By her contagious confidence, Pat McSweeney made you aware of a greatness you could realize or "what loving yourself you could accomplish," said friend and fellow advocate for peace and justice, Frances Jeffries. Jill Stein, M.D. former presidential candidate of the Green Party USA said of Pat "She was my teacher and leader and good friend--from the days of relocalization and Peak Oil back decades ago--Pat inspired me on and taught me about Catholic Liberation in the Americas. She knew everybody and connected us. She was a Tree of Life. She coached me on what to wear saying 'You need to embody your hope in your attire.' To this day I think if Pat would approve."  "Pat was remarkable for her joy, her peace; she was never gloom and doom," said her second cousin Mary Ellen. The families emigrated from Kiloren, County Kerry, Ireland. Mary Ellen's parents, her father a Foley, settled in Roslyndale and then West Roxbury, while Pat's settled in T...

 Over many years, as a participant in Witness Against Torture, wearing orange jump suits and hoods, the role phantasmagoric, embodying a presence of men in Guantanamo, we often practiced for ourselves, an exercise to recall our own privileged lives along with the years of detention without charge or trial, in Mansoor Adayfi's case, a Yemeni detainee known to Guantanamo guards as 441, wrongfully deemed one of the 'worst of the worst' and punitively held 14 years without charge or trial.  Hi Mansoor, Thanks for your work elevating in Poland and Germany, currently, [the Guantanamo  art exhibit ]. I'm writing with an observance that it is a special privilege to write you. We often, in years of Witness Against Torture (WAT) circle, would reflect on words and expressions of men in Guantanamo. In recent years, I appreciate your work from Serbia in solidarity with Gaza and speaking out against plans to use the Guantanamo facility to house 30,000 migrants . I imagine you are b...

The many-sided truth is thematically at the heart of Colum McCann’s Apeirogon, a shape with infinite sides. In a dramatic scene, the high-wire artist who McCann previously had described in As the Great World Spins makes a return, this time in an act crossing a valley uniting Palestinian and Israeli observers in awe. Spectacle and symbol unite when a dove perches on Petit’s head. The bird’s talons clutch his scalp. Dazed by pain he holds his balance bar still,  only narrowing his focus. Then. As the bird flaps, he sets one foot ahead on the tightrope. He moves forward and the claws release. A photographer’s image shows the dove flapping a foot over the artist’s head.  The narrator has switched view to observe an artefact reproducing the scene. Notice the camera in the photographer’s hands. Held on a strap around a man’s neck under his checkered Kafia. A sympathetic foreigner, not a casual observer. It could be a Nikon, examining Petit’s absence of fear with a highly-powered le...

In his spare time the UN delegate was generous. His education in the United States was a gift endowed by the head of the Crown family, who now was acquiring prospects for the Bulls, sportswashing his billions made from bombs in a game he had loved from his youth. The delegate entrance bypassed the exhibit of the Hibakusha (Bomb Survivors). Meanwhile, the representative of a nuclear-possessing state rehearsed what he would say in conference that day in the Dag Hammarskjöld UN Meditation room saying, “We fully accept negotiations in good faith and we are prepared to reaffirm it to this conference.” In walked three delegates. The first, from Nicaragua said, “Do you uphold the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals?” “Yes.” The second, from the European Union asked “Do you care for your neighbor?” “I support the peaceful uses of nuclear energy including sterile insect technique to combat Malaria and Dengue Fever--” the representative said, “but what more can I do?” “Would you allow democrati...

 Good Friday--I made a solitary walk for War Tax Resistance, Somerville-Walden Pond, seventeen miles.  First Entry-- Here I am this morning 15 of April 2022 Taking a walk with my self. My faith has been drawing me, over the years, to reconcile bodily, enactment of God’s cross, but today this is a morning walk, we’re walking the path along the minute man trail, I’ve love to add history I’m downloading this app as I pass the community gardens talking now  on my way to Davis Square Turning now to the gospel the readings of the day for the triduum, just want to remark that I’m beginning this with the desire to create looking at the hyacinth and the daffodil as I diary with the spirit of Thoreau with his impulse toward creativity and simplicity walking this l-shaped route this morning out to Concord and turning toward Walden pond where I’ll meet Emily where she’ll be with friends this afternoon, it’s a gorgeous moon, sitting low in the sky, a giant globe.  2nd Entry-...

  James Carroll writes "The future will come at us invisibly, frame by frame" ( The Truth At the Heart of the Lie,  316). Pope Francis's call for the multiyear process The Synod on Synodality asks us to listen, study, integrate an enlivened and dialogical faith. How can we become a Church of the Pilgrim People of God?  This process must accommodate those unheard, the vulnerable, the young, alienated. As opposed to the Newark Archdiocese, whose site offers resources to ensure full access of people with disabilities, the Boston Archdiocesan opened a survey asking for one sentence answer. It remains a  live survey --and while imagining how the Archdiocese may listen better you may do your best to mimic Proust in Swann's Way to extend your sentences. eg. listening to the people of parishes and institutions within the Archdiocese Might the good people, hearing the Good News, joining the Walk for Hunger, or this upcoming Winter Walk, rallying for the unhoused or non-...

“That’s what we would say on the reservation” my mother said, “all my relations.” She’s reading The Water Protectors to one daughter as the other runs back and forth from the kitchen giving her bandaged arm a kiss. I’ve just rolled up her sweater to see the wound from a skin cancer surgery this week she hasn’t told me about. “They glued it shut” she said, but it’s opened and my spouse finds a large bandaid to dress it. “It may not stick. I’ve had it since 2012” Emily said. "It's a Jubilee year," Emily tells me, referring to the act of biblical justice (Isaiah 61); every fifty years all the captives were released--I'm less intrigued about the custom in ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, than I am in the interpretation of God's time. Convinced that the lessons of Biblical truth about the time of Justice must inform our advocacy today. If God made us to know the meaning of the times, to anticipate the coming of God’s Kingdom of Justice from the same sense by which...