Seeking the Elusive Divine Peace

by Ray Waddle

It took a six-month prison term at age 73 for Presbyterian minister Don Beisswenger to understand the biblical phrase, "the peace of God that passeth all understanding."

He was sentenced for a peace protest against U.S. foreign policy and released in October, but he'll likely grapple with elusive divine peace the rest of his days.

“As a nation we're so reliant on violence and military enforcement to meet our objectives," he said last month.

"People of faith need to live with a sense of waiting for God's coming. It isn't in our hands to achieve our aims. It's important to believe in God's promises and keep our hands on the plow. We have to do both things."

Beisswenger was sentenced to federal prison in Kentucky -- a minimum security camp for 500 inmates -- for his non-violent protest at Fort Benning, Ga., against an installation that trains Latin American soldiers, formerly called School of the Americas (SOA).

He trespassed in November 2003 and was arrested with 26 others. Prison turned out to be a time of political witness and self discovery.

"Every morning I'd spend time between 4-6 a.m. in solitude, journaling, reading, struggling to understand it all, but learning to let everything go, let the struggles go," Beisswenger said.

"That was a great gift. At night, I was blessed to feel peace, shalom. I don't know why it came. Prison strengthened my interior life. I worked very hard to be alone."

Beisswenger, a retired field education director at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, went willingly to prison. His politics and theology led him there -- a commitment to make common cause with voiceless people, whether homeless people in the U.S. or citizens in Latin America who suffer, as he sees it, at the hands of U.S. foreign policy. Several SOA graduates have been implicated in killing of missionaries or torture. The Army says no courses there advocate torture or abuse.

Beisswenger's life as an inmate was an adventure of flux, frustration and faith. He had to learn rigid daily rules that were never made clear. He tried to relate to fellow inmates who were in their own world of anger or grief. He had to use time wisely: He received 1,300 letters from well-wishers, and he felt compelled to answer every one.

"My time in prison was effective if only because it made more people aware of SOA," he said.

He did a lot of writing once he found a regular place for it (eventually the laundry room, using toilet paper boxes as a desk -- "It was perfect," he said.) He finished 25 essays on topics ranging from the wonders of nature to the emotions of prison confinement. He wanted to share insights with other inmates. It wasn't easy.

"I knew how to be alone, how to nurture solitude. It's very powerful work. Every day is a new day. I tried to share that in prison. I bombed out."

Other inmates didn't want to nurture solitude. TV, all-night card games and NFL football absorbed them instead.

"But the sacred life of inmates became clearer," he said. They carry around feelings of loss and remorse: They don't see their children, there's no one to touch.

"One thing you discover is prisons are filled with people who have deep feelings of grief, and few resources for dealing with it."

He befriended various inmates nevertheless, making copies of passages from his readings from Scripture or from Frederick Buechner and slipping them to individuals. Beisswenger was known to be different from other inmates -- a minister doing time for nonviolent protest, not fraud or racketeering.

Today his work continues -- advocating for sentencing reform, visiting inmates in Tennessee prisons, mentoring homeless people at Nashville's Downtown Presbyterian Church.

And he returned last month to Georgia for the annual anti-SOA protest. Beisswenger saw 20 people get arrested. "I saw a bumpersticker: 'Jesus said love your enemies and I think he meant we don't kill them.' That's the undergirding theme. I'm going to work on that despite all the odds."

Ray Waddle, a Nashville-based writer, is author of
A Turbulent Peace: The Psalms for Our Time.