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London: An evening with Jim Forest

  • Malcolm Green

Jim Forest center, with Valerie Flessati, Gerry McFlynn

Jim Forest center, with Valerie Flessati, Gerry McFlynn

A good crowd of over sixty people, some from as far away as Oxfordshire, Coventry and Leeds, gathered in St Pancras Church Parish Hall, Euston for an Evening with Jim Forest.

Valerie Flessati set the scene telling us about Jim's background in the US Navy where he was a metrologist and shortly after becoming a Catholic applied to become a Conscientious Objector. He was involved with the Catholic Worker and the 1960 Catholic Peace Movement. He was the International Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation based in Holland for 40 years which during the cold war meant traveling in Russia and he got to know and became involved with the Orthodox Church.

We then moved on to a conversation between Jim and Gerry McFlynn. Of Dorothy Day, Jim said that "She was just as interested in me as I was in her" and he also recalled her bad temper but her apologies after were heartfelt, one letter he received he could hardly read because of the tear stains. It was through Dorothy that he met Dan Berrigan. A thought from Dan about our actions - Will this change? Will this divide? He referred a number of times to Thomas Merton and Seven Storey Mountain. Merton became a Conscientious Objector "If Christ didn't want to do it, I don't either"

Jim told us that he was imprisoned in summer 1959 for 13 months for destroying draft records. He referred to it as a sabbatical and said it gave him a chance to read all the books Dorothy had told him to read which were mailed to him. One day he received a notice from the mail room that a package had come for him from an unauthorised sender and did he want it returned or destroyed. He refused to tick either box and so had to see the governor. It turned out to be from NASA and a picture an astronaut had taken of the earth from the first moon landing. He has this picture on his device today and marvels it's a picture of the earth which doesn't show barriers. He had the idea recently whilst talking in Edinburgh that the picture could be made into a badge which would be a connection between the Peace Movement and Environmentalists.

Jim had recently met someone whose draft record he had destroyed who was grateful to him. Of course in those days that was the only record unlike today with computer backups.

Apparently Dorothy had a small statue of Joan of Arc. Jim didn't see how it fitted with Dorothy at all, but she told him that Joan was a saint of conscience.

Jim also reflected on loving our enemies, we should pray for them and quoted Merton "Compassion to those who oppose us - we all stand on the big ground of love."

Our thanks to Pax Christi, Thomas Merton Society, the Faith and Resistance Network and the London Catholic Worker for arranging such an inspiring evening.

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