John Dear, S.J.
   

April 30-May 2, 2010
Friday 6:30 p.m. dinner through Sunday lunch
$325   Earlybirds $35 off  

Program: Author, activist and Nobel prize nominee John Dear will offer a weekend of reflections based on the Gospel of John to help us on our life journey of peace in these difficult times of violence, war and global threat. His presentations will center on the theme of Life ---- that the God of Life has come into our world of death to lead us "to the fullness of life." If we dare follow the nonviolent Jesus, we must work to end the big business of death--war, greed, nuclear weapons, global warming and every form of violence. From the miracle at Cana to the raising of Lazarus to the resurrection of the peacemaking Jesus, the Gospel calls us to renounce every trace of violence, to non-cooperate with death, and so to live, as people of creative nonviolence, in "eternal life" here and now. The weekend retreat will include time for quiet prayer, small group and large group discussion, and renewing friendships for our journey to the God of life and peace.
 
An Additional Invitation:    JOIN JOHN DEAR ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN NEW YORK CITY AT A RALLY AND MARCH FOR A NUCLEAR FREE WORLD.  Cars will leave Kirkridge at noon, immediately following the Sunday morning liturgy and skipping lunch, in order to arrive for the event which begins at 2:00 pm in Central Park. Arrange your own car transportation with others attending the retreat or with friends.   The event marks the start of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference at the U.N.    
 
John Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, the former director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Award. As a longtime practitioner and teacher of nonviolence, he lectures, leads retreats and peace actions across the U.S. His many books include his new autobiography A Persistent Peace, a re-published Seeds of Nonviolence, and the popular Living Peace.

To register online, please click here.

John Dear spent eight months in North Carolina county jails for a Plowshares Action and has been arrested numerous times since then in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience for peace.  He has worked and witnessed for peace in other countries, as well.  After the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, John became one of the coordinators of the Red Cross chaplaincy program and worked with family members, firefighters and police officers. Today he lives in New Mexico where he helps coordinate Pax Christi New Mexico and works on a campaign to disarm Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb.  John holds masters degrees in theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California.  For information, see www.johndear.org 

 Other books by John Dear include: Jesus the Rebel,  Peace Behind Bars,  A Journal from Jail,  The God of Peace: Toward a Theology of Nonviolence, Disarming the Heart: Toward a Vow of Nonviolence,  The Sound of Listening,  The Sacrament of Civil Disobedience, Seeds of Nonviolence, Our God Is Nonviolent: Witnesses in the Struggle for Peace and Justice, and Oscar Romero and the Nonviolent Struggle for Justice.

For a full write-up of this program suitable for public posting, please click here.

 
 
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