From Chiapas to Rafah

The indigenous peoples who support our just cause have decided to resist without surrender, without accepting the alms with which the supreme government hopes to buy them. And they have decided this because they have made theirs a word which is not understood with the head, which cannot be studied or memorized. It is a word which is lived with the heart, a word which is felt deep inside your chest and which makes men and women proud of belonging to the human race. This word is DIGNITY. Respect for ourselves, for our right to be better, or right to struggle for what we believe in, our right to live and die according to our ideals. Dignity cannot be studied, you live it or it dies, it aches inside you and teaches you how to walk. Dignity is that international homeland which we forget many times.
—Subcomandante Marcos, Professionals of Hope  

 

When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them – and may ultimately get them—on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity—laughter, generosity, family-time—against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances —which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.
—Rachel  Corrie, Live from Palestine   

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in the World/529…

At this very minute, in other corners of Mexico and the world, a man, a woman, an other, a little girl, a little boy, an elderly man, an elderly woman, a memory, is beaten cruelly and with impunity, surrounded by the voracious crime that is the system, clubbed, cut, shot, finished off, dragged away among jeers, abandoned, their body then collected and mourned, their life buried.

—Professionals of Hope: The Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos

Photo by Mev Puleo; Chiapas; 1983

Share the Wealth: With Gratitude for Jean Abbott

I invite you to join us for an evening of sharing stories about Sister Jean Abbott (1943-2021), who was the founder of the Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma here in Saint Louis. You don’t have to have known Jean to show up; she led a remarkable life of caring, serving, and healing, and was an inspiration and lifeline for many people.

We meet by Zoom
Sunday 31 January
7:00 p.m. Central Time
Email me for URL
Markjchmiel@gmail.com

 

The following obituary appeared in the Post-Dispatch.

Sister Jean Abbott, dedicated advocate for St. Louis war refugees, dies at 7

Erin Heffernan Jan 11, 2021

ST. LOUIS — Sister Jean Abbott, a longtime advocate for St. Louis refugees recovering from the trauma of war, died recently at age 77.

Sister Abbott, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet St. Louis Province and founder of the St. Louis Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma, became a central figure in the St. Louis refugee services community through her work providing sanctuary and counseling to immigrants.

She died unexpectedly Thursday (Jan. 7, 2021). The cause of death was not known by Monday, according to friends and a spokesperson for her Catholic order.

Born in St. Louis in 1943, Sister Abbott took a vow of poverty and entered religious life in 1961. She worked for several years as a Catholic school teacher, with stints at St. Catherine of Siena Grade School in Denver, Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School in St. Louis and Compton Heights School, before she decided to obtain her master’s degree in social work at St. Louis University.

History from a New Perspective

Dorothee Soelle, Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian

A series of short 3-6 page chapters proceeding chronologically from growing up in Germany, through the war years, to her education, her intellectual influences, especially, existentialism; her becoming a teacher, raising a family, her learning and grappling and going beyond Bultmann; her changing theology which grappled both with modernity and mass suffering; her participation in political Evensong, the centrality of Vietnam for her links between past (Auschwitz) and present, ethics and politics), her leftist commitments and dialogue with socialists; her views on loving Bach in a world of torture,  her move to NYC to teach part of the year, her growing conscientization as a woman through Harrison and Hayward;  the pain of giving birth to her children, the gift of tears, her growing love for Fulbert her husband; her lover’s quarrel with the church, her full entry into feminism and mutuality via Union friends, her walking with the liberationists in Latin America as a way of going further than political theology; her solidarity with the Nicaraguan people, her involvement in the cause of Argentinean disappeared, her activism in the European peace movement especially during the Reagan years of build-up;  her work against apartheid,  her growing Jewish consciousness and meetings and discussions with Wiesel; her support of the Sanctuary movement; her memories of Heinrich Böll; her commitment to being a leftist after the 1989 changes;  her struggle with religious language; her cool relationship with her mother and accompaniment as she was dying; her best friend Luise Schottroff; her grappling with age and impending death and the need to become lighter; her remembering the best and not giving up.

A Note from Long Ago

Mev’s The Struggle Is One was published in the summer of 1994, some months after her glioblastoma surgery.

Current Reading

Solidaridad/3

 

Ale Vazquez

 

It Was Love at First Haiku

Maria told me to contact you
When you were fresh back from El Salvador

And perhaps needing another shoulder to lean on
After re-entering this meshugah militarized greed culture

There we sat at a table
At Café Ventana

And soon you spread before me
Your final project from the previous semester

You stayed up all night to do it
It had to be that way

Had to cut through the sleepiness
To pour out all that had accumulated—

On each page a water color by you
And a special photo

And a haiku on one page in Spanish
And on the facing page your translation into English

How moved your compañeras in the class must have been!
Your multiple forms connecting

To the many people who made a place
For you in their hearts

Es verdad— the impossibility of writing an eight-page
Double-spaced, TNR font, academic paper

Mentshes/3

With Jim, Dan, and Mev, Upper West Side, 1995

 

What You Understand Depends on Where You Stand

For Brent Fernandez and Brett Schrewe

On Daniel Berrigan’s Night Flight to Hanoi

Night Flight to Hanoi is an account of Jesuit Daniel Berrigan’s odyssey in late January and early February 1968, when he and historian Howard Zinn traveled to Hanoi as representatives of the American peace movement. Their aim was to bring home three U.S. pilots whom the North Vietnamese had released. The narrative includes his decision to go, the waiting, the arrival, the tours into the grotesque and destructive displays of US military power, the testimonies of Vietnamese humanity and ingenuity, the meeting with the pilots, and the unelaborated denouement when the men are flown home—contrary to the wishes of the North Vietnamese—on a military plane. He and Zinn went in good faith around the world to promote peace between the two countries; the U.S. government, however, violated the agreement.

What is bracing in this account is Berrigan’s journey of solidarity, risk-taking, and accompaniment (example: sitting in the bomb shelters with the Vietnamese). So, what matters after such exposure and confrontation over the course of several days?

Seeing matters: “I have seen the victims. And this sight of the mutilated dead has exerted such inward change upon me that the words of corrupt diplomacy appear to me more and more in their true light. That is to say—as words spoken in enmity against reality.” [22-23] How Berrigan’s Jesuit brother Ignacio Ellacuría stressed over and over the imperative to confront realidad.

Solidaridad/2

Ann Manganaro, Teka Childress, Ellen Rehg; photo by Mev

What You Understand Depends on Where You Stand

for Ellen Rehg

Mev looked up to Ann Manganaro
Co-founder of Karen Catholic Worker House
Sister of Loretto medical doctor
Compañera to Father John Kavanaugh

When Mev went to El Salvador in 1993
For the annual meeting with CRISPAZ
She sought out Ann for an interview
They spent hours together in Guarjila

Shortly after Ann’s death that summer
Mev prepared that interview for publication
For a Catholic health magazine
She was not pleased when she saw the final result

The editor had cut out something Mev deeded crucial
The part about Ann’s consciously choosing
To go to El Salvador
To act as a small counter to the evil of U.S. policy–

A million dollars a day for the decade
Going to the Salvadoran government
That was crucifying its own people–
So Ann went there to be with them

Ann was a witness to their agony
And their courage
She is still fondly remembered in El Salvador
And ought to be better known here

 

 

Dear “Hermana Ann”
by Maria Vasquez-Smith

Dear “Hermana Ann,”

Hello, my name is Maria Smith and I am a 2013 graduate of Saint Louis University. It has been a true honor getting to know you through The Book of Mev (as in your friend, Mev Puleo. Her husband, Mark Chmiel, wrote a beautiful book that you’d enjoy. It includes people like you that make me proud to be a SLU alum). This afternoon, I read an excerpt that features you being interviewed by Mev. During the time of the interview, you were both in El Salvador, perhaps sitting outside somewhere. While I read the interview, I was sitting outside my office. I had just finished eating lunch and was taking a moment to breathe and sit in the sun before returning back to work.

Political Holiness

Pedro Casaldáliga & José-Maria Vigil, Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation

Those who struggle for utopia, for radical change, saints marked by the liberating spirit, are all of a piece; they carry faithfulness from the root of their being on to the smallest details that others overlook: attention to the littlest, respect for subordinates, eradication of egoism and pride, care for common property, generous dedication to voluntary work, honesty in dealings with the state, punctuality in correspondence, not being impressed by rank, being impervious to bribes….Detailed everyday faithfulness is the best guarantee of our utopias. The more utopic we are, the more down-to-earth! (p. 58)

 

March 24, 1995 marks the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Two weeks before he was murdered while celebrating liturgy, Romero acknowledged the likelihood of a violent death but he was convinced, “I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.” Now widely cherished as a saint by the poor throughout Latin America, Romero indeed proved to be an inspiration to innumerable unknown Christians as well as a few famous ones — such as the Salvadoran Jesuit intellectuals — who suffered the same fate of persecution and martyrdom for their work on behalf of a new society. [1]

Political Holiness is an up-to-date examination of the spirituality that defined Romero and the continental cloud of witnesses that continues to defy institutionalized injustice with Christian hope. [2] The authors are well qualified to share the fruits of their reflections on their experience: Vigil has long labored as a theologian in Nicaragua, while Brazilian Dom Pedro has been one of the most courageous of Latin American bishops and, like Romero, he has been perennially threatened with death because he has championed the rights of the poor over the privileges of rich landowners. This book is a deceptively simple and quite compelling manual and guide to the dominant fundamentals, themes, and issues of the spirituality that has emerged in full force in the last several decades in the southern hemisphere. For specialists and students in spirituality, it is bound to provoke deeper reflection on spirituality, and Christian spirituality.