Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'm speaking
with my friend, author, longtime activist, and
professor of nonviolence, Dr. Ken Budigan. This
is a project of www .beatitudescenter .org. where
you can find many other podcasts and regular
Zoom programs on the nonviolence of Jesus and
practicing active nonviolence and working for
a more just, more peaceful, more nonviolent world.
So let's begin with a little prayer. I just invite
everyone, wherever you are, just to take a deep
breath and to relax and recenter yourself and
notice how you're feeling as we're going to begin
our conversation. And I invite you to enter into
the presence of the God of peace who loves you
infinitely and personally and everyone everywhere.
And let's welcome the risen nonviolent Jesus
here with us now and ask for the grace to follow
him more faithfully and to do God's will. God
of peace, thank you for all the blessings of
life, love, and peace that you give us. Be with
us now as we reflect together on your call to
follow the nonviolent Jesus and work for a more
nonviolent, more just world. Bless us, inspire
us, disarm us, strengthen us, and send us out
to do your will. and to do our part to help end
war and nuclear weapons and poverty and racism
and greed and justice and environmental destruction,
that we might be your holy peacemakers and welcome
your reign of universal love, nonviolence, and
peace on earth. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, friends,
it's a pleasure to welcome my friend Ken Budigan.
author, organizer, activist, speaker, nonviolence
trainer, strategist of movements, leader of Pace
Ibene, a longtime peace organization. Ken just
retired as a professor of the practice of peace
and justice and conflict studies at DePaul University
in Chicago. He's worked on a whole series of
movements for social change for decades, including
campaigns to end nuclear weapons, homelessness,
the U .S. wars in Iraq, freedom for East Timor,
and ending the U .S. wars in Central America.
In the 1980s, he was the founder and national
coordinator for the Pledge of Resistance, which
some old -timers like me may remember, which
for a decade mobilized nonviolent action for
peace in Central America. He has worked for over
30 years with Pache Ibene, which has trained
tens of thousands of people. in the practice
of nonviolence and the strategies of nonviolent
social change. And together we launched, when
I worked with Ken at Pache Bene, Campaign Nonviolence,
which is an annual week -long national grassroots
movement. I always joke, Ken, against everything,
poverty, war, racism, environmental destruction.
Ken serves on the executive committee. of Pax
Christi International's Catholic Nonviolence
Initiative, and he's been a global leader working
with the Vatican really regularly, right up till
today, to promote gospel nonviolence literally
around the world through the Catholic Church.
Ken's the author of seven books, including Pilgrimage
Through a Burning World, the story of the nonviolent
protest movement at the Nevada test site, and
what I consider the greatest practical program,
like a how -to manual of nonviolence called From
Violence to Wholeness, which you can get if you
go to the campaignnonviolence .org website. He
lives in Chicago with his wife, Cynthia, and
daughter, Leah. Ken Buttigan, welcome to the
Nonviolent Jesus podcast. Thank you so much,
John. Thank you so much. My pleasure. to have
you here. And there's so much I want to talk
about. I want everyone to know your stories.
So let's start from the beginning. And in our
allotted time we have, I'd just like to ask you
to walk through briefly really the great moments
of your journey as a peacemaker in the United
States over the course of your life as a follower
of the nonviolent Jesus. And let's start with
how it all began. You know, I've heard your stories
so many times, but they're always interesting
to me. from being a college student at San Diego
USD to going to Oxford and finally going to,
almost like a pilgrimage, Ken, to New York City
and meeting Daniel Berrigan and asking for his
advice. So how did you get started? Tell me your
journey to nonviolence. Thank you so much, John,
for having me aboard. It's really exciting to
be in a conversation about the nonviolent Jesus.
As somebody who grew up in the Catholic Church,
I don't think I ever heard the word nonviolence
ever in grade school, in high school, or in college.
All of these were Catholic institutions. And
I distinctly remember wondering about that. Where
is nonviolence in the Catholic Church? And in
my senior year in college at the University of
San Diego, I took a walk one morning and I suddenly
was walking into the arms of God. It was not
something I had expected, but every step I took
was deeper and deeper into the loving arms of
God. blew me away and it changed my life. That
and taking the four required religious studies
courses at the school that I had been putting
off assiduously my four years at USD. I took
them all at once and the combination of this
religious experience and then the theology of
God. changed me. And so I decided rather than
perhaps becoming a professor of art history,
I thought about that, the possibility of becoming
a lawyer. I decided that I wanted to put God
at the center of my life. And that meant going
and studying more about God. And that brought
me to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley
way back in 1977. And then I began to go on that
journey. In preparing for this conversation,
I went back to those days in my mind, and I realized
that at one point, even though I wasn't particularly
political, my family hadn't been political, I
wasn't politicized, I did read in the paper that
the University of California Board of Trustees
was going to be meeting in San Francisco across
the water from Berkeley, where I was, and deciding
on continuing to manage the two top nuclear weapons
laboratories in the United States, Los Alamos
and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And
I read that there was going to be a little demonstration.
I'm not sure what prompted me. I guess I would
say it was the Holy Spirit to get on a bus to
go over and to join this particular event. I
arrived there thinking there'd be thousands of
people. There were just a handful. I got there.
And I said, I'm here for the demonstration. They
said, oh, well, go in that room over there. So
I did. And I said, what's going to happen there?
They said, you're going to have a nonviolence
training. And I said, what's that? They said,
oh, that prepares you to to do this event. And
I said, OK, that's what I'm here for. So I went
in and I met for the first time in my life, Chad
Myers, who is a friend of John Deere's as well.
who is a scholar. But that day he was leading
this nonviolence training. It was a down and
dirty one hour nonviolence training preparing
us to take this action. So we did that for an
hour. And then I came out with my little toolbox
on nonviolence. And they said, OK, what we're
going to do is we're going to all lie down in
front of the doors where the members of the board
of trustees who are voting on this. have to come
out and see you lying there as if you were, I
guess, in a nuclear war. Like, I didn't know
the term die -in in those days, but that's what
it was. So I said, oh, okay. And they said, and,
you know, you may be arrested. And I said, oh,
okay. Well, I just got this training. So anyway,
we laid down. Governor Jerry Brown was the first
to walk out, and then a number of other of the
board. members and they had to walk over us.
We were not arrested. I got up and dusted myself
off and won home. I really didn't do anything
around these like this for a couple of years,
but it got me thinking about nuclear weapons.
And that led me to a book project at a Center
for Ethics and Social Policy, where I was doing
some work study job. And I proposed that I edit
a book on the environmental, political, psychological,
social, financial consequences of the arms race.
And so they agreed to this proposal. So I started
working on that. Then after a while, I decided
I needed to go get more research done. So that
took me to the East Coast. And I went from university
to university and think tank to think tank. And
like I said, I wasn't particularly political
in those days, but I was pretty distressed that
nobody could see a way forward to nuclear disarmament.
Everybody thought that was just the way it was
going to be. And what we should do is not only
increase nuclear weapons, but also conventional
weapons. So finally, after being in Washington
and then Philadelphia, I arrived in New York
and I was pretty distressed by this whole thing.
So before I left Berkeley, I was told, well,
if you get to New York, go see Daniel Berrigan.
I think he'll be interested in your project.
So they gave me his phone number. I fished it
out of my pocket and I called him up and I said,
Father Berrigan, you don't know me. But I need
some spiritual counseling on nuclear weapons.
He happened to be in town. He invited me to his
apartment up in the upper wilds of Manhattan.
And I spent a life -changing three hours with
him. It's rather like when somebody on their
hands and knees go up to the top of the Himalayas
to the cave and finds the guru there who transmits
a whole culture and tradition in the space of
three hours. I was totally blown away. Dan was
facing 10 years in federal. prison. And I said
to him, look, I'm going back to the West Coast.
What can I do for you? And he looked me straight
in the eyes and he said, don't do anything for
me. Find some people you can pray with and march
with. And in my mind, I said, Dan, you've got
this all wrong. You're the activist. I'm the
academic. You're the activist. I'm the academic.
But, you know, for the next several. That phrase
kept going through my right brain. Find some
people you can pray with and march with. And
you know what? I did. And I've been at it ever
since. Oh, that's such a great story. I love
hearing that. As many know, I did the same thing
when I first met Dan. And I've been thinking
about it with your story because I wanted to
ask him the meaning of life. I finally was really
scared, 21 -year -old, and I said, a young Jesuit
novice, I'm sitting at his feet practically in
his apartment. I said, Dan, what's the point
of all this? What do I have to do? And he said,
all you have to do is make your story fit into
the story of Jesus. And it was life -changing
for me, Ken. You know, it was getting... a word
way better than anything I could have imagined
from the guru. And when I think of your life
journey, I think that's what you did. Maybe unconsciously,
you know, we're all learning that to try to fit
your story into the story of the nonviolent Jesus.
And what you ended up doing in the 1980s is I
was telling my friends here at the recording
studio that It's hard to even grasp what you
did, Ken, and people won't believe it now, given
everything we've done. But if you can briefly
walk us through the story of the Pledge of Resistance
and how you helped, we now know, prevent the
Reagan administration from a full -on invasion
of Nicaragua. Thanks, John. Before I tell the
story, I will just say to all of us, we are all
capable of changing the world. All of us. All
of us are, as John Deere sometimes says, we're
all like little hobbits running around, but we
all have this power. And so I just invite all
of us, especially at this historical crisis that
we're in, to realize we all have this power.
But what happened with me was I did take Dan
Berrigan's command his marching orders seriously.
I found some people to march with and pray with.
And that turned out to be this group of seminarians
at the Graduate Theological Union. We formed
a little group we called an affinity group. We
had affinity because we were students, an affinity
group called Spirit Affinity Group, which was
based in gospel nonviolence. There we did for
two years. I basically just put my graduate program
on hold and just we did one wacky nonviolent
action after another about nuclear weapons, but
also what was going on in places like El Salvador.
And we also had a had a really powerful action
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where
some of my friends had decided to. entered the
Catholic Church, so they were going to be confirmed,
and we did that by carrying the nuclear cross
from one part of the area to one of the gates,
which was this 400 -pound MX missile, and then
we chained ourselves to it, and we were arrested.
Cross was taken off to the city dump, which we
took as a symbolism of disarmament. One day,
I had an experience where I got a letter from
somebody in Nicaragua. Now, for those who were
alive then, you knew that the Reagan administration
every day. said it was going to invade Nicaragua.
It was going to take over Nicaragua because it
had had a revolution there. It wasn't on the
same page with the United States and was also
carrying out attacks and raids on the people
there. And so I got a letter and I don't know
how this person ever got my name or address.
It was addressed to me. I opened the letter.
It was telling me about the carnage that my government
was inflicting on the people of Nicaragua. And
I had read about this. I'd gone to lectures about
this. I had gone to demonstrations about this.
I knew something about that. It didn't seem to
be telling me anything I didn't know. But then
about three quarters of the way down the letter,
it said, We're telling you now, so 10 years from
now, you cannot say you did not know. Do everything
in your power to stop this catastrophe. And that
shook me. Then I looked up and I literally had
a vision of this man holding a dying child in
front of me. And then that vision faded. I said
to myself, but I'm only one person. What can
I do? And then I remembered reading a story in
a magazine called Sojourners about a group of
50 people who had committed themselves to engage
in nonviolent civil disobedience or legal protest
if the U .S. invaded Nicaragua. And that they
were going to go to the border between Honduras
and Nicaragua and try to get in the way of the...
Of the invasion, if they were prevented from
doing that, they would go to federal buildings
in the United States and engage in that action.
And I said to myself, oh, well, why just 50 people?
Why not 500 people or 5 ,000 people or 5 million
people? And so I sat down for myself. I wrote
a little pledge that committed me to engage in
nonviolent civil disobedience of the U .S. invaded
Nicaragua or escalated its military intervention
across the region. And then I began sharing it
with people. And just to cut to the chase, I
joined with people in California and then with
folks at Sojourners and other places to build
a movement. called the Pledge of Resistance.
Eventually, about 100 ,000 people took that pledge.
This was the days, of course, before the internet.
And we organized ourselves into 400 local groups
across the United States. We had a signal group
that would call us out if there was an escalation
of military intervention or, God forbid, an invasion.
And as John said, for the next decade or so,
Some of us spent our lives engaged in that organizing.
And I will just tell you what I learned from
that experience, besides so much from my fellow
activists about what it means to be nonviolent,
but also the power of nonviolence. Because we
learned at one point from people within the administration
that, in fact, because of the actions we were
doing, hundreds and then thousands of people
engaging in civil disobedience, withdrawing their
consent from this policy, that the Reagan administration
had definitively decided not to invade Nicaragua.
They changed tactics, they went underground with
it, and that tactic also blew up in their face
because there was a movement across this country
calling them out in a different way. I learned
that we have more power than we think. And in
fact, not only did that prove true in terms of
stopping an invasion of Nicaragua, you will know,
of course, that the U .S. invaded Panama, Iraq
twice, Afghanistan, other places. but did not
invade Nicaragua. And we learned from Reagan's
people themselves saying it was because of ordinary
people power. So I learned that we have this
power and we can pull that. And we do that with
that sense of love for all, including those we're
resisting. Thank you so much for telling the
story. And I wanted you to do that because it's
so empowering. I remember those days very well.
I had lived in El Salvador in 85. I went to Nicaragua
with the Jesuits, went up on the border. We were
literally shot at. I got dengue fever. And all
the while, Ken, I had signed a pledge of resistance
and the Jesuits were going to expel me if I got
arrested. But I thought that was, you know, the
cost of peace. Somewhere along the way, we met.
And I want to ask you, if you could, because
our time is short, just to walk through a couple
of the other great campaigns you were part of
as leader. First, the Nevada test site, where
they were blowing up nuclear weapons, 1 ,500
of them in the 50s, and then the underground
testing. And you and Father Louis Vitale and
the Nevada Desert Experience and I ended up working
on the board with you there for many years. led
waves of civil disobedience. Tell us about that.
This is a really important campaign, and it's
really important for people to know about it.
So in the early 1980s, as the U .S. involvement
in Vietnam had begun to wane, our good friend
Father Louis Vitale, who was working, had been
exiled basically by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
to through Nevada, learned directly that nuclear
testing was going on. On average, once every
18 days from 1951 forward, there was a nuclear
bomb going off just north of Las Vegas. And it
was, as Daniel Ellsberg said, it was the most
bombed place on the planet. And so Louis, on
the 800th anniversary of St. Francis's birth
in 1981 and 82, just decided to go out there
and pray. And so a few Franciscans, laypeople,
priests, sisters, went out and began praying.
And then eventually they started a 40 -day event.
called the Lenten Desert Experience. And then
that morphed into an ongoing campaign with the
audacious idea of ending nuclear testing, not
just in Nevada, but worldwide. And that went
on for a decade. And in fact, just to make it
clear, that movement brought people from around
the world, around the country, and around the
world. And then those people would go home and
work on their own test sites. So that by 1993,
there was enough people power generated to get
an international comprehensive test ban treaty
promulgated and signed by 154 nations. The United
States actually signed it, didn't ratify it,
still hasn't ratified it, but has lived according
to it. even under the first and now the second
Bush administration, has gone with a moratorium
on nuclear testing. And this is huge. And I just
think we have more power than we think. And we
see this in the case of this really, really important
campaign that we need to celebrate and build
on. You know, it's like ancient history now,
but it was really quite brilliant, Ken, because
it was a Lenten program. And what happened was
parishes, ordinary church people would plan every
year, okay, so next Lent, I'm going to go out
to Las Vegas for the weekend retreat. And then
it just became this. I called it Civilist Obedience
101, basic choreography. You'd have a wonderful
retreat, meet hundreds of people from all over
the country. And then on Sunday morning, we'd
all drive two hours north into the desert. And
I mean the wild open desert. The Nevada test
site is larger than Rhode Island, as I recall.
And we'd literally cross a line in the little...
County police people had painted a little, I
mean, a little yellow line. And 25 ,000 people
were arrested over the years there. And it became,
I think, a Gandhian -level Satyagraha campaign.
Don't you, Ken? And that's, I mean, it's hard
to replicate anything, but it was just one of
the great experiences of our lives. So thank
you for sharing that. Yeah. If people are interested,
I did. I wrote a study about this called Pilgrimage
to a Burning World, published by New York University
Press, because it was a deeply spiritual and
sacred experience across many different traditions,
as well as a very savvy, strategic campaign,
and tried to capture that in that book. Yeah,
great book. So all this time, we're now in the
90s and the 2000s, and you're getting a PhD and
you eventually settle into teaching at DePaul
in Chicago. But we had the first Iraq War that
you and I were organizing. It seemed to me like
a demonstration every day in January, February,
March 1991. And then the second Iraq War in March
2003. which we have no idea how many people died.
But the number I've settled on is that we killed
1 .4 million Iraqis over all those years. And
it's hard for people to imagine now. Again, it
seems like ancient history. And this is, again,
asking you to briefly talk about the Declaration
of Peace campaign. We were doing nonstop action,
folks. Ken and I were in and out of jail and
all. But Ken is always going, well, I got to
change the country. I'm going, uh -huh. Well,
good luck with that. And then you. So 2003, George
W. Bush, there's weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq and we got to go there. And he's following
up on 9 -11 while bombing Afghanistan. And then
Kerry ran against George W. Bush and the whole
country is supporting Bush and the war. The polls
were like 80 percent. And Ken says. We're going
to call for the whole country, the movement,
to go to every local congressional district and
sit in and say, stop the war on Iraq. And you
called it Declaration of Peace. And it practically
changed my life because I organized a civil disobedience
action in New Mexico and faced a hard year in
prison for that. You really had a huge effect
on the whole country, Ken. Tell us about the
Declaration of Peace. So we had heard that the
midterm elections were coming up and those running
those campaigns said there is going to be no
discussion by the Democrats about the war in
Iraq. That is a non -starter. We're not going
to win on that. So people like Rahm Emanuel and
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid decided there's not
going to be any discussion about that. We had
decided that there should be a discussion, but
also action. And so we, inspired by our friend
Michael Nagler, who sent me an email on Christmas
Day 2005, the idea set a deadline for the U .S.
to be out of Iraq. It had already been three
years. And if that's not met, The whole country
goes and engages in nonviolent action, civil
disobedience and so forth. And so we love that
idea. And my spouse, Cynthia Okayama -Dopke,
and I just plunged into organizing this from
a back room in our house. And we, without getting
into all the details, one thing that we wanted
to say. was how do we frame it differently? Because
George Bush was saying the two options are cutting
and running or staying the course. And we got
with somebody who thinks about these things and
said, how about a third way, which is a new course
for Iraq or a new course on Iraq? And we thought,
huh, that's a third way to think about this,
because the new course should be peace and ending
the war and all of that. But it was a really
interesting framing. So we started, we invited
people all across the country to go into congressional
offices, and they did. And they brought this
pledge, this declaration. Will you sign this
declaration that unless the war ends by... September
21st, the International Day of Peace, 2006, we're
going to oppose the war and we're going to cut
off funding and so forth. So anyway, to make
a long story longer, as those delegations went
into these offices and saying, look, we're going
to be back and doing civil disobedience if September
21st comes and we don't have a plan to end the
war. Then it was interesting. They managed to
get 12 members of Congress to actually sign the
Declaration of Peace, which was great. But the
most important thing was it lodged the framing
right in there to the point where Rahm Emanuel,
Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, the senator from
Nevada who was the head of the Senate. shifted
course themselves, put out a press release third
week of July saying a new course on Iraq and
basically called for the end of the war. And
350 events took place across the country, civil
disobedience and other legal protests. Some of
us got arrested. the White House, the Senate,
and the House in Washington. John, you got arrested
in a really great way in Santa Fe. But that happened
across the country. The impacts, the day after
the midterms, the Democrats won handily. Not
that we're working for the Democrats, but the...
there was a landslide victory in the House, and
Bush fired the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,
the next day. So, you know, I'm saying this over
and over again. You know, John and I can talk
about this, but every one of us listening, we
have this power. And so if something, if an idea
occurs to you that's nonviolent and powerful
and creative, I highly encourage you to put it
out there and get with others and organize. It's
an amazing story, Ken, because you say, OK, we
had 350 events. Well, those events with hundreds
of people going and shutting down the local congressional
representative's office, not in D .C., but all
over the country. And that hadn't happened about
Iraq. There was that really big protest in 2003
just before the war started. But then people
just gave up. And you said, no, we're going to
do this. Here's a tactic. And so we, 10 of us,
went into the post office building in Santa Fe.
We're going to go to the third floor to the senator's
office. And the SWAT team showed up, 50 armed
soldiers. Out of the movies, out of the Terminator
or something. We hadn't done anything. We walked
under the elevator and they said, you're all
under arrest. And we said, we're just going upstairs
to see our senator. And they said, well, you're
going to do something notorious because they
were pointing at me. So we had brought the names
of all those killed in Iraq that we knew. We
had 10 ,000 names. And we actually had been carrying
them around for months and we stayed in the elevator
for eight hours and we read those names out loud
all day to the 50 armed soldiers, you know, with
machine guns aimed at us. And the media there,
and it was front page news for months and months
in New Mexico. And it was amazing, really kind
of life changing. And it put Iraq on the... front
pages of New Mexico, but that's what happened
everywhere. And I think, Ken, when you say we
have power, you know, by just calling upon ordinary
people to do what you can, and together we're
going to build a people power movement, shifted
the support of the war, and the war did end.
It's an amazing story, and you're amazing that
you keep insisting we can do this. And meanwhile,
our time is kind of coming up to an end. I would
love to have asked you about Campaign Nonviolence.
Folks can look it up. And about your work with
the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. We had Marie
Dennis on, so people can listen to her. But let
me close by asking you to talk about today. And
you've been telling us we have power. And your
own journey. as a follower of the nonviolent
Jesus and a peacemaker. Here we're now, as you
said to me on the phone last week, we're in this
liminal space of just unprecedented global crisis
and national collapse, but it's also an opportunity.
So what advice or suggestions do you have for
your listeners here about going forward on their
own journey as peacemakers? We are at a crossroads.
And we have the choice, as Dr. King said, between
nonviolence or nonexistence. And we're at that
crossroads. And as Pope Francis said when he
quoted King, he said, now the choice is up to
us. This is a critical, hellacious moment. I
want to think of it the way. In this way, I would
say we've been getting our training for this
moment. All these things we've talked about on
this call or all the things you've done, John,
in your life, which has been amazing and so varied
and so powerful. I want to submit that those
are all have been our training for this moment.
And we do not know. how this moment is going
to go. I do know we have more power than we think.
So one initiative that I'm engaged with, there
are two things. One at Pachibene, our good friend
Rivera's son is organizing Rise and Shine, which
every week puts out resources for all of us for
dealing with the tsunami that's emanating from
the Oval Office. So please go get those every
week from Rivera on the Pache Bene campaign nonviolence
website. A significant campaign right now is
One Million Rising. And this is an initiative
that emerged out of the No Kings demonstrations
June 14th. Some of us had the privilege to be
part of. Huge, huge march in Chicago, but all
over the country. And also indivisible. And they've
kind of put their power together and invited
people to imagine one million people rising up
in non -cooperation with what I call the movement
of movements, the sector of sectors, the campaign
of campaigns, to say, We withdraw our consent
nonviolently in all sorts of ways. Now, what
they're doing, they had 130 ,000 people two weeks
ago attend or listen after the fact to a webinar
that our good friends Maria Stephan and Daniel
Hunter and others organized. I highly recommend
go find One Million Rising. Watch that video.
The second installment of this is happening on
July 30th, Wednesday, July 30th. Depending on
when you're hearing this, it may have already
happened. I highly recommend you go watch that.
What they're asking people to do is, unlike what
we did in COVID, we get together in our living
rooms and form groups of non -cooperators. Sharing
your concerns about the moment and then... how
we're going to take action in lots of ways to
say I'm withdrawing my consent. And they have
a really great, powerful message that says, as
I've been saying ad nauseum on this call, we
have more power than we think. And we can pool
that power to withdraw what's called the pillars
of support that keep the current outrages going.
We can all be part of that. I think that's going
to be very, very important. So we need each other.
We need to be rooted in prayer. We need to follow
the nonviolent Jesus even through this moment.
We need to read the books of John Deere. We need
to be arm in arm as we create the conditions
for the shift. And what is that condition? It's
really a conversation that we're going to have
with our society. Do we want a society? that
is dehumanizing, disinheriting, dispiriting,
dominating, and destructive. That's what we've
got at the moment. We don't have to have that.
But that means we have to convey that. And we
can do that. I'd like to close by just quoting
one of the great figures of the 20th century,
Allen Ginsberg, who said, while I'm here, I'll
do the work. And what's the work? To ease the
pain of living. Everything else is a drunken
dumb show. While we're here, we'll do the work.
What's the work? To ease the pain of living,
to celebrate the joy of living, to bring the
fullness of life that Jesus calls us to, and
go forward. And the big secret is... All the
way through, we're going to be called to do this.
And let's do it with joy and even some kind of
happiness. That's how I want to kind of leave
this, John. Amen, Ken. Thank you so much, Ken
Budigan, for speaking with me today. And thank
you, dear friends, for listening to Ken and me
here at the Nonviolent Jesus podcast. You can
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May the God of peace bless you all. Keep on following
the nonviolent Jesus and see you next time.