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2019/04/10

Queen of Suffering - A Spiritual History of Korea by Ham Sok Hon

Queen of Suffering

A Spiritual History of Korea

Ham Sok Hon

Chapter I.	Humanity, History and Religion
Chapter II.	Korea: The Formative Elements
Chapter III.	Early Promise and Failure
Chapter IV.	The North: Prize and Peril
Chapter V.	The Broken Axle of History
Chapter VI.	The Just and the Unjust
Chapter VII.	Disaster Upon Disaster
Chapter VIII.	The Coming of Christianity
Chapter IX.	Liberation
Chapter X.	The Korean War
Chapter XI.	The Meaning of Suffering

Also from this edition:

	Foreward
	Author's Preface to the English Edition
	IntroductionKingdoms, Dynaties and Events

Map of Korea, China and the Surrounding Area

This document, originally scanned and edited by Tom Coyner of the Tokyo Monthly Meeting.

Copyright Information: © 1985 Friends World Committee for Consultation. Permission given by the FWCC for this reproduction. All rights reserved by the FWCC.

Quakerism in Japan: 1885-1943 - Quaker Service and Work for Peace

Quakerism in Japan: 1885-1943 - Quaker Service and Work for Peace

QUAKER SERVICE AND WORK FOR PEACE

Quaker Service Friends have ever been mindful of suffering bodies as well as darkened souls, and have labored to bring relief to both. In Japan so many sudden catastrophes occur. A bit of thoughtlessness in the manipulation of the charcoal fire, and a high wind, may wipe out half a town in a few hours. And one never knows where the tremors of earthquakes that are of such frequent occurrence will end. Under such circumstances the habit of sharing is well developed. Bureau drawers are made to disgorge out-grown clothes; an accumulation of tea pots comes out of the corners of closets; a cup full of rice from the family supply, combined with those of the neighbors' makes a filling meal for people who have just lost everything. Already we have spoken of relief to flood sufferers. In some degree relief has been administered to victims of such natural catastrophes by all the Friends' groups, as occasion has demanded.

Friends have done yeoman's service too in the cause of temperance. From the very beginning Temperance Societies were formed in all the localities where Friends were working, and great earnestness for the cause was displayed. Friends co-operated too with the national Temperance Society and the W.C.T.L. One result was a village not far from Tsuchiura whose village organization absolutely banned the use of sake, and kept it up for years. Many personal efforts to help friends escape from the habit were also made.

One member of the Mito Meeting tells of walking to his home outside the city, after dark at night, when only a young boy, and soon after he had joined the Meeting. On the way he saw a man intoxicated, lying in the ditch by the side of the road. He trembled with what seemed to him the enormity of his responsibility' under these circumstances. At first he started to walk on and leave the man there, but he heard a voice say to him very clearly, "If your Christian faith has any meaning, you will go back and help him". He did, and the incident stays in his memory as one of the turning points in his spiritual life.

But some moments are too tremendous to be handled by any small group, and one of them was the noon hour on September lst, 1923, when the great Tokyo earthquake occurred. This is not the place to go into detail on the sufferings, or the activities to relieve them, in the days that followed. But Friends did rise to the emergency, and gave organized and effective relief. They began almost immediately giving personal help to their own members, but when money was cabled them from the American Friends Service Committee, they set to work in earnest on a larger scale. A Service Committee(11) was formed on September 10.

This committee weighed the possibilities carefully, and eventually received permission from the city to build 28 small dwelling houses and an assembly hall, in one corner of a city park. These houses were rented to families who had lost their homes, and a democratic organization was effected. Meetings for entertainment and uplift were held in the assembly hall. Two years later they were moved further out of the city, and set up again in a group that was called "Friends Village". Gradually the householders bought their homes and the group was liquidated.

Another project was for more distressed people in one of the slum sections of the city. Here barracks were erected and food and clothing distributed. A program of music, movies, talks on hygiene, a medical clinic, Christian talks and hymn singing, attempted to minister to the whole man. This was carried on for four years after the earthquake.

In addition to the assistance given at the time of the earthquake the A.F.S.C. sent Hugh and Elizabeth Borton to Japan for a three years' period, to work with the mission and to give especial attention to Japan-American relations.

Work for Peace
As early as the autumn of 1889 a Japan Peace Society had been formed, Akasaka Friends taking the initiative. Its purpose was to study the problems of war and peace. A little later the magazine "Peace" was issued, under the editorship of Manji Kato. But this beginning was cut short by government order, at the time of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, as was also another beginning made in Yokohama, just at the eve of the war. Both of these attempts were made not by organized Friends Meetings, but by individual Friends. Non- Friends were admitted, and the activities of these societies, however short their duration, represent the beginning of the Christian Peace Movement in Japan. By the time of the Russo-Japan War in 1904, although there was no organization, the pacifist position was widely recognized, and many prominent people were associated with it. Among them was Kanzo Uchimura, with whom our story began. Friends seem to have lost their lead to some extent, during this time.

An interest in the movement had reached many public-spirited men, outside of the Christian church, and was fanned by Gilbert Bowles. He was assisted by a young man, named Setzuzo Sawada(12), who later became prominent in the diplomatic world. As a result of their efforts an organization called the Japan Peace Society was again formed in 1906. At first its leadership was prevailingly Christian, but later under the presidency of Count (later Marquis) Okuma, its scope and influence became broader. Anti-Japanese agitation on the Pacific coast made their work difficult, and after a quarter of a century of effective service, war, this time in Manchuria (1931), again nipped the promising bud. The two Christian organizations,--World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches and the Fellowship of Reconciliation were hardier plants, with which Japanese Friends continued to cooperate. Seiju Hirakawa served as secretary of the latter for a long period of years.

The Yearly Meeting had from the beginning a Peace Committee and it was by its recommendation that representatives were appointed to the London All Friends Conference of 1920. They brought back a report that very much stirred up enthusiasm for peace in the Yearly Meeting, when it was made at its 1921 sessions. A minute was adopted, giving expression to their renewed sense of loyalty to the cause. In 1924 when feeling was very strong about the Immigration Law which the American government had enacted the Yearly Meeting Peace Committee issued a declaration, challenging the attention of the Home and Foreign Ministers of the government. Again in 1931 after the beginning of the Manchurian Incident, Friends cooperated with other Christian sects of peace principles, in the following declaration to the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet: "We deeply deplore the international strife with our neighbor, China. Desirous of attaining lasting peace, based on the broad way of love for humanity, not only between our two countries, but among all the nations of the world, we confidently look to you for efforts to that end."

On several occasions Peace Retreats were planned by the Standing Committee of the Yearly Meeting, when for two or three days, those especially interested, would withdraw to some place where they could be uninterrupted, and there discuss quietly the implications of peace and war. It was mental and spiritual gymnastics such as this that helped to produce the internationalism of such men as Seiju Hirakawa and Yasukuni Suzuki, head resident of the young men's dormitory in Tokyo. Opportunities for its expression come to them often in personal relations with Chinese and Korean students in the capital; in service rendered to European Jews who drifted to Japan without any economical support for the present, or hope for the future; and in propagating the spirit of internationalism among the students of the universities in Tokyo. A trip to Shanghai after 1932 helped Suzuki-san further to realize the true results of war and an imperialistic policy.

Friendly personal relationships between the nationals of the two countries may be of more significance than any number of declarations made by organizations. One example was the visit of S.H. Fong of West China Yearly Meeting, to Japan. He was on his way home after a year or two spent in England, and was urged to see Japan. He was very much averse to doing so, having received most unfavorable impressions of Japanese character. With the feeling of taking his life in his hands, he finally introduced himself to Japanese Friends. Some of their leading spirits spent two or three days with him in intimate and frank exchange of views, and in worship together, in a quiet hotel on the seashore of Ibaraki Province. He was entirely disarmed in the course of it, and the whole group entered into deep fellowship together. One Friend remarked that to see Mr. Fong wearing a Japanese kimono about the hotel, had given her quite a new feeling for China, and before he left, he bought Japanese trinkets to take home to his family, although he had previously advocated the boycott against Japanese goods. Later his home in Chengtu was destroyed in a Japanese air-raid. When the news of it came to Hijirizaka Meeting, a collection was made, and a gift of money was sent through safe hands, as a mark of penitential brotherhood.

Other visits back and forth have been made in the interests of mutual understanding. Gilbert Bowles, Mansaku.Nakamura and Seiju Hirakawa were such emissaries, at one time going as far as West China. Letters of Christian good will were exchanged between the two Yearly Meetings, even after feelings in both countries were running high.

One very good place to see the peace movement in Japan in its practical workings was at the Bowles' dinner table, at which Minnie P. Bowles presided with her inexhaustible spirit of hospitality. Gilbert Bowles at the other end of the table, would be directing the conversation into channels that made all the guests assembled there from many quarters, feel at home and enlightened.

Westerners often ask about the conscientious objector movement in Japan. If there is such a movement, it is not allowed to become public. It will not become a widespread movement, I think, because Japanese ways of thinking are different from those of the West in so many respects. In the first place they have been taught in the feudal days of the past, as well as in imperialistic times in the present, the duty of absolute obedience on the part of the subject to his overlord. Because the whole is, more important than any of its parts, there is nothing to do but to sacrifice the individual judgment, even at such times as it repudiates the demands made on it by that whole. In such cases they feel that this is not sin for them, because it has been taken out of their hands and is therefore no longer their moral responsibility.

Then again the family organization is so much stronger with them than with Anglo-Saxon people. A family conclave, including parents and uncles, is held to determine the young man's future steps in life. Of course he has a chance to express his own desires, but he certainly does not have the freedom to choose his own way that the young men of the West have. Besides, the consequences of his deeds come back not only to himself, but to his whole family. The conscientious objector stand comes out of a more individualistic society than obtains in Japan, I believe.

Quaker Strains from Other Sources
Lest it be thought that Japanese Quakerism is one of which the Philadelphia Mission was the sole purveyor, an account should be given without more delay, of the many contributions that have been made from other sources, and which have helped to preserve its cosmopolitan quality.

From the very beginning there was Dr. Whitney whose name has already been mentioned. He was the first American student at the medical school of the Tokyo University, and after he had taken his degree, he founded a hospital in Akasaka Ward of Tokyo, neighboring Shiba. That was in 1886. Dr. Henry Hartshorne was another who came to Japan on a professional medical errand, but who gave concerned counsel to the little group of Friends in its beginning days. His daughter, Anna C. Hartshorne, remained its friend through her long years of educational service in Tokyo. Meanwhile George Braithwaite had come from England, and Dr. Whitney had married his sister, Mary, and brought her to Japan. Thus a new center of Friends was formed. A little gathering of very zealous believers grew up around the hospital. At first they did not call themselves Friends, but as time went on the need for some connection with a Christian group was felt. And gradually its members and those at Hijirizaka came to know each other. Individuals from the older group took responsibilities from time to time for the Akasaka group, and finally in 1939, after much conference on the subject, the Akasaka Meeting was recognized as a Monthly Meeting of the Japan yearly Meeting, the ninth and last to be set up. Teiko Kudo a very earnest and consecrated woman, ministers to it.

The group of English Friends was represented in the Mission Committee by the son of George and Lettice Braithwaite, G. Burnham Braithwaite, and his wife, Edith Lamb Braithwaite. Burnham's knowledge of the language, learned as a child learns it, was of great value to the work. Canadian Friends have also served on the Fission Committee, and their Board has shared in the financial as well as the spiritual support of the work.

Among the Japanese Friends are some who have had broad international experience, and who have brought back to the little Quaker group in their own country some of the air of that bigger world. Foremost among these was Dr. Inazo Nitobe, a member of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, which he joined when a student at Johns Hopkins University. His marriage to a member of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting made the tie with America stronger. Later, seven years in the Secretariat of the League of Nations, taking an active and highly valued part in the solving of world problems, confirmed his international viewpoint. At such times as he could be in Japan, he was in demand on all sides and led an almost unbelievably busy life. Friends will therefore never forget the occasions when he took time for them, attending and addressing their Yearly Meetings, conducting a conference group one winter on Sunday mornings for the members of Hijirizaka Meeting, or occasionally dropping in unannounced to their meetings for worship. His weightiness, his simplicity, his lovable qualities, left a deep impress on all he met, Portions of his view of Quakerism are appended to this account.

Then there is Iwao Ayusawa, a one-time student of Haverford College, whose years in America were followed by a long residence in Geneva, and work in connection with the International Labour Office. His Quaker home in America, together with friendship with Dr. Nitobe, and connection with the Friends' group in Geneva, were the formative influences in his Quaker faith. He joined Japan Yearly Meeting on his return, and has been a most concerned member. His work as executive secretary of the World Economic Research Institute in Tokyo, still takes him into international fields. Like so many people in the West of late, he has been especially interested in encouraging the study of post war economic organization.

Takeo Iwahashi and his wife came to us from London Yearly Meeting, joined during years of study in Edinburgh. Pendle Hill, a school near Philadelphia, has done great service for Japanese students, who have come back to their country to share the catholicity of view, and the sense of responsibility for service, acquired there. Among these are Kikue Kurama, Ryumei Yamano, Masa Uraguchi, and Tane Takahashi.

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2019/04/05

THE BACKHOUSE LECTURE BY CHO-NYON KIM

THE BACKHOUSE LECTURE BY CHO-NYON KIM

The Backhouse Lecture ‘An Encounter between Quaker Mysticism and Taoism in Everyday Life’ was delivered by Cho-Nyon Kim, professor of Sociology and of Daejon Meeting in South Korea. Cho-Nyon Kim explores his spiritual journey in the Korean religious environment, in which Confucianism, Buddhism. Taoism and Christianity have all influenced cultural practice and been integrated into daily life. He asks how we can live a simple life in a complex world. He focuses on how we can create a peaceful society in the face of nationalism and self-centredness.

Quakerism has similarities to Taoism in its mysticism and its sense of waiting in a meditative way. He concludes that he must “lead my life in the manner of those who always seek truth with an open mind”.

Cho-Nyon Kim visited Adelaide on July 16th. He was on his own as his wife did not come to Australia. Harald Ehmann was able to take him to all the places of interest with regard to The First Nations People during day, and translated into English from German with which language Kim was more confident.

Olga Farnill writes: on Mon, 16th July, 2018, fifteen Friends met at the home of Inga and Michael Tolley, to hear South Korean Professor Cho Nyon Kim, who teaches Sociology at the University of Tae-Jeon. He is one of a very small number of Quakers in Korea.

They follow their weekly meetings with an hour of study of topics such as Taoism, Quakerism, Eastern classics, and the Bible. There are 10 million Christians in South Korea, out of a total population of 45 million. Buddhists form a larger group. Cho Nyon explained that political tensions between the Left and Right have been entrenched even within S Korea, since World War Two. The boundary between North and South was drawn by Russia and the US, who both had agents operating throughout Korea to convert people to their side. Tensions remain in the South as many have kept a leftist allegiance, although the Communist Party is banned in South Korea. This has caused divisions within communities and families, which obstructs the peace process between North and South.

President Mun has made continuing attempts to prevent war, including meeting with President Kim. South Koreans want a peace treaty, but are sceptical of the very slow process. People in either country still cannot communicate with friends in the other. The Quakers of South Korea are contributing to the peace process by planning strategy with Buddhists and other supporters. A meeting in September, 2017, decided on a pilgrimage to two major areas of strongest conflict, inviting discussion between Left and Right-wing sympathisers. This began on March 1st, 2018 (a day commemorating the 1919 movement for Independence from Japan. The pilgrimage covered the cities of Seoul, Tsung-Nam and Tae-Jeon. These peace -making efforts have received good publicity, and will be repeated in other areas in September, 2018. Then, next year, the group will share its experiences and publish a Peace Statement.

2019/03/25

Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Peace will only come when all of us become the change we wish to see in this world. David Hartsough became that change and has spent the best part of 60 years working to bring peace to our troubled world. His book is one that every peace-loving person must read and learn from.” —Arun Gandhi, president, Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi

“It has been my privilege to work with David Hartsough over the years and to be arrested and jailed with him for nonviolent civil disobedience. I highly recommend Waging Peace to every American who wishes to live in a world with peace and justice and wants to feel empowered to help create that world.” —Daniel Ellsberg, The Pentagon Papers

“When great events happen, such as the falling of the Berlin wall, we must never forget that people like David Hartsough and many others have worked hard to prepare the ground for such ‘miracles.’ David’s belief in the goodness of people, the power of love, truth, and forgiveness and his utter commitment to making peace and ending war will inspire all those who read this book.” —Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, Peace People, Northern Ireland

“If you want to know what it means to live a ‘life well lived,’ read David Hartsough’s masterful book. It is not only a page turner, but it will probably transform the way you look at your own life—your priorities, your lifestyle, your future.” —Medea Benjamin, cofounder, Code Pink and Global Exchange

"Waging Peace ought to be required reading for every U.S. citizen befogged by the crude polarization between Islamic extremism and the equally violent, ineffective, but seemingly endless Western military reaction it has elicited." —Winslow Myers, worldbeyondwar.org

"David has rooted his lifelong pilgrimage of peace in a simple conviction: that all life is precious. He has helped spark and build one campaign after another when that preciousness is forgotten or undermined." —Ken Butigan, wagingnonviolence.org

"Waging Peace is a major contribution to understanding the inspiration and dynamics of the nonviolence movement in the years since the 1950s." —Robert Dockhorn, Friends Journal

Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
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Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
byDavid Hartsough
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Doug Wingeier
5.0 out of 5 stars challenging account of the author's amazing peacemakingJune 2, 2018
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moving, challenging account of the author's amazing peacemaking career

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Music Ad Lib
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsMay 4, 2016
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Exactly what I was looking for.

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Ronald D. Storey
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsDecember 2, 2015
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Reminds me of how little I have done for peace in my life. Very well written.

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tom imhoff
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsApril 29, 2015
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fascinating life story---inspirational

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bpalm46
5.0 out of 5 stars A life well lived.September 8, 2014
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Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist is a remarkable story of one person's journey through life living the ideals of Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

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D. Hazen
5.0 out of 5 stars A spiritual giantJune 17, 2015
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I consider myself to be a peace activist, and after I read David Hartsough's "Waging Peace," I could hardly avoid comparing my minuscule efforts to his lifelong dedication to nonviolence and fearless love. His quietly under-stated story of returning again and again to the front lines of conflict left me wondering if I could ever make a difference, and this is where the real value of his writing shines forth: yes, I can; yes, you can; we all can make a big difference. The appendices provide an exhaustive list of resources for motivation, practical steps, and hope. Hartsough condenses the lessons he has learned, references sources for further study, and compiles a long menu of possible alternative strategies for personal development, witness, study, low-risk nonviolent actions and direct confrontation. This concluding section is where I gain my courage to follow Hartsough's giant steps with baby steps of my own. The size of step does not matter, simply taking any step matters a great deal.

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Winslow Myers
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book and feel hope!October 20, 2014
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The fear that we citizens of the United States have been seduced into since 9/11 spreads across our benighted nation like a fog, inhibiting all policy alternatives not based in blind vengefulness. Special are those who have the spiritual clear-sightedness and persistence to make people-oriented global connections that pierce the fog of fear with the light of visionary possibility.

One such giant is David Hartsough, whose vivid, even hair-raising, memoir of a lifetime of peace activism, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, has just been published by PM press. It ought to be required reading for every U.S. citizen befogged by the crude polarization between Islamic extremism and the equally violent, ineffective, but seemingly endless Western military reaction it has elicited.

It hardly seems possible that Hartsough has been able to crowd into one lifetime all his deeds of creative nonviolence. He was there with Martin Luther King in the late fifties in the South. He was there when a train loaded with bullets and bombs on their way to arm right-wing death squads in Central America severed the leg of his friend Brian Willson in California. His initiatives of support for nonviolent resistance movements span both decades and continents, from efforts to get medical supplies to the North Vietnamese, to reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians, to support for Russian dissidents as the Soviet Union was breaking up, to the resistance to Marcos in the Philippines, and on and on. Hartsough’s book thus becomes a remarkably comprehensive alternative history to set against “the official story” of America’s—and many other nations’—often brutal and misguided reliance upon military intervention.

David Hartsough gave himself a head start by getting born into the right family. As a boy he heard his minister father preach the gospel of loving your enemies and almost immediately got a chance to try it out when bullies pelted him with icy snowballs. It worked, and Hartsough never looked back. Having determined to do integration in reverse by attending the predominantly black Howard University, he soon found himself sitting in with courageous African-American students at segregated restaurants in Virginia. A white man crazed with hate threatened him with a knife. Hartsough spoke to him so gently that the man was “disarmed” by the unexpected shock of a loving response and retreated open-mouthed and speechless.

Sixty years of innumerable protests, witnesses, and organizing efforts later, Hartsough is still at it as he helps to begin a new global movement to end war on the planet, called “World Beyond War.” While his book is a genuinely personal memoir that records moments of doubt, despair, fear of getting shot, and occasional triumph, even more it is a testament to the worldwide nonviolent movement that still flies completely under the radar of American media. Living in a bubble of propaganda, we do not realize how intrusive the bases of our far-flung empire are felt to be. We do not feel how many millions worldwide regard the U.S. as an occupying force with negative overall effects upon their own security. Even more importantly, we remain insufficiently aware how often nonviolence has been used around the world to bring about positive change where it appeared unlikely to occur without major bloodshed. The U.S. turns to military force reflexively to ”solve” problems, and so it has been difficult indeed, as we are seeing in our ham-handed response to ISIS and the chaos in Syria, for us to learn lessons that go all the way back to the moral disaster of Vietnam. We have not registered how sick of the madness of war the world really is. Now academic studies are starting to back up with hard statistical evidence the proposition that nonviolent tactics are more effective than militarism for overthrowing dictators and reconciling opposing ethnic or religious groups.

Coincidentally, the book I read just before Waging Peace was its perfect complement: a biography of Allen Dulles, first director of the CIA, and his brother John Foster Dulles, longtime Secretary of State. The Dulles book goes a long way toward explaining the hidden motives of the military-industrial-corporate behemoth which Hartsough has spent his life lovingly but persistently confronting—truly a moral giant named David against a Goliath of clandestine militarism that props up narrow business interests at the expense of the human rights of millions. Always this David has kept in his heart one overarching principle, that we are one human family and no one nation’s children are worth more than any other’s.

Hartsough’s tales of persistence in the face of hopeless odds remind us not to yield to despair, cynicism, fear mongering or enemy posing, all temptations when political blame is the currency of the day. Hartsough is a living exemplar of the one force that is more powerful than extremist hate, reactive fear, and weapons, including nuclear bombs—the human capacity to be harmless, helpful and kind even to supposed adversaries.

If—let us say optimistically when—peace goes mainstream and deluded pretentions to empire are no longer seen as the royal road to security, when we wake up to the hollowness of our selfishness and exceptionalism, when we begin to relate to other nations as opportunities to share good will and resources rather than to bomb, it will be largely because of the tireless efforts of insufficiently heralded giants like David Hartsough.

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Laurie Marshall
5.0 out of 5 stars What if we lived as a Christian nation?May 23, 2015
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This book is radical -the principles of Jesus radical. David Hartsough tells the story of a life dedicated to seeking that of God in everyone - the main tenant of Quakerism. As he looked into the eyes of hate filled segregationists, Vietnamese civilians, American soldiers, Nicaraguan peasants, Bosnian civilians, Cuban communists and other people around the world, he was able to connect with the Divine within them and often transform violent situations. I have rarely read a book of such courage. He models the practice of Jesus' words to "Love your enemy." And he challenges our country to live according to these principles. Yes, this is a radical book, inspiring in its non-materialistic, value-centered, speaking truth to power and loving text.

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Ken Butigan
5.0 out of 5 stars An Ordinary, Extraordinary LifeJanuary 29, 2015
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Years ago, my friend Anne Symens-Bucher would regularly punctuate our organizing meetings with a wistful cry, “I just want to live an ordinary life!” Anne ate, drank and slept activism over the decade she headed up the Nevada Desert Experience, a long-term campaign to end nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. After a grueling conference call, a mountainous fundraising mailing, or days spent at the edge of the sprawling test site in hundred-degree weather, she and I would take a deep breath and wonder aloud how we could live the ordinary, nonviolent life without running ourselves into the ground.

What we didn’t mean was: “How do we hold on to our radical ideals but also retreat into a middle-class cocoon?” No, it was something like: “How can we stay the course but not give up doing all the ordinary things that everyone else usually does in this one-and-only life?” Somewhere in this question was the desire to not let who we are – in our plain old, down-to-earth ordinariness -- get swallowed up by the blurring glare of the 24/7 activist fast lane.

These ruminations came back to me as I plunged into the pages of David Hartsough’s new memoir, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist (PM Press, 2014, with Joyce Hollyday). David has been a friend for thirty years, and over that time I’ve rarely seen him pass up a chance to jump into the latest fray with both feet – something he’d been doing long before we met, as his book attests. For nearly six decades he’s been organizing for nonviolent change – with virtually every campaign eventually getting tangled up with one risky nonviolent action after another. Therefore one might be tempted to surmise that David is yet another frantic activist on the perennial edge of burnout. Just reading his book, with its relentless kaleidoscope of civil resistance on many continents, can be dizzying – what must it have been like to live it? If anyone would qualify for not living the ordinary life, it would seem to be David Hartsough. 
As I finished his 250-page account, however, I drew a much different conclusion. I found myself thinking that maybe David has figured it out – maybe he’s been living the ordinary life all along.

Which is not to downplay the Technicolor drama of his journey. Since meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. as a teenager in the mid-1950s, David has been actively part of many key nonviolent movements over the last half-century: the Civil Rights movement, the anti-nuclear testing movement, the movement to end the Vietnam War, the U.S. Central America peace movement, the anti-apartheid movement, and the movements to end the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years he has helped found the Nonviolent Peaceforce and a new global venture to end armed conflict, World Beyond War.

This book is jammed with powerful stories from these efforts – from facing down with nonviolent love a knife-wielding racist during an eventually successful campaign to de-segregate a lunch-counter in Arlington, Virginia in 1960, to paddling canoes into the way of a U.S. military ship bound for Vietnam; from meeting with President John Kennedy urging him to spark a “peace race” with the then-Soviet Union, to being threatened with arrest in Red Square in Moscow for calling for nuclear disarmament there; from confronting the death squad culture in Central America and the Philippines to watching his good friend, Vietnam veteran Brian Willson, mowed down by a U.S. Navy munitions train.

These are just a few of innumerable vignettes of David’s peacemaking around the world. But there is much more to David’s life story than these intense scenes of nonviolent conflict.

Much of this book recounts how the foundations of his career as an agent of nonviolent change were laid, slowly and organically. His decision to give his life to peacemaking was shaped by the inspiration of his parents, who were both actively involved in building a better world, and by a series of experiences in which he witnessed the impact of violence and injustice, but also at the same time met a series of remarkable organizers who were not content to simply wring their hands at such destruction, including the likes of Civil Rights movement luminaries Bayard Rustin and Ralph Abernathy.

Most powerful of all, David set out on a series of illuminating explorations, with long stints in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and a then-divided Germany. Everywhere he met people who turned out to be complicated, beautiful and often peace-loving human beings. His nonviolence – and resistance to war— was strengthened by seeing for himself the people his own government deemed “the enemy.”

In Berlin—a city split between the East and West after World War II, but not yet separated by the wall the Soviets would build—he took classes on both sides of the divide and experienced up close what the “Us” versus “Them” of violence feels like: “In the mornings [at the university in the East] I would challenge the Communist propaganda and be labeled a ‘capitalist war-monger.’ In the afternoons, at the university in the West, when I challenged their propaganda I was called a ‘Communist conspirator.’ I thought I must be doing something right if neither side appreciated my questions! I didn’t consider myself any of these things: capitalist, war-monger, Communist, conspirator.” Instead, he was a nonviolent activist challenging the confining labels that are used to foment the separations that fuel and legitimate violence and injustice.

David has rooted his lifelong pilgrimage of peace is a simple conviction: that all life is precious.
He has helped spark and build one campaign after another when that preciousness is forgotten or undermined.

At the same time, he’s recognized that such a nonviolent life extends to himself. This is where the ordinary life comes in.

David and his spouse Jan live a simple life interweaving family time (including with their children and grandchildren, who live downstairs from them) with building a better world. They are activists, but they rarely let organizing keep them from taking a hike in the mountains or a walk along the seashore. They are regulars at the local Friends meeting. For decades they have been sharing their home with countless friends, who are often invited to the songfests that they frequently organize in their living room. When I stay with them in San Francisco, there is always a bike ride through Golden Gate Park to be had or time to be spent at a garden a few blocks away with its dazzling profusion of azaleas. Rather than giving short shrift to the fullness of life, David has found a way to live, as we say today, holistically.

David’s life qualifies as “ordinary,” though, not only because it knits together many dimensions of every day realities, but because it has dissolved the artificial boundary between “activism” and “non-activism.” All of life is an opportunity to celebrate and defend its preciousness, and this impulse gets worked out seamlessly in both watering the plants and getting carted off to a police van after engaging in nonviolent resistance at a nuclear weapons laboratory. Nonviolent action is a seamless part of the rhythm of life. It is a crucial part of the ordinary life. Once enough of us see this and fold into the rest of our life, its ordinariness will become even more evident than it is now. This was Gandhi’s feeling—nonviolence and nonviolent resistance is a normal part of being human—and David has taken this assumption up in a clear and thoughtful way.

Anne Symens-Bucher reports that she’s increasingly living the ordinary life—she’s developed a powerful example of it called Canticle Farm in Oakland, Calif. And I feel I’m getting closer to it day by day. But if you want to read a page-turner that reveals how one person has been doing it for the last fifty years, get a copy of David Hartsough’s new autobiography, Waging Peace. (Review first published on WagingNonviolence.org.)

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Leilani
5.0 out of 5 stars If you believe in power to the peaceful, this is your handbook!June 21, 2015
Format: Paperback
If you believe in power to the peaceful, this is your handbook!

David Hartsough and Joyce Hollyday narrate David's lifelong journey of peace activism. From Pennsylvania to Palestine, David Hartsough joins the cry for peace, forgiveness and justice. I kept having to tell myself to breathe while reading many of the accounts in David's life. I was holding my breath whenever I felt in awe, hopeful and when I was terrified for his life and for humanity.

David is making peace his pilgrimage. Wherever he hears, sees and encounters injustice, there is a power to his Quaker spirit that gives him the strength to live another day and serve peace for and with the people.

Please, read it.

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Winner of:
2015 Skipping Stones Honor Award, International and Multicultural Books

David Hartsough knows how to get in the way. He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines. Hartsough’s stories inspire, educate, and encourage readers to find ways to work for a more just and peaceful world. Inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Hartsough has spent his life experimenting with the power of active nonviolence. Engaging stories on every page provide a peace activist’s eyewitness account of many of the major historical events of the past 60 years, including the Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam War movements in the United States as well as the little-known but equally significant nonviolent efforts in the Soviet Union, Kosovo, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Waging Peace is a testament to the difference one person can make; however, it is more than one man’s memoir: it shows how this struggle is waged all over the world by ordinary people committed to ending the spiral of violence and war. (less)

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Jul 07, 2016 HBalikov rated it liked it
Waging Peace is both a memoir and a call for action. David Hartsough documents his commitment to non-violence from an early age. His father, a Congregational minister, was of a similar mind and participated in many American Friends Service activities.

The writing conveys a great deal of conviction and there are numerous examples of where the non-violent approach has been successful. A better gift for writing might have made it more engaging.

In the last portion of the book, Hartsough makes his case for active participation by his readers. He offers a Declaration of Peace and the opportunity to join “people from around the world” in organizing “A Global Movement to End All War and Promote Enduring Peace.”

Even if you do not choose to join, Hartsough raises enough ideas and issues so that a real conversation can begin. Here are some of those potential discussions that I have drawn from the book.

What kind of impact on peace would a reinvigorated Peace Corps have?

How much more participation in religion would take place in faith communities if they were more engaged in the true “world’s needs?”

How much have the peoples movements of Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador changed government policy?

Did the Marshall Plan of post- World War II demonstrate that it is much cheaper to wage peace than war?

Did non-violent students in Serbia bring down the Milosevic regime, when N.A.T.O could not? Can the same success in deposing dictatorships be attributed to non-violent movements in South Africa, India, the Philippines, South Korea, Chile, Bolivia, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Tunisia, Egypt, and Liberia?

We should have that discussion.
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Dec 18, 2016 Eve rated it really liked it
An inspirational journey told by a truly amazing visionary peace activist. This should provide a sense of hope and empowerment to all those who read this - particularly in these very dark times. And it shows the power of what just one person can do - for good. Well worth the read.
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Feb 08, 2016 Connie Kronlokken added it
David Hartsough grew up Quaker. He watched his parents protesting and early on wanted to get to know our "enemies," so he went camping in Russia! Had a great time. This memoir displays his consistent nonviolent-oriented sensibility in the many difficult situations he got himself into. He is now 74.

In El Salvador Hartsough's delegation was asked "Could you come to our village and just walk down the main street? This will save lives, because the death squads will know the world is watching." Learning that merely his presence could make a difference was a lesson he didn't forget. He started a group called Nonviolent Peaceforce which now works with the UN in some countries with refugees, as well as a smaller group called Peaceworkers. I believe he would agree with E.O. Wilson, who said that humans have some genetic predisposition to aggression, but the best way of subverting it is a "confusion of cross-binding loyalties." If people meet in the world, they are always forging bonds.

Hartsough also addresses the American addiction to consumption, saying we are using almost six times our rightful share of the world's resources. His family has always lived simply and he describes its advantages. (less)
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