Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I'd like to
reflect with you on the life and lessons of Mahatma
Gandhi. 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 nonviolence and working
for a more just, more nonviolent world. So let's
begin with a little prayer. I invite you wherever
you are just to take a deep breath and to relax
and recenter yourself. And together let's enter
into the presence of the God of peace who loves
you infinitely and personally and everyone everywhere.
And let's welcome the nonviolent Jesus with us
here and ask for the grace to follow him ever
more faithfully and do God's will of creative,
loving nonviolence. 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 Mahatma Gandhi that we might learn more about
how 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 that we might do our part
to help end poverty, racism, greed, injustice,
war. nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction,
that we might be your holy beatitude people,
your holy peacemakers, and welcome your reign
of universal love, nonviolence, and peace on
earth. In Jesus' name, amen. Once, long ago,
they asked Dr. King, who is the greatest Christian
who ever lived? And without missing a beat, he
said, Gandhi. And that is such a shocking answer
in the American South in the early 60s by a famous
Baptist minister. He's saying that this Hindu
is the greatest Christian who ever lived. I completely
agree with Martin King. Gandhi comes closest
to following the nonviolent Jesus. And I've been
following him. studying Gandhi since I was 20,
so I thought I'd offer a few reflections about
Gandhi and his life lessons for us. I began reading
the collected writings, the big 100 volumes of
all of Gandhi's writings, which was published
by the government of India in the late 90s, and
I've probably read 25 or... 35 other biographies
and books. And I published Mohandas Gandhi Essential
Writings, which I invite everyone to get. It's
a really great anthology of my favorite writings
by Gandhi. I remember when I finished it, my
friend Daniel Berrigan said, you've overdosed
on Gandhi and need to go to a 12 -step program,
which we had a good laugh about. So as I begin,
the key to... Understand Gandhi, for me, is that
Gandhi was not born Gandhi. He became Gandhi.
And there's such a profound lesson there. We
all have to really work at becoming our true
selves before God, becoming the peacemakers we
were created and born to be, to become people
of nonviolence, stuck in the culture of violence.
And this takes... real, single -minded, concentrated
effort to allow God to disarm us and transform
us. And that's what Gandhi did, perhaps more
than anybody. So I thought I'd walk through the
basic lessons or basic moments of Gandhi's life,
and then I'll offer 12 lessons. So as you know,
Gandhi was born in India in 1869. He went to
London to get his law degree. He got a job as
a lawyer in South Africa. He was totally Western,
wore a three -piece suit, played the violin.
The only thing that was noticeable about him
was that he was a vegetarian. But he had his
big conversion, as you remember in the fabulous
movie Gandhi, when he was thrown off the train
in South Africa. For sitting in the first class
section, which was reserved for white people
only. And I made a holy pilgrimage with my friends
to Peter Maritzburg, South Africa, to that train
station, which still stands today. He's thrown
off the train, if you can imagine, about midnight.
And he remains there, sitting on the spot on
the edge of the tracks. until about 8 a .m.,
wrestling. He said it was the hardest day of
his life. Do I forget this and just move on,
or do I do something about this to fight this
injustice and racism? And that was the beginning,
because when he stood up that day in the train
station in Peter Moritzburg, he was Gandhi. And
he decided to spend his whole life fighting racism
and injustice, which was really the beginnings
of apartheid. And he forms a movement in South
Africa, starts studying and practicing nonviolence,
using the word ahimsa from the Jains, struggles
with, you know, it's such a clumsy word, has
a contest to come up with a better word, which
he comes up with and he gives the award himself,
which is funny because he's a funny guy. called
satyagraha, or truth force, or the pursuit of
truth. But that word really hasn't caught on.
And he organizes marches in civil disobedience,
and hundreds and hundreds of people go to prison
with him to resist the unjust pass laws. And
you'll remember that from the movie. And after
his campaign wins, he goes back to India. Along
the way in South Africa, he forms an interfaith
community. builds an ashram, adopts total poverty
and simplicity. That's because he visited a Trappist
monastery and was so moved by them. He starts
meditating every day and starts reading the Sermon
on the Mount and the Bhagavad Gita every day
and begins his journey up through probably the
early 1910s of professing 14 vows, which is just
shocking. including vows of nonviolence, truth,
poverty, chastity, respect for all religions,
wearing only clothes he himself made, and fearlessness.
So he has a great victory in the movement in
South Africa, moves back to India, starts traveling,
learning what's going on, seeing the British
occupation and colonial and imperial rule over
India. And slowly begins to really build the
grassroots movement of nonviolence. He's saying
India at that time by 1920 had 300 million people.
And the British had 30 million people living
in India. He's saying 30 million people cannot
rule 300 million people if they refuse to cooperate.
And that was his whole plan, nonviolently, non
-cooperating until the British left. And the
British just thought that was the funniest thing
ever. And so through a series of circumstances,
in 1919, he calls for a national strike, actually
a day of prayer and fasting. But there's no phones.
It's hard to imagine no computer or no nothing.
They don't even have phones all across India.
And it spread like wildfire beyond everybody's
expectation. And the whole country shut down.
Everything. Everyone stayed home to nonviolently
protest British rule. And that's right there
a great lesson of the power of active nonviolence.
And that's what we need here in the United States
to do these days. In 1922, within three years,
he had launched a civil disobedience campaign
and over 50 ,000 people had gone to jail, pledging
total nonviolence and being all willing to go
up to 10 years, and many of them did. And then
Britain arrested Gandhi in 1924, and it was called
the Great Trial. He was sentenced to six years
in prison for protesting the British Empire.
Afterwards, he came out weak. He was always almost
dying and always fasting. And he began going
deeper into daily prayer and building a constructive
program to serve the poor and really doing some
exciting, dramatic fasts to confront, in particular,
religious -based injustice against the untouchables
and injustice against women. And then all of
this led up to several years of concentrated
petitioning God, what do we do to spark the British
to leave? So he's two years training his 80 followers.
They're going to do something, and they're going
to be shot and killed, but we're going to be
totally nonviolent. I just don't know yet what
we're going to do. And then he comes and announces,
God has told me what to do. We're going to march
to the sea and pick up salt. And everybody thought
that was just ridiculous. The British laughed.
And he's thinking, you know, we'll get like 10
feet and they're going to open fire and kill
us. But they set off on this 240 -mile walk,
doing about 10 miles a day, the 80 trained Satyagrahis,
and they're marching to the ocean. And within
hours, The whole country is electrified. And
after several months, when they get to the ocean,
he makes salt and picks up some dried salt by
the sea. The whole country engages in civil disobedience.
Now, the British owned the salt industry. And
in this rural poverty, salt was critical to surviving
the heat. So this was a brilliant. symbolic action
of Gandhi's and totally illegal. And this was
1930. And some 100 ,000 people were arrested,
and they all got 10 years in jail. And Gandhi
was arrested too. And he kept teaching nonviolence
and provoking the British to leave. By now, in
the 1930s, he's spending two hours a day in prayer.
When he gets out, I think this is about 1933.
I'm telling you this because it still shocks
me. I'm thinking he's about 61 or 62, okay? He
and his wife, Kastor, announced to their community
the ashram where they have 400 people living.
I went there for a month with Arun Gandhi, who
was raised by Gandhi, to India. I really loved
it. Gandhi says to the community, you know, we're
way too rich and comfortable. And they had nothing.
We're moving to the poorest place in the center
of India where no one can get to, which is a
village of untouchables. You know, the lowest
caste system. It was such a shocking thing. In
other words, in his early 60s, he was still going
as far as radical as he could. And so he moves
to this place called Warder and sets up a model
village. And he's using the spinning wheel now.
And his idea is to teach every person in the
country to take up the spinning wheel, to make
their own clothes so they don't rely on the British.
And then they can sell them to one another and
have, you know, little communities that can sustain
each other. Then World War II happens. and he
launches the civil disobedience campaign, and
he's arrested and imprisoned for life. His wife
dies in prison. By 1942, think of this, 300 ,000
trained Indians, all trained in Gandhian nonviolence,
are in prison with at least 10 -year sentences
for opposing British rule and doing civil disobedience.
And their argument is, oh, yeah, you're fighting
the... Nazis to defend democracy. Well, then
you better leave India. If you believe in democracy,
you can't have imperial rule over us. So he's
released and sick. His wife dies. And then the
United States drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. And friends, I just want to insist,
and I've been doing this for years, that this
is A very important point about Gandhi. So he's
really one of the most well -known respected
spiritual leaders in history. And from the day
of August 6, 1945 till the day he died, he spoke
about nuclear weapons and the need to abolish
them and get rid of them as a critical effort
for the spiritual life. How can we be serving
God, worshiping God, following Jesus, saying
we're even semi -nonviolent and allow nuclear
weapons to exist? In 1947, the British left India,
but a civil war broke out, sparked by some of
the... Jealous leaders in the country split into
East Pakistan and West Pakistan, and a million
were killed. Some scholars now say three million
were killed. And there's no guns involved. So
these are all swords, if you can imagine. It
was horrific mass murder. And imagine the failure
that Gandhi felt like he was. He said, did I
waste my whole life? Was it a mistake? Should
I have not led? a whole nation to try to practice
nonviolence. And he went on several fasts to
the death to stop the killing and actually stopped
the riots in Bangladesh and the mass riots and
killings in Calcutta. And he was on his way to
march to Pakistan, you know, to try to end all
the killing when he was assassinated. January
30th, 1948, in New Delhi, as he walked to his
five o 'clock evening prayer meeting. He was
79. The conspirators, about 10 or 12 of them,
who were the far right Hindus, who had been planning
for decades to kill Gandhi, and Gandhi actually
knew them personally, and knew they were planning
to kill him. Their heirs are now running India
today. So in my book on Mohandas Gandhi Essential
Writings, I offer a couple of basic lessons and
I'll walk through them just for your reflection
and just to mull on these teachings because he's
so profound and critical for our own predicament
today about what do we do, where do we go, how
do we follow the nonviolent Jesus. So number
one, and you just have to forgive me for being
such a broken record. But Gandhi taught morning,
noon, and night over and over and over again.
All he said for 50 years was persistent, consistent,
steadfast, dedicated, committed, faithful, relentless,
truthful, prayerful, loving, troublemaking, illegal,
active, creative, provocative, public, daring,
nonviolence. That's it. That's his message to
the world. Here's a quote. Nonviolence means
avoiding injury to anything on earth in thought,
word, or deed. Wow. Devotion to nonviolence is
the highest expression of humanity's conscious
state. Wow. Nonviolence is the greatest and most
active force in the world. Now listen to this
one. One person who can... express total nonviolence
in life, exercises a force superior to all the
forces of brutality. I think he proved that,
but of course Jesus did. You know, Jesus, completely
powerless on the cross, dying in total nonviolence,
continuing to disarm every human heart. Here's
another favorite quote of mine. My optimism rests
on my belief in the infinite possibilities of
the individual to develop nonviolence. The more
you develop it in your own being, the more infectious
it becomes. It overwhelms your surroundings and
by and by might oversweep the world. In other
words, Gandhi says, if you go deep into this
way of non -killing, which is really universal
love. in the pursuit of the truth of our common
unity, it will become contagious. You know, if
you're willing to give it on your life and you're
just so totally insistent on nonviolence. So
he learned pretty early on, much to his shock
in South Africa, that nonviolence, as this clumsy
word, for lack of better words, is way beyond
the refusal to hurt or kill. We don't kill anyone,
but we give our lives to stop the killing and
to transform the violence of the world. And he
saw it as the force of God, that God is totally
nonviolent. It's the method of God, he said,
because that's what Jesus did. And it's the power
of God available to us to work for good and transformation
for the human race and all the nations. So Gandhi
said that if you engage in the power of nonviolence,
force more powerful than all the weapons and
nuclear weapons of the world combined. That's
a direct quote. So that's our path, but few people
are choosing it. We have a way forward. If all
of us Americans could just put down the sword
and practice nonviolence with the same steadfast
devotion he did, we really could get somewhere
and dismantle our weapons and dismantle this
whole... culture of permanent warfare and injustice.
Because Gandhi said nonviolence always works.
Why? Because it's the method of Jesus on the
cross. Suffering love, in the end, the willingness
to give our lives will eventually melt every
human heart, you know, and disarm others, including
the oppressors, to liberating all of us, oppressed
and oppressors. So Gandhi teaches me That nonviolence
begins in the heart where we renounce the violence
in ourselves. Wow, did he work hard on his inner
nonviolence. And then it moves out in active,
creative, daily, meticulous nonviolence to all
the people around us, our families, our communities,
our churches, and then our cities and nation
and world. And Gandhi made a lot of mistakes,
but not as many as the rest of us do. He just
wrote about them and learned from them. He didn't
repeat them and tried to practice personally
the total nonviolence he wanted for the world
and what he wanted in others. And he said, well,
this must be the way of God. So there's got to
be a way to use this to take on the whole British
Empire. Now, Dr. King said no one had ever really
done that before. had really applied the Sermon
on the Mount insistence on nonviolence to an
entire nation. And Gandhi was saying, I'm just
beginning to experiment with this. We can go
and do this with every nation in the world. And
he was right. He got the British to leave nonviolently.
And Dr. King and the civil rights movement got
to bring down segregation nonviolently. And there
have been 85 nonviolent revolutions since then.
So nonviolence. He's inviting us to be practitioners,
teachers, and promoters of nonviolence. So how
are you doing with that? Number two, Gandhi said
around 1900, think about how far ahead of his
times he was here, nonviolence is at the center
of every world religion. because it is the way
of God. So that's why he took a vow to respect
all the religions. He says nonviolence is at
the heart of all spirituality. It's what it means
to be human, to be godly, to be human is to be
nonviolent. And God is a God of nonviolence.
And he was trying to embark on a new spirituality
of nonviolence. And that's why I always think
the future. from a Gandhian perspective, is interfaith
nonviolence and discovering the common ground
of nonviolence that we all walk. So he's basically
showing us that Hinduism means total act of nonviolence,
especially if you follow his take on the Bhagavad
Gita. He's saying through his friend Abdul Ghaffar
Khan that Islam is about total nonviolence. The
word means peace. his friends, many close Jewish
friends, that Judaism is all about nonviolence
through the magnificent vision of Shalom. And
Buddhism is all about, you know, infinite compassion
toward all living beings. There's no violence
involved. But Gandhi said Christianity is the
greatest religion of nonviolence because Jesus
was the epitome of nonviolence. It's just that
Christians... have completely rejected the nonviolence
of Jesus and turned it into a state or imperial
religion. That's why he refused to become a Christian.
But he was probably more devoted to Jesus than
anybody. So there's a lot to ponder there, just
to start discovering the nonviolence in all the
world's religions. And to read Gandhi on Jesus
is very powerful. Third, Gandhi spent his life
in pursuit of truth. That was the other word
that he used morning, noon, and night, truth.
To the point that Gandhi said that truth is God.
We would say God is truth. I am the way, the
truth, and the life. But Gandhi was trying to
unpack that for us and said this amazing statement,
truth is God. And he invents the word satyagraha,
truth force. or the persistent clinging to truth,
to talk about the human journey as a journey
toward the truth. And every human being has a
piece of the truth, but none of us have it all.
And the flip side of truth is total nonviolence.
You can't get to the truth through violence.
And the purpose of nonviolence is to lead to
the truth, which is God. So in his pursuit of
the truth, He concluded that, well, we have to
be people of nonviolence then because violence
doesn't work. The means are the ends. You reap
what you sow. And we were created to live together
in peace in cultures of nonviolence. So very
beautiful. You don't hear much about truth these
days in the United States, anywhere for that
matter. And we can all think about how, what
is truth? mean for us and how honest do we want
to be and how relentless are we in our pursuit
of truth. Number four, in the famous trial of
1922, he had an extraordinary statement. Gandhi
said, non -cooperation with evil is as much a
duty as cooperation with good. I think that's
critically important. In other words, Gandhi
said 100 years ago, Things are so bad in the
world, evil is now institutionalized at such
an unparalleled level that we can destroy the
planet, that it's not enough to try to be good
and to do good even. You have to also resist
evil, if you see what I mean. In other words,
you can't just say, I'm a peaceful person and
I believe in peace. You know, if that's all you
do, Archbishop Tutu would say, you're the problem.
You have to speak up publicly and take action
publicly against permanent war. It's not enough
to be against violence. You have to be public
practitioners of active nonviolence. My friend
Ignacio A. Correa, one of the six Jesuits assassinated
in El Salvador in 1989, said to me the day I
met him in 1985, that we, the Jesuits here in
El Salvador, and this guy wrote the pastoral
letters for St. Oscar Romero, Herr Correa said,
we are trying to be for the kingdom of God, but
we have learned the hard way through the death
squads and tyranny and oppression of Salvador
that if you claim to be for the reign of God,
you have to stand up publicly against the anti
-reign. That's what Gandhi's talking about. You
want to be good, you have to stand up against
institutionalized systemic evil. Number five,
Gandhi said that the way to peace involves risk
and sacrifice. Now this is also critically important.
You see this in the life of Jesus going to the
cross. That if we might think of ourselves as
peacemakers or working for peace, but if there's
no sacrifice, no risk involved, how real or authentic
is it? How godly is it in a world of total war?
What he's talking about is a willingness to give
our lives nonviolently for a new nonviolent world.
He had many sentences like this, just as in the
art of violence and war requires a willingness
to kill, the art of nonviolence and peace. requires
the willingness to be killed. I'm not talking
about a masochistic death wish to be a martyr.
I'm talking about a willingness before God. Whatever
you want, I will do. Your will, not mine, even
if it would help to give my life for suffering
humanity. The early Christians put it this way.
If you want to follow Jesus, if you want to stand
against the Roman Empire, you have to participate
in the Paschal Mystery. the cross and resurrection
of Jesus. And Gandhi really studied and thought
a lot about the cross, more than most. And he
says that's the path to peace. Well, who talks
about that now? If you study Dr. King's speeches,
he's talking about the cross and accepting suffering
without retaliating in the nonviolent struggle
for justice every single day. I've looked at
his speeches. I think we're so comfortable here,
most of us upper class, well -educated white
people, that we're not taking risks or feeling
the brunt of global oppression. But we have to
be willing to get on the side of the poor and
oppressed and the enemy and get out into the
trenches and experience and practice nonviolence.
to the point that it's really costly. We're talking
about, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, costly nonviolence,
not cheap nonviolence. Number six, maybe I'm
repeating myself here. I guess I am. Gandhi said,
this is going a little farther, that nonviolence
requires accepting suffering. So before I was
trying to get at risk, which is why I've done
so much civil disobedience, but here in this
point, Wow, this is so tough to even say. Gandhi
said the practitioner of nonviolence has to court
suffering. You court it. You're seeking it. Like
Jesus. For what? Your personal disarmament and
transformation? For political nonviolent revolution?
And in Gandhi's words, to see God face to face.
Well, wow, is that politically incorrect to talk
about accepting suffering? And you think that's
bad? Listen to this sentence. Nonviolence in
its dynamic condition means conscious suffering.
It does not mean meek submission to the will
of the evildoer. It means the pitting of one's
whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working
under this law of our being, It is possible for
a single individual to defy the whole might of
an unjust empire to save honor, religion, and
soul, and lay the foundation for that empire's
fall or regeneration. Of course, he's talking
about Jesus there on the cross, who sowed the
seeds for the fall of the Roman Empire. Well,
I could go on and on about that, but again, this
is the question of how far do we want to go in
our nonviolence? And what are we willing to risk
and how far, what are we willing to suffer and
how are we willing to lay down our lives? And
so I just invite all of us to go before Jesus
in our prayer and reflect on those questions
as the world moves closer to the brink. You know,
what are we willing to give? for the disarmament
of the world. Number seven, Gandhi learned over
time that prayer is essential. If you're serious
about peace and justice, he had this beautiful
sentence, mute prayer is my greatest weapon.
He was saying that in the thirties, but right
now he's this world famous revolutionary and
people were going, what? Mute prayer? Let's get
on with the revolution. But it was a slow journey
for him. In South Africa, By the time he's in
the 1930s, he was spending one hour in silent
prayer every morning in the ashram, usually around
3 a .m. And he'd read a sentence or two from
the Bhagavad Gita and the Sermon on the Mount.
I know I went to the place where he did it in
Ahmedabad with Arun. And then he would have a
five o 'clock prayer service and they'd read
the same readings and have these beautiful songs.
This great Hindu song, his Muslim song of peace,
and the Christian hymn to love. Remember in the
movie, he dies as he's walking to the five o
'clock prayer service. Now, he said in his autobiography
that the goal of everything I'm doing is to see
God face to face. That's a very profound statement.
And he is really busy, let's say, leading a revolution.
Everybody in the world wanting to see him so
that by the 1930s, he's going, I'm not, I'm not,
I need to go deeper into nonviolence. So he declares
Monday his day of silence. So he doesn't talk
to people. He can sit there and write little
notes, but he refused to talk so that he could
be like the embodiment of peace. And he was always
training to be assassinated. He knew the day
would come and he wanted to. Be very nonviolent
and in his heart, totally nonviolent and so forgiving.
That leads me to my next point, number eight.
Gandhi was completely dedicated to purity of
heart. Okay, why do I say that? Well, in those
collected writings, I went through all the letters
of Gandhi. I mean, so there's no computer, there's
no nothing, but he wrote 20 letters a day for
70 years, if you think about that. And the government
has collected them. And he's always writing about
the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus, but the one
verse that puzzled him and challenged him the
most, and I've said this on an earlier podcast,
I think it's the sixth beatitude, depending on
how you count them. Blessed are the clean of
heart, they will see God. Blessed are the pure
of heart, the nonviolent of heart. So there's
that thing. I want to see God face to face. My
teacher, Jesus, says to do that, I have to have
a totally nonviolent heart. I can't have any
more violence inside me, not a hard heart, not
aggression, not judgment, self -righteous, anger,
all of that has to go. And he would write throughout
his life, how do I do that? How are you working
on having purity of heart? Well, this is, of
course, very great instruction. And Thomas Merton,
said a spectacular thing, in my opinion, about
Gandhi in his beautiful book, Gandhi and Nonviolence.
He said, unlike everybody else in all the movements
who ever lived, Gandhi's work for peace and justice
was the fruit of an inner unity already realized.
So think about that. The rest of us are going,
we're going out there and we're going to make
you people be peaceful. I'm going to force you
to be peaceful and be just. Merton is saying
Gandhi. worked so hard at his inner transformation,
allowed God to disarm him so much that he becomes
like Jesus, a spiritual explosion. He becomes
contagious and touches 300 million Indian people
and people around the world up to this day. Very
powerful lesson. Number nine, Gandhi insisted
that if you want to work for justice and disarmament
and creation, you have to live in solidarity
with the poorest of the poor. You have to become
poor, serve the poor, join and constructive programs
that relieve and end poverty and promote a just,
more just society. So he gave away all his money
and renounced his career, his law firm, created
a communal farm, made his own clothes, dressed
like the poorest Indian peasants, shared their
meager diets, and served and listened to the
poor every day for the rest of his life. And
the part of, you know, going to jail and siding
with the untouchables was another way to share
in the poverty of the masses. This is a very
famous quote, often called the Gandhi talisman,
which I end my collection with. I will give you
a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when
the self becomes too much with you, apply the
following test. recall the face of the poorest
and the weakest person whom you have ever seen,
and ask yourself if the next step you contemplate
is going to be of any use to that person. Will
that person gain anything by what you're about
to do? Will it restore that person to a little
bit more control over his or her own life and
destiny? In other words, will it lead to freedom
for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting
away. Wow, he wrote that to somebody about five
months before he was killed. Number 10, Gandhi
taught the power of nonviolence meant rejecting
all worldly power and embracing powerlessness
of this new life. So the afternoon before he
was killed, the reporter is interviewing him
and says, well, what's your advice? What have
you learned? What's your greatest teaching? And
he says, without missing the beat, have nothing
to do with power. Reduce yourself to zero. Those
are, again, very profound teachings. Again, he's
talking about Jesus on the cross, what St. Paul
called kenosis, emptying yourself, not grasping
at God, letting go of everything and all control,
appearing apparently powerless in the eyes of
the powerful empire, but on the other hand, becoming
an instrument of the power of God, the power
of nonviolence to spread through you and disarm.
many people and even nations. So this is that
mysterious thing between power and powerlessness
and what is power, the power of God, which is
apparent powerlessness, the crucified Jesus,
but is more powerful than all the so -called
powers and weapons and empires of the world combined.
Maybe I'll just end with one more point. It's
a very hard one for us, but it's at the heart
of Hinduism. which is that as we give our lives
for peace and justice, we renounce the fruit
of our action. In other words, and Merton was
very big on this, we seek peace, justice, disarmament.
So we're working for the end of all war and the
end of the wars in Ukraine and the massacres
in Gaza by Israel and funded by the United States
and the wars in Africa and nuclear weapons and
extreme positive. poverty and all of it. But
at the same time, interiorly, we let go of the
results of our action. So we're practicing, Gandhi
insisted, an inner detachment. Instead of being
successful, hey, I did it, I ended the war. We're
just faithful and letting God work through us.
Instead of saying, I'm going to be effective
and do this. Well, that's what the Pentagon is
about. We risk the ineffectiveness of apparent
failure, the life of prayer and suffering love
of the nonviolent Jesus on the cross, which is
totally disarming, transforming the world. Instead
of trying to be relevant, we practice the irrelevance
of the nonviolent Jesus. So he's talking about
really surrendering ourselves to God, trusting
that the outcome is in better hands than ours.
It's in the hands of God. And if we remain faithful
to God's way of love and nonviolence and universal
compassion and peace, our lives will bear good
fruit according to God's will. That's a very
deep and very helpful spiritual practice. And
if we work on that, it'll keep us all faithful
to the journey, I think. Let me end with a story.
And forgive me for my name dropping. It was the
day the George W. Bush launched. The war on Iraq,
I think that was March 2003. Might have been
March 2002. So yeah, it was March 2002. I happened
to be with my longtime friend Joan Baez that
night in Santa Fe. And I was complaining to her,
as I often do, because she's this elder of nonviolence,
in my opinion. And I was saying, we've tried
so much to stop this war, doing this, this, and
this. And I was in so much trouble. We were having
no luck. And she's listening there. And I finally
stop and pause. And she goes, well, John, you
know what Gandhi would say? Well, that was electrifying
to me because nobody in my life has ever said,
well, you know what Gandhi would say, John. And
she gave one of the great quotes of Gandhi, which
I invite you to think on. Full effort is full
victory. Hey, John, full effort is full victory.
So I invite us all to go full on with all we
can like Gandhi. into active creative nonviolence
and building a movement of nonviolence and doing
our part to welcome God's reign of earth. So
thank you, dear friends, for listening to the
Nonviolent Jesus podcast. I hope you can get
my Gandhi book as well. You can hear more podcasts
and find other upcoming Zooms at beatitudescenter
.org. And please consider offering a donation
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bless you all. Keep on following the nonviolent
Jesus. See you next time. Thanks.