Chris McDonnell, UK
christymac733@gmail.com

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January 23, 2019

Ours to care for

Things happen when we least expect them. Events change us. Gifts console us.  

Many years ago that happened to a friend of mine, Jim Forest. In the Summer of ‘69 Jim was serving time in a US prison having taken part in a protest against the on-going war in Vietnam.  

In late September of the previous year, 14 men broke into Milwaukee’s Selective Service office. Their intention was to remove and destroy 1-A draft records, some 10,000 of them, containing the names of those young men about to be drafted into military service in Vietnam. Five of those involved were Catholic priests;- one of the laymen was a peace activist, Jim Forest.  

The draft records were burnt with home-made napalm on a nearby patch of ground whilst they joined hands in prayer and waited to be arrested.  

During two weeks in May 1969, 12 of them stood trial. Found guilty, each served a year behind bars. That was how Jim ended up in prison in July that year. That’s where he was when the first Moon landing took place in July. The Whole Earth image brought back by the Apollo 11 crew became as famous as the Earth rise image from Apollo 8. An unexpected gift, a package from NASA addressed to Jim, was delivered to the prison. In it was an original print of that image. For the remainder of his serving time it was propped up on a small table in his cell, an icon of our planetary home, an iridescent globe in the vastness of space. The print remains in Jim and Nancy’s home in Holland to this day.  

He often takes a laminated copy with him on his lecture tours, as he did when he recently visited Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, where he was guest speaker at a Pax Christi gathering.  

It was from these meetings that the idea of ‘Whole Earth’ lapel badges arose, using the Apollo 11 image as the central motif.  

In our time, fifty years on, there is an urgent need to be reminded of the constraints for us living on our small earthly home travelling in the void of space. Jim reports that the Catholic Worker group in Glasgow has now made a thousand badges, each with the message, “Ours to care for.”  

When we meet a stranger we often ask where they come from by way of opening a conversation. Maybe their accent gives us a hint. It was the accusation made against Peter when he denied knowledge of the Lord “Why, even your accent betrays you”. And when we find that there is common ground- “yes, I've been there, I know that place”. Conversation flows.  

When Jim e-mailed me about the idea of the Whole Earth badges, I began writing a few words. “What is your name? Where do you live? What street, what town? What numbered place? Tell me your story“. That led me on to remembering childhood in South London, a world that seemed large and endless. Caught in a local environment, where a visit to the shops was a long journey for small legs, impatient to be home, we spent our days. "The street was different then, wider, larger, gardened-green, caught in a child's gaze.”      

We all remember places and people from our first few years and have to come to terms that nothing stays the same. Time is a measure of forward movement — there is no going back. People change and the place we shared is altered. I can still remember the apprehension of stepping off the pavement to cross the path of occasional passing cars to reach the waiting tram. All a long time ago with roads much busier and shops now full of many and varied goods in stark contrast to post-war London years. “Now it has changed but then so has the address. No longer a street but a ball, balanced in space, a common place of refuge, shared with others."  

A child’s concept then of a ball was of something held in the hand, something to play with. Now, “That street, a whole earth speck held by gravity to its attendant star. Blue, orange, brown, flecked with white, cratered with human life and pain ravished by the loss and stain of our indifference.” So much has changed that we “Move out, to look back in wonder, re-name our street, the spoken word beneath our feet.”  

It is not surprising that there is confusion all about us as we struggle to live with each other, as strife overtakes order and the news is of conflict and anger, pain and loss.  Old certainties are discarded as we face a future unsure of the outcome. Parliamentary democracy has entered unchartered waters in recent days as a solution to the EU debacle is sought. Maybe Seamus Heaney was right after all – ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’.

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