A Week at Ghost Ranch
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - Rose at 5 a.m. and took my camera across the road to photograph Chimney Rock and other views as the sun rose. Went down the hill for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. then back up to the Tumbleweed bunkhouse on the mesa for the Telling Truth to the Powerful and Not So Powerful workshop starting at 9:00 a.m.
A theme raised in the workshop and in evening worship services throughout the week was “Empire.” The leader, Carol Wickersham, was the founder of the No2Torture movement within the PC(USA) and used that as an example of the principles covered in the workshop. Some of the handouts for today were:
Five Reasons Torture is Always Wrong: And why there should be no exceptions written by David P. Gushee, PhD. who is Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy and Senior Fellow, Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership, at Union University, published in the February 2006 issue of Christianity Today.
Inhuman Behavior: A chaplain’s view of torture written by Kermit D. Johnson who is a chaplain and major general in the U.S. Army (retired), published in April 2006 issue of The Christian Century.
The General’s Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, become one of its casualties written by Seymour M Hersh, published in the June 25, 2007 issue of The New Yorker.
Carol also mentioned two books:
The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements written by James M. Jasper, PhD. who is currently an independent scholar living in New York.
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think written by George Lakoff, PhD. who is a cognitive linguist on the faculty at University of California at Berkeley. This is a very valuable book that helps explain why there is so little productive dialogue between conservatives and liberals in America today.
And a letter written by Capt. Ian Fishback to Senator McCain that was printed in the Washington Post on September 28, 2005. In his letter Capt. Fishback asks “Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security?”
One remarkable observation from the No2Torture initiative is that people coming from radically different perspectives can find common ground on specific moral issues. For example, retired military personnel and anti-war activists could agree on banning the use of torture.
This idea was bolstered by an editorial published in the Washington Post on Thursday, July 26, 2007 written by P. X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner who both worked in the Reagan administration. The article was titled War Crimes and the White House: The Dishonor in a Tortured New 'Interpretation' of the Geneva Convention.
After lunch on Tuesday I planned to hike up to Chimney Rock but there were thunderstorms in the area so I decided it would be safer to hike Box Canyon. However, the 12th time I crossed the creek I remembered the warning about flash floods and wondered whether Box Canyon was such a good alternative. In the end no thunderstorms passed over Ghost Ranch and I had a good hike.
The evening worship service after dinner was inspiring but also surprising. When a congregation consists of ministers and active lay people the responsive readings and hymns are joined with great enthusiasm (and volume). It made our Sunday mornings at Pilgrims seem a bit anemic.
