40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
an autohagiography, July 16, 2008
This review is from: A Persistent Peace: One Man's Struggle for a Nonviolent World (Hardcover)
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Throughout Christian history there has been quite an interest in men and women who did great things, whether in this world or within their soul. These men and women weren't seeking self-satisfaction. Rather, they were truly seeking God and his work in them and in this world. The interest in such people often insisted they be viewed as saints, objects of devotion if not worship. Biographies written were often filled with stories of great victories, moral pronouncements, heroic stands. Little was said that would suggest these people had real personal histories or daily struggles or lived in complex times.
Glossing over the negatives, and thus the whole truth, these biographies were meant more as inspiration than history--inspiration for those already walking in their footsteps, devoted to the cause and method.
A Peristent Peace is such a book, though oddly enough not one written by a later disciple but rather written by the man himself, John Dear. This fact makes the book curious to review. I do not share his views on pacifism, yet I am sympathetic to them, and was very open to being convinced, enlightened and taught. I was curious how he formed his views, how he wrestled with the Catholic Church's official teaching, and in general the overall story of a man who has been on the frontlines of peace protests for the last thirty years.
I was disappointed, however. A Persistent Peace is a history of the icon, John Dear S.J, and even more the story of the names and places involved in the Peace movement since Reagan.
But we never really get to know the man, John Dear. The gift of an autobiography is that we can see not only the events, but also the internal perspective, wrestling, frustrations, development of the subject. John Dear seems to open up, but often only in ways that bolster the sense of his superiority. People around him don't understand him. They are bored or angry or confused. Dialogue is pontifications of his teaching to the ignorant, even hateful, opponents or less ignorant friends. This is coupled with a hero worship of sorts, in which Dear seems to reveal himself most by talking about the people he wants to be like. But, all throughout it seems a lot of the real John Dear remains hidden, hidden because it seems he is still unwilling to be truly transparent about who he is and where he came from.
In the foreword, Martin Sheen writes, "I suspect that much of John's character was formed, as it is for all of us, during adolescence, that critical period when every level of physical, emotional, physiological, sexual, and spiritual development begins to emerge."
I suspect this too. Only A Persistent Peace gives nothing of this. We begin with John in college at Duke. We are given only the barest glimpse of his family life, which is decidedly upper class and filled with powerful influences. Indeed, he mentions his father and mother only in passing again and again, often as sources of introductions for people he proceeded to lecture about peace issues.
So, we don't really ever get to see the man, only the image of the peace activist seeking the way of Jesus in this world as he sees it, fighting against the benighted masses who disagree, not only with the goal but also the method--public protest and nuisance. This is not a review to argue such tactics, however, I can't help but think that being empowered because of arrests for public behavior is entirely different than the martyrs arrested for their message. Speaking the message is perfectly fine and accepted, a fact I think grates against those who seek to find identity within a pampered martyrdom.
Because of this I was disappointed with the book. We are left with more of a polemic than a story, again and again told rather than shown. Which places me outside of the target audience, to be sure, which is almost certainly the choir of people who already celebrate the message, goals, and tactics of John Dear as being the true expression of a "faith that does justice".
Giving this a star rating was difficult even still, because I realize for many this is precisely what they want and need. Hagiographies were popular, and still are, because people need heroes presented in a certain light and need the empowerment that comes from seeing their causes as black and white, good versus evil. I give it three stars because I do not share the initial assumptions and was seeking a history of the man rather than a story of places, and celebrities, and events that make up the Peace movement. I wanted to learn about the man, not the symbol.
Here is a quote that I think would best help readers to determine the worth of this book. John Dear upon arriving at the Pentagon says, "it was the center of death for the whole planet, its prime purpose to organize the empire's killing sprees at the behest of the multinational corporations and their politicians."
If you agree with this, then you will see this as a five star book, speaking truth to power, and modeling heroic activism. If you disagree, you will find this book likely confirming what you like least about the Peace movement, even if you happen to agree with many of their ideals.
This is not particularly an interesting or insightful autobiography. It compares poorly as such to the recent works by Jurgen Moltmann about his life in theology,
A Broad Place: An Autobiography, or Billy Graham about his life in evangelism
Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham. Both were significantly more open and self-aware, maybe because both of these were written much later in their lives, after retirement and after perspective had given them added insights. Nor does this come near the masterpieces that are
The Long Loneliness or
The Seven Storey Mountain.
This is a book for the choir. If you're wearing the robes then have at it, enjoy it, for it is certainly written with passion. It is also a good history of the last decades of the Peace movement. In fact, I wish Dear had not styled this a story of one man's struggle and instead more honestly made this a book of many people's participation.
As such, I'm left thinking Dear is trying to impose himself as a major figure, seeking the identity of his heroes Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, but falling flat despite his many arrests and popularity within a certain segment of particular activists. He wants to be seen and applauded and affirmed.
Which makes me wonder what his life was like before Duke and with his family. Which makes me also wonder if maybe he really should have become a Franciscan after all.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, August 13, 2008
This review is from: A Persistent Peace: One Man's Struggle for a Nonviolent World (Hardcover)
Folks are always going to have qualms about the actions of the John Dears, the Daniel and Phil Berrigans, of this world. If for no other reason, we see the cost to them of their convictions and we are compelled to weigh both the courage of our own convictions and their potential cost to us. It is the same cost Jesus spoke of to his disciples when he turned his face toward Jerusalem in the gospels and began to speak ominously of his coming crucifixion.
I definitely count myself among the choir to whom Dear is preaching. I hope it is a big one. It includes everyone who wants to see peace on earth, and is wondering what they might do to contribute to its realization. It includes everyone who seeks to follow Jesus and is open to the emphasis of John Dear (along with Gandhi, MLK, Tolstoy, the Berrigans, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, Rene Girard, Eileen Egan, John Howard Yoder, Walter Wink, Andre Trocme, and Jim and Shelley Douglass...for starters) on the nonviolence of Jesus. I hope it especially includes young people who are just beginning to think about such questions, and who want a sense of the past thirty or so years from a radical Christian perspective.
What I loved about this book, as one who is slightly older than John and has lived through the same history, is the combination of the reminder of what's gone on and John's intrepid consistency in seeking out the heart of the action, the crisis points where the peacemaking focus of the gospel needed to be manifest. He went to El Salvador in the mid-eighties, and met the Jesuit priests there who would be slaughtered several years later. He could thus have a visceral clarity about the wrongheadedness (and wrongsidedness) of the official U.S. position vis-a-vis the Salvadoran people. He could throw himself in with Father Roy Bourgeois from the early years of the School of the Americas Watch and its annual protest at Ft. Benning, the most spiritually profound rally of its kind, sprung from the blood of the martyrs of Central and South America. He directed the Fellowship of Reconciliation, visited Iraq in that capacity and saw the devastation caused by sanctions, and thus was prepared in advance to know that the Iraqis were not our enemies, even as the second Bush administration made its case for war on them. He volunteered to work with grieving families at Ground Zero in New York in the days and weeks after the towers fell.
John Dear has given his life wholeheartedly for the cause of peace. It is less truthful to say that he has grasped the Beatitudes and claimed them than to say that the Beatitudes, and the one who spoke them, have grasped and claimed John. Soren Kierkegaard famously said, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." John Dear has willed to be a peacemaker, convinced that is Jesus' call to him and to us all.
Here's the part that moved me most. John was working at a Salvadoran refugee camp in 1985 when he accidentally sustained a bad cut by a machete on his right hand. He was stitched up in the emergency room to which Archbishop Oscar Romero had been brought when he was assassinated. "Days later, I returned to the camp. The men rushed over to see my wound. 'Now you are one of us!' they exclaimed. They showed me their own collection of scars -- one or two on every limb of every man; some even had missing fingers. But unlike me, they never had access to an emergency room. They mended their bodies as best they could and bore ever after the marks of their wounds. An old man took my arm and said, 'Someday, when you raise your hands in the air with the bread and wine, you will look up and see El Salvador.'" (pp. 132-3)
Fr. John Dear, SJ, sees El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Los Alamos, from the perspective of those being crucified violently, and takes us there to see with him. He longs and works for the reign of a loving God, the beloved community. For his dedication and single-minded devotion, I am most grateful...and by his example and this book I am inspired and encouraged to play my part.
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14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A non-religious and non-political review, July 10, 2008
This review is from: A Persistent Peace: One Man's Struggle for a Nonviolent World (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
A non-religious and non-political review
After reading the A PERSISTENT PEACE: ONE MAN'S STRUGGLE FOR A NONVIOLENT WORLD, I am going to use a different angle for my review. I'm going to focus on this autobiography without involving any religious and political implications. This is one of the books where I feel that others `fail to see the forest for the trees'.
My disclaimer: This book is an autobiography. It's a memoir. It is ONE man's view of the world. It is ONE man's life journey. It is the interpretation of how ONE man defines living `Christlike'. It should be interpreted as just that. It's not a manual of how he believes all Christians should be. It is not out to disrespect the military, government and other religions as a whole. It is simply one man's journey in the world. Focusing on this premise alone, there is a great deal to be learned from John Dear.
The writing is riveting and fascinating. The version I read was one that had not been proofed yet. Even with the extra material included, the book never dragged on or was boring. The writing skill of John Dear moved his story along. It kept me engaged in what was going on. It made me want to find out what his next adventure was going to be.
It amazes me that such a small sequence of events in John's earlier years lead him to the path that he eventually followed. In a world that has seemed to turn so materialistic and violent, it brings hope to see that there is at least one individual out there who chose to live a life of nonviolence and peace. Regardless of whether or not a reader agrees with what John believes in or backs every single one of his protests and views, it is an admirable quality. It is a rare quality.
Personally, I do not agree with all of his protests, views and beliefs. However, I give him credit and respect for what he is trying to accomplish. I learned some details about history/current events and issues that occurred throughout the time-period that Dear covers in his book. There are some items the media does not report. There are some items that I don't pay attention to because they seem minor and not important in my day-to-day life. I was able to see the big picture for some of these events.
I am giving this book 5-stars and I would recommend that others read it. The content is fascinating. The writing is impeccable. The book is engaging. It is thought provoking without being too deep. In this diverse world, very few will agree 100% with what John Dear stands for and I am betting 98% can even relate to how he has lived his life. Yet, this book deserves a fair chance because there are smaller messages that it contains. Messages that are so simple that they can be incorporated into most lives. Just read it as a memoir and I don't think you will be disappointed because there is at least one thing for everyone to learn from this man's life.
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