EPISODE SIX: Time & Space Warp
EXCERPTS
FIRST EXCERPT Even the teamwork needed to pull off nationalistic violence (including domination of other peoples) is spun in the terms of individualism. The messages given to most school children in the USA is that the violence of militarism is good, necessary, praiseworthy, and socially valuable. Those adverbs need to be applied to farming, rather than militarism. Most young folks i know understand and believe this as well, but the popular understanding of "farming" does not imply the same notions of excellence, praiseworthiness and social value that capitalism, militarism, and materialism do imply when presented in the mainstream culture of the USA. What on Earth would Jesus do about that? Capitalism, consumerism/materialism and militarism/domination are all secondary social constructs, much less important to a social fabric than the basic relationship humans necessarily have to the planet; we eat food in order to survive and food comes from the earth. As a Christian Anarchist, i'm well aware of Christ's quip: "people don't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." That's a valuable statement in a society that is excessively focused on bread or agribusiness. But our society's cultural values are on the other things we live on--the messages of consumer culture (rather than the messages from God). The American Empire is so very far removed from a local, land-based, agricultural paradigm, that it's probably hard for most North American "christians" to fathom the context and radical messages from Jesus Christ (which were based in a VERY different culture). To turn the phrase, what on Earth would Jesus communicate in this context? He's left it up to his followers to keep the radical messaging going along with the radical activity. "Radical" means "of the root", and our country (folks living in the 50 states) needs more farming, not just to be more radical about our relationship to the earth (not just for the sake of the message it sends when a state or nation has that kind of integrity of sustainability), but because it's the most logical, healthy, and secure way to live. Again, most of my CW friends understand this, many other young folks in this culture "get it" too, but the word that comes from the mouth of television (when averaged out) does not support this sentiment.

Of course we need bread and roses. Of course we need stories and socializing. Of course we need meaningfulness. Every single person who has ever lived for more than a month on an organic farm, eating the produce of that land, engaging personally in the processes of nature which create the food--each one of us spending time this way--has a sense of meaningfulness that goes beyond every word that comes from the mouth of consumerism, militarism and materialism. Not every one of us farmers may live by that sense of meaningfulness, but it's an awesome experience to have in our minds (even if we simultaneously have other notions of meaningfulness in competition with the land-based sense). The messages coming from the soil and the elders who can teach us ought to be heeded, for our own good and the goodness of future generations. When the plants thrive, so do the humans. When the humans behave hazardously by creating toxins to poison the water and kill the plants then the humans sow the seeds of their/our own destruction. Everyone who's lived as a farmer with the plants for more than one growing season understands this. Poisoning the air, water, and soil through nuclear weapons production is like insulting the God of the universe. We live on bread and meaningfulness, and our God-given ability to freely choose among various futures and to choose sane, just, peaceful, pleasurable activities that lead to healthy futures is jeopardized when we arrogantly believe we have the right to control other people.

Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day understood this anarchistic principle. We are all beautiful creatures who are meant to be free and who can freely choose to support each other and the common good. We are all in trouble when we instead choose fear and death-worship (such as nuclear weapons provide for us), and it's a mortal sin to live by that standard of domination, divorced from our dependence on the goodness of God's creation.


SECOND EXCERPT My identity as a pacifist anarchist Christ-follower allows me to participate in a groovy Church (despite it's dysfunctional dynamics) of any stripe that doesn't mind me claiming membership in it. I'm not religious about my anarchism, but am slightly religious about my lovarchism. From the point-of-view of the Bishop of Rome, I'm perhaps an unorthodox heretical nincompoop--who knows? But like me, the Bishop of Rome (a.k.a. the "pope") is only alive for about a century, and only influential in social affairs for less time than that. The Catholic identity preceded him and me, and likely will exist after we are both dead and gone. The doctrines of the church will be altered over time, and the mood of the Catholic Worker movement will probably shift over time as well.