Proving Your Worth

We all need to chat with an old person or at least read some of their wisdom to get the time- tested perspective on life. That's why reading 88 year old, Jesuit Priest Daniel Berrigan's interview in Sojourners Magazine was so helpful as I struggle to make a mark on this world.
For Father Berrigan, a peace activists, fighting for peace was worth the endless rally's, writing 50 books, and even imprisonment. In protesting the Vietnam War he torched draft files with homemade napalm outside a Maryland draft board office. In 1980, he hammered on nuclear missile nose cones which earned him a two-year prison sentence. In this decade, he protested the US Detention Prison in Guantanamo Bay. Between imprisonments he taught university students, lead spiritual retreats, volunteered with AIDS and cancer patients. All of this work and we are not any closer to a peaceful planet.
What would he tell younger activists? "One does what one can and lets the results go. The good that was to be done, was done because it was good, not because it goes somewhere."
I am so result oriented, wanting to accomplish something tangible before my life ends. It's almost as if I have to prove my right to exsist. I have a feeling I am not alone. Many of us think that proving ourselves in our ticket to stay here. We've earned our keep, so to speak.
Rev. Daniel, who now lives in the Kairos Peace Community in Manhattan, leads Bible Studies to people across generational lines and faith traditions. He believes that "The closer we are to Biblical wisdom, the less consumed we will be about proving ourselves and about ego and celebrity."
You can learn a lot from an old person, even when you are one.