As I look
up at the statue of Gandhi and start to read the inscriptions
on the Walls of Names that surround the statue, a distant memory
begins to stir inside me.
I remember that Gandhi and his teachings used to be a very big
deal for me and for hundreds of thousands of others in my generation.
I remember when, in the distant past, I read the works of Gandhi
and of Martin Luther King and tried to live a life based on their
ideals. It dawns on me that I had even once thought of myself
as a "pacifist," had acted on those thoughts for nearly a decade.
How is it, I am asking myself, that I had forgotten all that?
And so I begin to think thoughts, and feel feelings, that had
somehow gotten buried over the years, buried under real world
problems like graduate school, career, finding and fixing and
paying for a home, raising kids and paying bills, and the other
daily details.
I remember 1961, marching across the Potomac along with thousands
of pacifists, religious leaders and other naive young idealists
like me, carrying Ban The Bomb and Student Peace Unions signs,
hoping and praying we could convince President Kennedy to stop
the open-air-testing of nuclear weapons, then to ban nuclear weapons
for ever.
Idealistic? Sure. But Gandhi proved that it's the idealists who
can change the world.
Today with open-air-testing banned for decades, we don't worry
about nuclear fallout. Back then we had nuclear fallout around
us all the time -- in the air we breathed, the food we ate, in
our bones, in the bodies of unborn babies -- and in everybody's
mother's milk. Strontium 90, they called it, a deadly nuclear
material with a half life of 28 years that, like lead, replaces
calcium in your bones. It was there thanks to the arms race between
the US and the Soviets.
And I remember how great it felt when we won that one, when President
Kennedy announced, first, a temporary ban, and then a permanent
ban on atmospheric testing.
Today as I stand under Gandhi's statue, I see Martin Luther King's
name on the Wall of Names and I remember something else I had
forgotten: the Freedom Rides.
Like
the night in 1962, when I was in a young college professor's living
room watching two African-American students (gently) pummeling
and shouting at a fellow black student who has gone limp on the
floor in the classic pose of passive resistance. I had forgotten
- but now I remember - this, my first lesson from the nonviolent
black civil rights group, the Students Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee in Gandhi's and Martin Luther King's teachings on the
use of nonviolence to change unjust laws.
Now
the rain lets up a little here at The Pacifist Memorial and I
watch as the ceremony finally begins with spirituals and gospel
songs.
The
songs bring me back to another night long ago, after a full day
of "sitting in" (black and white together) at the many whites-only
restaurants that then lined the highway between Baltimore and
Washington, DC, trying to use Gandhi's teachings to peaceably
force them to serve all races of people.
That
night, we all gathered at the Baltimore AME church to celebrate
our victory. No one had been arrested, no one had
been asked to leave, and some had actually been served in the
restaurants. We all joined hands in the church to sing spirituals,
"We Shall Not Be Moved" and "We Shall Overcome" and, right then,
as we crossed our arms and held each others' hands and swayed
to the music, we really believed it.
But
it had a larger sacrifice than all that. It took the assassination
of President Kennedy late in 1963 to shame Congress into finally
passing the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964.
I remember
all this -- and more, much more - as I stand there in the rain
looking at Gandhi. I recall that Gandhi himself had died at the
hand of an assassin. And then I see John Lennon's name on the
Wall and his "War is over if you want it".
I remember
how I never could reconcile myself to that unexplainable tragedy
- the violent haphazard death of John Lennon, the peace lover,
the gentle man, the metaphor for my generation.
Whew!
These are powerful memories of a tragic era in our national consciousness,
memories and feelings I had successfully held in check for 20
years, now rushing back in a jumble of emotions here in the rain
at The Pacifist Memorial.
What
is it about a statue and some piece of brick - the image of Gandhi,
the Walls Names -- that can generate such strong emotions.
I begin
to understand. You've seen those pictures of tearful veterans
with their hands pressed against the names carved on the walls
of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial? For me, The Pacifist Memorial
in Sherborn has just that effect. It is more -- a whole lot more
-- than just a statue and list of names with nice quotations.
It
is a gathering place for memories, a lens that magnifies and refocuses
our emotional recollections of forgotten friends, fallen heroes,
of time long past, innocent lives cut short, and of now-distant
ideals. A place to relive, to remember, and to mourn and to reconcile.
