselves
sacrificially. We cannot help, but be at
the mercy of - be under - the powers
that be.
I understand
the concept of charity in the sense that Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker
wrote of and lived it--as a radical practice that attempts to live in
voluntary poverty as close as possible to the destitute in order to help them
step across the threshold with hospitality.
Dost's poem is sobering for me, especially in our context this
morning. And yet, it is not
disheartening. It takes a tough mind and
tender heart to admit the truth to ourselves that we cannot help in the usual
way we think about it. We need to acknowledge that to force change usually leads
to greater suffering. It takes a tough
mind and tender heart to not allow ourselves to fall prey such hubris. The poem is for us today an admonition, but
it opens up to the possibility of countless affirmations.
Dynamic Contradictions, Tough and Tender
Let's pause
with this troubling thought to consider the importance of the words that Martin
Luther King Jr. uses to describe the mind and heart. The mind must be tough. It is not hardened in ideology, nor is it too
weak to ask questions. It has been toughened through the development of
principles that have been put through endless trials of discernment. It is
tough like a muscle through the exercise of these morals at each and every
moment of our lives. The heart,
however, must be tender - neither soft, nor made of stone. The heart must be tender through compassion
and forgiveness, even as we struggle to face those horrors that otherwise make
us go limp or burn with hatred. The mind
and heart, each within its own conflict, are dynamically aided by the tension
created by the two working together.
Only with a tough mind and a tender heart are we able to honestly, truly
follow Dost's plea to "Consider what might compel a man/ to kill himself, or
another."
It is not for
us to judge. Nor is it for us to assume
that such sacrifice and humiliation necessarily compel one to destroy
life. We are first called to listen, to
consider the situation of another in all its fullness and complexity. With a tough mind and tender heart we are
called first to attend to the other.
This holds true not only for the powerless, but also those who are in
power. In this way, I hold that we must
not judge John Yoo today, nor those who come to his book signing. Likewise, as hard as it may be, we should not
automatically condemn those who indefinitely detain and torture at Guantanamo. A reaction is indeed demanded in these
situations, but I believe it makes all the difference how we respond to the
oppressor. The strength to love is
primary for the tough mind and tender heart.
Though many of
us met for the first time a just a few days ago, the fast has brought us
together in a unique way. It has helped
us shed our individual egos, allowing us to be attentive to each other. It has also bolstered our ability to be strikingly
composed at our vigils. Our silent presence
in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods creates a tone far different from other
types of demonstrations, forcing on-lookers and passer-bys to pause and think
rather than be berated by angry shouting that invokes horrific facts. The latter often only petrifies hearts,
hardens minds. We, instead, are trying
to be a different kind of witness.
I propose a
connection: the ignorance that sustains and justifies torture and indefinite
detention functions very much in the same way as that of the racism Dr. King
confronted during the Civil Rights Movement.
It is driven by an institutionalized fear that cannot be overcome by
dialogue with those who legislate our laws.
We seem to have exhausted those rational means as much as they did a
half a century ago. No, what will awaken
the conscience of the ignorant, Dr. King believed, is only an action that does
not make sense.
In our world,
it is violence in reaction to violence that makes sense. Civil disobedience does not. Willingly offering one's body up to be
beaten, willingly going to jail... such actions do not make sense, and therefore
seek to break the cycle of violence by first refusing to participate in the
common sense that infects our society.
In this way too, our silent demonstration itself refuses to play a game that
is rhetorically structured by the ignorant, and thereby sets a different tone
that we want the other to adopt.
Regaining the Power of Imagination
In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail,"
Martin Luther King qualifies the charges that he is an extremist for practicing
civil disobedience by writing, "Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are
in dire need of creative extremists."
Let us try to be such creative extremists here and now. Our task today and in the days ahead toward our direct action on January 21st
is to invent new ways of speaking out and demonstrating against torture. Toward this goal, is not the rigorous use of
the imagination an integral midway between a tough mind and a tender heart?
We should not
confuse the imagination with a source of fiction or escape. On the contrary, the imagination is our means
to see the reality that is hidden and forbidden to us. The imagination is our tool to resist how
reality is dictated to and framed for us.
It also allows us to find ways to connect, for instance, to the men at
Guantanamo - a relationship that is denied us.
The strength
of our imagination uncovers what reality is, and then asks how it could be different. It is opposed in all way to the violence
perpetuated by reaction.
In closing, I
am thinking of an answer Father Dan Berrigan once gave when asked what was the
greatest loss after the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. He responded, "The imagination." Fear has strangled each of us, it has shut
down our minds and closed in our hearts.
As we go out to confront John Yoo today, please bear with you Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.'s words. Use "tough mind
and tender heart" as a mantra to quell the fear within you, and to put forth a
dynamic silence to crack through the expressions of fear that is the continued
justification of torture and indefinite detention. Let us heed the words of Dost the poet, and
struggle to act accordingly. Our burden
is lightened, gladly, by doing this work in community