Celebrant's Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection by Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Abstract

Reviewed by: Celebrant's Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection by Bill Wylie-Kellermann Ryan Di Corpo Celebrant's Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection. By Bill Wylie-Kellermann. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. 212 pp. $23.00. The radical life of the late Jesuit priest and poet Daniel Berrigan, at once revered and ridiculed for his provocative acts of nonviolent resistance against the death march of war and imperialism, is welldocumented in numerous books, essays, and documentary films. Berrigan, most remembered as one of nine Catholic activists who, in 1968, illegally burned 378 draft records in a Catonsville, Maryland parking lot, was himself a prolific author. At the time of his death in 2016, Berrigan had published more than 50 works—some collections of poetry, some musings on the Old Testament prophets, some chronicles of the anti-war protests that made him an unlikely icon. (Full disclosure: I personally befriended Berrigan during the final months of his life.) It is despite numerous detailed studies on Berrigan's legacy that Detroit-born activist and retired Methodist pastor Bill Wylie-Kellermann, who first met Berrigan in the early 1970s, has delivered to us a truly unique commentary in Celebrant's Flame. Pulsating with the rhythms of poetry and protest, Kellermann's book presents a kind of spiritual symphony, a collage of personal reflections, friends' recollections, and essays by contemporary peacemakers. The book, moving freely between topics ranging from Scriptural exegesis to French absurdist Albert Camus, is best read slowly, [End Page 61] savoring its prose interspersed with Berrigan's hallmark poetic flourishes. This is a book for contemplation, to be read with the temperament of monks and the righteous fever of prophets. Calling us to lives of "radical discipleship," as Mr. Kellermann terms it, Berrigan ruffled feathers—and bruised egos—in the hallowed halls of American political power and the institutional church through a stubborn, stalwart rejection of violence under all circumstances (4). Kellerman, who was studying at New York's Union Theological Seminary when he came to know Berrigan, describes Bible studies with the Jesuit as striking the soul with paralyzing force. "Never had I met anyone who took The Book with such life and death seriousness," writes Kellermann. "I got knocked off my horse. A tidy worldview crumbled. I do not exaggerate: I was struck nearly dumb and wandered the seminary for a time more than a little lost" (79). Kellermann regards Berrigan both a spiritual mentor and a confessor, a prophet who outright refused such an august title. (Berrigan once chided an "idiot headline" in The Baltimore Sun which asked if he and Phil were modern-day prophets) (82). A major strength of this volume is that it offers a generous helping of Berrigan's poetic works. His verses—sarcastic then sincere, challenging then comforting—reveal an innate Christian sensibility, a worldview imbued by the spirit of peace. In his five-part poem "Vietnamese Letter," his meditations on a nation scarred by war highlight a distinctly Eucharistic flavor. "[T]he sweet earth, punished by ruffians' fists / heals like a rising loaf, a bread of heroes," he writes (73). In "Homily," he extends the metaphor of our world as the Body of Christ: "Said; a cleric worth his saltwill salt his bread with tears, sometimes.will break breadwhich is the world's flesh, with the world's poor,count this his privilege and more—" (37) Celebrant's Flame is also aided by four essays by Berrigan's friends, who provide valuable insight into his personal character. John Bach, once an inmate with Berrigan at Danbury federal prison in Connecticut, recalls a weekly class on great novels. "[I]n that prison classroom I marveled at Dan's insights, eloquence, spot-on analysis, and the implications for what passed for politics," writes Bach (17). "In the evening […] Dan would brew concoctions of coffee, hot chocolate, with melted Snickers bars that were shared amid all the laughter" (18). Catholics familiar with Berrigan will find Celebrant's Flame replete with fascinating, little-known details about his life (Did you know he [End Page 62] wrote unproduced television screenplays?) and timely reflections on his legacy today. Catholics unfamiliar with Berrigan...