The Nonviolent Jesus

This week I reflect on my new book, Universal Love: Surrendering to the God of Peace. This is Part 1 of 2 episodes.
In this first episode, I tell how the book came about. When the pandemic began, I joined the local gym and the young person who taught the class, whom I call Will, asked me to be his guru, so I started teaching him meditation. He called God, “Universal Love” and one day, Universal Love came to him in prayer and called him to be “an extension of Universal Love.”
Sections in the first part of the book include "The Difference Meditation Makes", "To Hell With Spiritual Pride", and "Experimenting with Nonviolence".
Over the years of spiritual direction and conversation that followed with Will, as we became friends and discussed all this, we also started doing writing practice at the local coffee shop on these themes, writings which one day turned into this book.
In this episode, and the first part of the book, I reflect on the importance of daily meditation, letting go of control, living in intimate, trusting relationship to God, learning to surrender everything to God, and trying from now on, to do only God’s will, not our will.
I conclude this episode with the story of my visit with Archbishop Tutu in Cape Town, South Africa, where he confided with me his thoughts on free will as the basis of understanding God and our work for peace, justice and nonviolence, a teaching I am only now beginning to understand.
Next week I dedicate the podcast to the second half of the book, and will be sharing excerpts and more on Substack as well.
Available now from www.orbisbooks.com or call 1-800-258-5838, or ask for it at your local bookstore!
More information at beatitudescenter.org
Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus,
🌻, John

This week my guest is my friend peace activist Ann Wright. She is a retired US Army Colonel who worked in the military for 29 years, 13 on active duty and 16 in the Army Reserves, as well as a retired US state department official.
In March 2003, when the US started massively bombing Iraq, she was one of three state department officials to publicly resign in protest of the US war on Iraq.
Since then, she has become a full-time activist working to end war, often working with organizations such as Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, International Peace Bureau, World Beyond War, NO to NATO, Hawaii Peace and Justice, and many other groups.
She travels full time to places of conflict around the world, such as Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Palestine, Cuba--to see the effects of US warmaking.
She also speaks out and writes about the need to resist war and pursue peace. She has been a coordinator with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla for 16 years and was jailed in Israeli prisons twice for being on Gaza flotillas. Visit: www.voicesofconscience.com
We discuss her public resignation over the US war on Iraq, and her work for peace in Afghanistan and Palestine and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
“I just could not be a part of what I knew was going to be a horrific death of so many people in Iraq,” she tells me about her resignation. “Never underestimate the power of trying to get people together to do something that will galvanize the rest of our community and the country. It's our own conscience we have to watch out for. We have to be able to say: ‘I've done what I could to try to stop the violence in our world.’ Be consistent and keep moving!”
Join us with this incredibly brave, resolute and inspiring peace activist!
beatitudescenter.org
🌻, John

This week I speak with Ched Myers, one of the world’s greatest scripture scholars, about his new book on the Gospel of Luke, called Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics.
Many of us consider Ched’s great commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Orbis Books, 1988), the greatest book on scripture ever written.
An activist and a theologian, Ched and his partner Elaine Enns are ecumenical Mennonites based in southern California where they lead Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (visit www.bcmonline.org). He begins our conversation by sharing his journey to radical Christianity through the Catholic Worker movement and our mentor Daniel Berrigan, and then we turn to Luke.
In his new book, Ched explores Luke from the perspective of “Sabbath economics,” the biblical practice of resisting economic disparity and the idolatry of wealth, greed, and war. We discuss Jesus’ first sermon in the Nazareth synagogue where he proclaims the Jubilee Year (Lk. 4), the parable of Lazarus the rich man and the poor beggar who dies and goes to heaven (Lk. 16), and Luke’s resurrection story on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24)
“The biggest single, core, root issue of violence is economic disparity--the cruel gulf between the have-too-muches- and the have-not-enoughs. Concentrated wealth underlies every form of violence and is ruining our planet. If we Christians are going to follow the Way, we need to dive into the scripture about Sabbath economics.”
Be inspired to be part of the "Sabbath Economy" !
beatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with writer Emily Yellin, co-author of the new, posthumous memoir by the late Civil Rights leader Rev. James Lawson called Nonviolent: My Life of Resistance, Agitation and Love, which comes out on Feb. 17th from Random House.
Emily is a longtime writer for The New York Times. Jim Lawson was my friend for 34 years. I first met him in jail during a protest in 1990 and he later hired me to be director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Dr. King called Jim Lawson “the greatest theoretician and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” Jim was taught nonviolence by his mother, went to prison for refusing to be drafted into the Korean war, spent years in India learning nonviolence from Gandhi’s friends, then returned to the US, joined Dr. King, and became the main strategist for the Civil Right movement, from the lunch counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides to Birmingham, Selma, and the Memphis garbage workers’ strike.
(Jim did two zoom sessions with the Beatitudes Center before his death which you can watch on the free Beatitudes Center YouTube channel. You can read the transcript of the first one, “Nonviolence Is Power,” at www.beatitudescenter.org/blog/page/2/)

“One of the things that stunned me about Rev Lawson,” Emily tells me, “was his consistency with nonviolence that came from a deep conviction to love. Jim Lawson was the best example of how to live a life that leads with love and does no harm. One of his core teachings was, ‘We can't imitate the evil ways of our oppressors.’
"Nonviolence is the way to build a more loving and just world," is what Jim Lawson has taught us. Listen in and be inspired! God bless you!—Fr. John
beatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with Mike Farrell, best known as "Captain B.J. Hunnicutt", one of the stars of the hit TV show "M*A*S*H" in the 1970's, and later "Providence". He is also a writer, director and producer of TV films and has also appeared in several movies, and many, many other television roles. For three years he served as first vice president of the Screen Actors Guild, and as a member of the Guild’s national board of directors.
During our conversation, I am constantly impressed by his openheartedness and humanity.
I met Mike in 1990, protesting US military aid to El Salvador.
Mike is President of Death Penalty Focus, Co-Chair Emeritus of Human Rights Watch in California, and serves as spokesperson for Concern America, a refugee relief and development organization. He has traveled the globe for the last 40 years with international peace and human rights delegations.
In his work to stop the US wars in Iraq, he co-founded Artists United to Win Without War. A life-long opponent of the death penalty, he has led Death Penalty Focus for 37 years, since 1988, and speaks, debates, writes and campaigns across the country in opposition to state killing.
He helped lead the 2021 campaign to abolish the death penalty in California, which can only happen by a statewide vote, and came within 2% of succeeding. Their 2016 proposition just barely lost too.
He is the author of a great memoir which I recommend called, “Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist.”
We talk about his beginnings at the Manhattan Project, a halfway house, and his work at Operation Bootstrap in LA.
He tells us about his TV debates with Anita Bryant about gay rights, and his work in El Salvador when the bishops were assassinated and the camps he visited at the Thai-Cambodian border during the reign of Khmer Rouge.
He also recounts many of his life changing experiences from when he first visited Death Row in Tennessee in 1975 to his involvement with Death Penalty Focus.
Mike is still hopeful about abolishing the death penalty, and how the youth in this country are becoming more aware and becoming activists.
When asked about his personal faith, he shares the three things that all human beings want and need: listen to this incredibly personal and openhearted conversation and learn from this amazing actor, activist and human being!
More episodes, zooms and information: beatitudescenter.org
Death Penalty Focus: https://deathpenalty.org
More information on the nonviolent Jesus can also be found on https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/