Whisper of Conscience

One day while I was at work in the U.S., I got a call from a man who said he had been appointed my parole officer. He had not given anything but his name in identifying himself at the switchboard, and he assured me that he was being careful "not to reveal" to my employer the fact that I had "a criminal record."

I was impressed by the personal concern the man obviously had for his clients, but I couldn't help laughing. I explained, "In my case, there is nothing to worry abouteveryone here knows. In fact there is a picture of the 'crime' over my desk and another in the hallway of my home."

The parole officer, who later came to visit, continuously shook his head while with me. He kept saying, "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before."

Though that year on parole is long over and I am now living in Holland, the photograph is still over my desk. It occasionally still surprises visitors who have nothing to do with the peace movement. The photo shows a group of 14 people, about half in priestly black suits, having a prayer service around a huge bonfire. We were burning files of the nine draft boards serving the city of Milwaukee, an event that took place September 24, 1968. That action resulted in our imprisonment. It was the sixth experience of imprisonment for me, and the longest - about 13 months.

"Do you regret any of it?" a visitor asked recently. "No, not a bit." In fact that last stretch in prison, though it was hard on some other people important to me, was for me mainly a time of recovery and deepening my life, praying more, reading things I hadn't had time for.

I am grateful for my own arrest and prison experiences, and I know others who have a similar gratitude. Even so, undertaking actions which can lead to imprisonment is not something I easily recommend to others. There are people for whom prison is destructive, embittering, or deeply disillusioning. Its impact on husbands, wives, and children also has to be considered.

Not all the reasons that people take part in acts of civil disobedience are good ones. For some, involvement follows from the hope of winning admiration and acceptance from a certain community or group in which civil disobedience is a common practice. For some it follows from being told that inability to undertake acts of civil disobedience shows that you aren't yet "serious" - you're still in the movement's vast kindergarten.

Some, especially men, are shaky about being accused of cowardice for their renunciation of armies and violent methods; they want to be seen as "manly." Surely the readiness to face rough handling by police and to endure time in jail will show that you have John Wayne's toughness, even without his six-shooters.

Some are drawn to civil disobedience because everything else seems so insignificant and slow: knocking on doors, standing at street corners, handing out leaflets, trying to get signatures on petitions and pledges. (In fact it may be less frightening to face jail than to talk to strangers, especially those who look like they support "the other side.")

And certainly there are those who simply don't know how to say no to someone they very much respect and admire and who seems to want them to say yes.

Personally, I am cautious about civil disobedience, both because of my concern that it be well-conceived and have both an awakening and encouraging effect on ordinary people, and because it is crippling for an action to include participants who are in it for the wrong reasons.

In conversation with those considering participation in civil disobed ience, I have always shared a saying by Leon Bloy that I first learned while with the Catholic Worker in New York: "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

Bloy didn't mean some sort of Christmas-card good cheer that is entirely innocent of suffering and grief. It is rather the joy of a God-given clearness about the way ahead, if only the next few steps. After much searching and talking and reading and praying, finally there is a deep certainty. That's real blessedness, even if the way ahead is in a difficult direction. You know you are on the right track, that you are acting within God's special hope for your life.

This is what conscience is about. It isn't that there is one good thing to do and many bad things, and you have to get the one right answer. There are a lot of good things that need to be done, and you have to somehow figure out God's hope in your own life and how this is part of the special vocation God is giving you.

It isn't easy. We never get finished with having to struggle to hear conscience. It tends to whisper. It sometimes, perhaps often, pushes us in ways we (or others around us) don't want to go. Maybe to jail. Maybe not to jail.

The attempt to hear conscience is made more complex by the fact that peace movements, like every other gathering of human beings, include those who are more than willing to take over the role of conscience in your life. Sometimes they can seem so brave, so bright, so absolutely right. But they aren't your conscience.

Nor is there anything all that special about jail. It isn't a nobler place to be than all sorts of other places. Whatever others may think, you aren't really a hero for being there. It is another place where people live, a special kind of ghetto. But it is profoundly valuable to be there if that is where God wants you and if going there is a consequence of being faithful.

Jim Forest was general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and a contributing editor for Sojourners when this article appeared.