Storytelling

Workshop Number 14

Led by Mary Loehr

In this workshop we were simply asked to share the stories - more specifically, the people, literature, maxims, and music - that have shaped our lives. Listed below are the personal responses of participants. The items are not officially endorsed by any agency.

- Vance Reese, reporter

Juanita Nelson

  • Persons: mother (and vice versa, She became a war tax resister), Wally Nelson, J. P. Norion (became Gandhian) Karen, Bob Beatty and others in the war tax resistance movement Person/Movement: Pauli Murray and the formation of CORE at Howard University
  • George Bernard Shaw: Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (except at the end where he advocates a woman's inaction)
  • Margaret Kennedy's book
  • Philip Hallie: Lest Innocent Blood be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon, and How Goodness Happened There
  • Author: Thoreau (thrown out of a Methodist camp for reading this)

Vance Reese

  • Biographies of Gandhi, Jesus, Saint Francis,
  • John Woolman, George Fox
  • Abraham Joshua Heschel: Man is Not Alone

Herb Myers

  • The Mennonite Mental Health Story
  • If We Can Love

Joffre Stewart

  • Hymn: “Down by the Riverside”
  • Persons: Sunday school teacher and chaplain who declared themselves atheists;
  • Corvy Bishop, William Ogburn and Meyer Nimkoff: Sociology (a textbook which taught that patriotism was something to oppose)
  • e. e. cummings: i will not kiss your fucking flag
  • Veblen Thorstein: Theory of the Leisure Class
  • Karl Marx: A World Without Jews
  • Author: Dwight MacDonald

Alan Gamble

  • Persons: parents
  • Sojourners (magazine)
  • Books: Agenda for a Biblical People
  • Jim Wallis: The Call to Conversion
  • Martin Luther King: Strength to Love
  • Biography: Gandhi
  • Leo Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God is Within You
  • Jonathan Kozol: The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home (chapters on famous persons, including Helen Keller, Martin Luther King; a good book for educators)
  • Maxim by Dorothy Day:We are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful.
  • Dan Hallock: Hell, Healing and Resistance: Veterans Speak

Mary Loehr

  • Author: Gene Sharp
  • People: Dorothy Day, Catholic Workers and Ploughshare activists (including Barbara Demme and Jim Douglas for a sense of working together)
  • Newspaper: The Catholic Worker
  • Walter Wink: The Third Way
  • Denise Giardina: Saints and Villains: A Novel (on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
  • Magazine: Unarmed Struggles (published by the Peace Brigades)
  • Community: Ithaca, New York

Nancy Rice

  • Place: Garrett Evangelical Seminary in the mid-1960s (taking a closer look at scripture, having challenging classmates)
  • Person: Max (husband)
  • Jean Houston with Margaret Rubin: Manual for the Peacemaker (initially scared to read it)
  • C. S. Forester: The Peacemaker
  • Daniel Berrigan: Trial of the Catonsville Nine
  • Magazine: The Catholic Worker
  • Workshop: on anarchy

Robin Harper

  • Biographies: Albert Schweitzer, Gandhi
  • Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet
  • Persons: mother (who promoted non-violent views),
  • A. J. Muste, B. Rustand, Larry Scott, George Willoughby
  • James Bristol: Primer on Pacifism (pamphlet)
  • The Friends' Peace Testimony (1660 submission to King Charles II that say, We utterly [condemn] war.)

Dirk Panhuis

  • Person: Stern, a Dutch minister, wrote thesis on the power found in service.
  • Magazine: Dutch monthly Fellowship of Reconciliation Journal
  • People: Gene Sharp, Martin Luther King
  • Movement: Divestment movement out of South Africa, and the Friends in the movement
  • Jan de Hartog: The Peaceable Kingdom (in 4 volumes)
  • Biographies: Nelson Mandela, Gandhi
  • Author: Mohandas Gandhi
  • Hildegard Goss-Mayer: The Power of the nonviolence. The Christian and the Revolution in Brazil. (Original title: Die Macht der Gewaltlosen) (about Latin America in the late 1960s)
  • Kate Penner (editor), Risking for Change. Stories of Ordinary People

William Galvin

  • Persons: son (especially in the 1980s draft),
  • Martin Luther King, Gandhi, John Howard Yoder, Ricardo Esquivia
  • John Howard Yoder: The Politics of Jesus

Jon Harmon

  • Person: parents (messages of ‘think for yourself ’and ‘be compassionate and kind’)
  • Howard Zinn: A Peoples History of the United States
  • edited by Cooney and Michalowski: The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States
  • Biographies: Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela
  • compiled by Margaret MacDonald: Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About
  • Saying: “If you think you're small and ineffective, you've never been in a tent with a mosquito.”
  • Civil Rights Movement /Vietnam Era

Dee Logan

  • Research: a report on Hiroshima done in grade school
  • People: grandparents and great aunt (all immigrants)
  • Culture: Native American heritage
  • Books about Native Americans
  • Time/Experience: the experience of being a child and the violence in the US nuclear protests
  • Saying: “Once you know something [and act on it], you can never go back.”
  • People: Cesar Flores, Fannie Lou Hamer, Noam Chomsky

Karen Brandow

  • Persons: Ellen Shapiro (8th grade friend who introduced her to political activism), Wally Nelson (who challenged: How can you be working for peace and paying for war?), Abbie Hoffman (for being fearless), and Randy Kehler.
  • Documentaries: The War at Home by Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown (on the Wisconsin Vietnam experience)
  • The New Underground Railroad (on the Salvadoran refugees)
  • Newspaper: various articles on what ‘our’ taxes are buying
  • Place: Living in Guatemala for eight years
  • Culture: Judaism, and Jewish history for providing the concepts of mitzvot and tikkun olam (the concepts of [divine] mandates for justice)

Ben Yoder

  • Corrie Ten Boom: Peace Be With You (read aloud by his parents)
  • Al Rhymer: My Heart is Turned to Mourning (shift from withholding to simple living)
  • Daniel Hallock: Hell, Healing, and Resistance: Veterans Speak (especially Steve Weynat's story)

David Zarembka

  • Place: teaching in Africa with Randy Kehler in the mid 1960s
  • Gladys Kamonya
  • Person: father, who served as the primary example of conscientious objection in Tanzania
  • Other mentions at the end:
  • Author: Noam Chomsky, Ed Maxwell, A. Cameron, Robert J. Lawson, and Brian W Tomlin: To Walk Without Fear: The Global Movement to Ban Landmines, Jacques Lusseyran: And There Was Light.