Basics:

*  Born in the US South

*  Now resides in the Northwest USA and Palestine

*  Graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Theology and English in 2004

*  Dedicated to working with the oppressed and disenfranchised

*  Committed to pacifism and trying to live a Nonviolent life in every way



Details:

I was born and raised in the United States South, the son of a Christian preacher.  When I was 15, I moved with my family from the South to the Northwest, USA.  

My childhood is one mixed with good memories and nightmares.  I fondly recall playing sports with my father, attending church, making friends, spending time with extended family, etc.  I was relatively sheltered in my childhood, had a fair amount of stability, and was taken good care of, in many ways.  

On the other hand, there was a dark secret that stayed within my family for 22 years and cast a shadow over most parts of my life.  Early in my childhood, my father admitted to physically abusing his family; the violence and abuse started before I was born and ended (for me) when I left home at 16.  Because of my father's occupation, I was not allowed to speak to anyone about the violence that happened in the home or to me.  My mother and father fought hard and often, and although my father was the scary of the two (over six ft tall), my mother was also to blame for a good deal of the violence, both indirectly and directly toward me.

My parents managed to stay married through all of this, for better or for worse.  I have one brother, three years younger, and he also felt the violence in the home.  For him, the violence was a little more emotional (put downs, etc.) but over a longer period of time, as he didn't leave home until around 24.

When I was 15, I was big enough to fight back against the violence I received in the family.  I had never taken it completely passively, and my attempts to defend my mother or brother against the larger foe's angry outbursts (my father) had made me a greater recipient (in some ways) of the violence.  When I did start fighting back directly, though, the situation went from bad to worse.  I have not always believed in nonviolence and pacifism, and there were many fights at this point in my life where I used both my body and other weapons to "defend myself."  

Eventually, I realized that one of us, my father or me, was going to, literally, kill the other person.  Someone had to leave.  I haven't lived at my parent's home much since I was 16:  initially I attended boarding schools in high school, then I went to college.  

It takes some time to heal from 16 years of watching and receiving violence.  But, leaving home was, in my father's words, "probably the best thing I could have done."   

One of the most important gifts my father ever gave me was modeling the spiritual discipline of private prayer and meditation.  He encouraged me to develop my own practice, and since about 13, I have found much comfort, strength, and insight from my personal meditation time.  Taking time for reflection and prayer was just what I needed to cope with the violence around me.  Today, my personal meditation time has morphed from Bible study and prayer to a more quiet, waiting meditation, but I am still thankful to have the practice of taking time each day to get in touch with the divine.

When I was 18, I did what any good boy raised in the South does and registered to vote as a Republican.  My family wasn't overtly political when I was young, but I had to choose a party to vote in my US state primary, so by default, I registered as Republican.  

However, it was also about this time that I started to more fully develop my world view.  My parents, my father in particular, had always encouraged me to research answers for myself and not blindly trust authority, especially when it came to religion and the Bible.  These principles I applied to religion, but also to how my religion and developing spirituality might inform my world view and politics.  

My last year in high school, I took an Advanced Placement English course and fell in love with literature, study, and, eventually, the Liberal Arts (previously, my favorite subject in school was Math, but I didn't love school or the subject much).  I had always felt compassion for the poor, and even before I had developed a world view, I spent many weekends feeding the homeless in the inner city, participating in aid trips to Honduras and Brazil, etc.  But, the AP English course started me on a track of thinking about the world, especially the poor and disenfranchised, in a deliberate and, I hope, a compassionate way.  

During my first year in college, I was accepted into the Honors program, which allowed me to take smaller, specialized classes for Liberal Arts required courses (History, English, etc.), and this enabled me to continue developing my world view.  

After two years, I had the opportunity, through the Honors program, to study for a term at Oxford University (Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies).  Before I began courses at Oxford, though, I finished my second year of Attic and Koine Greek in Athens, Greece during the summer.  After Athens, I traveled throughout Europe, eventually ending in Britain to start classes.  

Oxford was the most challenging, yet rewarding academic experience I've ever had.  While studying Historical Theology, I enjoyed meeting one on one with my tutors and reading and writing the research papers (by the end of the term, I had written hundreds of pages of researched writing).  

I had been in an Oxford library researching all day when I returned home to the news of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.  Over the next few days, I watched with embarrassment as the US President said he was going to round up these thugs and bring them to justice.  Several of my tutors (who happened to be Christian) started passing out essays about the "Just War Theory" and C.S. Lewis's writings on war.  I had never given much thought about my attitude toward war, but I had been reading through the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament just before all this happened, and I couldn't help but think that Bush's words and the Just War Theory arguments seemed to fly directly in the face of the Nonviolence taught in the New Testament.  I raised some objections with my tutors at the time, but I admitted that I needed more time to research the issue and come to an informed opinion.  From an early age, though, Jesus' challenge to "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you," had haunted me, and I began to also realize the tremendous example of pacifism carried out by Jesus and the early Christian Church for the first 300 years of its existence.   

I took about a year to develop my beliefs about war and violence.  Although I attended classes on ethics, philosophy, etc. during this period, my readings and knowledge of the New Testament were most influential on developing my beliefs about violence and war.  Aside from the intellectual exercises, though, my personal past experiences with violence also influenced my developing beliefs.  For example, I started to reflect upon my responses to violence, and I saw that whenever I had responded to the violence in my family with my own violence, it only exacerbated the problem.  I could not think of one time in my personal life where "defending" myself with violence helped the situation--it only started the cycle of anger, revenge, and escalation, and the violence only stopped when one person decided he would not respond to the violence of the other person (most of the time, out of pure exhaustion).  

The Christmas season of 2002 is when I realized that I had made a decision about my attitude toward war and violence.  I had been talking with a professor at a Christmas party and sharing how I was essentially a pacifist, except that I wanted to defend the oppressed, using violence if necessary.  This professor challenged me:  Would you want someone to violently defend you against an oppressor.  "No," I answered.  "So then why would you do that for someone else?  If you believe God is the one to defend the oppressed, then let God do that.  Don't take over that role from God."  That is the moment, I think, when I embraced Nonviolent Pacifism and renounced all forms of violence:  physical, verbal, emotional, nonverbal, etc.  I continued in reading some of the great pacifists:  Jesus, Tolstoy, Gandhi, MLK Jr., but I also attempted to make my nonviolent pacifism personal to me--not merely a philosophy, but a way of life.  For me, it's a constant struggle:  simply because I adopt a nonviolent philosophy doesn't mean I'm nonviolent; rather, I have to continually strive to live a life where I see that of God within each person and circumstance.  Since I grew up around much violence, it's not easy for me to change to being patient, soft spoken (when necessary), slow to anger, etc.  The time I take in daily meditation helps me to be the person I want to be; I cannot say that I am Nonviolent--it's not a destination one arrives at, but rather a never-ending journey.  I seek each day and moment to be Nonviolent.

My belief in Nonviolence and pacifism is based on reasoned arguments and spirituality, but my personal experiences with violence help inform my intellectual analysis.  When I first started considering Nonviolence as an alternative, it was not because I wanted to "turn the cheek" or act nonviolently; rather, it was a challenge I felt called to pursue.  I am not, by nature, a nonviolent or peaceful person:  if someone hits me, my gut reaction is to hit the person back harder.  But Nonviolence is something I feel compelled to strive toward out of a conviction that it is the right thing.  I am not a pacifist because it works all the time (violence sometimes appears to be the easy, "quick fix" to a problem); I'm a pacifist because I have to be, because I believe its the only thing that will change the cycle of violence.

While on my way to becoming a pacifist, I had begun speaking out on my quiet, conservative Christian campus against the build up to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  At first, it seemed like I was a lone voice, but soon, many other students and faculty joined me in voicing concern, and we started a movement of Activists for Peace and Justice on campus, where there had not been any political or peace groups for some years prior.  By the time I finished college, I was quite well known on the campus for my trouble-making for peace.

Before graduating, I had the chance to enter counseling for over a year.  The counseling sessions helped me to process much of the violence I had experienced earlier in life, and they gave me a framework for continuing my healing.  Although I had taken classes to learn how to counsel other people, I needed to also make peace with the persons of my past (including myself).  The time I spent receiving personal counseling was essential for helping me to face some of my anger and resentment, let go of it, and learn alternative methods (different from what I grew up with) of how to relate to other people and situations.  My greatest fear had been repeating the violence I had seen in my family.  The counseling helped me lay down some of this fear and continue in my pursuit of Nonviolence.

In 2004, I graduated summa cum laude with an Honors BA in Theology and English, minors in Biblical Languages and Speech Communications.  After graduation, I spent a year volunteering with AmeriCorps and tutoring at risk students (grades K-5).  For a short time, I worked as a counselor at a local community college, but I soon found a home living and working at a Catholic Worker House, Guadalupe House.  This fit in well with many of my beliefs and desires:  the house functions as a transitional home for homeless people, and the community is involved in political action at the local, national, and international levels.  One event I participated in many times was the demonstrations they helped organize at Bangor Nuclear Sub Base (one of the largest stock piles of nuclear weapons in the world).  

I took a break from working Guadalupe House for a year to volunteer for a second year with AmeriCorps, this time with a Quaker program.  My volunteer site had me working at a homeless shelter in downtown Seattle, and this is where I started to realize that working with the homeless was something that I couldn't get away from (actually, I really enjoyed it!).  

Working with my homeless friends in this intense environment also taught me much about Nonviolence.  Specifically, I learned to hone skills in deescalation, knowing when to get in and out of the way, etc.  Many times, I felt like I was able to deescalate a situation pretty well, but a few times, I had people swinging at me or lowering their heads and charging me.  I also learned not to take a  violent outburst personally, as there's no way to perfectly respond to a situation like that, and many times, people are responding to internal stimuli:  voices in their head, chemicals in their body, etc.  It's always difficult for me to find the balance between keeping order and fairness and seeing God in each person, feeling compassion for them and their story.  One time in particular, I was a little hard on someone, didn't make an exception for her, and didn't believe her story, only to find out later that her story of having major physical disabilities from cancer and a recent surgery were true.  These instances made me seek to error on the side of compassion, not judgment (what may be fair but not kind).  

Toward the end of my year working in Seattle at the homeless shelter, I became a member of University Friends Meeting.  The unprogrammed Quaker meeting fit my theology and desire for actions of peace and justice.  I had attended Quaker meetings for several years and enjoyed their quiet meditation.  Also, after graduating from college, I had gone through a fairly major theological shift away from specifically identifying as Christian.  During this "faith crisis," I had existential questions on the nature of reality and was quite agnostic.  To make a long and complicated story short, I came to the place where I could say, "I believe in love.  I believe that humans should love one another, regardless of the questions about my existence or the existence of anything outside my 'self.'  Somehow, I know that I should love; and that love means that humans should not kill each other because we cannot make a judgment about who's life is more important than another's (and, if we kill each other, we cease to love).  If God is love, I believe in God."  I still admire the life and teachings of people like Jesus, and I continue to get inspiration from the New Testament (not so much the Jewish Scriptures), but I don't see Jesus as God, necessarily, and I don't believe in a God who would send people to Hell based on whether their beliefs are right are wrong.  Even before moving from Christianity, I had thought that one's beliefs are important only inasmuch as they influence how one lives.  Now, I look at some of the violence from the Jewish scriptures, and I see how many Christians behave and condone violence, and there's no way I can support that belief system or be affiliated with it.

It was a little difficult for me to join the unprogrammed Quaker meeting because of its associations with Christianity (although Quakers come from a Christian tradition, many unprogrammed Quakers today are not Christian but are bound together in commitments to peace, nonviolence, simplicity, silence, meditation, etc., etc.).  My desire to belong to a like-minded community outweighed my objections about a past affiliation, though, and I feel very welcome in my community in Seattle.

The other strain of interests that runs parallel to all of these latest events is my strong and persistent passion to work in Palestine with nonviolent resistance.  Since about 2003, I have wanted to work in Palestine.  My interests originally developed as I watched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan develop.  I came to realize that these wars are really symptoms of a larger problem of utterly failed US foreign policy in the region for the last 50 years and more:  a complete one-sided favoritism toward Zionism and the state of Israel at the expense of others living in the region.  So many of the conflicts in the Middle East stem from America's blind support of Israel, and the situation in the region would be much easier if a peace could be found between Palestinians and Israelis.  

As my reading and research of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grew, I also began talking with people who had visited the region, particularly a close University professor and a good friend.  After paying off college debts, I planned to try to work in Palestine.  Initially, I looked to work with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a pacifist group that does nonviolent accompaniment in hot spots around the world, including Palestine.  I first worked with CPT by participating in a two week information and humanitarian trip to the US-Mexico border in 2005.  Later, I attended another two week trip with CPT to Palestine (my first personal visit to the area) (see my blog and pics for more info on this).

After some time, it became clear that CPT wasn't the perfect fit for me and the work I wanted to do in Palestine, but out of my first trip to the region, I had networked enough and made contacts so that I could return to work with a local NGO based out of Aida Refugee camp, Bethlehem, West Bank.  Originally, I worked in the camp teaching English and computer classes, but the organization soon lost its funding, and I found myself with little to do in the camp.

Since I had originally wanted to work with direct nonviolent resistance to the occupation, when I had free time in the camp, I became more involved with protests against the Separation Wall and other Israeli tactics of oppression.  For a month or so, I attended protests almost every day in places like Bil'in, Ni'lin, Umm Salamuna, Al-Khader (Bethlehem), etc.  At one protest, I was lightly wounded in the neck with a tear gas canister fired from an M-16 rifle.  As I participated in more demonstrations, I saw many people injured around me.  I also started to become increasingly frustrated with some of the violent aspects of the demonstrations:  rock throwing, hatred of the soldiers, patriotism and nationalism, etc.  Eventually, I quit the demonstrations because, while I am certainly willing to make a sacrifice and get injured or worse for a Nonviolent struggle, I am not willing to make that sacrifice because someone wants to throw rocks (the Israeli soldiers use light violence like rock throwing as an excuse to lambaste protesters).  I do not support a violent nationalist struggle for independence; I want to find a way to love the oppressed and oppressors, to create a different reality through stubborn compassion and justice, not violence.  I left the protests to find this more peaceful, Nonviolent way to live and resist.  

After leaving the protests, I helped to manage a Palestinian peace hostel on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem for a number of months.  Eventually, I returned to live in Bethlehem and started teaching English classes in Hebron.  I continued to have good success with teaching English in Hebron until I left Palestine in late March, 2009.  

Since returning to the US, I have been struggling to get settled and stable again here.  I have finally been able to find stable housing and work--I am now working as a phone counselor to people trying to quit tobacco use.  So far, the job is rewarding, interesting, and challenging, and I am amazed at the struggles of people trying to quit their addictions.