This is a response to a query submitted below regarding my intentions in dressing up as a prisoner of the American War on Terror.
I really appreciate what you said and the feelings you're experiencing. I understand them, I think, because they are the same things that I experienced prior to doing what I did. It's a sense, really, of a "quiet desperation," as Thoreau said. What can a single person do gazing into the gut of a monstrous machine that devours and turns what is good into utter carnage?
What a lot of people did was walk away. The problem is too big, too complex, too far away to actually engage and deal with. On the opposite side of the spectrum is attack. One can attempt to shut down the machine, to throw a Molotov cocktail in its gut. Both of these are unsatisfactory. The first step to dealing with IT, is to repent. To stand in the witness of what we as a society have done--what you as a member of that society have done--and to weep for the evil which we are capable of doing.
The issue of the American gulag system has been on my radar for almost a year, if not more. For months, I have read and read and read about it, becoming more and more outraged. Earlier this school year, I reached a point of despair wherein I realized that if I did not stand up and say or do something, then all my education on the issue would be worthless.
The journey from there on out was deeply spiritual for me, which is why I earlier used the term "repentance." Neither secular nor religious people could give me answers about what I ought to do. The idea of my protest merely crystallized one night. After that, I knew that it was my proper response.
And so just before protesting I prayed about what I was doing. And the end goal, I realized, was not that Guantanamo is shut down. Or even that Dick Cheney is sentenced to life imprisonment. The end goal was repentance leading to love, which is salvation. The demonstration was not an apology, or an attempt at atonement. Rather, it was recognition of my evil and an act of turning away from that evil. The evil, in this case was antipathy, lack of love for the men imprisoned and tortured, the families wrenched apart by this process, and the communities terrorized by my government. It was a small act of repentance, fitting a small person.
And by doing it publicly, I wanted to offer all of you an opportunity for repentance. We cannot turn away from our evil without knowing it. But once knowing, we must either reject or accept that evil. And so you are asking, I think, how may I repent?
And my answer is the same as that of the people I asked before I asked God.
I don't know.
There is no set way, there is no litmus test for whether your response is enough. In a sense, this is because there is no enough. Had I knelt in the quad for the entire school day, it would not have been enough. Had I knelt there for the entire school year, it would not have been enough. Not even a lifetime of vigil could atone for the actions of my government. Nothing I could have done would have sufficed. So I did something.
The typical responses: donate money to the ACLU, write letters to people in authority, etc, seem so empty. And they are if done without a spirit of humility, of request for forgiveness. But they are things that can be done, and things that I will, hopefully, be organizing in the upcoming weeks.
Thanks for sharing.
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