Judy Dunbar

Please click on this photo to view a slideshow of the retreat.

By Judy Dunbar, Associate

"Nonviolence is Organized Love" was the theme illuminating and challenging the sessions during the Associates and Sisters Carmel retreat at the Villa Angelica and House of Prayer.  The teaching and experiential exercises, drawing on a process developed by Pace e Bene, were facilitated by Joan Marsh, who co-presents workshops with the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz.  "Organized Love": Writing this, it strikes me as a new Associate, as an apt phrase both for nonviolent action and for Associate-ship. The opportunity to strengthen our bonds with other Associates and with Sisters on such a weekend enabled us to experience "organized love" and helped us drive more deeply into the spiritual journey and its fruits in the call to act for justice.

A rancher from Fresno and a union organizer, an undocumented worker from Mexico and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent:  Can you try to take the perspective of each of these opposing parties to the immigration debate?  We tried to do so, in role play, with spirited engagement, even as we learned the sobering truth Gandhi taught:  no one possesses the entire truth. Thus nonviolent action, we came to understand, attempts, as Joan Marsh put it, "to reveal the pieces of the truth of all parties so solutions can be constructed that incorporate them."  We were also given scenarios:  "A person does nothing as a man on a nearby street repeatedly slaps a woman who appears to be his wife or girlfriend.  Is the onlooker's action violent or nonviolent?"  Discerning what is violent or non-violent is often not obvious, we learned, even as we worked to apply definitions-e.g., "Nonviolence is a creative power for justice and the well-being of all that uses neither passivity nor violence."

When we each took a silent, reflective walk on the grounds of the Villa Angelica and of the House of Prayer we found enlarged copies of sayings, each secured on the earth by a rock. I found one by Martin Luther King, Jr., that reminded me of that extraordinary woman of courage, Dorothy Stang, and of St. Julie's call for "courage in the century we live in. Great souls are needed, souls having the interests of God at heart."  King's statement said:  "The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor.  It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it....it calls up resources of strength and courage...."  That evening in the Villa we saw the striking, moving film: Dua Vida: Two Lives, One Cause-Dorothy Day/Dorothy Stang.

The Villa was also the site of additional forms of bread for the journey.  We gathered around the abundant, eye-catching, delicious food prepared with labors of love and ingenuity by Monica May and Maryann Osmond.  Our laughter was as overflowing as were our cups.  The weather was a Carmel knockout-bright, warm, and clear, with amazing light on the ocean. More amazing, even, was the vision and generous work of all whose imagination and hard work made this time of "organized love" possible, including Sisters Jeanette Braun and Kay McMullen.