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Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in Gods work to save the world.

Confessions of Crimes Against the State

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Published on Monday, February 13, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Confessions of Crimes Against the State
by John Dear

With the Bush Administration’s admission of widespread surveillance upon ordinary Americans in pursuit of empire, I thought I would save them the trouble of further harassing me and confess my crimes.

I am, after all, an ex-con. I’ve have been arrested scores of times, imprisoned in jails across the country, even had a national guard unit march upon my house and church--all because of my public stand against the state’s wars and nuclear weapons. I’m sure I’m on somebody’s list.

Forty years ago, the great Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote “A Signed Confession of Crimes Against the State,” where he made the shocking announcement that he had been sitting in the woods, enjoying the sunshine and listening to a mockingbird. He confessed that he was useless as far as the state was concerned. “I am shattered by the realization that I have never attributed the sunshine to its true cause, namely the state,” Merton wrote. “Clearly I am not worthy to exist another minute.” Alas, my crimes are equally deviant.

First of all, yes, I live in the desert, off the grid, far from the mainstream culture, and like Merton, that makes me useless, unsuccessful, unAmerican, an unproductive cog in the all-American wheel. Worse, I live not far from Los Alamos, where the state builds its nuclear bombs, spending billions for global destruction while poisoning the land and the population. Yes, I confess it, I hope and pray that this work, which I name as demonic, will end immediately. Yes, I admit, last August, for the sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima, I joined hundreds of friends, and put on sackcloth and ashes, like the people of Nineveh long ago, to repent of the sin--the crime!--of war and nuclear weapons.

Yes, it’s true, I sometimes wander the desert like John the Baptist denouncing the crimes of the state, and call for its leaders to fall from their thrones as Jesus’ mother Mary did famously in the Magnifcat. Yes, I confess, too, that I have been telling audiences around the world about my criminal hope for the disarmament of Los Alamos, and for that matter, Livermore Labs, the SAC Base, the Trident Sub bases, the Oak Ridge Labs, and all other imperial installations of nuclear genocide.

Yes, the state should know I have not been rehabilitated. I’m proud of hammering on an F15 nuclear-capable fighter bomber in 1993 in Goldsboro, North Carolina to fulfill the prophet Isaiah’s commandment to “beat swords into plowshares.” We upheld international law, the Nuremberg Principles, and God’s law of nonviolence. I believe that anyone involved with the production, maintenance and use of nuclear weapons is engaged in criminal behavior.

Worse, I confess that I have traveled into enemy territory. I admit I have not killed my enemies; I have not hated my enemies; I do not wish my enemies were dead, like most patriotic Americans do, as the state orders. I not only like them, I love them, as Jesus commanded, and I have met tens of thousands of them over the years--in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Palestine, India, the Philippines, yes, even in Iraq. Tomorrow, I am doing it again. I go to Colombia to befriend the people targeted by U.S. military and economic domination. I know I shouldn’t, but I am called by a Higher Power to love them. I just can't help myself. I'm so sorry.

Yes, I confess it: I’m also against the death penalty, not only because it’s unjust and racist, but immoral, cruel, inhuman. I not only want a moratorium, I want it outlawed. I hope that every electric chair will soon be dismantled and we will stop injecting people with lethal poisons--as if killing people who kill people is<

Comments

Hello dear John,
Peace be to you and to all, including my government's enemies and my enemies governments! I appreciated running across your name as I explored CPT web links and read your submission with a grateful heart.
I wonder where you stand on abortion? If you do oppose this tragic "option," I suggest that an easy way to be consistent would be that, when you write about children, simply add "born or unborn." That is not too "in-your-face," yet everyone will get it.
Life is beautiful. Bless you for living it so fully and well. Hope to see you around.
In Christ,
Mary Grace<

Posted by: Mary Grace

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