A Persistent Peace

Thanks to Julie for the tip about this video clip ...

Provided he's not in jail, Fr. John Dear, SJ is scheduled to be one of the main speakers at our Congregation Chapter this summer. For those not in the know, a Chapter is the main governing body of a religious community. In our case, we gather every 6 years - this year in NJ this summer. It's a time to elect new leadership, make major decisions about the community, and decide what our focus will be for the next 6 years (and I am assured, to pray and play as well!). I'm not a voting delegate, but I will be attending the Chapter and working on the communications committee. I'm really looking forward to it!

But back to John Dear ... as I said, he is one of our major Chapter speakers which I'm really excited about. Back in the Spring of 2004 when I was trying my hardest to ignore a message God seemed to be trying to get through to me (namely, that I seemed to have a dual call to religious life and peace & justice work), I read a little book called Living Peace by John Dear. I was reading a few other library books at the time - Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg and In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen - and the combined effect was on the one hand a cracking of the wall I'd built to "protect" myself from God's dreams and on the other hand a flaming of the fire within that is my passion to work for peace through justice. There were of course other factors that helped to leave my bureaucratic past and have me sitting now writing this post on my laptop while sitting on a couch in a convent. But to make a long story short, John Dear was one of those factors. I seem to remember I may have even written him a letter to that fact!

Julie's post says that he has a new book coming out from Loyola Press (her employer) this summer. There's even a website for the new book. Maybe we'll get a bit of a preview at Chapter!