Trabue House Gate
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Monday, January 9, 2006
Peacemaking News
I've just received a bit of news that looks interesting. I haven't had a chance to check it out further, but here's at least one study that acknowledges the wisdom of peacemaking.
"It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing. However, most people, including many leading policymakers and scholars, are wrong. The reality is that, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and nearly all other forms of political violence have decreased. The world is far more peaceful than it was."
- Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia and former UN official, describing how worldwide peacemaking efforts - despite some major failures - have been broadly and quietly successful.
A major study by the Rand Corp. published this year found that U.N. peace-building operations had a two-thirds success rate. They were also surprisingly cost-effective. In fact, the United Nations spends less running 17 peace operations around the world for an entire year than the United States spends in Iraq in a single month. What the United Nations calls "peacemaking" -- using diplomacy to end wars -- has been even more successful. About half of all the peace agreements negotiated between 1946 and 2003 have been signed since the end of the Cold War.
a link to a Washington Post story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/27/AR2005122700732.html
"It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing. However, most people, including many leading policymakers and scholars, are wrong. The reality is that, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and nearly all other forms of political violence have decreased. The world is far more peaceful than it was."
- Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia and former UN official, describing how worldwide peacemaking efforts - despite some major failures - have been broadly and quietly successful.
A major study by the Rand Corp. published this year found that U.N. peace-building operations had a two-thirds success rate. They were also surprisingly cost-effective. In fact, the United Nations spends less running 17 peace operations around the world for an entire year than the United States spends in Iraq in a single month. What the United Nations calls "peacemaking" -- using diplomacy to end wars -- has been even more successful. About half of all the peace agreements negotiated between 1946 and 2003 have been signed since the end of the Cold War.
a link to a Washington Post story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/27/AR2005122700732.html
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Twofer Tuesday
As I've had several discussion this last year on Jesus as he relates to US policies - many of these discussions having been with conservative religious folk - the question has crossed my mind:
Are there any policies that the Christian Right advocate for that have a basis in Jesus' actual teachings?
I know that this sounds like a provocative question and it's only partially meant to be. Partially, I'm genuinely interested. With all the effort being spent in opposition to gay marriage, welfare and abortion, and all the advocacy on behalf of this war, on behalf of big businesses, stern interrogation methods, etc...ALL of which I find either absent from Jesus' teachings or actively opposed by Jesus' teachings, I'm genuinely interested if the Religious Right feels that Jesus' words back up any of their positions.
And this is not to say that I think Christian thought ought to be the final arbiter in US politics - I don't (although I do think that Jesus' teachings ought to be Christians' final word).
Nor is it to say that I think I can find backing from Jesus for all my positions - I can't (Jesus, while seeming to love the environment, may not have spoke any on environmental policy, at least that I can think of off the top of my head).
It's just an honest question, if anyone's interested in biting.
Are there any policies that the Christian Right advocate for that have a basis in Jesus' actual teachings?
I know that this sounds like a provocative question and it's only partially meant to be. Partially, I'm genuinely interested. With all the effort being spent in opposition to gay marriage, welfare and abortion, and all the advocacy on behalf of this war, on behalf of big businesses, stern interrogation methods, etc...ALL of which I find either absent from Jesus' teachings or actively opposed by Jesus' teachings, I'm genuinely interested if the Religious Right feels that Jesus' words back up any of their positions.
And this is not to say that I think Christian thought ought to be the final arbiter in US politics - I don't (although I do think that Jesus' teachings ought to be Christians' final word).
Nor is it to say that I think I can find backing from Jesus for all my positions - I can't (Jesus, while seeming to love the environment, may not have spoke any on environmental policy, at least that I can think of off the top of my head).
It's just an honest question, if anyone's interested in biting.
Ever the Twain shall we read...
I'm in the process of finishing up a book by Thomas Sowell, “Conflict of Visions,” in which this conservative fella explains the difference between those with Constrained and Unconstrained visions. Sowell claims that this division is roughly the division between Right and Left, respectively.
I'll report on that more later. One comment I have now is that Sowell quotes William Godwin, John Dewey and Justice Earl Warren as speakers for the Unconstrained/Left. One of my initial thoughts was that no one I know on the left lists these folk as role models or advocates of our positions. My question to the gent
(Koby) who suggested I read it was, “Where are the folk that I would identify as speaking for the Left, philosophically?”
"Where were Thoreau, Emerson, Wendell Berry, MLK, Mark Twain?" I asked.
To which Koby asked, “Twain? Thoreau? Emerson? Speakers for the left? How so?”
And so I offer a small sampling of what they didn't teach us in school about Mark Twain. It's a great way to start the year.
Mark Twain on capitalism
Who are the oppressors? The few: the king, the capitalist and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.
...on vivisection
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
...on revolution
I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.
...on laborers
When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and hod-carriers, and stevedores, and house-painters, and brakemen, and engineers, and conductors, and factory hands, and horse-car drivers, and all the shop-girls, and all the sewing-women, and all the telegraph operators; in a word all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power ... when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains a Nation has risen.
...on the US
But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket.
======
I could go on and on. Twain is one of our great writers, which everyone knows. But he was also one of our great philosophers, seems to me. A fact that I think has gotten lost (or hidden?).
I'll report on that more later. One comment I have now is that Sowell quotes William Godwin, John Dewey and Justice Earl Warren as speakers for the Unconstrained/Left. One of my initial thoughts was that no one I know on the left lists these folk as role models or advocates of our positions. My question to the gent
(Koby) who suggested I read it was, “Where are the folk that I would identify as speaking for the Left, philosophically?”
"Where were Thoreau, Emerson, Wendell Berry, MLK, Mark Twain?" I asked.
To which Koby asked, “Twain? Thoreau? Emerson? Speakers for the left? How so?”
And so I offer a small sampling of what they didn't teach us in school about Mark Twain. It's a great way to start the year.
Mark Twain on capitalism
Who are the oppressors? The few: the king, the capitalist and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.
...on vivisection
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.
...on revolution
I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.
...on laborers
When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and hod-carriers, and stevedores, and house-painters, and brakemen, and engineers, and conductors, and factory hands, and horse-car drivers, and all the shop-girls, and all the sewing-women, and all the telegraph operators; in a word all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power ... when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains a Nation has risen.
...on the US
But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket.
======
I could go on and on. Twain is one of our great writers, which everyone knows. But he was also one of our great philosophers, seems to me. A fact that I think has gotten lost (or hidden?).
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Good night
I bid a good night to this old tired year
and to all my friends, old and new.
May we wake in the morning to find
a more peaceful and just world
and the strength to make it so.
Dan
and to all my friends, old and new.
May we wake in the morning to find
a more peaceful and just world
and the strength to make it so.
Dan
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Clarence Jordan, Part I
I quoted from Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospel in a previous post and folk asked about Clarence [last name pronounced, "jer' dan"]. Clarence and his wife, Florence, have a most interesting and uplifting story (with some small connections to our humble little church here in Louisville) and he is considered a saint by those of us so inclined. I've borrowed bits of a story by Joyce Hollyday to fill you in.
Enjoy and be inspired.
From an excellent story in:
© Sojourners, December 1979, Vol 8, no 12
by Joyce Hollyday
Florence and Clarence Jordan met at Southern Baptist Seminary in 1933, where he was a student and she the assistant librarian. When they began to consider marriage, Clarence said to her, "If you want to be the wife of a pastor of a First Baptist Church, you don't want to marry me." And he shared with her his plans to go back to the deep South, which was his home, to use his undergraduate agricultural training and "do something for the poor."
Clarence and Martin England, a former American Baptist missionary, found 440 acres of land in Sumter County, near Americus Georgia. Beginning to formulate a vision for a Christian farming community that could be a resource for the rural poor, Clarence and the England family moved there in the fall of 1942. The Jordans' first son was born in September, so Florence stayed with her parents in Louisville and then with Clarence's parents until April, 1943, when the house that Clarence and Martin were building was, in Florence's words, "at least campable."
Florence remembers that the switch from big-city living to "days of cooking on a wood stove, washing in the old iron pot, and carrying water were not easy. The land was a rather desolate-looking place, with some sagging barns, outbuildings, and sheds, one large, unpainted house , and two rundown tenant houses. But we were young and it was an adventure wit the Lord."
They called this adventure Koinonia, from the Greek word which was used to identify the early church in Acts, which pooled its resources and shared the life of Jesus Christ in an atmosphere of reconciliation. This was the model for the fledgling farm. The particular reconciliation that was so desperately needed at this time and place was between black and white. The Koinonians hired a black man, a former sharecropper, to help with the farm. They all ate their meals together, and this breach of Southern tradition brought on the first hostility toward the community.
In a story that has been told many times, Clarence showed the courage and quick wit that became his trademark. A group of men came to the farm. Their spokesman said to Clarence, "We're from the Ku Klux Klan and we don't allow the sun to set on people who eat with niggers."
Clarence glanced over at the western sky and noticed that the sun was creeping low. He thought a bit, swallowed a few times, and suddenly reached out, grabbed the man's hand, and started pumping away, saying , "Why, I just graduated from Southern Baptist Seminary, and they told us there about folks who had power over the sun, but I never hoped to meet one here in Sumter County." They all laughed, and nobody noticed that the sun had slipped down below the horizon.
Despite the hostility of white neighbors, the farm soon became a success. Clarence invented a mobile peanut harvester and established a "cow library," through which poor neighbors could check out a cow for a period of time so that they could have milk. He built a deluxe chicken house that was the envy of the Koinonia wives, whose own houses were austere by comparison. The luxurious chicken quarters were the target of many jokes from the neighbors, but when Clarence began getting more eggs than anybody else, those same neighbors were soon asking him for advice.
Meanwhile, Clarence's reputation as a powerful, uncompromising preacher was growing. As he traveled the country preaching pacifism, social justice, and community, he drew young people to the experiment at Koinonia.
Florence remembers that people who came to visit the farm were always surprised to meet Clarence. They always expected to see an "older, intellectual-type person," rather than this large man who had earned his doctorate when he was 26 years old.
A distinguished professor once came to the farm while Clarence was working on a tractor. The man said, "I wish to speak to Dr. Jordan." Clarence wiped off a greasy hand, extended it, and said, "I am he." The man responded, "No, I wish to speak to Dr. Clarence Jordan." Clarence insisted that he was the one the man was looking for. After repeating his request, the professor finally got in his car and left. A few days later Clarence received a letter from the man, expressing that he was infuriated with the impudent help that Dr. Jordan managed to keep around.
Florence believes that Clarence "was one of those rare persons in whom dreams and practicality came together. He could do everything. He was not only a good farmer, he was a mechanic and an intellectual; he could lay bricks and do electrical work, whatever needed to be done. And he was as good in the kitchen and with the children as I was."
Some of the people who came to visit on the farm stayed. By 1950 the community included 14 adults. They embarked on year of struggle, marked by tension, mixed expectations, and disillusionment. Things moved slowly, every decision was labored, and community living was difficult. The infant community was beginning its arduous growth into tumultuous youth.
Clarence Jordan, Part II
In August, the small Rehoboth Baptist Church, where Florence had taught Sunday school and Clarence had led the singing and preached occasionally in the previous eight years, made a move to withdraw fellowship from the Koinonian's because of their racial view.
Florence faced the congregation alone while the others were out of town. She sat quietly in the pew as the recommendation to reject them was read. There was a tense pause. Then Florence got to her feet and moved that the recommendation be accepted as read. The congregation responded with stunned silence, supporting the motion, but unwilling to side with Florence. The Koinonians were eventually excommunicated, but Florence had shown the rare courage that was part of Koinonia from the beginning...
Clarence's aid to two black students in their application to a formerly segregated college in Atlanta was the spark that ignited the hostility. It began with threatening phone calls, grew to vandalism, and finally escalated into life-threatening violence.
Fences were cut, crops stolen from the fields, and garbage dumped on the property. A truck's engine was ruined by sugar placed in its gas tank, and nearly 300 fruit trees were chopped to the ground.
The children faced hostility and abuse in school, and the Jordan family was finally forced to send 14-year old Jim Jordan away to private school.
The farm's roadside market was bombed several times and eventually destroyed. Nightriders sprayed machine-gun bullets at the houses. Fires were set on the property, and crosses were burned on the lawns of black friends.
Several members of the community were called before a grand jury in the spring of 1957, the outcome of which was a report accusing Koinonia of maintaining Communist ties and of self-inflicting the violence for attention and profit. The community was asked to leave the county.
The violence forced the community members to ask difficult questions...
"Sometimes there was shooting two and three times a week, and we knew there was a chance that somebody might be killed...But we said, 'Well, that's okay too. We're not the first Christians who will have died for what we believe, and we won't be the last.'"
"The strange thing was that once we had made that decision, that it really didn't matter whether we lived or died because as Christians we're bought with a price, we're not our own, there was a peace. I think that is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I give you the peace that passes understanding.' It's the kind of thing that all Christians ought to face. But I'm glad they don't have to. But it did do something for us, and so we survived. And no one was seriously injured."
Sumter County residents bolstered their attack with the weapon of economics, hoping to choke the farm's livelihood, since they seemed unable to scare the Koinonians away.
"They formed a real solid boycott. One businessman told us that he was forced to sign at the point of a gun not to sell to us. We couldn't buy gas, fertilizer, or feed. We couldn't sell an egg. For about a year there we didn't make a living. If it had not been for our friends, who voluntarily gave to us, we couldn't have done it."
It was necessity that forced the community into the mail-order pecan business during the boycott. The mail and the open pecan market were two things the local people could not control...
Clarence's plan was a way for the rich to share their resources and for the poor to find new hope and security in their lives. His idea was that the farmers would work together as partners, providing for one another and returning any excess back to the fund so that more land could be purchased for others.
The idea of partnership was carried out in the farming, the pecan industry, and in housing. With Clarence and Millard [Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, which sprung from Koinonia. -dan] working together on the fund raising, money poured in from friends and churches. By this time the farm covered 1,400 acres. Plots of land were sold to area residents at whatever price they could pay. By 1969, the first house had been built. Koinonia Partners was in business.
Clarence lived to see the first house almost completed. On October 29, 1969, at the age of 57, he died.
Millard was unable to convince the coroner or county medical examiner to come to the farm to pronounce Clarence dead: "Even in death, Clarence Jordan was rejected by the high and mighty, by those in authority, in the area in which he lived. But this was not surprising to me, as it never had been to him, because the Bible promises that a prophet is never with honor in his home area."
The medical examiner insisted that Millard rent an ambulance and bring Clarence's body to the hospital. But Millard felt that Clarence would have objected strongly to having money spent on a dead body. "So we loaded the body in the car...I smiled as I went through town with Clarence sitting down. I knew he would have gotten a terrific charge out of that."
======
I could go on and on, he's such an interesting character and Koinonia's story is so fascinating, but that's enought to whet your appetite. Feel free to read his own writings, or more about his story. For more info about Koinonia Farms and the Jordan's, visit:
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