Sermons
This was presented as the keynote speech at the Oceana Peace
Education Network’s annual Peacekeeper Awards Presentation:
Awards given to ordinary citizens advancing the cause of peace in
Western Michigan.
The Rev. Vail Weller
“Speak Your Peace”
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Pentwater, Michigan
I’d like to open with a reading which has an uncanny resonance
these days. It was written by Mark Twain in 1910 and is entitled
“Victory of the Loud Little Handful”.
The loud little handful – as usual – will shout
for the war. The pulpit will – warily and cautiously –
object…at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation
will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should
be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is
unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.”
Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the
other side will argue and reason agains the war with speech and
pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it
will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently
the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers
stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes
of furious men…Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies,
putting the blame on the nation that is attacked, and every man
will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will
diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of
them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war
is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after
this process of grotesque self-deception.
This afternoon, I have the great privilege of “preaching
to the choir” – a group of people who have gathered
today because they believe in peace and are willing to work for
it. I don’t need to convince you that it’s important:
you already know that! In fact, it is your stories that
inspire me!
We gather this afternoon to honor ordinary people in our communities
who are making a difference. There is scarcely a more moving thing
to see. Without expectation of fanfare, these remarkable people
we celebrate today have quietly and consistently made peace real
in the world. This is all-the-more poignant because we teeter on
the brink of war.
Unfortunately, this is what I will need to concentrate my remarks
on. We need to gather together in solidarity, to consider how we
might “increase the peace” when it seems to be a foregone
conclusion that we will indeed go to war.
I want to speak to you today of heroes (and “she-roes”)
of the recent past. Who comes to mind when you think of your most
admired peacemaker? Perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Jesus,
Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks…and surely many others.
Let us now remember – these heroes are, and were, regular
people. They lived and suffered and struggled and had to make choices.
It was their choices that set them apart. It was their choices
that set them apart. It is upon these moments of dramatic
choice that I wish to concentrate the balance of my remarks.
Daniel Ellsberg was a regular citizen. He had been a U.S. Marine
company commander, a Pentagon official, and also a staunch supporter
of America’s battle against Communist expansion. In 1964,
through his work at the Pentagon, he was first exposed to internal
documents which detailed American military strategies in Vietnam.
Virtually immediately, he was convinced that there was no prospect
for military victory. But more disturbingly, he became aware that
the policy-makers themselves, those elected to congress and the
senate, did not possess accurate information. They – and therefore
the American people – were being deliberately misled.
Ellsberg became aware of this reality in 1964. It was not until
1969 that he felt that he himself personally had to do something,
and he knew that it would be at the expense of his career, reputation,
and freedom. He began smuggling confidential files home from his
office at the Rand Corporation, files which detailed the deception
of the American people and the growing pessimism (even within the
government) about the Vietnam War. He photocopied 7,000 pages total,
working on the Xerox machine almost all night every night and then
working at Rand during the day.
I had heard the story of the Pentagon Papers before. But I recently
heard Daniel Ellsberg interviewed on the radio and I was really
shaken by his story. His new book entitled “Secrets: A Memoir
of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers” was just released this
month, and this was the occasion of his interview. He said that
he had no idea that the release of this book would be so unfortunately
timely. He said, “For me, it’s as if I’m reliving
what was happening in the Pentagon in 1964 and 1965. This time,
for awhile, it looked [as if some] were ready to resist another
Gulf of Tonkin (1964) resolution -- which got us into Vietnam --
but in the end they caved. So, now we have Tonkin Gulf II, with
key phrases like ‘as the president determines’ and ‘all
necessary measures.’ That's an absolutely blank check, just
like the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Only the place names have changed.”
1
In his book, Ellsberg details his journey toward outspokenness.
As he became increasingly convinced of the moral issue with the
administration’s actions, he began to haunt anti-war conferences.
Clearly at first he felt fearful. He didn’t want to be spotted
by anyone from Rand, or the government. Describing his first peaceful
protest against the Vietnam War, he says, “I felt naked—and
raw. My memory is of feeling chilled on a gray, wintry day; I have
to remind myself that it was Philadelphia in August. But no one
after all was noticing me. There was no press, no police. People
passed by incuriously, mostly without pausing to read our placards.
Some accepted the leaflets we handed to them; others didn’t
or handed them back. Passersby looked briefly at us or kept their
eyes straight ahead, as they would glance, or not, at panhandlers
or nowadays at the homeless.” 2
Ellsberg talks about his internal dialogue: if not even passersby
cared about what the protesters were saying, why would the government?
“Why are we doing this? What am I doing here?” he remembers
thinking. But then, he realizes, “Something very important…happened
to me. I felt liberated. I doubt I could have explained that at
the time. But by now I have seen this exhilaration often enough
in others, in particular people who have just gone through their
first action of civil disobedience, whether or not they have been
taken to jail. This simple vigil, my first public action, had freed
me from a nearly universal fear whose inhibiting force, I think,
is very widely underestimated. I had become free of the fear of
becoming absurd, of looking foolish, for stepping out of line.”
The other consequence was, of course, that Ellsberg had at that
moment joined a movement. He began by learning all he could about
the situation, which led him to conclude clearly that the actions
of the government were wrong. Once he was clear about that, he felt
compelled to act, and so although nervous about the ramifications,
he joined up with others who were experienced, and he put his body
where his beliefs were. And the next thing that happened was that
he was inspired to take more dramatic action, at greater personal
risk.
The next day, Daniel Ellsberg listened to a presentation at the
triennial conference of the War Resisters’ International.
The speaker was Randy Kehler, who simply told his personal story
of how he became involved in a very visible anti-war organization.
Randy’s presentation went right directly to Daniel Ellsberg’s
heart – so much so, in fact, that he became dizzy, he was
breathing hard and swaying, and he found that he couldn’t
control his tears. He left the auditorium and made his way downstairs
to the men’s room, where he suffered a complete collapse.
He just wept and wept.
“I had not been ready to hear what Randy had said,”
he writes.
I had not been braced for it. When he mentioned his friends
who were in prison and remarked that he would soon be joining
them, it had taken me several moments to grasp what he had just
said. Then it was as though an ax had split my head, and my heart
broke open. But what had really happened was that my life had
split in two…What I had just heard from Randy had put the
question in my mind. What could I do, what should I be doing,
to help end the war now that I was ready to go to prison for it?
No transition period occurred, during which I asked if I
was willing to go to prison to help end the war. That didn’t
come up as a question; it would have answered itself .4
Not all of us have the access to critical information that Daniel
Ellsberg, working at the Pentagon and the Rand Corporation, did.
(However, at the close of the radio interview I heard with Ellsberg,
he said pointedly, “If people in the administration and the
Pentagon can hear me, indirectly or directly, I urge them to consider
that if they know of untruths; if they know of false arguments being
made; if they know, from documents passing their hands, that the
country is being deceived into a reckless war, then they should
considering doing what I wish I had done in 1964 and 1965, rather
than waiting till 1969 and 1971: Going to Congress with the documents,
and to the press, and telling the truth.”5 )
No, not many of us will have this kind of difficult decision to
face. But we do have opportunities each and every day to speak up
against injustice, intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, and sexism.
Every single day, unfortunately.
In addition to these daily opportunities, there is currently a
remarkable opportunity for peace-minded people. There are many who
feel strongly about the current movement toward war, and this offers
a real chance for citizen involvement. I was so encouraged that
almost 100 people gathered yesterday in front of the Mason County
Courthouse in Ludington to stand in support of peace. Next Saturday,
we gather again at the courthouse and proceed a few blocks to a
full-scale peace rally, with musicians, and children’s activities.
Those present will be given the opportunity to individually speak
their peace for a minute or two, for this is what we can do. We
can speak our peace and stand up for what we believe in, and in
doing so, we can make a difference. Additionally, a full-page ad
is being taken in the Ludington Daily News against the war, and
any people who wish to add their names are encouraged to do so.
It was Henry David Thoreau (proudly, I tell you that he was a Unitarian)
who wrote “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”. Tolstoy
quoted him against conscription and Gandhi distributed his words
in India before several mass actions. Thoreau himself refused to
pay a poll tax, in protest against the Mexican War, and spent a
night in jail. (It was for just one night, because, against his
will, someone interfered and paid the tax.)
Militant disobedience by a civilian was akin to that of a soldier
who refuses to serve in an unjust war, Thoreau said. In his state
of Massachusetts, he claimed, such a soldier was applauded by many,
but not imitated, out of the (quote) “thousands who are in
opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect
do nothing to put an end to them…They hesitate, and they regret,
and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and
with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy
the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they
give only a cheap vote…Cast your whole vote, not a strip of
paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless
while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then;
but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”
5
This is what the Peacekeeper Award Recipients have done. They have
cast their whole vote. They have used all of their gifts to bring
peace and justice into the world by beginning right here in our
corner of Western Michigan, and to them we owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Not only do they inspire us to stand up for our beliefs, but they
also might be inspiring the kind of transformation that Daniel Ellsberg
experienced. It takes a peacemaker’s brave example to make
possible courageous acts of our own. Individually, we feel alone.
But one becomes two, and two three, and little by little, love takes
over the land.
I close with a poem by Marge Piercy entitled “The Low Road”.
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter,
ten thousand, power and your own paper,
a hundred thousand, your own media,
ten million, your own country.
It goes one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
Thank you, peacemakers, for being regular people doing remarkable
things. Thank you for making brave choices. Thank you for inspiring
us to do the same.
- Ellsberg, Daniel. “The Shame of the Politicians”
in “The San Francisco Chronicle” Wednesday, October
23, 2002.
- Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon
Papers (New York: Viking, 2002) 268.
- ibid 272-273.
- Ellsberg in San Francisco Chronicle article.
- Thoreau, Henry David, as quoted in Ellsberg’s Secrets
263.
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