Isabel Allende: A Wonderful Truth

It is a wonderful truth that things we want most 

in life — a sense of purpose, happiness and 

hope — are most easily attained 

by giving them to others.

 

— Isabel Allende

 

Jean Shinoda Bolen: Women Changing the World

I believe that the thought that women together 

can change the world is emerging into the minds and 

hearts of many of us, and that the vessel for 

personal and planetary evolution is the 

circle with a spiritual center.

 

— Jean Shinoda Bolen 

Vaclav Havel: The Salvation Of the World Lies In the Human Heart

Deeply Relevant Quotes To Our Times

From Vaclav Havel

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them. 

This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.

Follow the man who seeks the truth; run from the man who has found it. 

A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.

Lying can never save us from another lie.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.

Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth. 

The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul. It’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. 

Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. 

It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs. 

Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works for only a few. To change this, we must learn to act toward each other and our environment in profoundly different ways. 

The question is wholly other, deeper and equally relevant to all: whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human "I." 

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self.

Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world. 

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge. 

We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality. 

Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart. 

Kings Bay Plowshares: Meet Two of the Seven Activists Who Secretly Entered a Nuclear Submarine Base

I listened to this program today on Democracy Now! and was struck by the sheer force of the courage, integrity, truth-telling, and profound concern and caring for life. I was so deeply moved. Wow. Tears. These are the true visionaries of our time who are committed to peace not war, to truth not lies, to love not fear, to healing not harm, and to the wisdom and compassion of a higher good for all and rather than the ego and greed-driven cultural stories and belief systems that are destroying our nation and the planet. These are the true heroes in our midst. May they inform and inspire us all. — Molly

***

"I believe that the United States nuclear arsenal is the linchpin of white imperialism being wrought upon the world," says Martha Hennessy, an anti-nuclear activist and the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, speaking from house arrest. "When I hear President Trump threatening these other countries, I can only take him seriously and take responsibility, personal responsibility myself, to try and raise a voice to make it obvious what is in the minds of these war planners."

We look at the resistance against nuclear weapons here in the United States. On April 4, 2018—the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination—seven Catholic Plowshares activists secretly entered Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, one of the largest nuclear submarine bases in the world. They were armed with just hammers, crime scene tape, baby bottles containing their own blood, and an indictment charging the U.S. government for crimes against peace. Their goal was to symbolically disarm the nuclear weapons at the base, which is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Each submarine carries 20 Trident thermonuclear weapons. The activists said they were following the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” It was the latest of 100 similar anti-nuclear Plowshares actions around the world beginning in 1980 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The first Plowshares action in 1980 was led by the late Daniel Berrigan and Phil Berrigan. Phil’s wife, Liz McAlister, was one of seven arrested at the April 4 action. McAlister and two other activists, Jesuit priest Stephen Kelly and Mark Colville, remain locked up in pretrial confinement in Brunswick, Georgia. Four others—Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta, Martha Hennessy and Clare Grady—are under house arrest. All seven could face years in prison, if convicted. We speak with Martha Hennessy and Carmen Trotta. Hennessy is the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Carmen Trotta helps run the St. Joseph Catholic Worker House in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we look at the resistance against nuclear weapons here in the United States. Last April 4th, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, seven Catholic Plowshares activists secretly entered Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, one of the largest nuclear submarine bases in the world, armed with just hammers, crime scene tape, baby bottles containing their own blood, and an indictment charging the U.S. government with crimes against peace. Their goal: to symbolically disarm the nuclear weapons at the base, which is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Each submarine carries 20 Trident thermonuclear weapons.

The activists said they were following the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares.” It was the latest of a hundred similar anti-nuclear Plowshares actions around the world beginning in 1980 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. That first Plowshares act was led by the late Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Phil’s wife, Liz McAlister, was one of the seven arrested at the April 4th action. Liz McAlister and two other activists, Jesuit priest Stephen Kelly and Mark Colville, remain locked up in pretrial confinement in Brunswick Georgia. Four others—Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta, Martha Hennessy and Clare Grady—are under house arrest. All seven could face years in prison, if convicted.

Well, I recently spoke to Martha Hennessy and Carmen Trotta here in New York at Mary House, a Catholic Worker home here in the city. Hennessy is the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Carmen Trotta helps run the St. Joseph Catholic Worker House here in the city. I spoke to them shortly before Clare Grady was released and put under house arrest. I began by asking Martha Hennessy about what they did when they entered the nuclear sub base April 4th.

MARTHA HENNESSY: I was with my friends, seven of us. And we spent nearly two years discerning and praying about what we could do. And we walked onto the base at Kings Bay. It’s not a well-known site of the U.S. military. And we walked there on behalf of people who couldn’t do such a thing or take such an action. And we walked there to expose the Trident nuclear arsenal. And we symbolically disarmed the nuclear weapons. We were not anywhere near nuclear weapons. But Carmen’s group got a little bit closer to the bunkers. But, essentially, we left Daniel Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine, there on site at the administrative building of the Strategic Weapons Facility of the Atlantic. We posted an indictment on the doors of the facility. We also had banners that read, “The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide.” And we put up crime tape.

AMY GOODMAN: And where did you go? Where did your—

MARTHA HENNESSY: I was at the administration building.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did you feel this was so important to do?

MARTHA HENNESSY: I believe that the United States nuclear arsenal is the linchpin of white imperialism being wrought upon the world. I think that we have used these nuclear weapons in ways, since Hiroshima 73 years ago. We have used this threat against the world in many different ways throughout history. And I felt that, for myself, I was able to take this kind of action, to do this kind of discernment, and offer up an effort to wake the world to the terrible dangers that we face. These weapons, as long as we have them, at some point, they will be used. And I have had trips to Russia, Korea, South Korea, and Iran. And when I hear President Trump threatening these other countries, I can only take him seriously and take responsibility, personal responsibility myself, to try and raise a voice to make it obvious what is in the minds of these war planners.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Carmen Trotta, you, together with Martha Hennessy and five others, went on this military base, the Kings Bay naval base. Describe what you did that day?

CARMEN TROTTA: Took a very long walk inside the base. The small group that detached with myself wanted very much to get as close as we possibly could to the heart of evil, which is to say the weapons systems themselves, and therefore we were disgruntled, really, initially, that there were no Trident submarines being worked on at the base at the time. If that were so, we would have tried to get to the Trident itself. The fact was that that was not so at that time, and therefore we went to go to the bunkers, where the nuclear weapons themselves are housed, and managed to cut a few fences and were very perplexed by the complexity of the last fence, frightened by it, frightened by being in a lethal-force zone.

And as we were contemplating getting through that last fence, there was finally, after a couple of hours on the base, a response from the base itself. And then we held our banner, which said that nuclear weapons are illegal and immoral, and wanted to show to the military something soothing to be able to say to them when they came. And so, when they came, we told them immediately that we come in peace, that we were unarmed, that we were American citizens, that we meant them no harm.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you have with you when you got to that area near the bunker?

CARMEN TROTTA: There were—we had hammers and blood and bolt cutters.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, blood?

CARMEN TROTTA: They’re vials of blood that were taken from people in the community, so it was our own blood. And the blood gets used as a symbol of life. Particularly within the Catholic and Christian faith, blood is the symbol of life. It is also—that level of red is also a constant danger warning. And as I think I tried to say before, the Plowshares actions are designed to sort of slap people awake to the reality that is before them. It is more alarm than anger. We are more alarmed than we are angry. Although I don’t want to put down the notion of being angry in the sort of persistent failure of what could and should be, you know, one of the greatest nations in the world, and the ongoing, persistent failure, particularly after World War II.

AMY GOODMAN: Martha Hennessy, what happened when you went to the administrative building? How money people did you go with? What did you come with? And how did the military find you on the base?

MARTHA HENNESSY: Well, they ignored us for a while. They had their hands full with the people at the bunker. They were most concerned about the people at the bunker.

AMY GOODMAN: With your group?

MARTHA HENNESSY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: With Carmen and his group.

MARTHA HENNESSY: The three people. And so, I was with one other person. And the two of us brought little hammers and vials of blood and Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine. And we put up our posters, and we saw that there were people working in the building. And we did not go into the building. The door was unlocked. But it was very quiet, very eerie.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened when the soldiers came?

MARTHA HENNESSY: Well, we were able to post our indictment and pour our blood and write “Love one another” and “May love disarm us all.” We wrote that on the sidewalks. And then we joined two other people who were at the display, the missile display, which welcomes visitors into the complex. And we joined them, and we probably were there for perhaps an hour, in both settings, before—we saw the cars going towards the other site, where our friends were. But they didn’t bother to handle us until at least an hour later.

To continue this transcript, or to watch the full video interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/23/kings_bay_plowshares_meet_two_of