Through contemplative nonviolence, we focus on the nonviolent Jesus and the Holy Spirit of peace, love, and compassion, and in so doing, we undergo a lifelong, daily, ongoing conversion to nonviolence, a new beginning that starts every time we sit to meditate. In this contemplative practice, we deal with our inner violence and surrender ourselves to the God of peace, even if we do not want to or do not understand why we should. We undergo a cold-turkey withdrawal from violence. . . . It’s painful and uncomfortable—and literally our salvation. This journey for the sobriety of nonviolence will continue for the rest of our lives. . . . It’s a long-haul, ever-deepening awareness, a daily surrender of our violence to God, so that over time we are transformed by God’s disarming love and sent into the world of war as God’s peacemakers. . . .
-- John Dear
Those who follow Jesus should attract the same people Jesus attracted and frustrate the same people Jesus frustrated.
