witness

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Happiness, Peace

Customers are always happy to hear their pianos after I tune them. Is that the only happiness they share with me? No, my other obligation is to be so kind that the customers say to themselves “I’m so glad I could talk to Kent today.”

Peace activism is not only fine-tuning an institution like taxation or social welfare. It is also a commitment to delivering the message so that the audience will say “I’m so glad I interacted with Kent today.” Ineed, if I do not inspire that happiness in my listener, there is little chance that my message will have a positive effect.

Undertaking to be against something constitutes being in opposition. Progress, on the other hand, is a matter of being in support of something. Peace building lifts the self-esteem and happiness of the parties to the peace.

When I try to tune two people who think they hate each other, it is crucial for both of them to conclude “I’m so glad I could talk to Kent today.”

copyright © 2011 Kent Busse
please quote freely

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Islam’s creative role

Author: Kent Busse

The Old Testament identifies the function of persecution as “Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.”

Jesus instructed “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

Gandhi taught “First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win.”

The US Marines put it this way: “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

Senseless persecution is the doorway through which America has admitted its Quakers, Jews, Mormons, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Africans, Hispanics and Latinos into fellowship. Open, public confrontations are so much better than the secret police and mass disappearances employed elsewhere.

Young children are held up as our role models because they possess the pliability and resilience to express conflicts in heated screaming matches and move on from there to work out their differences and share the playground without perpetuating grudges. This is the power to be healed.

Allah and nonviolence will yet see us through the current round of persecutions by which Islam is assuring its diversifying role as a permanent fixture in the American landscape.

copyright © 2011 Kent Busse

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Killing in Our Name

Author: David Finke (upon request by PRC)

One of the agonizing aspects of capital punishment (a/k/a the State killing its own citizens) is that — in its official-sounding pomposity — a convict is executed (in our case) “in the name of the People of the State of Missouri.”

That’s what happened in the early hours of May 20th, after a 4-year hiatus in which there were no death sentences carried out here. In a dozen locations across Missouri people gathered in witness against this act, saying in effect, “Not in OUR name!”

The man who was systematically poisoned to death (though supposedly unconscious) was Dennis Skillicorn, involved in at least 3 murders — never as the direct perpetrator but yet legally liable as an accomplice.

Whether or not one is moved by the case (easy to make) that he was repentant and rehabilitated and had given his last 15 years to efforts at restorative justice, the opposition to killing him was a religious and philosophical one for most of us, not dependent on the specifics of his case.

I was gratified to see that — on the vigil line in front of the county courthouse in Columbia, MO, the night of Dennis’ execution — we had a dozen folks who in some way or another were part of our Friends Meeting. The mentor/exemplar for us all in these efforts has been Friend John Schuder, aged 87, who decades ago founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation in central Missouri. He has made and maintained the collection of incisive and dignified signs for people to hold on these vigils, and is unswervingly our most eloquent spokesperson.

Three of our local Quakers are featured in this picture of quiet outrage and grief. The image of people standing in silence rather than ranting is one that gets through to many, and bit by bit may help turn the tide of public opinion.

There were about 40 people present, including Catholic Worker folks who have a huge quilt on which they keep adding pictures of yet one more person put to death in our name since the ghastly practice resumed perhaps 20 years ago. We’ve killed over 50 human beings, and I think rank just behind Texas and Georgia (or Florida) in our blood-lust. [Editorial note: Skillicorn was the 67th Missouri inmate to be put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1989; source: Kansas City Star – May 20, 2009.]

I’m grateful that we have the support of our Yearly Meeting, and help of Peace Resources Committee, for caring about this and being at the forefront of public witness against this barbarism. And that’s what it is, regardless of how Officialdom keeps trying to sanitize it.