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Imprisonment was Thoreau's first direct experience with state power and, in typical fashion, he analyzed it:
"The State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest."
Prior to his arrest, Thoreau had lived a quiet, solitary life at Walden, an isolated pond in the woods about a mile and a half from Concord. He returned to Walden to mull over two questions: (1) Why do some men obey laws without asking if the laws are just or unjust; and, (2) why do others obey laws they think are wrong?
More recent American prophets have thrown their own light on the crises of our time while confronting the questions posed by Thoreau.
Amid the carnage of Vietnam, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, posed a challenge to those who hoped for peace without sacrifice, those who would say, "Let us have peace but let us loose nothing. Let our lives stand intact; let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties."
Berrigan saw no such easy option. "There is no peace," he said, "because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war -- at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison."
So, if the making of peace today means prison, that's where we need to be. It is time to accept our responsibility to do ALL we can to stop the violence of wars waged in our name. Now it's our turn to ponder those questions.
Ray McGovern under arrest at White House - photo by Cheryl Biren
I found instructive the first and the last comments engendered by this article:
-from 'Ned Lud':
"This Task: 'You have a duty to perform, a task. You can do any other thing, any number of other things; but if you do not do this task, you have wasted your life.' Jalalud-Din Rumi"
-from 'Rafe Pilgrim':
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