S4 Ep 7 Faith & Friendship

Network Sting: MSW Media

Martin: Hello and welcome to the fourth season of The Martin Sheen Podcast with yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course. And I’m delighted to be back hosting this podcast pilgrimage where the destination is still and always will be the journey itself. Along the way, I plan to share stories and personal memories of some of the many people, places, and events that have helped to shape my lifelong happy and continuing struggle as an artist and a man to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. I also hope to explore poetry as a powerful form of expression and communication by proxy, as it were, and how poetry is such a vital and necessary component of our spirituality and our public discourse. And from time to time, I’ll invite friends, fellow actors, poets, scholars and family members to join our pilgrimage and discuss what inspires their artistic journey. And so, friends, let us continue.

Martin: Often on this podcast I have shared stories about my faith and as I say, “my life-long journey to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh.” And so I sat down at the mic to have a talk with an extraordinary man who has been on that journey with me for more than 40, as a friend, an inspiration, and a hero: Father John Dear.

Martin: Welcome. You are the first person to be interviewed here that didn’t have a name Sheen or Estevez.

Father John Dear: Wow. Well, thank you for having me, Martin, and, thank you for the podcast. I’m so happy about it because now the whole world can know your great spirit of love and joy that your friends know like I know, and more people can know you the way I do.

Martin: Well, I was afraid of that and ah…

John: Well, I told you it was gonna be rough.

Martin: Okay, John, that’s the. You and I go back. Okay, you and I go back a ways. Tell me, when did you, when did we first meet? It was a dark and stormy night.

John: Dark and stormy night. It actually it was a dark and stormy night.

John: We…You had just gotten arrested at Riverside Research with Daniel Berrigan, our great friend and mentor. We’re both like groupies of Dan. And there was a, young activist friend of ours named Jack Marth, who was arrested with you. And Jack said to you, oh, you gotta meet John.

Martin: Ah.

John: And you were just, had just finished “Wall Street’ like that day or the day before, and then you got arrested. And so you said, well, let’s meet him. And we met at the church in, Time, in Washington Square at 8 o’ clock on like a Wednesday night. And you said, let’s go for a walk. And I think you were staying at the Sherry Netherland up and

Martin: Because we walked all the way to it.

John: We walked till three in the morning and he and I talked and we’ve been talking ever since.

Martin: Because I remember that night we walked. I thought we walked all night. I guess we did.

John: Well, we like 4 in the morning.

Martin: Yeah.

John: And we only scratched the surface of the topics.

Martin: Yeah. So, you and I, went through some extraordinary times together, as you say, with Dan and Phil. Dan Berrigan was your mentor, your teacher, your hero really. Tell us about him.

John: Well, I entered the Jesuits in 1982, right after I had gone on a walking pilgrimage through Israel, being a dopey 21-year-old kid. And I’m visiting the Chapel of Beatitudes and I’m all full of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount and I saw all these jets swoop down over the Sea of Galilee and bomb people. It was the summer war of 1982 and I was so on fire with the Beatitudes, I, I said I’ll spend the rest of my life teaching this, Jesus’s way of peace and nonviolence and the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount. Two weeks later I entered the Jesuits. What do you do? And I’m still trying to do that. I wrote a letter to Daniel Berrigan and he kind of never recovered. And I met Phil before.

Martin: Phil was Dan’s brother.

John: Philip Berrigan the great antiwar activists and brothers. They were in their 60s then. I was in Pennsylvania, Dan is in New York, Phil’s in Baltimore. I meet Phil and he goes, you’re interested in working for peace, kid? I go, yeah. He goes, go get arrested at the Pentagon and report back. And I did, not being that bright as a Jesuit novice, it didn’t go over that great. But I met Dan and I went on 100 retreats with him and wrote books with him. And he’s, I’m now his literary executor. He was my mentor and friend and teacher. Almost like the Buddhists. The Buddhists have a guru monk or the Hindus. That’s the way Dan was for me and maybe a bit for you.

Martin: He was, yeah.

John: For us he was like our own Gandhi because he was so much fun. But he said things.

Martin: He was so disarming.

John: What language is he, speaking in? Because he was a poet and he was like a reincarnated Irish poet from the 17th century who’s trying to get rid of war and nuclear weapons and Jesus. So he, he’s, I’m now 22 and asked by Pax Christie to interview him because I throw myself into the peace movement and I go to interview Dan. And I’m in fear and trembling and I’m asking about his life and work. This is ‘83 or ‘84. And I want to ask him the meaning of life.

Martin: And he said it was a stream. And you said

John: And I, I’m, I’m so scared. I’m going, Father Berrigan, Father Dan. Dan, what’s the point of all this again?

Martin: Yeah.

John: And without missing a beat, Dan said to me, when I was a kid, all you have to do is make your story fit into Jesus’s story.

Martin: Wow.

John: I thought he was going to say, go end all wars, kid. And I was scared. That was getting the meaning of life for me. That worked.

Martin: Can I tell the story about attending your very first Mass after your ordination? You’re from, Maryland, but

John: D.C.

Martin: but you did most of your work in D.C. among the poor at St. Aloysius, which is very near the capital. And I, would visit you there on occasion. We would do some work with Mitch Schneider and the homeless in Washington. And then I went overseas for something and I came back

John: South Africa.

Martin: Oh, I was in South Africa. And I managed to get back into Washington on the very morning of your first Mass. And I rushed to St. Aloysius. And your first Mass was in the basement. It wasn’t even in the upstairs.

John: I didn’t even rate.

Martin: But it was your very first Mass.

John: Standing room only

Martin: Standing room, it was packed with all the, the activists that you knew and loved for all those years, and I was lucky to be among them. And you began the Mass with this. May the grace and peace of God, our Father, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the love of the non-violent Jesus be with all of you. And the crowd erupted. And I had never heard that phrase from a Catholic, non-Catholic, or anybody in my life until that moment that the nonviolent Jesus was what this was really all about. And that was the guy we’re supposed to be following.

John: It’s so powerful. And I’ve been saying it every day since. And you helped me a lot because you were moved by.

Martin: Oh, so now it’s my fault.

John: It’s always your fault. And I always say, well, you don’t know Martin Sheen. Anyway, I’ve been trying through actions and books and talks and preaching every day since then to tell the world that as Dan Berrigan said to me once, Jesus didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but wow, was he not passive. Jesus was totally nonviolent. His whole message is universal love, universal compassion, universal peace, and Gandhi’s right, and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King. That means total nonviolence. And if you claim to be a follower of this guy, the journey is total nonviolence. Isn’t that great? And that’s what you and I learned from Dan and what we’ve been trying to do. And, how can we become more nonviolent? Help create a church of nonviolence. Help, create a more nonviolent country and world. How am I doing here? And welcome God’s reign. So Jesus is saying the kingdom of God.

Martin: We’ll be right back after this word from John.

John: I’m just getting going here. It’s the coffee, folks. He’s been giving me too much coffee.

Martin: Oh, my friend, so great to hear these words. And I want to take you back. Before you were a Jesuit, you were a student at the University of Duke. And you’re laughing already. You know what I’m going to ask you? Mary Lou Williams and Paul Farmer were there. Tell us who Mary Lou Williams was and who Paul Farmer was.

John: Yeah. So your listeners. Martin is a friend of mine, truly. And so he knows all these crazy stories and episodes. When I was a wild college kid at Duke University.

Martin: You were a musician, a rock, a rock

John: Well, I wanted to be a rock star.

Martin: Yeah.

John: Or a newspaper publisher like my father, or a lawyer. And none of that worked. I became a Jesuit, a priest. Where did I – So I, was really serious about music, and it was never going to work, but, I mean, I was studying Rachmaninoff, and, and I was in this crazy fraternity, and there was a party every single night, and we were all the number one students at Duke, and, you know, wild. And so I was a history major, and I loved it. And I decided not to believe in God. I’m really gonna see how it goes.

Martin: Very practical decision. I see that. Yeah. A lot of good that did you.

John: It didn’t work. God was like, yeah, kid, go ahead with that. Let’s see how that works. And so, because Martin knows me, in the room next door to me in the fraternity, I guess my next year this kid shows up. He’s 16, a full scholarship. He was the number one student in

Martin: And he was?

John: Alabama! Paul Farmer, who becomes the world’s number one prestigious doctor, maybe in history. And then, I am taking classes with the leading jazz pianists of, I think, history. And that was Mary Lou Williams. Now, she was 76, 77.

Martin: And she was teaching at Duke at the time.

John: Right. She was legendary in the 30s and the 40s. So she knew boogie woogie. She wrote a lot of songs. She played for Duke Ellington. Her best friends were Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, and I kid you not. And, so you couldn’t get into the class because there’d be 500 people in the auditorium, in the orchestra, in the music school, where I spent hours every day before the evening party. By the way, I signed up for the class on the first date.

Martin: Did you have any idea who she was?

John: Yeah.

Martin: Oh, you did?

John: I was, you know.

Martin: Okay.

John: And I was serious about. I was recording music and bringing musicians in, and I went to…

Martin: Were you really talented? Were you really good? I’ve never heard you play.

John: No, I gave it all up for Jesus. Thank God for everybody. I know it’s all in my ego, my delusion. It was so much fun. But, I’m in this room, and then she strolls in, and she sits down, and, oh, my God!. She started playing boogie-woogie and just tore up the piano. She played for two hours, and she never talked. And the idea was she was trying to teach white kids jazz. And she worked. She was the number one teacher in campus. And then she stopped, and she goes, y’, all, the point of my class is that jazz is love. And I’m going, oh, now we’re getting somewhere good. I never. No one at Duke talked about love. But anyway, what happened is that I went up to her because you know me. I’m shameless. I said, Ms. Williams, will you teach me how to play jazz? And I’m, like, the only one who did that.

Martin: Is this during the class or after?

John: After class. And so she took me in to try to teach me jazz.

Martin: You had private lessons with her?

John: Yeah. It didn’t work.

Martin: She got rid of you?. She wrote you off.

John: But then I decided one day. I always joke, I was knocked off the fraternity bar stool. I saw the light and decided to become a Jesuit. I had to give my life to Jesus.

Martin: Well, we’re not there yet.

John: Anyway,

Martin: Mary Lou Williams.

John: Well, I was just going to say

Martin: She’s part of that journey.

John: Yeah. Because then I started going as a trained by the priest to be a hospital chaplain at Duke Hospital. And I’d go in.

Martin: and she became ill.

John: She became full of cancer my senior year. And so I went in once a week and then was going in daily because we were already friends. And I was sitting with her, and I would say, just sit at her feet like she’s in bed. She didn’t have any visitors. Tell me your life story.

Martin: Just like that?

John: Yeah. And she did. And she knew I was going to enter the Jesuits. And she kept saying to me, john, don’t forget, it’s all about love. God is love. And I thought, you know, I knew Mother Teresa really well, that she’s the only other person that I felt such universal love from. Unconditional love. Mary Lou Williams. She should be a saint.

Martin: Yeah. So you would bring her, um, communion while she was ill, and you were with her right up to her death? Yeah. When did she die?

John: She died the week after I graduated from Duke in May 1981. And she had a couple of friends with her. And, she was a great saint. And, she taught me the possibilities of love.

Martin: Yeah. We’ve done her story here from Blessed Among Us, Robert Ellsberg’s book. And we added, uh, the fact that a documentary was done on her called Music on My Mind. And so if any of our listeners get a chance to see that documentary.

Martin: We’re going to take a little break now but I assure you there’s much more to come. Please stay tuned.

Martin:  Welcome back.

Martin: I just want to remind our listeners that we’re interviewing Father John Dear, an old and dear friend, an activist, and one of my dearest friends, as well as a personal hero in my life. And I want to talk about another, I’m going to drop another name before we go too far. I’m going to talk about Ethel Kennedy. I know that you were close, particularly toward the end of her life. And I don’t think a lot of people realize how extraordinary a woman this was. Although, we knew her. But you knew her far better than anyone I know that wasn’t in the family. Would you agree to that?

John: But, and you and your wife Janet, she knew her and loved her, too, and a lot of her friends, whom we knew very well. And I had connections because just before I entered the Jesuits, I worked for the Robert Kennedy Memorial foundation, which was headed by Bobby Kennedy’s best friend, David Hackett. And I was his personal assistant. So I had a connection. But finally I was in Florida maybe 10 or 12 years ago, and Ethel called me and said, will you come and spend a day with me? And I did. And we hit it off because we knew so many people. And I knew

Martin: She adored you.

John: Yeah, I knew David Hackett. And so, Oh, my God, the story. She was so funny, but I gave it right back to her. And so we sat down that day and she told me her entire life story, the most intimate stuff and what it was all like. And really her family and then Bobby and then the kids. And then I saw her every three months for the next 10 or 12 years and said Mass with her. But she was like nobody else I never knew. Full of life and vim and vigor and sports and everything you’d think about her, but my God, what a faith she was. It was beyond any doubt. She was like, totally believed in God and “let’s get on with it!”

Renee: And she was really no nonsense?

John: Oh, she invented no nonsense! And, oh, my God, and the whole family, everybody, we were all coping with Ethel, but I got to know her in such a deep way and pray with her. I got to pray with her and talk with her about God and coach her through some stuff that they suffered so much and they still are. And I thought she was great, but I knew it in a different way than her friends or her family. And I met all her friends. I’d go there and there’d be 40 people in the living room going, why are you all here? Ethel called us all and said, I want you to meet my new best friend. And now John will say mass.

Renee: Oh, no,

Martin: A very brief one.

John: Anyway, Ethel was great. And the odd thing about that mass was the daily readings was, love your enemies. and so I talked about universal love and I said, Ethel, that’s what you and Bobby did. You tried to end the Vietnam War. And everybody started crying. It was such a profound experience. God bless Ethel and everybody. And we all have to learn from her this fullness of life, living life to the full. And with Bobbie trying to stop war and injustice and racism in the culture of death. And she was, continued to the end. She was an activist.

Martin: Yeah. I want to talk about another activist, Jim Lawson.

John: Could talk forever about Jim. Yeah.

Martin: Ah, let’s talk a little bit about Jim Lawson.

John: Really?

Martin: Because I was with you when I met him in jail.

John: Yeah. And you didn’t know who he was.

Martin: I had never clue. No.

John: Giving them an, I’m giving.

Martin: Martin, tell the story about how we ended up. So what happened was hanging out with you.

John: In 19, November 1989, the six Jesuit priests were killed in El Salvador. And I had lived there in 85.

Martin: You knew them personally?

John: Yeah. Under their tutelage, they’re all smoking cigarettes, and they’re sending me out to the refugee camp. And they’re going, when the death squads come in, we’re going to send you out there, and let’s hope they kill you. I mean, it was tough. These guys were tough. And it was war. Huh? Was at the height of the Salvadoran war. Well, they’re all brutally assassinated. And there’s, we massive demonstration around the country, and I’m on the phone telling you what we were doing in the Bay Area, you started telling our friends in LA and they picked it up, which was regular, really meticulous Gandhi and nonviolent campaign at the Federal building in San Francisco. And then you guys started it in LA and you called me and say, come on down. And I got. Bill O’ Donnell and Davida Cody, our really close friends, and they start a weekly campaign called the Wednesday Morning Coalition.

Martin: And people from the Catholic Worker as well.

John: Catholic Worker, of course

Martin: Catherine and Jeff.

John: Jeff Dietrich.

Martin: Jeff Dietrich.

John: So the first time, though, there were a thousand people and a couple hundred of us got arrested, but

Martin: We would succeed, and mind you, this is before 9-11, when you could protest on federal property without fearing you’re going to jail for six or eight months or longer

Renee: Before the Patriot Act.

Martin: Yeah. So we shut down the federal building every Wednesday morning.

John: Every Wednesday morning.

Martin: And no one came in. And for months. And so it was an every Wednesday morning deal. They saw us coming. We marched from La Placita up to the federal building, only a few blocks away, and they saw us coming and then said, prepare, you know, to buckle down. Here they come again. And we would have prayer services in front and then we would shut it down.

John: And it was happening across the country. And after two months of this, US Military aid to El Salvador was cut.

Martin: Ended.

John: Yeah.

Martin: And ended the war.

Martin: Yeah

John: Now, of course, the killings went on for other reasons, but that first day, Jim Lawson is up there speaking.

Martin: I didn’t have a clue who Jim, Lawson was. So tell us.

John: I didn’t know either what was going on. They handcuffed us and in fact, did throw 125 of us men into this large room in the basement of the federal building.

Martin: It was where they kept Immigration,

John: Right.

Renee: The federal building right there in Westwood?

Martin: No, no, not Westwood. Downtown.

John: Downtown Main Street. And we surround and shut it down. And, you know, Jackson Brown’s playing Lives in the Balance and Jim Lawson’s up there preaching. This is Jim Lawson. He was Martin Luther King’s best friend besides Andy Young, and he wrote everything. He was the brains of the movement. He’s the guy who brought him to Memphis. And now he’s the pastor of the famous Holman Methodist Church here. And we were friends ever since with Jim, you and I.

Martin: He refused to stay on the floor.

John: Yeah, you can tell.

Martin: He shimmied up the wall.

Renee: While he was still handcuffed?

Martin: While he was handcuffed with his hands behind his back. And the guard came in and said, mister, you better get back down on the floor. He said, I’m terribly sorry, but my back is killing me and I’m not a young man anymore. And I, except for the guards and Reverend Lawson talking, you could hear a pin drop. And we thought, oh, my God, we’re in enough trouble to begin with. You know, now what? You know. And the guards left, said, we’ll see about that. And the guard came back with a couple of more guards. And they said, mister, you better get your ass down on the floor. He said, I’m terribly sorry and I don’t mean to offend you and I’m not being difficult. He said, but I’m in such pain, I can’t hardly bear it anymore and I’ve got to stand. So please understand. You better get down, mister. I’m, warning you. And I did the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I don’t know why or how or I don’t know if I’d ever be able to do it again. I shimmied up the wall and the guard looked at me and yelled, you better get your ass down, mister. What are you doing? And I said, I’m standing with the preacher. And the whole room got up and started singing. Do you remember?

John: Yeah, yeah,

Martin: for sure.

John: But it’s the power of non-violence. And we still need. I just want to say for the record, we still need to keep resisting and standing up and sitting down and doing what we can to end the culture of war and racism. Can I preach? nuclear weapons and fossil fuels?

Martin: We thought you’d never stop up.

Renee: Exactly what we expect.

Martin: We were counting on it.

John: Getting no respect here.

Martin: John, tell us about your podcast.

John: Oh, I have a wee little podcast don’t you know. It’s called the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast.

Martin: What a surprise.

John: I’m a big-name dropper. It’s a free global podcast. It’s also on the National Catholic Reporter every Monday and on my website, beatitudecenter.org and I give talks on Jesus and nonviolence. And I have guests on, the first one was this prestigious actor, Martin Sheen.

Renee: Oh, really?

John: Yeah.

Renee: How did you get Martin Sheen on your show?

John: I don’t know.

Martin: It’s outrageous.

Renee: Oh, well, there you are. Sorry. Okay.

John: It was just a practice episode. How am I doing here?

Martin: You’re doing great, John.

Renee: Fantastic.

Martin: As we say so often on this program, these proceedings are concluded.

John: And on that note, thank you very much.

Martin: Thank you, John.

Renee: Thank you.

John: And Martin, thanks for doing this and bringing your spirit and your great, all your, the hope you give to all of us around the world and, and, and the hope of peace and love and joy that we don’t have to be grim as we stand up and say no to war and nuclear weapons and poverty and we can follow Jesus and still be cheerful because – you better stop me otherwise I know –

Martin: I’m not gonna stop you. I’m gonna ask you just one maybe last little…

Martin: Consider this from French philosopher Voltaire. Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities.

Martin: The following is a selection from the book “Blessed Among Us” by Robert Ellsberg. The book is filled with daily reflections that explore the lives of saints as well as ordinary men and women with extraordinary stories of courage and spiritual awakening.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Jesuit Priest and Poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in England to a prosperous Anglican family. Though he excelled at Oxford and seemed destined for a brilliant career, these expectations were dashed when he announced his decision in 1866 to become a Roman Catholic and then a Jesuit priest.

Hopkins was a gifted poet, but in becoming a Jesuit he presumed he must renounce his literary interests. In 1875, however, he read about a shipwreck off the coast of Kent. Among the victims was a group of Franciscan nuns escaping anti Catholic persecution in Germany. When his superior casually mentioned that it would make a good subject for a poem, Hopkins felt authorized to resume his writing. It was as if a dam had burst. The result was his epic “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” one of the most remarkable poems in the English language. In compressed, highly charged language, he used this event to describe the victory wrought by Christ through his passion and resurrection. Yet neither this nor any of his subsequent poems was published in his lifetime. His friends found his revolutionary style bizarre and incomprehensible.

Hopkins spent most of his life in obscure religious assignments, wracked by doubts regarding his abilities and accomplishments. Only toward the end of his life did he seem to resolve the identity of his vocations as priest and poet. Poetry, he came to see, was his only means of naming and replicating the sacramental character of the created world; It was his way of expressing his true being and thus returning praise to his Creator.

Gerard Manley Hopkins quote: “The world is changed with the grandeur of God.”

Born in England on July 28, 1844, he died of typhoid in Dublin, Ireland on June 8, 1889. Gerard Manley Hopkins was 44 years old.

Robert Ellsberg is an American publisher specializing in religious and spiritual exploration. He is editor in chief and publisher of Orbis Books. He lives and works in upstate New York with his wife.

Martin: I invite you to delve further into the works of the poets I shared with you, and I hope you seek out writers and poets whose work speaks to your hearts and minds with the power to inspire your life. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe to my podcast, The Martin Sheen Podcast, with your host, yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, wherever you find your podcasts. Yeah, I still have to say that.

You can find a complete list of the poets and titles of their poems that I’ve chosen at our website, themartinsheenpodcast.com.

I want to thank the people who make this podcast possible. Our producer and research assistant, Renee Estevez, whose explanation of the Internet really gets me thinking, “What’s for lunch?” And our sound engineer and editor, Bruce Greenspan, the man behind these rich and seamless recordings with the much-deserved nickname the Sound Surgeon. And I especially want to thank you, our listeners, for joining me.

And so, friends, we part with the prayer from Tagore.

Where the heart is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead

habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—

into that heaven of freedom (my Father) let our country awake. Amen

Renee: The Martin Sheen Podcast all rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written consent of the author and TE Productions

Renee: “Blessed Among Us: Gerard Manley Hopkins” by Robert Ellsberg is included here by granted copyright permission and we thank the author for this opportunity to share his work.