Since we would like to be a bookstore with a cause, we particularly need books in the following subject areas:

Any books written by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin or any catholic worker authors past and present; Catholic and Christian classics, Sustainable Living, Alternative Energy, Social Justice and Organic Urban Farming,

We could also use donations of rosary beads, icons, holy pictures, crucifixes and catholic art. Local donations can be left on the back porch at 3704 Overland, Boise Idaho 83705.  We welcome any mailed donations.

While each of us has been born into an imperfect and broken world, it is the love of Christ that elevates each of us and ultimately frees us. The love of Christ transforms us into something of higher worth. As Pope Benedict XVI stated in his encyclical letter – Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope) paragraph 28 “The relationship with Jesus, however, is a relationship with the one who gave himself as ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion with Jesus Christ draws us into his ‘being for all’; it makes it our own way of being.” This redefines our relationship to our world around us, from a person who would pass on the opposite side of the road to avoid a traveler to the more compassionate view taken by the Good Samaritan. The mercy shown by the Good Samaritan reflected God’s love for his children. Pope Benedict continues, “Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others. Loving God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in responsibility for others.” So in performing works of mercy, we hope to reflect the words of Jesus Christ, when he admonished the questioning bystanders to behave as the Good Samaritan, “Go and do likewise.”

Some travelers stay with us just a few days while others have remained with us several years. Our list of travelers that we pray for is getting quite long. The needs and goals of each traveler vary except for the unifying needs of community, security and peace. God has blessed us with two beautiful houses that provide community, security and peace to those who may have never known any in their lifetime.

“Do not strive after a purely ‘down to earth’ aim in life, in which you may find pleasure but follow a noble ideal which will give you joy. To find pleasure is one thing; to be happy another. Unfortunately for us, in this world the two do not always go hand in hand. Meanwhile, develop your mind, and heart, discipline your will; be superior to all obstacles and pursue your way bravely towards your goal.” – Where Silence is Praise by A Carthusian.

Our joy is sustained in community, not just during the holidays, but throughout the entire year. The community of both the men’s and women’s houses gives strength to those who are facing daunting obstacles. The results of our community and God’s grace give us much to be thankful for. These are just a few moments we would like to share:

• Receiving a call on Thanksgiving from a resident because she is working on Thanksgiving and is so joyful to be sober.

• Another resident is joyful because she is reuniting with family by eating a Thanksgiving meal at our house with her college-age son and his girlfriend.

• One resident is surprised and amazed when she completes her GED on her first try.

• A resident received dental work after living with six abscesses and a fear of dentists.

• Yet another resident is joyful because he has received a promotion and a raise at a job.

Many obstacles have been overcome and goals bravely pursued to realize these joyful moments. Each success is celebrated with a, “Yes, we knew you could do it!”

The beauty of the Holiday season can be seen in the greetings, artwork, lights, food and music. These ‘down to earth’ pursuits give us pleasure and rightfully so. However, at our houses, we experience the sublime, deep life changes that can only be the result of God’s graces, such as reuniting families, abstinence and sobriety, clear thinking, employment and health that truly bring joy. True joy comes from interior changes where God dwells in us.

Our standard of measure is, “Have our travelers left better than when they came to us?” Only with God’s blessings and grace that moves our benefactors to mercy and compassion, can we say a resounding, “Yes!” Thank you and God Bless to all our benefactors who have supported us throughout the year.

Written by Laura Hudson, a Boise Catholic Worker and a member of St Mark’s Parish.

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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(Read more at: www.helencaldicott.com/about.htm)

The following is based on an interview with Helen Caldicott during her visit to Boise. The interview was conducted by Larry Munden & Mark Hanawalt. For brevity speakers will be identified by initials only. Editing was done only for the sake of clarity.

L.M. (to H.C.) You have been involved with the issues surrounding nuclear energy for some time now. What direction do you see things going now with the nuclear energy? Are they going backwards or forwards?

H.C. Backwards! We’re in grave danger. Nuclear power is moribund because of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, then the nuclear industry got itself together and what it’s after is huge government funding.

L.M. That is definitely the case here.

H.C. No private company is going to build a reactor on there own. Wall Street won’t touch it, Standard & Poor’s won’t touch it. It’s a socialized industry. They’re using global warming as an issue and of course it produces global warming in it’s own right.

M.H. I’m going after the Nuclear power plants, with the idea that if I do that, it will help to eliminate nuclear bombs, and nuclear war.

H.C. In America they have special reactors to produce nuclear bombs, special reactors to produce plutonium bombs, so even if you shut down the civilian reactors in the U.S., that won’t effect the fact that America is making a whole new generation of nuclear weapons. and then America is the model for the world and therefore as these reactors are exported around the world by companies such as GE and Westinghouse, these countries will have bomb factories and so I don’t think that stopping the reactors for energy will stop the bombs being made unless America and Russia disarm because most of the nuclear weapons in the world belong to the U.S. and Russia. 97% of the existing weapons are owned by Russia and the U.S. These are the real rogue nations. They are the axis of evil, threatening to blow up the world any day.

L.M. Do you think the threat of deteriorating relations between Russia and the U.S. poses a real threat of nuclear war.

H.C. I don’t think the threat of deteriorating relations is causing more danger. It goes up and down. The threat is that the U.S. has developed the idea that they can win a nuclear war against Russia. Russia is very paranoid about when the U.S. might launch an attack.

As I’ve said in my book, the real danger is George Bush’s military, industrial complex. It is very important to realize how the weapons are on hair trigger alert and every day they make mistakes and get close to launching.

L.M. That’s a scary thought.

H.C. It’s not the political relationship that matters. They kind of know that they can’t blow each other up. It’s the technological setup which depends on humans being infallible, which they’re not

L.M. Given those circumstances is there a political answer?

H.C. It’s the only answer. See, I met with President Reagan who I didn’t think would listen to me, but he and Gorbachov almost agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons in 86.

Now all of the other nations are waiting for America to take the lead. Russia has been watching us for a long time. All that’s necessary is for America to take the lead and say okay lets sign a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons in five years and then the rest of the world would follow. Everyone emulates America. She’s the model

M.H. That may change now. I think we’re messing things up pretty good!

H.C. Well you are, but you’ve got lots of weapons and other people want them. People still think about war the way they always have except that it is annihilation now. We glorify war. Why do nations glorify war when we lock up murderers. The whole society is geared to murder. The Catholic Church has a big role to play in this area if they will.

L.M. I don’t think they are doing that now.

H.C. They’re not. They are more concerned with sex. They should be doing what Jesus would do if he can back, working to save the planet. Jesus never talked about most of the issues that the church seems to be concerned with. It’s about masculine power and that they block women out really gives me the dry rot.

L. M. What is the next best step.

H.C. Well, I’ve got three solutions, one for global warming. I’d produce a road map for a carbon free, nuclear free future. By 2050 you could do it. All you need to do is tax CO2 at $20 to $30 per ton, stop subsidizing nuclear power and it will die and then you cover all the parking lots in America with solar panels and you plug in your hybrids during the day. Every building should have solar panel on them, paid for by the federal government instead of spending a trillion dollars on killing.

M.H. Do you think the American people have the capacity to look at something like that?

C.H. They can, but they have no guts. They don’t have the indignation to approach it. They have sort of been socially engineered to think this is the greatest country on earth in spite of the fact that many of them are very poor and some 47 million don’t have any health insurance. They have no idea how the rest of the world lives so they live in a kind of a vacuum. I was involved in the eighties when I first came here in helping to create a revolution when we did a project to show the medical effects of a nuclear bomb being dropped on New York City and Boston and the Catholic Bishops would wake up in the morning and see the concentric circles on the map and think that Jesus wouldn’t like this. People started saying that nuclear war is bad for our health and in five years beginning with the majority of Americans supporting the idea of nuclear war it had changed to 80% being opposed. That was the second American revolution. I know that you can change Americans. They are good hearted people who don’t really know what is the right thing to do.

M.H. You have made an analogy that the planet is like a wounded patient. My take on it is that the American people are looking on it as if the government is the doctor. I believe that there is need for a grass roots movement.

H.C. It has to be grass roots. The people have to understand that they are the leaders and that the politicians are their representatives. The politicians respond when you have the people behind you, otherwise they respond to the corporations.

M.H. It seems to me that the corporations have become so embedded that the government has become like a large corporation.

H.C. It is a corporate government.

M.H. What do you think of video conferencing? I would like to integrate video conferencing into a grass roots movement.

H.C. You have got to get to millions of people and the only way to do that is through the media, the television. You have to do something that is spectacular enough that they are forced to cover you. Americans have to get very creative and use their imagination. It could be led by the church if they simply had the people to do it. The Catholic Worker movement was started by Dorothy Day wasn’t it? She was a wonderful woman.

L.M. Yes, she was but unfortunately the church is not really supporting many of the current efforts.

H.C. I know, tell me about it! Very unfortunate! The answer lies in education. As Jefferson said “An informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion.” We have to inform the new generations.

L.M. One of the most significant things that George W. has done was to lift the restrictions on ownership of the media.

H.C. It’s terrifying. You’ve got five corporations who own the majority of it. One of the worst is my compatriot from Australia (Note: i.e. Rupert Murdock) He is the most dangerous man in the world today. In truth, because the newer generations need education and are getting their information from these dreadful television channels, the media is determining the fate of the earth. Somehow we have got to turn that around.

At this point our time had run out and so we thanked Ms. Caldicott for her time and consideration in granting us the interview and went on our way much impressed.

- Posted by Larry Munden and Mark Hanawalt, Catholic Workers and activists living at Peter Maurin Activist House in Boise.

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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It is past time for the people of our country to speak out clearly and loudly against the horrors of the war in Iraq. For too long we have chosen to disregard or overlook the lies and overt manipulation which the Bush administration has used to justify this war before the invasion of Iraq and during the entire conduct of the war.

Whatever the opinion polls say about the number of people who oppose this war, few if any, have managed to confront the Bush administration with effective opposition and I guess that includes myself. It is time that we looked at this war for what it is and acknowledge that we chose to invade Iraq because of the oil which lies beneath their desert sands.

It is now beyond question that this administration intends, and almost certainly has intended from the start, to maintain a long term occupation in Iraq and that we are not going to accept any government in Iraq which is not favorably inclined toward U.S. interests. This means that it is time for us to decide how serious we really are in our opposition to the war and to act accordingly.

Perhaps as part of this we need to examine and understand what President Bush has called “our addiction to oil” (which, by the way, is a nice psychological move to plant the fear of losing our supplier in the minds of the U.S. public). We need to ask ourselves if we are really so addicted to our automobiles, not just as transportation, but as status symbols which are inextricably linked to our sense of self-worth, that we will accept this war to maintain our current standard of living, however wasteful and extravagant.

Whether the above is true for a few, some, or most of us, we need to look at the cost of this war in human terms and relate it to our need to maintain our supply of oil because we cannot divorce ourselves from the consequences of the actions we are taking in Iraq. I do not refer here to the cost in dollars, but the cost in human suffering and the cost to our own sense of what our country stands for.

I cannot believe that the people of this country really want to see the women and children of Iraq (or the young and old men either) pay the price they are paying to insure that we have a supply of oil. This is truly blood for oil, including that of our soldiers. We must acknowledge that what is going on in Iraq is unacceptable and then decide what action we can take to bring it to an end. An even more pressing question is, what kind of insane world is it that can accept the mercenaries of Blackwater gunning down innocent Iraq’s, including women and children, and then have the head of the company go before Congress and swear that they have done no wrong. Wasn’t the war bad enough without this?

The reality we must face is that we have allowed, or been unable to prevent, the Bush administration to lead us into a situation which may simply not have a good ending for the people of Iraq or the U.S. The failure to take action can only result in having to watch the war go on and accept the incredible suffering of the people of Iraq. To do so will have an effect on all of us which is not pleasant to contemplate because we will have diminished our own humanity and the very essence of what human life means.

We must say – “No more blood for oil!”

- Posted by Larry Munden, writer & Catholic Worker

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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Every time I attempt to write my views on the Iraq War I become frustrated. I consider myself to be a rational person and to have a great appreciation of rational discourse. It is difficult to respond to this war in a rational way. The Iraq War is a lie, a miscalculation, an abomination and a tragedy and the list could go on without getting any better.

We as a nation have allowed our government to lead us into a prolonged war (which looks to become the longest in our history) on the basis of misrepresentation, at the very least. It is a war based on an impossibility – it is impossible to establish (or force) a democracy for a nation by an outside force. It is, at least, extremely unlikely that you can go to war against a country and then have a democracy emerge which will establish a government that is favorable to your interests, but, of course, we would not accept anything less.

So we have wound up with a situation in which our nation is in a kind of paralysis. Our government has no discernible plan of action to insure a successful conclusion to the war in the foreseeable future. In fact it would probably be impossible to say exactly what our government would accept as a successful conclusion short of having control of the region’s oil reserves.

The public, despite what appears to be nearly overwhelming opposition to the war, seems to be powerless to effect change and the rest of the world seems to be content to witness the rapid rise and fall of what some in the current administration deemed an American empire.

Perhaps the best way to put it is that the Iraq War has become both a tragedy and an absurdity. A tragedy because of the immense suffering which has been inflicted on the people of Iraq, the vast majority of whom for which there is absolutely no evidence that they participated or had any intent of participating in any action against the United States. An absurdity because no one seems to be able to say how to bring the war to a successful ending or even to define, in terms that most could agree on, what a successful ending means. In the mean time Twiddle Dum and Twiddle Dee sit in Washington trying to figure out how to convince us that, if we would just allow them to run the world, everything would be okay (well, at least, for the people who count!)

If anything about this war makes any sense in regard to our claim to be a Christian nation, it escapes me. If there is any meaning to what defines a Christian nation and we want a good ending to this war then we should pray for peace first and then for forgiveness. Most of all we should pray for the healing of the wounds that have been inflicted on the people of Iraq as a result of this war.

We need to understand, in a new way, that whether the bullet or the bomb comes from a terrorist or from a nation which has declared war, the wounds inflicted are still the same and those who die are just as dead. Until we can understand that, we will continue to live in an absurd world.

- Posted by Larry Munden, writer & Catholic Worker

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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There are many good reasons not to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho: the economics don’t play out, the energy payback is too long, CO2 emissions are created in the mining, milling, and enriching of uranium, Idaho is earthquake country, nuclear plants need lots of water for cooling, and they don’t work well in hot climates when sited on rivers or lakes. Here, however I shall focus solely on the moral issues in this writing. All quotations come directly from the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”.

“Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.”

“You shall love your neighbor.” This of course starts with your own family. “The family should live in such a way that its members learn to care and take responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, and the poor.” Uranium mines and radioactive waste disposal sites are usually in poor and minority areas. They don’t have the political clout to stop the hazards from coming to their communities. Yucca Mountain has been chosen to store nuclear waste generated by nuclear power plants even though this isn’t the best place to store the waste. The Western Shoshone Indians who have lived there for generations believe it is sacred ground. These too are our neighbors and deserve our love not our waste.

“You shall not kill.” “Human life is sacred.” The processes involved in nuclear power generation are very much the same as nuclear bomb building. Enriching of uranium can be used for either nuclear power generation or nuclear bomb building. If reprocessing waste is done, it makes it much easier to separate out the plutonium that is used for bomb building.

“You shall not steal.” “Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.” By creating this non-natural radioactive waste we are stealing from all the future generations. For example, one by product is iodine-129 which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. That means we are stealing from thousands of generations the land, cost of storage, cost of security, and very possibly polluting their air, ground, and water.

I am asking everyone to call, write, and e-mail your local, state, and federal elected officials. Please tell them you don’t want a nuclear power plant in Idaho and that any tax dollars go toward a solution to the waste we already have instead of new nuclear power plants. I also ask pro-life, health, social justice, and other church groups to come together in solidarity to get this message out. I thank you as will generations to come.

Written by John Weber, a Boise Catholic Worker and a member of St Mark’s Parish. John has built a solar car and his home is powered by solar energy.

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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I recently read with interest the Idaho Statesman article dated Monday, August 20, 2007, titled “BSU professor works to help less fortunate.” The article relates Will Rainford’s efforts to establish Sanctuary. The shelter was a result of his efforts along with various denominations coming together to house the poor during the most brutal, winter nights. Sadly, the article mentions that, “he gets mostly hate mail – and a good percentage come from Catholics.” Dismayed, I wondered how my fellow Catholics end up sending hate mail when themes of Catholic social teaching encourages us to respect human life and provide an option for the poor and vulnerable.

“In a world warped by materialism and declining respect for human life, the Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. We believe that every person is precious, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person.” - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Themes of Catholic Social Teaching

Perhaps our secular culture has had a stronger influence than our own Catholic social teachings on our perception of the homeless. I’ve have just finished Following Christ in a Consumer Society by John F. Kavanaugh where he makes a splendid case for the Personal Form of relating to our world versus the Commodity Form currently encouraged by our society and culture of consumerism. Kavanaugh helps explain what I observe, puts those observations into context and provides concrete ways to live a life that is more Christ-like. I’d also highly recommend his bibliography which provides a variety of reading material to broaden our perspective on culture and faith.

According to Kavanaugh (33), the theme of the Commodity Form is “that persons do not count, unless they are certain kinds of persons. If they are not endowed with value by power, affluence, productivity, or national interest, they may be sacrificed at the altar of ‘our way of life.’” For example, at the Dorothy Day House we have witnessed residents entering treatment centers, receiving diagnosis, being released, at which point their Medicaid runs out and the medicine needed for a full recovery suddenly becomes unaffordable. The lack of affluence subjects our resident to the vicious cycle of self-medicating to ease debilitating pain. The National Alliance on Mental Illness ranked the state of Idaho 51st in the nation for mental health spending (including Puerto Rico). I believe this reflects the attitude certain kinds of persons do not count.

Grading the States 2006: Idaho

Kavanaugh contends that our society currently “degrades humans to achieving and producing forms.” Most of the people I know wouldn’t consciously degrade anyone. I find the degrading occurs in more socially acceptable forms where the following comments are heard; “People are tired of hearing about the poor”, “They should get jobs” or my favorite, “You know, some really want to be homeless.” All I can think of is that to be homeless means freezing in winter, dangerous sleeping conditions, questionable food and most likely, unaddressed mental health issues and self medicating if possible with drugs or alcohol. Now, if that was me I wouldn’t “really want to be homeless.” By the grace of God, I am not living on the streets. However, what if I was so profoundly wounded that I did live on the streets? I am not talking about victimization but acknowledgement of circumstances that result in inherent inequality. Christ came to comfort the poor and vulnerable.

The Sermon on the Mount reminds us in Matthew 5:7 “God blesses those people who are merciful. They will be treated with mercy!” The productive and achieving are called to use their God given gifts for good, not the further degradation of our fellow human beings by comparing who is worthy of shelter and/or food by what they can produce or achieve. Thankfully, the book provides a counter cultural way of living called the Personal Form which calls us to faith, hope and love. I have never considered faith, hope and love counter cultural, but perhaps considering the influx of media promoting consumerism, in this day and age, it is!

Kavanaugh goes on in Chapter 11 to define the Personal Form with four basic areas of focus so faith, hope and love resonate through out our lives; prayer, use of our gifts in relationships, simplicity of life and finally social justice.

1. Through solitude praying we become vulnerable to our own weakness and strengthened in Christ. Prayer allows us to be tested in relationships and bears fruit in the works of mercy and justice. Dorothy Day noted that it was her relationships in community with other Catholic Workers that tested her more than her actual work with the homeless.

2. The use of our God given gifts will become self-serving if prayer is not part of our daily existence. There is nothing wrong with using our gifts to produce and achieve.It is only when we compare others to ourselves or judge others worthy of the basic life necessities, of human dignity, that we begin to distort our gifts.

3. Simplicity in life is about attitude or the style of life we choose. Thankfully, the book points out that an examination of consumerism doesn’t mean you have to stop consuming which would be impossible for starters. There are many beautiful objects that enrich our lives. However, we must have a developed interior life through prayer and social justice so consuming doesn’t become the goal in and of its self. Advertising does a good job convincing us that the product they are selling will solve our interior aches and pains when in reality a closer walk with God through prayer and service is what is needed to ground us.

4. Finally, laboring for social justice springs forth as a result of our faith, hope and love. Therefore, “we deliberately enter the presence of persons for who the consumer and commodity ideology is not a dream but a nightmare.” (Kavanaugh 188) It is the ability of the poor and vulnerable to evoke love that makes them valuable. In their vulnerability, they are unable to hide behind accomplishments or accumulations but still move us to love. That is the greatest gift any person can give another, to evoke love.

So at the Dorothy Day Place and Thomas Merton House, we meet Christ in hospitality and try to help restore the human dignity while putting the needs of the poor and vulnerable first. My favorite truism came one day on the sidelines of a field, when a soccer mom from the opposing team glanced over and stated, “We are all in this together.” I had to smile and agree.

Kavanaugh, John F. Following Christ in a Consumer Society. 2nd. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.

“Grading the States 2006: Idaho.” NAMI. 2006. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). 25 Aug 2007

Written by Laura Hudson, a Boise Catholic Worker and a member of St Mark’s Parish.

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

Technorati Tags:Hospitality, Social Justice, Catholic Church, Homelessness, Housing, Poverty, Mentally Ill, John F. Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society

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What is Benedictine Spirituality? To properly answer that question we would first have to answer the question, what is spirituality? An excellent definition of spirituality is “sensitivity or attachment to religious values.” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) Thus, Benedictine Spirituality can be defined as “sensitivity or attachment to religious values, which proceeds from the precepts of the Rule of Benedict.” Certainly a key message from the Rule of Benedict is a constant love and respect for God and the world God has created. So Benedictine spirituality must be spirituality, which is sensitive to this dual responsibility.

The Rule of Benedict originally promulgated to control the community life of Benedictine Monks has, fairly recently come to be seen as a guide for not just monks, but for Christians from all walks of life seeking to perform Christ’s work on earth. There are more than a few unfortunate similarities between the world of the 6^th Century and the world of the 21^st Century. Now as then, God has been pushed to the background of mans awareness. Disbelief in God, and in many circles, an overt hostility to God or religion are rampant. Our world, just as the world of the 6^th century is increasingly consumed with egotism, violence and despair. The good news of Christ’s redeeming love falls on deaf ears.

Benedict, faced with all of this, responded by setting out for his followers some very simple precepts. Benedict’s “Rule” is actually a collection of 73 chapters dictating in great detail the day, life and living habits of monks. Much of it in fact has little application to the modern world, but just as much of it is as valid today as it was 14 centuries ago.

To those of us involved in Catholic Social Action there is a particularly acute example of Benedictine Spirituality in our “patron saint.” Dorothy Day was a Benedictine Oblate. In 1955 at the age of 58 Dorothy Day became an oblate of St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. Thus, this woman, who had committed virtually her entire adult life to social justice, decided to bring yet another element, the element of Benedictine Spirituality to her work. The merging of work, prayer, and hospitality to the dispossessed was for her, the essence of Benedictine Spirituality. She gives an example in her writings of the problem most of us face as we struggle to maintain our Benedictine Spirituality in a world consumed by woes. “ I say the rosary, I read my Psalms. At home kneeling by my bed, or in the bitter cold, lying in my bed, my prayers are brief, half conscious, and the planning, the considering, the figuring of ways of making ends meet goes on.”

Dorothy Day an exemplar of the person we would all like to be admits to letting the cares of the world, and the frailties of human nature impinge on her best efforts to communicate with God. In this matter, just as in so many others she offers to us the promise that our work is not in vain. Her work was not in vain, and neither is ours.

Following are some Benedictine principles, which can help us use our religious values to bring good to our world. At all of them Dorothy Day excelled, and with hope and trust in God we can do the same.

Listen: The very first word of the Rule of Benedict is “listen.” “Listen my son to the words of the master . . .” (Prologue Rule) Too often in our lives we are too busy “telling” to “listen.” Our prayers are usually prayers of importuning when we should take time to simply and meditatively “listen” to what God is trying to tell us. We must learn to “listen” to those around us, without a compulsion to interject and suggest. What are their needs, what are they seeking? Listening is a difficult skill to master in our results-oriented culture. Most of us have been taught not so much to listen as to gather facts, and once we have the facts to come up with a solution. A sorely lacking skill in our society today is the ability to simply listen, quietly, with compassion and not with an objective of suggesting a solution. There is no dearth of problem solvers in our culture but we are sorely lacking in good listeners.

Pray: Benedict laid out in great detail how and when the monks of the monastery should pray. In fact 13 of the 73 chapters of the rule are devoted exclusively to the times, forms and manners of prayer to be observed. Lay Benedictines, could not, as a practical matter come close to observing literally Benedict’s strictures on prayer. What we can do however, is to specifically commit time in our life, at least in the morning and evening to formal observance of a duty to pray and use that time to give our hearts and our souls to that process. A specific time must be set aside each day, and dedicated to the commitment to prayer. It need not be lengthy but it must be sincere. Benedict himself cautions “We… know it is not on account of our wordiness that we are heard…therefore prayer ought to be short and pure…” ( Rule 20 – 3 & 4)

Benedictines whether professed or lay should make their prayer session one with their community, and for this reason should center their prayer around one of the recognized offices. Lauds, as a morning prayer and Compline as the final prayer of the day can make the perfect “bookends” to a work schedule or business day which does not allow much time for prayer and quiet repose.

Hospitality: “All guests who present themselves are to be received as Christ.” (Rule 53-1) This rule, obviously written to the monastery as a hostel, should be a guide for our daily lives. It actually flows from the above admonition to “listen”. People generally will not present themselves to us as guests literally seeking a place to stay. Quite often though people will present seeking the hospitality of our companionship, comfort or solace. We may not be able to do much concrete to address their problems or fill the voids in their lives, but we can always offer the hospitality of time, kindness, courtesy and consideration. In an increasingly rude, crude and inhospitable world, followers of Benedict should stand out as exemplars of hospitality, offering what we can to all who seek.

This is obviously a very brief introduction to a topic, which could keep a room full of theologicians and philosophers busy for days. However if all of us could keep these very simple ideas constantly before us, and strive to follow them we, and the world would be much improved. The Rule of Benedict offers its greatest value in today’s world not as a set of proscriptions but as a suggestion for arriving at the best possible frame of mind. Listen well, pray regularly, and see all as Christ.

Written by John O’Hagan, Benedictine Oblate Monastery of Ascension and writer for Boise Catholic Worker Paraclete.

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

Technorati Tags:Benedictine Spirituality, Spirituality, Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, Prayer, Rule of St. Benedict, Catholic

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“Behold, I will spread peace over her like a river…” (Is 66); “On entering any house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’” (Lk 10). “Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day.”

It is striking how often the word “peace” occurs in the prayers for Mass and in the New Testament. It is clearly an important Christian idea. It is also an important gesture. A recent German movie called “Into Great Silence” presents the life of the monks of the Grand Chartreuse, the chief monastery of the small and very austere Carthusian Order. In one scene, two new members are welcomed by the rest of the community. The new member goes before each monk, kneels, and then is lifted up by him and given a ritual embrace. This ceremony is called the Pax, the Latin word for “peace,” which is also the Latin word for the “Sign of Peace” we give at Mass before communion. The idea and the gesture are important enough to think about for a bit.

The gesture of the “kiss of peace” goes back to early Christian times. The people of the Roman Empire did a considerable amount of kissing, and for them kissing was not so specifically an erotic act as it tends to be in modern society. A kiss, in Roman society and among the early Christians, had at least four non-erotic meanings. First, members of extended families kissed often, and so did friends. So, Christians, as God’s family, kissed each other also. Unlike their pagan neighbors, Christians extended the kiss to everyone in their communities, whether slave or free. They saw the kiss as something new: it expressed not biological bonds, but a spiritual communion. A second meaning of the kiss among the Romans was spiritual exchange. The Latin word spiritus meant breath, but also spirit. So, when people mingled their breath when they kissed, they mingled their spirits, shared the same spirit. So, for example, a dying Roman might kiss his family members in hopes of imparting his spirit to them. Christians applied this to the Holy Spirit, who dwells in each of the baptized. Thus, in the traditional Latin Mass, and maybe again in the English Mass if some proposed changes are adopted, the presider often said “The Lord be with you” and the celebrating congregation replied “And with your spirit.” The connotation of this reply is that the Holy Spirit who dwells in your spirit may keep you one with the Lord. Thirdly, starting in the second century, Christians began linking the “kiss of peace” with reconciliation. This was not a biblical or a Roman idea, but it quickly became deeply embedded in Christian practice. At the same time the kiss of peace was placed before communion. Thus, before receiving communion, Christians had a way of expressing the reconciliation and forgiveness that Jesus said should precede bringing a gift to the altar. Fourth and finally, Christians thought of themselves as the body of Christ, a communion that was spiritual, but also institutional and social, a communion of people living bodily in the world. The “kiss of peace” was a tangible, physical way of expressing both dimensions of their communion with each other.

Over time the use of “the kiss of peace” changed. Gradually, kissing on the lips was replaced by other gestures, and little by little these were used less frequently at Mass, and finally not at all. “The sign of peace” was restored to the Mass after Vatican II. There are four possible places where it has at some time or other been exchanged at Mass: at the beginning, where it should serve not just as a “hi” or “howdy,” but as a gesture of solidarity in Christ and in the church. A second place, favored by the Eastern churches and which may be recommended for us in the proposed liturgical changes, is between the office or readings and the Eucharist prayer, that is, at the preparation of the gifts, which marks that transition. Having heard the word of God, we will now offer our gifts, and before we do that we need to express reconciliation and solidarity. Or thirdly, it can occur before communion as it does now, and has in the Roman rite since the fourth century. Finally, it can be exchanged at the end of Mass.

So, what does all this mean for us? First, it is the peace of Christ that we exchange. The sign of peace starts at the altar, which stands for Christ. Peace is something we work for, but above all it is a gift, a grace. Secondly, the kiss in all its forms and settings, reminds us that we are the body of Christ, a spiritual, but also a social, institutional and embodied community. For us, to be spiritual is to be indwelt by the Spirit, and the spirit does not dwell in disembodied, isolated souls. That is why we join together to celebrate Mass, as well as pray individually. Thirdly, “the sign of peace” reminds us that there is something phoney and self-contradictory about our participation at Mass if we have unreconciled differences with others. In the Byzantine liturgy, instead of saying “Let us offer one another a sign of peace,” the presider says “Let us love one another.” If we have come to the Eucharist unreconciled, the celebration itself is meant to reconcile us, because it is nothing else than the making presence of Christ’s cross, which reconciled us to God and to each other. We need to let the Eucharist work its reconciling effect in us. Finally, the sign of peace is not just an “in-group” hug; it is a pledge for us the baptized to be peacemakers once we leave church. When we give each other “the sign of peace,” we are giving encouragement to forgive those who have wronged us and pledging to work to break down hostility, resentment, polarization and animosity in our families, communities, church, nation and world. Only then can “the peace of the Lord be always with us.”

- Father Hugh Feiss is a Benedictine Monk at the Monastery of the Ascension in Jerome Idaho. He has served as both retreat master and spiritual director for Boise Catholic Worker.

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If anyone has seen much coverage of the war in Iraq or Afghanistan recently then they must have been watching a lot more TV or different channels than I have. Is it just me, or has the war, other than the politician’s talk of it, virtually disappeared? If so, is that such a bad thing? I suppose the answer to that question depends upon your perspective and I would assume that it is not a bad thing from President Bush’s point of view. My own point of view may be somewhat different.

First of all, what do the vast majority of us know about war? The answer to this is almost certainly, very little. I served in Vietnam in an administrative position and, other than a few mortar and rocket attacks on the division headquarters at Dong Tam and a few nervous evenings as I traveled to small outlying base camps as part of my duties, I was actually far removed from the realities of the war. Just how far removed I was did not really come through to me until many years later.

Since my job required a good deal of travel throughout the delta in southern Vietnam, most of it by helicopter, I was able to arrange transportation to Saigon by helicopter when I was going on my R&R to Singapore. An unexpected part of that trip was that I rode with a body bag at my feet all the way to Saigon. I was, at the time, able to minimize the effect of that and to look at it as just a body in transport that I could largely ignore. It was only recently that I felt the full impact of that when, for the first time, I recognized that whoever he was, for me he was the body of the Unknown Soldier for Vietnam. The full meaning of the very concept of the Unknown Soldier hit home and, after nearly forty years the tears came because I realized that war represents a loss for all of us whether or not we lose someone close. There is no way that we can even begin to understand war if we are not willing to look at the full reality of the loss that war brings.

All war, whether looked upon as just or not, involves suffering and loss, most of all for those directly involved in combat and those close to them. If we close ourselves off from the realities of war and deny the loss, we cannot even begin to understand the realities of war. As much as our government has sought to obscure the realities of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq we have to come to terms with the incredible human costs for the populations in both. Unfortunately, when we look at the war in Iraq the cost to the people of that country has been tragically high. This is only touched on by the media and it leads one to wonder if President Bush’s insistent on removing the limits to percentage of ownership of the media, despite considerable public opposition, is being rewarded by the limited and very controlled coverage the war is now receiving.

Whatever is presented to us on television or not presented, we must come to understand the destruction and death that war involves. Without understanding the full impact of this war on the people of Iraq we risk not understanding the implications of war itself. The worst statement that I have seen about the war in Iraq was in the Idaho Statesman on June 6, 2007. The simple sentence, with all of its horrific implications was “The U.S. military itself says it doesn’t track civilian casualties.”

To understand the full implication of that sentence we must go back to the initial justifications for that war that were presented by the Bush administration. In spite of this administration’s attempts to make us think otherwise, there has never been any evidence presented that connected 911 or Al Queda with Iraq. The justification for the war centered around Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction which proved to be either an inexcusable miscalculation or an outright lie, although we may never know which. When these reasons proved to be unsustainable the emphasis was shifted to establishing a democracy in Iraq. The question has become, in light of our refusal to track the war’s civilian casualties, how many of their people are not going to be around to enjoy the democracy we are supposedly trying to establish?

All wars involve a degree of misrepresentation or outright lies, but this one may well involve more than most. There are, I believe, two lies that are the most outrageous. The first is that we went into Iraq primarily to help them establish a democracy. The evidence suggests strongly that our real intent was to establish a government friendly to our interests and an economy tailored to suit U.S. business goals. Neither of these would automatically be achieved if Iraq truly achieved a democracy.In fact, it is at least likely that any democratic government elected in Iraq might choose to act counter to what we perceive our interests to be, especially since the majority of the population is Shite and might naturally lean toward a close relationship with Iran.

The current position of the Bush administration is that we have to fight terrorism in Iraq or we will have it within our borders. Even if there is some truth to this we should know by now that there appears to be no truth to the suggestion that Al Queda was involved in Iraq before we invaded. This brings up the strong supposition that we chose Iraq as a battleground by starting the war and drawing Al Queda into it so that we could fight them on another country’s territory other than Afghanistan where we knew that the terrain would make for a very difficult war. This may seem like a cynical view but surely it cannot be more cynical than the disregard shown for the displacement and death of so many Iraqi civilians.

So what position is reasonable in regard to this war other than the continued quest for peace in the world that we should all be involved in? I believe that Thomas Merton, the renowned monk and author put it best when he addressed the issue of war and peace. In one of his essays on the matter he stated: “Prayer and sacrifice must be used as the most effective weapons in the war against war… this implies that we are also willing to sacrifice and restrain our own instinct for violence and aggressiveness in our relations with other people.” This may be the best answer we can find for ourselves as individuals, but, as a nation, much more is needed. As a nation we need to devote far more effort toward achieving peace in the world than we put into making war. Finding the way to do that is one of the most important challenges facing humanity.

- Posted by Larry Munden, writer & Catholic Worker

- Original artwork by Kevin Larmee

Boise Catholic Worker is a group of Lay Catholics who study and live the social teachings of the Catholic Church in their daily lives through the guidelines set down by Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day. Catholic Workers give comfort to the homeless and suffering as well as promote social justice through education efforts and action. We welcome all faith based volunteers to Boise Catholic Worker.

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