The Nonviolence of Dorothy Day by Martha Hennessy

 

About the Speaker

Martha Hennessy (born July 11, 1955) is an American Catholic peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement co-founded by her grandmother, Dorothy Day. She grew up Wethersfield, Vermont. She is the seventh child of David Hennessy and Tamar Day Hennessy, the only child of Dorothy Day. Her sister is the author Kate Hennessy.

She worked for 30 years as an occupational therapist, including time at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, White River Junction Healthcare System in White River Junction.

Hennessy is active in the Catholic Worker Movement. In 1979, Hennessy was arrested with many other demonstrators while attempting to occupy the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant under construction in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Since then, she has been arrested while demonstrating against the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the United States government's use of drones in war, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war in Yemen.

In 2020 Hennessy was interviewed about her life, anti-war activism, and grandmother, Dorothy Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin in 1933.

On April 4, 2018, Hennessy took part in the Kings Bay Plowshares action, breaking into Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia to protest its stockpile of nuclear weapons. She was arrested and later placed under house arrest in late May 2018 with an electronic monitoring bracelet strapped to her left ankle. On November 13, 2020, she was sentenced to 10 months in prison. As an extension of the Plowshares witness she blurbed a book about Plowshares, ARISE AND WITNESS: Poems by Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, About Faith, Prison, War Zones and Nonviolent Resistance, published in 2024.

There is light and there is love in this world”: An Interview with Martha Hennessy

November 12, 2020/Eric Martin

…

When I spoke with Martha Hennessy, she was at her Vermont farm, waiting to be sentenced as she faces over twenty years in prison. She and six other Catholics entered Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia on April 4, 2018 to symbolically disarm the Trident submarines there, each of which can carry 5,760 times the power of the Hiroshima explosion. In their statement, the seven placed their action in line with Pope Francis’ writings which condemn the possession of nuclear weapons. 

Martha Hennessy is a Catholic Worker, public speaker, and gardener. She’s also the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker in 1933 in New York and is currently on the path for sainthood in the church. Day’s anarchist movement shelters homeless people in houses of hospitality and publishes a newspaper espousing radical, Catholic pacifism. Like her granddaughter, Day sometimes found herself in jail for protesting, and her movement has spread across the world. 

As we go to press, Martha and other defendants are due for sentencing on November 12 and 13, though the pandemic may cause further delays. Their action is the latest in the plowshares movement, which began in 1980 when eight Catholics entered a General Electric facility, hammered on nose cones for nuclear warheads, poured their blood on documents, and prayed for disarmament. The action sparked others like it under the banner of the biblical call in Isaiah and Micah, saying, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.” Co-defendants Liz McAlister, Steve Kelly, and Patrick O’Neill have already been sentenced for the Kings Bay action, while Clare Grady, Mark Colville, Carmen Trotta, and Martha await their date. 

Martha’s mother Tamar, Dorothy Day’s daughter, raised her nine children on a farm in Vermont. She spends half her days on her own farm there with her husband and family and the other half at the New York Catholic Worker. She started her career as an occupational therapist in 1992 and embraced Catholicism as an adult, returning to the community her grandmother started in 2010. I met her at the Maryhouse Catholic Worker in the East Village in 2013, and she quickly became a friend and mentor. We spoke here in an online video conference, with her voice quiet and patient when the topic is serious and loud and up an octave the many times she breaks out in laughter. She discusses prayer, resistance, Catholicism, being a woman in a patriarchal church, and why she decided to enter a military kill zone and risk significant prison time. 

Let’s start with your Vermont garden. You talk about it as a spiritual outlet. How much does gardening act as a prayerful space for you?

I think that is my base. Tamar, my mother, was a disciple of Peter Maurin [who co-founded the Catholic Worker with Day and emphasized agrarian work] and she had all the skills innately. Growing your own food is a good, subversive activity, and it’s also deep prayer. I have these grapevines and pear trees that I planted when I was young and I’ve been able to attend to them throughout my lifetime. And grapes and figs and all these biblical plants. And someday I really want to grow spikenard, what was dumped on Jesus’ head, the precious oil. So gardening is definitely a spiritual and theological foundation for me. 

You told me once that you were growing castor bean you got from Egypt.

Yeah! From Rafah border. I’d forgotten about that. One of my great aunts traveled the world and collected seeds. These were English people and they were really all about gardening. And my mother did the same thing, she collected seeds and slips wherever she went. And I kind of picked that up from her. She grew things like cotton and papyrus and dates and palms in Vermont for fun. 

But yeah, the Rafah border. Let’s see, it must be about six years ago I was trying to visit people in Gaza. Twice now I’ve tried to visit, unsuccessfully. And we were camped out at this fence line, this gate, you know we could hear the bombs thudding at night. The Israeli Defense Force was dropping bombs on the city nearby where they had the tunnels going underneath the barriers to get food to the Palestinians. And I just brought home some pastor beans and grew it one summer and it grew to be ten feet tall. Like the mustard seed.

You’ve traveled pretty extensively. Did that contribute to you becoming a Catholic Worker and joining the plowshares movement? 

Well, I would say that my travels brought me back to the Catholic Church before it brought me back to the Catholic Worker. I travelled in remote places where I felt like I had been swallowed by a whale and then spat up and told to go home and do the work of faith-based resistance. 

So that was really the beginning of taking very seriously my baptism. I remember a landlady of mine, a Catholic Filipino woman. She’d drag me off to church and all of that really changed me. You know, seeing the world is so important, especially for Americans, my God. My first trip was at seventeen to Spain and Morocco. And then I had trips to France and Italy and I always found myself going to these churches and looking at these incredible mosaics and icons. I’ve had three trips to Russia and in 1996 maybe I had a trip to Lisieux, the town that St. Therese of Lisieux came from. I wasn’t back in the church but I think all of those little exposures brought me to a place of receptivity. 

You brought up a different saint in court when you quoted Teresa of Ávila on the stand, saying you wanted to be the hands and feet of Christ. That made me wonder about your influences beyond Dorothy Day and your mother. What other historical figures guided you on your way to the Catholic Worker, plowshares, gardening, and everything else? 

Well, I grew up in a house that had [Alban] Butler’s Lives of the Saints [a classic compendium of Christian saints and martyrs]. It was Granny’s. Every once in a while, when she came to Vermont, she took some back to New York. I knew those figures were big in her mind and a very important part of our educations. She handed me a book of Joan of Arc when I was about twelve and, you know – this woman dressed in men’s clothes, riding on a horse. It was the coolest thing ever. 

Yeah, certainly the saints, and just people of courage. People of vision, people who over the course of everyday conversations you can sense something about that particular person that their level of awareness and level of understanding of compassion is really something to behold and something to be treasured. And you know Dorothy herself was that kind of a person. And I believe my mother was too. So, we just sort of had our antennae out for people whose world view really showed the compassion of Christ in an everyday sense. 

What about the 20th century?

Well, when I was a teenager my mother had a case worker because we were on welfare. And this social worker was a very kind and decent person. She would come to the house to visit, check up on us kids and such. She certainly impacted me. [Catholic Worker, sister, and plowshares activist] Anne Montgomery impacted me. I remember talking with her at Jonah House [a Baltimore peacemaker community] and being really touched at how she opened up to me. She was such a beautiful person. I ran into [anti-nuclear activist] Susan Crane early on and she impressed me with her single-sightedness. As for famous figures, I don’t know. I certainly was aware of Angela Davis and… Jane Fonda [laughs]. I dug Hanoi Jane. 

Why do you remember your social worker first? What was so impressive about her? 

You know the welfare office was a really painful place for my mother to go to and most of the people there were really uncompassionate. But this person really resonated with Tamar, she really loved Tamar. She was politically aligned with her, I think. They became friends when she was supposed to oversee her. 

My mother was so good that way, she was always befriending people, really developing attachments. I know that there were other families that my parents met through the Catholic Worker. And I remember visiting their homes when I was a kid. I remember those women being very warm and hospitable, mothers of many children. Those are the women that loomed big in my life when I was young.

That makes me wonder how being a mom influences the way you see yourself as a Catholic and the way you go about living your faith.

Of course, once you’re a mother you look at anybody’s child – you hear someone say “mom!” and you have a visceral response to that. Even as a grandmother today, my concern is for everybody’s grandchildren. And you know, that whole experience of giving birth certainly changes a woman in terms of her connection to humanity. And, you know, the whole definition of family was very different for me growing up in the Catholic Worker. Everyone was your brother and sister. You were responsible for everyone. And the motherhood was just an extension of that large family experience. 

How do you navigate a nakedly patriarchal church where so much of the work is done by women, mothers, and people who can’t wield the sort of ecclesial power that men can? Does that play into how you see yourself as an activist or Catholic Worker?

Oh, yeah. I think it impacts why I was out of the church for so long. You know when I saw the Madonna and child as a very young child, I thought Jesus and Mary represented all mothers and babies. And you know, that connection to the Blessed Mother, I feel that very directly through my mother and my grandmother right to the Blessed Mother. The rosary was very big in my childhood. 

But this patriarchy business… My mother, she left the church because of the corruption of the institution and the patriarchal treatment of women and children. And she had nine children with a man who couldn’t even take care of himself. She was following church doctrine and it left her in a lurch. So I’ve had these two extreme examples of Tamar leaving the church and the history of Dorothy’s intense conversion [to Catholicism]. 

But I had to come to a place of resolving this resentment towards these men who take charge and run things and are abusive and neglectful. And you know celibate men know nothing about the realities of life and family life most especially. And I do hope that that changes. I do think that women should become deaconesses. I do think that the whole business of making the sisters support themselves in old age by selling off their properties – that’s par for the course for these guys’ behavior. It’s heartbreaking to see, you know. Seeing [Cardinal] Dolan at the Republican National Convention – when are they gonna get a clue? 

What changed to allow you to come back to the church?

I came to the conclusion that – why am I letting this institution get in the way of the Holy Spirit? Why am I throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak, by just abandoning the whole thing? And then after I came to understand that the true church is something to stay with, and to just put up with these priests that give bad homilies. And, you know, the opportunity for disappointments will always be there. But I had to move beyond that.

So now you’re in the plowshares movement, which is based on a quote from Isaiah and Micah [two prophets, biblical characters who called people to repent in the name of God’s justice and compose a significant part of the Bible].What is it about the prophetic imagination that drew you in so far that you’re willing to go to jail for years for it? 

I don’t know. Maybe I’m attracted to these truth tellers who get it in the neck. [Laughs.] You know, that’s what Granny’s life was. The prophets are being brought to us every day in the readings. And I just had to come to a whole new level of understanding of who prophets are and what happens to them. We do the daily lectio, the Bible study, and Liz McAlister is just so beautiful in her Bible study capacity and I just learned more and more. The deeper I got into it the more I learned. And then also probably reading Daniel Berrigan. Some of his books gave me a whole different light on the function of the prophets. 

Speaking of Berrigan, your Granny didn’t really approve fully of the Catonsville action he participated in [when he and eight others burned Vietnam War draft files with napalm in 1968]. She said these actions are not ours. And you’ve told me you’re not sure she would have been on board with yours. How do you navigate being in these two worlds of the Catholic Worker – and not just being any part of it but being a descendent of Dorothy – and the plowshares movement? Is it hard occupying a space where not everyone agrees the two overlap neatly?  

Good question. You know, life is full of contradictions. And how do you simultaneously hold conflicting things? I would say that goes along with my re-entering the church. I had to hold controversy and conflict in balance. And I know this whole history. I got it in the neck from some folks for engaging in that kind of an action. But for me, I had to figure these things out in my own time, in my own life. 

Dorothy comes from a very different background. And I’m not practicing non-violence nearly as well as my mother and grandmother practiced nonviolence. Believe you me, I have an Irish temper. But she went to the trial of the Catonsville Nine. She understood what they were trying to say and do. 

Why did some people disagree with your action? 

Oh, “You’re betraying your grandmother. These plowshares actions are not nonviolent.” The secretness of it and the cutting of locks – that’s the big problem. “Gandhi and King wouldn’t have approved of that either.” 

This seems similar to discussions around the uprisings all around the nation, what some people call riots that are destroying property. People tearing down statues, for example [which Donald Trump has committed to harshly punishing].  How do you interpret this?

Didn’t people tear statues down when the Soviet Union crumbled too? I think that’s the nature of empire crumbling is you have to remove the idols, you have to remove the symbols that reinforce this system of violence and injustice. Pulling the statue off the pedestal compared to the guy on the statue who condoned slavery… you’re really faced with this double standard. 

But I don’t think people should be smashing store windows. You know, this guy on 2nd Avenue just opened up his shop. It’s just a small business and someone came through and smashed his window. What’s the point of that? I don’t get it. You know, you want to wreck property, go to Wall Street. 

There’s a conversation going on in the Catholic Worker movement about race. I remember sitting with you at a BLM event in Abyssinian Church in Harlem in 2015 and seeing your name on a list of sponsors. It surprised me to see “Black Lives Matter” and “Catholic Worker” next to each other. And now the plowshares movement has for the first time brought white supremacy into their conversations explicitly. How do you see both the Catholic Worker and Plowshares in relation to BLM?

Well, you know, it’s the whole question of oppression. I believe the nuclear arsenal is the ultimate white supremacist weapon. It’s the keystone that keeps white supremacy and capitalism in power. So, you know, participating in plowshares for me was addressing all these guys coming into the soup line on First St. at St. Joe’s [New York Catholic Worker House] and seeing the horrific condition they’re in. I mean they have nothing. And here we are spending trillions on nuclear weapons. 

So that connection was there. And of course, I grew up on Dorothy talking about the weapons industry as a theft from the poor. We’re using all of our money on these weapons and there’s nothing left for the poor. And you know so many of the poor are people of color because of the racist economic system. 

I know there’s been some discussion in the Catholic Worker about it being a white movement and a racist institution. Racism is just so insidious. I mean most of the homeless we serve are Black and most of us are white. You know, apartheid is just embedded everywhere. But I grew up hearing about my mother in the deep south, of her being shot at in the Koinonia biracial experiment farm. I knew that racism was very much present in our culture, even though I grew up in Vermont, the whitest state in the union. And a lot of what Dorothy focused on early on in the movement was the condition of Black people. You can go back in the [Catholic Worker] papers and see that that was very much an issue. 

But I think the analysis of the last thirty years is that we have neglected that, and I would agree. I think we have. 

Getting into the plowshares action now, when you all went to Kings Bay Naval Base you said it was a sacramental action. What does that mean to you?

I’ve been studying Pope Paul VI lately and I printed out this [grabs the top of a stack of papers on her desk] general audience talk he gave in April of ’65, “Signs of the Times.” And in that he says something to the effect of, “We like to place staunch confidence in the divine savior who exhorts us to recognize the signs of the times so that we see amid obscure darkness numerous indications that seem to announce better times for the church and for mankind.” Then he goes on to say, “Thus the supernatural order is communicated to us by the sacraments which are tangible signs of an invisible reality.” So, there’s that definition of what is sacramental. 

How do you understand that, though?

We were bringing the body of Christ literally to a place of such immense sin and desecration. You know, we are trying to actualize that there is truth and there is light and there is love in this world. And that base represents all the opposite of truth and love and light. And the reality of us bringing what we brought there, which is ourselves, part of the mystical body of Christ, and calling it a sacramental act of disarmament. 

I’m still learning about what any of that means. I have no theological training and background! I think there are many, many sacramental acts in our lives and we just have to learn how to recognize them. 

Just so you know, you’re one of my favorite theologians.

[Laughing] I don’t know what makes a person a theologian, but… we learn from each other.

You spray painted “may love disarm us all.” Is that right? 

Yes.

What do you mean? 

Well, first and foremost I disarm myself. That was something I learned very early on in the process of the plowshares discernment. And one of the very first things I heard, I think from [plowshares activist] Paul Magno, quoting Phil Berrigan [of the original plowshares action], saying this is about self-disarmament. And I thought [smacks forehead], “Oh my God, is that why I showed up for this? I didn’t realize that at all.” So, may love disarm us all – it’s first and foremost to myself. And then to my family, my community. Then to the greater world. 

What about the church?

Let’s talk about the U.S. church, since it’s the U.S. that has these weapons. As Granny said, the great scandal of these nuclear weapons is that the vast majority of them are in the hands of white Christians. She was talking about the Russians and the Americans. 

I don’t want to poke a stick in the eye of the church. I really don’t want to do that. We talk about nonviolence, and that’s part of it too. But I also I get upset about the U.S. bishops not revisiting that pastoral letter from 1983 regarding nuclear weapons [The Challenge of Peace], and I’m so upset that Pope Francis is very clearly and deliberately calling for nuclear abolition and the U.S. bishops are not responding on the pulpit. How does it get lost in translation? 

The plowshares movement isn’t all dedicated Catholics, but our group in particular happens to be. I think this is certainly a wake-up call to the U.S. Catholic Church. But you know, it’s even bigger than that. It’s a message for everyone, including non-Christians. I found myself returning to my Christian roots after visiting these Muslim countries. I felt the presence of God in that faith, Islam. Stronger than I did here. So I want to convey to everyone of faith, not just Catholics that my action was an act of love for all of humanity. 

Can you talk about visiting these countries?

YEAH! [Martha waves her arms excitedly.] The call to prayer! It was so incredible. I heard it in Egypt. I heard it in Iran. I heard it in Northern Iraq. I heard it in Jerusalem. I heard it in Amman, Jordan. The call to prayer, five times a day. I thought, that’s incredible. God is here. And I just never felt that in my own country. We have to pay attention to other peoples’ faiths. 

I got to go on this beautiful trip in April 2008. It was shortly after my mother died. It was very hard. I went with Global Exchange, a group that [Code Pink co-founder and activist] Medea Benjamin co-founded. And it was like citizens’ diplomacy, getting to go there to know the people culturally. I had heard about Islam as a kid from my mother, the pillars, charity being a very important one. It’s clear that we all share one God in my mind. 

After 9/11 so many Christians’ relationship to Islam was one of fear and anger, not curiosity. 

That was manufactured. They got us to associate it just with bin Laden. It’s related to oil, to the crusades. 

Okay, back to your action. Catholics have this body of social teaching. And you said on the stand what you seven did there was a “Catholic social action.” Do you see your particular action as a form of Catholic social teaching?

It’s all in the encyclicals already. When Jesus walked this earth we didn’t have nuclear weapons, did we? I don’t see it as anything different than what we’ve been given. What’s different is the 21st century, the technology, advanced capitalism, the war machine, the current form of empire. I don’t know, I don’t see a plowshares action as any different derivative of the Catholic social teachings, other than century-to-century there’s these changes that inevitably occur. 

What personal things did you carry with you onto Kings Bay Naval Base?

I was wearing a medal, my St. Benedict medal.

What’s your St. Benedict medal? 

That was given to me when I became an oblate. [An oblate becomes associated with a monastery without formally joining its religious order.] In the first jail I was allowed to wear it the first month. And in the second jail they took it away from me. That was the only religious thing that I carried on me. 

Where are you an oblate? 

It’s a monastery in northern Vermont, almost to the Canadian border. Monastery of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Benedictine. I became an oblate – oh, my third anniversary is coming up – on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. And I became an oblate along with a military woman. I thought that was fascinating. I was baptized with another baby of one of the unwed mothers at the Catholic Worker, and then I was made an oblate with another person and I just find that all of this has to happen with each other, in community. We’re never alone. 

Why the Benedictines?

‘Cuz I was born on July 11, the Feast of St. Benedict. [Laughing.] And because Granny was an oblate, I’m trying to copy her. [More laughing]. 

Because of ora et labora, I dig their whole charism. You know, work and prayer. I went back to the Catholic Worker thinking, “Yes, I want to work and I want to pray.” The Benedictines are on the land as well, and I saw [Catholic Worker artist] Ade Bethune’s artwork growing up and ora et labora was emblazoned on my mind. 

[Ade Bethune’s 1935 “Pray & Work: Ora et Labora”]

Well, the action was obviously work. For you personally, was it also a form of prayer? 

Oh, absolutely. You know, Catholic action. Prayer. Moving prayer. Prayer that entails body mind and spirit. 

I’ve heard of Heschel’s idea of praying with your feet, but what do you mean, “moving prayer”?

Well, maybe it’s similar to Dan Berrigan saying, “find a place to stand and stand there.” Put your body somewhere. 

What did Jesus do? He went up Golgotha. You can’t just sit there and talk about it, you have to go out and do it. Maybe that’s the difference between workers and scholars. You know, it’s not just in the head and it’s not just in the heart. It’s head heart and body. I don’t know, I had to walk out onto that base. 

Well, if it was a form of prayer for you, did you experience God at all through the event or in the space?

Totally! Totally. I experience God in nature. And it was a starry night. There were frogs croaking. It was April, it was spring in Georgia. I felt the presence of God continually. And, you know, I was afraid. I was incredibly afraid. I didn’t know what I was walking into. I didn’t know how we’d be received. I could only imagine what the dangers were. I felt God when the arresting officer walked up to us. He had the presence of God in his voice, in his face. It was stunning. 

It’s striking hearing you describe the frogs and the stars. You’re experiencing God in creation while you’re there to disarm a threat to all of creation. It’s a strange theological landscape. 

It’s a natural, simple, obvious one to me. 

Well, how much were you motivated to go there to pray and embody the prophets, on the one hand, and on the other how much were you motivated to cause the removal of the actual, physical nuclear weapons? Clare Grady [of the Kings Bay Plowshares action] told me it’s impossible to separate the two. What do you say? 

I think it’s both. You know, Granny died feeling like it was all a failure. I mean, poverty was still there. The destitution, the wasting of money for weaponry. None of that changed in her lifetime. If you really want to look at it that way. And for me, things have only deteriorated in my lifetime. So what’s the takeaway from that? 

But our faith calls us to continue to retain faith, hope, and love. And another wonderful quote I remember from Dorothy is, “You can’t despair, there’s too much work to be done.” And maybe that’s where my solace comes. What’s the alternative to actually doing something? The alternative is to sit and go mad. So I was compelled to join Witness Against Torture [an interfaith collective organizing to shut down Guántanamo Bay’s U.S. detention facility] when I heard about the torture. I was compelled to go to Hancock Airport Base [where the Upstate Drone Action campaign resists the piloting of drones used in Afghanistan] after I learned about drones being used to kill people. 

I don’t know, it’s at a real visceral level. As far as the success of it, the other thing is the fool dying on the Cross. What did he accomplish? That’s when we have to look at resurrection. I would rather be screaming “no” against bad things than sitting silently. It feels better to me, physically and morally. 

Any last words about these hopes you retain, Martha? 

Cleaning the temple. The temple being those cathedrals, our bodies, and the damn nuclear weapons.  

Courtesy: 

https://killingthebuddha.com/mag/damnation/there-is-light-and-there-is-love-in-this-world-an-interview-with-martha-hennessy/

Martha Hennessy
• Jun 18, 2024

Martha Hennessy is a prominent US peace activist, Catholic Worker and granddaughter of Dorothy Day. Here she talks to Tom Dennehy-Caddick ahead of a 90th anniversary Catholic Worker talk late last year.

So, 90 years on from its founding, what is the message that the Catholic Worker movement has for today?

I believe the message remains the same. We work with the Catholic social teachings, providing the works of mercy, houses of hospitality. Also, the parts of Peter's programme. You know, agronomic universities, where scholars can come to work and workers can become scholars and study. A method of breaking down the class structure of the United States. So, I think that the mission is always the same. The gospel teachings of Christ. How do we work as disciples of Christ in the 21st century.

Dorothy Day and Martha Hennessy

Immense technological changes have occurred, especially since the 1930s, but Dorothy and Peter spoke to the immediate needs of the person in front of you. Dorothy was very practical. Peter had the theoretical underpinnings and the Gospel teachings. You know what I always remind myself of? To keep it very simple: to love God with all your mind, heart and soul, and to love your neighbour as yourself. That's the basic Christian teaching. And so, we do hope that the Catholic Worker continues to display and further that message in the movement.

If your grandmother, Dorothy Day, and her co-founder, Peter Maurin, were to see the movement today, what do you think would strike them? What would make them be joyous? What would they want to call us back to?

I think they would be very grateful to see the soup lines. You know, feeding the people who can't fit into the houses. The soup lines, I think are very important. And also the hospitality that is provided in the houses, you know, to the best of everyone's abilities. I mean, they would recognise the scene in the kitchen of cooking a big pot of soup to be distributed. So, I think that that hospitality aspect is still quite obvious and intact.

I think they might wonder what's going on with some of the houses that may not be doing in-house hospitality and speaking truth to power. Though there are houses and communities who definitely hold on to that message. And, you know, we have to evolve. Things change over the decades and over the generations.

You have spoken before about how your peace work with Kings Bay Ploughshares - being imprisoned for entering a US nuclear military base - differed from Dorothy's more restricted view of direct action. Is there something about today which you think requires us to act differently?

She recognised the horror of the bomb. She witnessed it in her lifetime, unlike us. But I think the two principles that she had concerns about with her dear friends, Phil and Dan Berrigan, were the question of secrecy and destruction of property. So, I had to discern in my own heart and mind what that meant. This question of the nuclear weapons being right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. The secrecy behind the whole programme just was unbearable to me. And Dan Berrigan spoke to the question of property. What is proper to the common good? Nuclear weapons are not proper to the common good. So, that answered my question of the so-called destruction of property. And, you know, for our situation with the US military, you're not going to get onto those bases if you announce that you want to go onto those bases. So that was it. What will resistance to nuclear weapons require? It may look different in my grandchildren's time. We're praying to God that they'll be abolished within my lifetime.

Catholic Worker communities are very beautiful but also very challenging places to be. What was it like to grow up within the Catholic Worker movement?

The Catholic Worker movement is not an NGO. It's not an agency. It's a family. And I certainly grew up with the definition of family being beyond biological. So, I think it's very important to keep that spirit within the houses of making people feel comfortable and welcomed and that you're willing to share, you know, all that you have with them, including yourself, and your time, and your space.

A real challenge is growing up in a large city. Tamar, my mother, loved the countryside. And so her first two children were born at the Eastern Catholic Worker Farm, and the next two were born on their own farm. And then my sister was born on the Peter Maurin farm. So we had a variety of experiences of being a family unit within the community, but also having our own space. But, you know, there are issues. There's a lot of mental illness in the Catholic Worker houses due to the situation of those who are left behind, who fall through the cracks. But my mother had wonderful memories of her childhood. Just the warmth, the camaraderie, the family style that Dorothy managed to evoke, for everyone. Now, how beautiful is that compared to state institutional approaches.

When you grew up, you moved away for a time from both the Catholic faith and the Worker movement. How did you find yourself journeying back to faith and back to the Catholic Worker movement?

It's hard to explain conversions. Conversions are mysterious things. My father left the family when I was six. My mother kind of left the church. She had all kinds of questions of how the Church treated women and children. My grandmother was heartbroken to see us just drift away from the Church. But later I just found myself returning. I really can't explain it. Dorothy was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002, and I had to give a little acceptance speech, and my life changed drastically after that. I was just hit over the head. I was living in Vermont, working as an occupational therapist, raising my children, getting them through college, living a normal life, paying my war taxes. And then I had to give this little speech, and I realised what this legacy meant... the kind of soapbox I was given and how I should start using it. So that was kind of the beginning.

Later, I struck up a correspondence with Daniel Berrigan, and he really did help me in very mysterious ways to return to fundamental questions. What does your baptism mean to you? What are you going to do with this? The answer was: you're a Catholic, and you're within the Catholic Worker. Still, I was totally terrified of going back to Maryhouse. I hadn't set foot in the house for 24 years after Granny's funeral, but now I can see that all of these little seeds were planted to bring me back somehow.

This article was published by Independent Catholic News, 15/12/23, and featured in the Easter 2024 London Catholic Worker newsletter.

The Ark and Lanza del Vasto by Dr. Siby K. Joseph

 

 The Ark and Lanza del Vasto
Or
Contribution of Lanza del Vasto in Spreading the
Message of Gandhi in the Western Society
 

                                               Siby Kollappallil Joseph

 

ABSTRACT

 

Lanza del Vasto was an Italian aristocrat who came to India in 1937 to meet Gandhi and to find answers to some of the fundamental questions which he was preoccupied with.  He wanted to know how Gandhi, who was by birth a Hindu, was practising   The Sermon on the Mount taught by Jesus Christ in day-to-day life and use that knowledge to become a good Christian. Lanza’s meeting with Gandhi and three months stay with Gandhi was significant in terms of understanding the life, philosophy and methods of action of Mahatma.  On a request from Lanza, Gandhi had given him a new name Shantidas meaning servant of peace which set the goal and mission of life of this philosopher.  He returned to Europe on the verge of Second World War and published about his Indian sojourn in the form of a book viz.   Le pèlerinage aux sources (Pilgrimage to the Sources) in 1943.  This publication was an enormous success and he became popular in France.  In 1948, after the death of Gandhi, he started the Community of the Ark to translate Gandhian principles in communitarian living in the Western society. He also undertook a second pilgrimage to India to participate in the Bhoodan or land gift movement led by Vinoba Bhave. It further helped him in understanding the efficacy of non-violent methods in achieving social justice. Lanza spent more than thirty years in community experimentation and peace action based on the principles of Gandhi blended with Christian principles   mainly in the Western society. It helped in spreading the message of Gandhi in   France, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and other parts of the globe.

 

Keywords: Lanza del Vasto, the Community of the Ark, Nonviolent Action

 

Introduction

 

The life of Gandhi has been a source of inspiration for some of the world leaders, activists, thinkers and scientists who immensely contributed towards the creation of a better or humane world. Among them we can find the names of Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, Danilo Dolci, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and many others across the world. During the life time of Gandhi, many people from different parts of the globe established contacts and stayed with him for different durations in his ashrams. Lanza del Vasto was one of such personalities who came to India from Europe way back in 1937 to meet Gandhi and to find answers to some of the important questions that were troubling his mind. The most puzzling question before him was war. He was aware that “war does not fall upon us like a stone from the heaven.” [1]  Further, war is not a natural calamity and what is it that makes war inevitable? He found the explanations about war such as hatred and economic necessities as childish and futile. In all civilizations war is accompanied by misery, slavery, civil war or revolution and somehow all these are bound together. Besides, ‘what is the origin of them all, how do they work with each other and especially what is the way out of them?’[2]  These questions agitated the mind of young Lanza and he was convinced that Mahatma Gandhi was the only one who had the key, ‘key to get out of this prison?’[3]

 

        Lanza came to know about Gandhi from the classic work of Romain Rolland viz. Mahatma Gandhi in the year 1928. It was in the same year he defended his doctoral dissertation on relational philosophy at Pisa University. The intellectual accomplishments, literary and artistic pursuits could not satisfy this young man. By this time he had started his innings as  a writer, poet and artist and made some contributions in these fields.  In fact the name Lanza del Vasto was his pen name and his original name is Giuseppe Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte. He belonged to a Sicilian noble aristocratic family.  Even though he was born in San Vito dei Normanni, near Brindisi, Italy in 1901, he was good at French and English languages other than Italian as a youth due to his family background, extensive travels and studies. He was also able to teach Latin with ease. Instead of looking for an academic profession after his doctoral studies; he was in search of the essential. That prompted him to walk across Southern Italy barefoot and penniless from Rome to Bari to quench his spiritual quest in 1933.  Again in 1935 he travelled on a bicycle in France and Italy from Paris to Caen and from Caen to Florence. He gave up the earthly pleasures and comforts, experienced poverty, hunger and rejected profit, competition etc.  He wanted to meet Gandhi to find answers to the questions he was searching for and also to understand  and experience how Gandhi, who is a   Hindu by birth, puts into practise the gospel of Jesus Christ in day to day life and action. To put it differently his purpose of meeting Gandhi was to learn ‘how to become a better Christian.’  Keeping these goals in mind he went on a pilgrimage to India in December 1936.

Meeting with Gandhi

        Lanza’s first journey to India from Europe at the age of thirty five took almost a year because he mostly travelled across India on foot. On December 22, 1936 he boarded the ship for India from Genoa, Italy and reached India via Ceylon or Sri Lanka.   Lanza del Vasto’s first journey to India is vividly depicted in his book Le pèlerinage aux sources (Pilgrimage to the Sources).[4] The fourth Chapter “ Wardha or Three Months with Gandhi” explains the indelible imprints created by Gandhi during his stay with him.  The impact of the first meeting itself was so profound. Lanza wrote about the first meeting that “I discover that I am nothing, have never done anything and want nothing except to stay like this in his shadow. Here he is before my eyes, the only man who has shown us a green shoot in the desert of this century.” [5]  This historic meeting took place on January 29, 1937. This meeting and stay with Gandhi was a turning point in the life of Lanza del Vasto. During this period he could understand the fundamentals of Gandhi’s principles and his philosophy of life.  Lanza explains why Gandhi was so appealing to him. According to him “In Gandhi, it is a quickening of the Christian spirit that has reawakened the Hindu virtues. Tolstoy’s evangelical dreams gave him the first impulse and led him to formulate his social doctrine. Careful reading of the New Testament confirmed him in his vocation….. Moreover, his promptness to act, his sense of historical opportunity, his organizing abilities are purely western qualities. All this contributes to make him a supremely universal person. His teaching is addressed to all, [6] and his success concerns us all for reason not at all political.” [7] 

 

On a request from Lanza del Vasto , Gandhi had given him a new name   Shantidas meaning servant of peace. Gandhi may have given this name taking note of his interest in peace and non-violence. In a sense it helped Lanza to set peace as the goal and mission of his life.  During the period of stay in Wardha, Lanza informed Gandhi that he wanted to go to the holy source of the Ganges.  Lanza felt that it was a plan of Almighty and he had received signs of it if not an order. Gandhi agreed to his proposal. His trip to Ganges was not leaving Gandhi in search of another source. At the time of parting he said “Bapu jee , I am not leaving  you. I am going in your stead. You are coming with me, I am taking your dear eyes with me, and through mine you will see the holy Source of the Ganges” [8]

 

Pilgrimage to the Source of Ganges

 

Lanza del Vasto’s pilgrimage to the source of Ganges in the Himalayas was also an enlightening experience. In Narendranagar, one of the large villages of Himalayan hills, Lanza felt he received a divine call or call from God. In the beautiful night in the hills, he heard a voice that told him ‘Shantidas, what are you doing here? Go home.’  He turned around, but there was nobody and he waited for some explanations, but there were none.  He was not sure what to do but decided finally to obey it. This experience was from night of June 16 to 17, 1937. He was reflecting on this call and he formulated an action plan which he conveyed to Gandhi in response to a letter he received from Gandhi during that period.

 

Plan of an Order Promoting Peace

 

 Lanza wrote to Gandhi about his plan of an Order promoting peace in the West from Narendranagar on June 27, 1937. This letter clearly shows his vigorous zeal and the vision.  Lanza realized that he was not fit for work in a village of India. He felt that he was personally called for work in his home in the West, where peace was in great danger and lovers of peace were an object of ridicule and hatred.  For the realization of this goal, he wanted to establish an Order of wandering brothers promoting peace across the countries. It will be like a disciplined army armed with the weapon of sacrifice following the vows of poverty, chastity, work, obedience and perpetual refusal for rest. In his letter to Gandhi he wrote: “They will teach peace: that is not taking rest, but it is the sword, as Jesus said. The peace must not be desired out of fear for death and destruction. It must not be loved for the preservation of the pleasures of life, but it must be wanted as a duty of the spirit. Peace does not belong to cowards, but to those who resist violence from outside and from within. Until now those men who have accepted war made heavy sacrifices for the same, similarly they must be ready to take the same risks for the conquest of peace. Our first battle, and victory, will be a refusal of military service in all countries at the same time. It will be a march of those who have been regimented to army, with banners and trumpets, saying no to the military barracks, but ready to end up in prisons.”[9] Thus it is very clear that idea of conscientious objection to military service was formed in his mind well in advance even before he plunged into peace action. As a result of this experience his plan to return to Europe became strong.

 

Meeting with Gandhi again for Guidance

 

Lanza del Vasto returned to Sevagram  to meet his Master,  that is,  Mahatma Gandhi and sought  his advice. He reached Sevagram in September 1937. During his stay with Gandhi, Lanza got an opportunity to discuss in detail about his plan of returning to Europe to implant Gandhi’s doctrine in the West. The question Gandhi placed before him was “Are you called? Or is it you who are calling yourself? Or are you forcing yourself to believe yourself called?”   Gandhi wanted Lanza to find out by himself whether it is divine call or not.   In other words, the test Gandhi placed before him was to find out whether it was ‘God’s will’ or his own.   When Lanza tried to find answer to this question he became more confused and disturbed. However, he continued his pilgrimage in India.  His farewell meeting with Gandhi was in Haripura in February 1938. This meeting was a touching one. Lanza told Gandhi that he was leaving his own country and his father. This shows the intimacy between two personalities who were convinced about the efficacy of nonviolence.  Gandhi said “….   I shall miss you. And yet, it is right that you should go, that you should be put to the trial you are looking for, away from me. You will see if non-violence is strong enough in you to impose itself on those you live with. A lukewarm thing loses its heat when it touches something else, a burning thing sets fire to everything it touches. You will write to me. You will write to me from Palestine if you succeed in making your pilgrimage. You will be able to see the struggle between the Jews and the Moslems at first hand. It breaks my heart; you will tell me what you feel about it. But you will write to me before that and afterwards too. Now the time has come. Go.” [10] Gandhi was sure that he will contribute to non-violence in his country, in Europe and even the rest of the world. That is the reason why he gave the consent to Lanza to proceed and work towards peace and non-violence. Also it was appropriate time because whole world was making preparations for war.

Lanza in Europe in the midst of War

  After his return from India, by the end of March 1938, Lanza reached Egypt. In April he spent almost a month in Italy and moved to Paris. He was well received and everybody was eager to hear about his Indian adventure. But when he started speaking about peace and non-violence everybody was smiling. He thought that it was  sign from the  Lord that he was ‘uncalled’ and decided to  speak only to those who  wanted  to hear about it and sought   his advice on what they have to do.  In October, he went on foot to Palestine, then on the brink of civil war, to Jerusalem, "between two lines of tanks" and to Bethlehem, where he arrived on the eve of Christmas. He moved further on foot to Constantinople and the Mount Athos. Lanza was in Paris when the Second World War broke out. He realized this is the dark period when nothing can be done. The catastrophe of the war deepened his faith in non-violence and the significance of Gandhi’s principles to overcome the civilizational crisis the Western society was facing.

 

Publication of the Pilgrimage to the Sources

 

On a request from an editor to write down about his journey to India Lanza spent almost five months from January to May 1943 to put it into paper.  That resulted in the creation of his classic work in French viz.   Le pèlerinage aux sources (The Pilgrimage to the Sources) which was published in 1943 by Denoël.  Referring to this book Rene Wadlow  wrote “It is not fully clear to me why the German censorship in Paris allowed the book to be published. They may have thought that telling about Gandhi's struggle against British imperialism might help their cause and did not understand the power that ideas of nonviolence would have. In any case, the book was so much a “breath of fresh air” in a France worn down by the war and occupation that some 200,000 copies of the book were sold in a few weeks.” [11] The publication of this work was an enormous success and it sold over one million copies.[12] It was translated into several languages and  Lanza became  a well known figure in Europe due to this publication. He explains the impact of this book as follows: “It was the time of occupation, of misery, humiliation. People were imprisoned in camp. My book went there. Many afterwards came and told me ‘you have saved my life’. ‘I took to the test of life again reading your book speaking of non-violence, of palm trees, of great horizons, of the things of God’.[13] This publication largely contributed to the dissemination of Gandhi’s ideas and ideals in Europe.The fourth Chapter of this book “ Wardha or Three Months with Gandhi,” to which a reference has already been made earlier, beautifully summarizes  the fundamental principles and the philosophy of life of Gandhi.

 

Establishment of the Community of the Ark

 

             It was in June 1941, through his friend Luc Dietrich, Lanza had a meeting with Simone Gibelin (Chanterelle),  a musician from Marseille.  Later Chanterelle became the companion of his life and activities. Lanza’s engagement with Chanterelle took place in January 1948.[14] Lanza heard the news about the martyrdom of Gandhi. In a meeting of French disciples of Gandhi, Lanza   said “Let us not cry my friends. Let us be full of joy. He came out of the changing days to enter eternity.  Let us envy him rather…I believe since Jesus Christ such an example had not been seen. He was a saint, a sage, a master and a hero. He died a violent death, as fits a man of non-violence. Of him I keep a white memory… I lost my father. But Gandhi is not dead, he will never die.” [15] It was not an emotional outpouring; on the contrary he was finding hope despite his personal loss of a fatherly figure, mentor and guide. He felt that the right time had come to translate his plan of Gandhian order in the Western society. After his marriage with Chanterelle, Lanza founded the first Gandhian rural community known as the Community of the Ark in Tournier, Charente, France.The establishment of a Gandhian order in the West or the Community of  the Ark was aimed at overcoming the grave disaster of violence in the Western society, like the Ark of Noah in the Old Testament. It was a creative expression of the application of non-violence in communitarian living.  

 

The Community of the Ark was a modified version of Gandhi’s ashram in India suited to the Western society or a European model of ashram on Gandhian lines. Lanza while introducing Gandhi’s philosophy to the Western world through the Ark synthesized it with the spirit of Jesus Christ or Christianity. The very name Ark and the cross as its symbol were part of this synthesis.  The cross symbolizes the path of suffering to save humanity from its wrongdoings.  Even at the initial stage the work of the community was not limited to application of non-violence in community living.  They organized the groups of Friends of the Ark and conferences were held in the cities for the wider dissemination of Gandhi’s principles. However, his first experiment was short lived and he had to close down the experiment after four years due to absence of specific rules and regulations and lack of commitment of people involved in the community experimentation.

 

The Second Pilgrimage

 

            Taking clues from his first community experiment, Lanza re-established another community in 1953 in Tourettes-sur-Loup in the Alpes-Maritimes.  He undertook another pilgrimage to India from January to May 1954 to join Vinoba Bhave, the spiritual heir of Gandhi, in the  Bhoodan or land gift movement. The march with Vinoba helped him in understanding the efficacy of non-violent method in ensuring social justice without bloodshed and violence. Like Gandhi, Vinoba was also a great source of influence on Lanza.  His experiences in the second pilgrimage to India resulted in the publication Gandhi to Vinoba -The New Pilgrimage.[16]  Through this work he introduced to the West, the life of Vinoba Bhave  and his march with him  and also extracts of Vinoba’s  writings  from the  book  Swaraj Shastra.  Walking with Vinoba in the land gift movement was an enriching experience for him. He returned to Europe with a renewed zeal and determination to rejuvenate his community experiment.

 

Rejuvenation of the Community Experiment

 

            After his return from the second pilgrimage to India , Lanza   relocated the Community of the Ark  to Bollène in Vaucluse in 1954.  He made systematic efforts to rejuvenate the community experiment .Rule and regulations were framed to make the community experiment a sustainable one.  As a result, a new member who would like to join the community would be treated as a novice for three years. Only after successful completion of this period he/she would become a full-time member of the community. Only on the basis of a unanimous decision by the old members, will a new member be admitted to the community. Vows were prescribed for the members of the Ark and they should follow them by their own choice. They were: work (including bread labour, service), obedience (primarily to the rule and one’s vows), responsibility (and co-responsibility), purification (of one’s self), poverty (living simply), truthfulness (service of truth) and non-violence (including defense of justice).[17] These efforts helped in ensuring the stability of the community and filtering right kind of people who had commitment and conviction to undertake community living on non-violent lines. In the course of time, the Ark experiment gathered momentum and the number of people living in the Community increased substantially.

 

To accommodate the increased strength of members, the Community of Ark was relocated in La Borie Noble with the acquisition of 1000 acres of farmland and forest in the hills of the Languedoc in Southern France. The members of the Ark rebuilt the half-ruined buildings of stone deserted by the villagers since the First World War and they shifted to this location in 1963.[18] As Lanza del Vasto and Chanterelle were staying in La Borie Noble, it became the headquarters of the Community of Ark. Later two more communities were added viz., Nogaret and La Fleyssière. Many communities were formed in France and other parts of the globe as a result of Lanza’s  work over thirty years. La Borie Noble and La Fleyssière are the two rural communities of Ark which are still active and functioning on the ideals laid down by Lanza del Vasto. La Borie Noble is a place of pilgrimage for the followers of Lanza del Vasto because his mortal remains were buried there. In addition, manuscripts, photos and personal belongings of Lanza are kept there.

 

Guiding Principles of the Community 

 

The life in the community of the Ark is centered on the principle of non-violence and its application in economic, social, political and other facets of life.  In order to become a part of the Ark, one has to take the path of non- violence and lead a life marked by simplicity, service, sharing and work for justice and peace. The Ark Charter reiterates the community’s deep faith in non-violence as follows: “In the footsteps of Gandhi and Lanza del Vasto, the members of the Ark has chosen non-violence as a basis for working on oneself and spiritual research. They choose: to open themselves to service and sharing; to live in a simple manner, respect all living beings, to act for Justice and Peace by nonviolent means.” [19] The Community of the Ark attaches great importance to manual labour and it is  a creative expression  of one’s self. Lanza  said “It is in the making of things that human beings are themselves made.’’ He was of the view that everyone  should acquire the basic skills to fulfill the basic necessities viz. food, clothing and shelter so that they can lead a self reliant life   keeping as much away from market and consumerist tendencies of modern times. Meditation, prayer, consensus decision making, singing, dancing, celebration, art work, calligraphy etc. are carefully interwoven in the life of the Ark even now. The members of the Community live as single persons or as families and lead a disciplined life to attain mastery over the self.  In a sense life in the Ark resembles a monastic life of renunciation, detachment and self rule. It is open to all those having faith in different religious traditions or seekers of truth without having any religious affiliation.

 

Continuous Efforts at  Revitalization and evolution

 

  The Christian Charismatic Revival Movement during the seventies affected its work because some of members left the Ark to form their own groups or religious revival communities. It could overcome the crisis with the calling of General Chapter of the Order in 1975 which literally    re-founded the Ark in a more structured manner by the formal approval of Constitution, Vows and the teachings. The period from 1975 to 1992 was a period of constant growth and expansion and the number of communities expanded to 13 in France as well as Spain, Italy, Quebec and Argentina. The Ark could not maintain the momentum for a long time after the passing away of the founder in January 5, 1981, even though the Community of Ark of Saint Antonie was founded in 1987.  The number of people living in the communities reduced drastically and some of the communities were closed down with the passage of time.

 

New efforts were made to revitalize the Ark and a complete document on the founding principles and the new organization was voted upon in 2005 Chapter giving birth to the ‘The Community of the Ark: Non-violence and Spirituality’. This document was confirmed in 2012 which provides a clear picture of the mission, foundational principles and the structure of  the new organization. At present the Ark consists of communities, friends and well wishers who pursue individually or in groups vigorously the ideals of Lanza and Gandhi. They are scattered throughout France, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador etc.  In the communities, members of different nationalities with diverse backgrounds and religious traditions are living together practising a non-violent lifestyle similar to the Ashrams.  Non-violence and spirituality are hallmarks the Community of the Ark. The simplification of life, nonviolent relationship and struggle for justice and peace, respect for differences and religious reconciliation, unity of life, the culture of living together and the constant practice of consensus as a mode of decision-making are some of the characteristic features of the community that make the Ark experiment  a unique one.

 

 Dissemination of Gandhi’s ideas and ideals

            Lanza popularized the ideas of Gandhi and Vinoba through his writings and actions. Many of his writings had a Gandhian flavour.  Many writings of Gandhi were available in France or in the Western society. However, Lanza noticed that Hind Swaraj,  which  is a  small tract which Gandhi wrote in 1909 during his stay in South Africa was  unknown to the  French people. This tract of Gandhi is considered a seminal work or a manifesto because in it one can find seeds of his fundamental principles and ideas. This work is basically a critique of modern Western industrial civilization and institutions associated with it. The immediate provocation for Gandhi to write this book was to reject the cult of violence represented by the avowed Indian anarchists in London and their prototypes in South Africa. Also he wanted to tell the world the sublimity of non-violent resistance viz. Satyagraha, which he was practising in the South African soil while fighting for the rights of people of India origin. Gandhi was always ever evolving in the realm of ideas and actions. However, Gandhi remained strongly committed to the views he expressed in Hind Swaraj in 1909 till the fag end of his life. Lanza del Vasto introduced this book to the Western society with a French edition   of Hind Swaraj  in 1957  with his eloquent  ‘Introduction’. In his ‘Introduction’ Lanza described this work as a fundamental one. “This small work is fundamental. It is surprising that in France many of Gandhi's writings have been published, and many, many more on Gandhi himself, yet this one, in which the germ of his whole doctrine lies, has been neglected. The fact is that under cover of a gentle, uniform style it is extremely audacious. The fact is that the new Indian politicians have no desire to publish it and the Westerners no desire to receive it. Because it accuses the latter of maintaining a fiendish civilisation and it accuses the former of spoiling and enslaving their country under the guise of freeing it.”[20]  Like Gandhi,  Lanza was also  a great critique of modern Western civilisation.  From the ‘Introduction’ which Lanza wrote, it is evident that he went far ahead in his criticisms against the modern Western civilization than Gandhi. Also by the time the challenges posed by Western civilization became more apparent. Lanza opines that a person gets convinced about Gandhi’s arguments in Hind Swaraj not because of the strength of his arguments but mainly due to the truth in Gandhi’s life. According to Lanza the roots of Gandhi’s critique lie in the personal experience and religious conviction of Gandhi and it was not the result of a systematic study or his expertise in a particular branch of knowledge. In a sense the Community experimentation in the Ark was aimed at practising  Hind Swaraj ideals in action

 

Non-violence in Action

 

In response to a question "What did you learn from Gandhi?" Lanza replied "The principle of the unity of life.  This was the basis of nonviolence.  ...  Here was a man who believed, thought, felt and acted in the same unity, precisely what is lacking in our own culture.  Gandhi pointed out that means and end are related as the seed is to the tree." [21]  The Community of the Ark was an attempt to realise this unity of life in day to day life which was lacking in Western society. It demands application of the principle of non-violence at all levels.  There would be perfect harmony between means and ends. Lanza was so fascinated by the power of non-violence. He wrote "It does not require the training of an army; it needs no jiu-jitsu. Control over the mind is alone necessary, and when that is attained, man is free like the king of the forest and his very glance withers the enemy. " ? [22] The life in the Community was a nursery or training ground for non-violence for his fellow companions who demonstrated its power in their fight against injustice and exploitation.

 

Lanza del Vasto’s understanding of Gandhi’s non-violence and his first initiation in non-violent movement under the leadership of Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodan or land gift movement from January to May 1954 deepened his conviction in it. According to him the real object of non-violent resister should not be attaining the goals. On the contrary one should   aim at  ‘the changing of the enemy into a friend, of the wicked man into a just man, of the tyrant into a fair-minded and generous ruler.’[23]

 

In December, 1956, Lanza along with a group of companions joined Danilo Dolci[24] in a fast for eight days to draw the attention of authorities about the miserable living condition of the poor people in Sicily.  In the following year, to stop the torture of political prisoners in the Algerian War by the French Army as well as National Liberation Front of Algeria, Lanza fasted for twenty-days. In this fast, Lanza received a telegram from Vinoba Bhave stating that “God bless your Satyagraha, I hope to help in melting my heart with love.” As a result of the fast different cross sections of society began to voice their opposition against the torture and the relations between the Christian and Muslim communities in Algeria gradually improved. The influence of this fast was so deep even a General resigned rather than follow his superiors’ orders in Algeria.

 

Lanza was in forefront in the fight against nuclear weapons and even nuclear energy that is the reason why the Community of the Ark in La  Borie Noble  uses very little electricity in their Community experiment  due to  its  opposition to nuclear energy. He was highly critical of atom bomb and described it as ‘death for everybody.’ He wrote “The Bomb is the vilest of weapons, forbidden by definition, since there is no defense against it. If defense is what makes combat legitimate, the ultimate weapon against which there is no defense is all offense and totally evil. What is totally evil is also mad.”[25] In 1958, the members of the Ark campaigned against the production of the first atom bomb by France by a nonviolent “invasion” of a nuclear factory at Marcoule. This symbolic action was followed by many fasts and campaigns against the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

 

During the time of war in Algeria from June 1959 onwards, the activists of “Action Civique Non-Violente” an   independent organization promoted by the Ark was in the forefront of action against the internment camps where Algerians were detained on the ground of being 'suspects'.These activists went to these camps and demanded that they should also be arrested on the very same charge of being suspects. Later, they worked towards securing the right to conscientious objection to military service. In 1963, during the Second Vatican Council they fasted for 40 days in Rome to sensitize Pope John XXIII and cardinals ‘to condemn the arms race, to balance obedience to all authorities with conscientious objection, to introduce civil disobedience and to introduce non-violence.’ The encyclical Pacem in Terris, which came out just at the end of the fast, gave positive responses to the first three points.[26]

 

        The Ark played an important role in the victorious battle of Larzac (1970-1980) which prevented the Government plan to expand the military camp of Larzac by taking huge areas of agricultural lands for weapon testing. In March 1972, Lanza fasted for 15 days at Larzac to support 103 farmers who did not want to sell their agricultural land for military use. Lanza’s  intervention  averted a violent outbreak of the peasants. Seven hundred kilometres walk to Paris, and sit in under the monumental Eiffel tower and many other non-violent actions resulted in victorious ending of the battle. It will be remembered for ever in the annals of history not only of France but also the whole of Europe. 

The CANVA (Coordination of the Nonviolent Actions of the Ark) of St. Antonie l’Abbaye, is a new structure born from the Ark community which brings together companions and others in nonviolent action. It organizes campaigns and supports those institutions and individuals engaged in non-violent movements.  The CANAVA is engaged in civil disobedience for many years for the total ban of the genetically modified crops which denotes a public, peaceful, non-violent violation of a law, with the ultimate aim of changing the law/ rule or the socio-economic and political order that promotes these genetic modifications. The Ark has been instrumental even now in organising a number of protest meetings, prayer meetings, and symbolic non-violent actions in different parts of the globe in an effort to change the culture of violence and war to culture of peace and non-violence.

Epilogue

From the above analysis it is can be safely concluded that Lanza through his community experimentation and non-violent actions contributed to the spreading the message of Gandhi in the Western Society.  The life of Lanza is a source of inspiration for non-violent activists in the Western society because of his complete adherence to non-violence and principles of Gandhi.  The contribution of Lanza lies in the fact that without diluting the fundamental principles of Gandhi he successfully applied them in the Western world which was on the verge of a civilizational crisis.  The beauty and uniqueness of his message was the fusion of principles of Gandhi with the spirit of Jesus Christ or Christianity. Such a fusion is the need of the hour because the whole world is moving towards multiculturalism. It is to be noted that Lanza was a multifaceted personality who made contribution as a philosopher, non-violent activist, poet, painter, sculptor, writer and musician. Padre has observed “ Lanza del Vasto seems to have lived several lives in one. But he lived them – every single one of them – with a constant philosophy that sums up the subtitle of one of his books (“Principles and precepts of the return to the obvious”): “In praise of a simple life.”[27] Therefore, it is necessary to analyze his contribution in various fields. It is quite unfortunate that many people in the world are not even familiar with the contribution of Lanza in spreading the message of Gandhi in the Western society and rest of the world.  This paper is a modest attempt to address this lacuna. However, it is a positive development that his contributions are now being assessed in a number of fields like back to nature, degrowth, environmentalism and so on.

 

Notes and References

 

[1]. Lanza del Vasto, Pilgrimage to Nonviolence (Wardha: Institute of Gandhian Studies, 2017), p.14.

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. Ibid.

[4] . The first English edition of this book was published in 1972 by Schoken Books, New York with the title   “Return to the Source."

[5]. Lanza del Vasto, Return to the Source ( New York :Schoken Books,1972), p.100.

[6] . The emphasis is added by the author.                                                      

[7] . Ibid.,  p. 144.

[8] . Ibid., p. 161.

[9]. This is culled from the letter which originally appeared in Lanza del Vasto’s  work  "Le viatique" and was subsequently published in the "News of the Ark", special issue No.3, January - February 1991, as a tribute to Lanza.

[10]. Lanza del Vasto, Return to the Source op.cit., p. 290.

[11].See Rene Wadlow “Lanza Del Vasto: (1901-1981) Shantidas-Servant of Peace”

     This article  is available on the website : whttp://www.ovimagazine.com/art/16241

[12]. Lanza del Vasto, Return to the Source op.cit.,p.7.

[13] . Lanza del Vasto, Pilgrimage to  Non-violence, op.cit.,p.16.

[14].  Lanza  got married  with Chanterelle in Crécy-en-Brie on June 24, 1948.

[15] . As cited in  Claude Markovits , The Un-Gandhian Gandhi : The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma(Delhi:   Permanent      Black,2004 ) p.26.

[16]. Lanza del Vasto Gandhi to Vinoba: The New Pilgrimage (New York:Schocken Books,1974)

[17]. Mark Shepard , The Community of Ark (California: Simple Productions,1990)., p.29.

[18] . Ibid.,  p. 13.

[19]. The Community of the Ark Non-violence and Spirituality, Navigator 2012.

[20]. Lanza del Vasto's introduction to the French edition of 'Hind Swaraj'. Translated by Gerry Blaylock. https://www.semisottolaneve.org/ssn/a/30496.html

[21]. See Rene Wadlow “Lanza Del Vasto: (1901-1981) Shantidas -Servant of Peace” op.cit.

[22] . Lanza del Vasto's introduction to the French edition of 'Hind Swaraj'. Translated by Gerry Blaylock. https://www.semisottolaneve.org/ssn/a/30496.html

[23] . Siby K. Joseph, Lanza del Vasto: A Messenger of Peace ( Carcassonne: Gandhi International,2018)p.53.

[24]. Danilo Dolci (1924 –1997) was an Italian non-violent activist best known for his opposition to poverty,     social exclusion and the Mafia. He is popularly known as the "Gandhi of Sicily."

[25] . Lanza del Vasto, Warriors of Peace: Writings on the technique of Non-violence(New York: Alfred A. Knof,1974), p.104.

[26] . Antonino Drago  “The Five Political Prophecies of Lanza del Vasto,” Gandhi Marg, vol.37, Number1, April-June 2015, p.63

 

[27].  Padre , “Lanza Del Vasto, A Pioneer In Environmentalism” Posted on August 22, 2017. https://www.guardian-angel-reading.com/blog-of-the-angels/lanza-del-vasto-environmentalism

 

 

https://www.gandhiinternational.org/images/docs/edited_Lanza_del_Vasto_A_Messenger_of_Peace1.pdf

https://archive.org/details/sibykjoseph-ashrams-of-Gandhi-and-Lanza-del-Vasto

https://www.gandhiinternational.org/images/docs/Lanza_final_book_proof_August_10_august.pdf

                                                    Lanza at Sevagram Ashram  February 1937 

                                  Lanza's drawings of Gandhi 1937

                            Bhoodan Yatra  with Vinoba Bhave , Bihar 1954