Remembering Jim Forest ; Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan and Thich Naht Hanh were Mentors and Friends
On April 5, 1977, Jim Forest received a phone
call that his friend and collaborator Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, had been kidnapped
by the Argentinian government. The most likely outcome was death. From his
office in the Netherlands, Jim and his staff worked to free Adolfo. They
nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize as a publicity stunt to embarrass the
Argentinian government. Within hours, hundreds of papers picked up the story,
and fourteen months later Adolfo was released. Expecting nothing more to come
of this, Jim thought he had received a prank call the next summer when the
Nobel committee called to inform him that Adolfo had won the prize.
Not wanting to waste this opportunity, Jim
arranged for a meeting in Rome with Pope John Paul II. At this meeting, their
goal was to ask the pope that Arturo Rivera Damas be appointed as the permanent
successor to the recently assassinated Óscar Romero. Pope John Paul went on to
grant their request.
As a child, he learned about the horrors of
war when a minister at a local Methodist parish hosted two victims of the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had come to the US for reconstructive
surgery. Peering at their silk veils, Jim came to learn that hospitality to
those in need, those suffering, was far more important than politics. Despite
his many encounters with political events over the coming decades, he always
kept in mind that it was people who ultimately mattered.
It is unsurprising then that in 1960, while
serving in the Navy, Jim would find a kindred spirit in Dorothy Day. Dorothy
was a Catholic convert who founded the Catholic Worker movement, a network of
houses of hospitality that served the poor and promoted peace. Shortly after
discovering Dorothy’s writings, Jim visited Dorothy’s community in
Manhattan.
Before long. Jim had become a Catholic
himself, which complicated his military career. After his conversion, he
applied for CO status. Jim was discharged as a conscientious objector and went
to live at the St. Joseph Catholic Worker community in Manhattan.
Together Dorothy and Jim published the Catholic
Worker paper, protested war, and offered hospitality to all who
knocked. Through Dorothy, Jim met his two other mentors, Jesuit priest Daniel
Berrigan, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Jim visited Merton in Kentucky,
thinking of moving on from the Catholic Worker to become a monastic. Instead,
Merton told him the Holy Spirit had other things in mind for him.
By 1967 Jim had founded the Catholic Peace
Fellowship with the support of Berrigan and was working at the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. Through his work with FOR, Jim became acquainted with
Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh. Thầy, Jim assisted Thầy with his most famous
book: Miracle of Mindfulness, published in 1975
with an afterward from Jim.
On September 24, 1968, Jim and thirteen
others, the Milwaukee Fourteen, broke into the Brumder Buiding in Milwaukee,
liberated thousands of draft cards, and set them on fire with napalm. At his
trial they wished to admit as evidence a range of legal opinions against the
war in Vietnam, and a number of religious texts, including the New Testament.
The judge rejected this, saying that admitting the New Testament as evidence
“may create substantial danger of undue prejudice” in the jury.
In 1977, he and his family settled in the
Netherlands as he took over operations for the International Fellowship of
Reconciliation. With the war in Vietnam over, Jim began to turn his attention
to ending the Cold War. In truth, Jim has never seen a conflict he did not try
to peacefully end. Jim traveled to the Soviet Union to promote East-West
integration. Jim saw the Russian Church as a natural partner in this work. Over
the course of the ’80s, Jim made many trips to the Soviet Union, writing about
the experiences of Orthodox Christians there.
That same year, Jim took a step across the
Iron Curtain, and joined the Russian Orthodox Church himself. Where others saw
enemies, he saw fellow humans on the journey to God. Jim would go on to write
“It is not so much belief in God that matters, but love of God, and similarly
love of others, including love of enemies.”
Jim went on to run the Orthodox Peace
Fellowship, and write many biographies and theological works. He passed away January 13, 2022. He
was 80 years old
Below is a partial list of Books by Jim Forest. We suggest starting with “Writing Straight With Crooked Lines” This is an autobiography that will provide insight into who Jim Forest was.
Writing Straight with Crooked Lines Eyes of Compassion; Learning from Thich Nhat Hahn At Play in the Lions Den; Biography of Daniel Berrigan Praying With Icons The Root of War is Fear All is Grace; Dorothy Day Biography Loving Our Enemies; The Hardest Commandment Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins
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