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John W Hamblett's avatar

Last weekend my wife, Liz, and I were sat on the concourse at Kings Cross railway station in London, drinking coffee and waiting for our train, north, back home. A young man materialised at our side; a suddenly still figure in the shifting mass of folk in transit. He had a newspaper in his hand. Turns out he was homeless and selling the paper was the way he kept body and soul together. “It’s a really good alternative to the mainstream media”, was his sales pitch. The paper was called Dope. The front page was taken up by the legend, “Already Against the Next War”. I have it here. On the inside cover a strap line informs the reader that the paper is published, “in solidarity until everyone has a home and nobody lives in a cage”. It counsels the reader to “Let this radicalise you rather than lead you to despair”.

Dope is a kind of anarchist patchwork quilt comprising freshly written pieces and extracts filleted from texts of the tradition. We were reading bits and passing it back and forth between us on the train to Hull. I can’t remember whether Liz or I came to the last piece first. No matter. The concluding story was written by a woman who had opened a community bread making business. She named her enterprise, The Conquest of Bread, after the book written by the great libertarian-pacifist anarchist Peter Kropotkin.

I guess the bread-maker doesn’t know this, but she shares her reverence for Kropotkin with Servant of God Dorothy Day. However, she may well hear all about that link soon enough as the bread-making takes place in a small bakery in Hull. And, given that Liz and I are currently reading, The Conquest of Bread, after our morning prayer; and, as we are currently seeking some kind of encounter with local anarchists that we might re-engage politically during this weird time we have exchanged e mails with the baker.

Your latest offering landed in our in-box as we began our baker-outreach thing. Got to say, I love it, Jack. Our struggle is to find the language necessary to radicalise the faith and spiritualise the

anarchy. The attendant problems this endeavour encounters has been my major preoccupation ever since we quit the Catholic Worker. Still thinking. Don’t want this to get too long and clunky. So, et me quit, here. I may have suggested this before, but you really ought to read Jacques Ellul; Christianity and Anarchism, and The Meaning of The City, are slim but indispensable volumes. I would argue, strongly, that much the same could be said for Peter Kropotkin’s, The Conquest of Bread.

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L’Aura Claire's avatar

Thank you for this thoughtful piece 🧡 Nearing 60, having done such things as started a school of sustainability, facilitated for Occupy, represented the incarcerated at standing rock, gone through Al-anon, and come out of decades of yoga with the jewel of a simple daily 40 minute meditation practice, I have come to these same conclusions. Being only a few years into my contemplation practice, I am finding much loosening of neurosis and an expansion of the understanding of what it is to “hold space” for others. I still struggle with how to expand this into larger local efforts-projects but I trust that will come in time 🙏🏼

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