Too Long a Sacrifice
Bowman, David J.
this time discovering unplumbed depths of his own prior experience in Mexico, unsuspected compartments on the "left side" of his mind, where lurk eschatological lessons long before taught...
...He is more careful later, but I fear the unwary reader will have a skewed mind-set...
...They saw hundreds of illegal actions--seizing of petrol stations, blocking of roads, intimidation of workers at the entrances to estates--go unpunished...
...The writing is clear, but the "beauty" mentioned in the blurb is confined almost entirely to the last paragraphs of each chapter--evidence that they were originally separate articles...
...But for now, it is likely that the violence will continue...
...I do not know anyone living in Northern Ireland who thinks civil war is unlikely...
...Himself an obvious apostate, he calls his witches "little sisters," finds in don Juan a perfect being, sees in the Eagle a faint An ever more important book reflection of man...
...He describes the "moral limbo" of civic life, the discrimination against the minority, the intransigence of the majority, the role of Mr...
...There is nothing here to gratify an interest in Indians, Mexico, anthropology, healing, or drama...
...A Lewis or Day found that choosing Christianity meant Commonweal: 314...
...C]EEATIVE HSLOCAT/011--TIIE NOVENENT OF aACE Robert McAfee Brown Abingdon, $7.95, 144 pp...
...Paisley in fomenting trouble and helping the IRA grow...
...I am sure the book is inaccurate in a couple of important matters...
...Presently Carlos is resurrected as an amnesiac...
...Be that as it may, Jack Holland succeeds admirably in describing the conflicting emotions that have pervaded Northern Ireland during the recent past, as civic events flow on and violence besets the communities...
...they enter a condition known as "glory...
...Emilie Griffin is an advertising executive interested in the dynamics of conversion because of her own passage from Christian Science through Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism...
...The Belfast Provos seem recently to lean further leftward...
...Even time may not tell...
...The first seers were made by the Eagle, Which put them into the world to recruit, train, and lead other seers "to freedom" -- that is, out of this inferior realm, up to a higher and better place...
...Veteran Juanists will no doubt cherish Castaneda's solemn instructions for would-be lucid dreamers, his recapitulation of lxtlan's ethics disguised as an exegesis of stalking, his sly allusions to currently fashionable wonders: Atlantis, pyramid power, parallel universes, right-brain function, shared dreams, sensory deprivation, altered states, elephant man, astrological character types, Ouspensky's wheel of fortune, Gurdjieff's planets, cosmic anatomy, and the god who has forgotten his divinity: Indeed, Castaneda is a fountain of allusions...
...I TURNING REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF CONVERSION Emille Griffin Doubleday, $8.95, 189 pp...
...Don Juan calls his disciples together to announce his imminent departure from this world, but Carlos forgets the announcement in that "other momentous event of jumping to certain death and not dying...
...They should get credit for this...
...As one of my Northern Irish friends said, this is the most optimistic scenario possible, and in my opinion is unreal...
...The Eagle does not care about man's actions and yet It has provided man with a passageway to freedom...
...Then, within an hour of the deadline for candidates, Maguire dropped out--for reasons not made public, but intimidation seems likely...
...Both have often called the official IRA "Communist" as a tactic in their internecine strife over territory in Belfast...
...His account of the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and Provisional IRA, their ups and downs in violence and non-violence, has an authenticity probably provided by David McKittrick, Belfast writer for the Irish Times, mentioned in the preface...
...Every cycle of seers leaves a redemptor behind to begin a new cycle, each cycle guided by the Rule of the Eagle...
...no merely logical "solution" is possible, with bigotry setting the scene and the dead ruling the living...
...The one on "Identity Crisis" is accurate and basic...
...They were willing to be used for peace, and they helped bring about a cease-fire at Christmas, lasting for six months...
...for" the human part of the Eagle is too insignificant to move the whole...
...For Nationalists: anger, despair, frustration at the twin evils of political disfranchisement and juridical mistreatment...
...Turning develops the maturation thesis tactfully, blending personal reminiscence and analysis with materials from other converts such as C.S...
...Was it a vote for terrorism, or simply for keeping a Unionist out of Westminster...
...Since this aquiline Moloch governs all creatures equally, men cannot pray tO It for grace or favor...
...This may be the direction in which things will go, but hardly in the way he predicts: no civil war, because the Loyalists would not fight for "Ulsternationalism" and the Provos would not fight with the British gone...
...Pray for the people in the north...
...is the majority "British" or "Ulster-ites" or "Nortltern Irish...
...For Loyali'sts: fear of being "betrayed" by Britain and of losing their cultural heritage as well as political power...
...for awareness is the Eagle's food...
...Although they draw on different resources, they share a faith that God uses time for our maturation, even when we resist him...
...A phone call from Dublin this morning brought news of Sands's victory by about 1500 votes--so the political whirligig will spin again...
...A recent conference on "Federalism" co-sponsored by Glencree and Corrymeela offered some encouragement to those of us who believe in reconciliation, first in the north and then in the whole island...
...The author thinks the UFF has always been a pseudo-organization, a cover for UDA killers...
...He says the UDA's "real business is assassination" again...
...The Dublin group has been consistently merely socialist...
...this time discovering unplumbed depths of his own prior experience in Mexico, unsuspected compartments on the "left side" of his mind, where lurk eschatological lessons long before taught by don Juan, but then quite forgotten on don Juan's command...
...Nonetheless--not because It loves Its creatures but because It values awareness--the Eagle has granted one gift to living things: the power to disobey the summons at death and thereby to preserve awareness beyond death...
...He was shot in the heart as he was celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital chapel...
...John Oarmody T HESE TWO fine books make an interesting comparison...
...The Ulster workers' strike in May 1974 not only brought down the Faulkner partnership government, but immensely increased the minority's distrust of the police and army...
...He says: "the greatest and most disastrous compromise was the creation of Northern Ireland itself . . ." so he will surely arouse more than thought in the majority there...
...Communist" they are not...
...In general, they confirm his factual account and .most of his evaluations...
...therefore, it seems unreal...
...In a nutshell, gnosticism: This world is to work one's way out of...
...These were the same "law and order" forces which had been arresting and jailing people merely on suspicion...
...It !s up to the seers to follow the Rule, which is not a story but a map...
...The immediate context of this review is the Fermanagh election April 9, in which Harry West of the official Unionist Commonweal: 312 Party was opposed only by Bobby Sands, a Provisonal IRA prisoner in the Maze who had been on hunger-strike since March 1. Other Nationalist-oriented candidates dropped out in favor of an independent, Noel Maguire, brother of the deceased M.P...
...When they die, their awareness floats to the Eagle's beak, there to be eaten...
...With a preface by Jorge Lara.Braud Father Placido,~who worked many years with Archbishop Romero, relates the inspiring story of a timid man who became a fearless prophet for social justice...
...I think this election makes Jack Holland's book even more important, in that he gives a sense of the resentn~ent in the minority community that goes far to explain such phenomena as this election...
...It is frankly nationalist, stating that British withdrawal is essential to a political solution, but it also goes far to destroy the IrishAmerican myth of the Provisional IRA "political patriot...
...The Amnesty International and Bennett reports have only deepened this distrust, although the present Chief Constable, Jack Hermon, is more and more seen to be fair...
...Jorge Lara-Braud, Inter.American Ecumenistand Director of the Councilon Theologyand Cultureof the Presbgterian Churchin the U. S. Illustrated $7.95 paperback tailed and accurate...
...The police-army-judiciary relationships, and their centrality to both the security of the powerful and much of the resentment of the powerless, is deARCHBISHOP ROMERO Martyr of Salvador by Placido Erdozain...
...The don Juan books have lately turned into a morbid magic theater, where entrance is not for everybody...
...I hope it does, and that i...
...TOO LONg A SACRIFICE Jack Holland Dodd, Mead, 510.95, 217 pp...
...He describes Belfast 1969-71 as the "type" of the problem, and Direct Rule as a belated and undesirable attempt by the British to take responsibility...
...With a prefatory poem by Ernesto Cardenal "There is no one quite like Dora Pedro, a witty, fiery, mystical, practical poet-priest, bishop of the poor, defender of the Indian, a combination of Oscar Romero, Helder Camara, Dan Berrigan...yet he is also a 'typical' priest of the ~:hurch that has given the world so many saints and martyrs in just the past decade...
...The author begins thus...
...Just before being eaten by the Eagle, awareness passes through a momentary purgatory...
...The Protestant clergy took the initiative toward the December 1974 Feakle meeting with PIRA, not vice versa...
...they struggle with a problem not of evil but of error...
...The majority has plenty to fight against, and to fight with--one hundred twenty thousand registered rifles, for one thing, plus guns retained by ex-B Specials...
...Quite so...
...instead one endures an allegorical ordeal, where metaphor piles on metaphor, contrivance on contrivance, emblem on icon without relief...
...What I am describing," writes Castaneda, "is alien to us...
...But the process in any scenario will be long and difficult...
...Our views on the UDA differ, too-although I admit that my friendship with Glenn Ban" may color my judgment...
...From the moment a warrior understands the nature of awareness, don Juan tells Carlos, he ceases to be a person, and the human condition is no longer a part ofhis view...
...Robert McAfee Brown is a prominent Protestant theologian interested in the dynamics of grace because of his own passage from cradle Presbyterianism through Christian ecumenism to liberation theology...
...All of us who write or speak on Northern Ireland run the risk of misleading others by referring to "nationalists" and "loyalists" (or whatever other political terms are used) by religious affiliation, "Catholic" and "Protestant" --too often giving the impression that bad religion is still basic to the conflict...
...David J. Bowman I N my judgment, this is one of the best popular books for Americans since Gary McEoin's Northern Ireland: Prisoner of History in 1974...
...Jack Holland says he has written a book to arouse thought, rather than slogans...
...Lewis, Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, Avery Dulles, and Dorothy Day...
...They knew both "sides" would try to use them, but felt the time was ripe for opening up channels of communication between the British government and the Provos...
...there are such people, but I do not know them...
...Yet the Republican Clubs in the north have some capable political operatives, like Seamus Lynch on the Belfast City Council...
...Jack Holland shows again and again how brutal the Provies have been, and how they have disregarded the nationalist people more and more...
...His chapter on sectarian murders is poignant...
...This sixth book is an intricate, mysterious...
...He details the "five techniques" used by the army in 1971 on men arrested under the Special Powers Act, whose "inhuman treatment" led to a lasting distrust of uniformed or plainclothes forces...
...His seers possess free will to disobey the Eagle's summons...
...Thomas E. Quigley, USCCAdvisor for Latin America "Bishop Casaldaliga's no-holds-barred answers to his trusted questioner personify the stunning witness of the new church of Brazil in which he, as pastor and prophet, and poet, leads a daily Christ-like defense of the Amazonian poor against the powers of death...We, U. S. Christians, need to read this book...
...bizarre,-but tedious labyrinth wherein Castaneda cultists will gleefully lose their minds and the general reader will quickly lose the thread...
...They talked of the northern Loyalists' view of PIRA...
...Much of the naffation is mere synopsis, devoid of action or feeling..In vain one looks for sex, love,human relations, or normal emotions...
...Holland's book with some close friends, north and south, of various ideologies, whose experience and judgment I trust...
...Reports from the recent conference on "Federalism" have it that Glenn's "Independent Ulster" stood up well as an alternative to other proposals...
...A Merton or Dulles, wrestling with Roman Catholicism, had a definite doctrine and discipline to confront...
...Let me detail something of how each book develops this thesis and then risk reflecting on it briefly for another winter of our discontent...
...The author's suggestion at the end shows no originality: British withdrawal, an ail-lreland conference, a 32-county state with a Bill of Rights...
...All living things belong to the Eagle, their creator and reason for living...
...4.95 paperback o At bookstores or write ORBIS BOOKS Maryknoll, NY 10545 Write for new catalog 'MYSTIC OF UBERATION A Portrait of Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga of Brazil by Teofilo Cabestrero...
...According to one of those lessons, now remembered: The power that governs the destiny of all living things is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity...
...Maybe his next series of reports will provide this balance...
...Gangster" is his word for them since 1975...
...w'ill reach even the thinkers in Northern Ireland...
...I began this review in Washington in March, then asked the book-review editor to let me finish it after visiting Ireland-Northern Ireland April 1-9, so am continuing it on April 11 in D. C. My idea was to check out my opinions of Mr...
...His intimate and personal recollection of a gentle pastor who refused to abandon his people and who gave preferential treatment to the poor is published one year after ArChbishop Romero's martyrdom...
...He is in good company in depicting it so, but surely the most evident historical fact is that by far most of the people in the north try to live decent, industrious, loving lives--like Jack's mother, for instance...
...I would call it "Marxist" or "leftist...
...My main quarrel with the book is its excessive focus on violence as the historical reality--violence from both "sides" and from security forces...
...I prefer to Conversion & maturation think that Andy Tyrie is a force for moderation, and that the New Ulster Political Research Group is genuinely converted to politics...
...This left the running open to Sands, for whom a strong campaign was waged, playing the "green card" of anti-British, antiProtestant, anti-establishment emotion and conviction--as West was playing the "orange card" again, in a disheartening reprise of the past...
...Jack Holland sees much Communist influence in the conflict...
...Partly because of its close use of these other authors, it evokes moods of the 1930s and forties, when Christian faith probably seemed a more exact entity than it does today...
Vol. 108 • May 1981 • No. 10
