I mentioned in my recent remembrance of John Garvey that I had known him for nearly 50 years. I met him when I was 18
years old. The folly of Vietnam had become alarmingly plain, I was facing the
draft and John was a volunteer draft counselor for the American Friends
Service Committee. John was my senior by only four years, but I assumed him to be much older. He didn’t offer advice, only facts about the law and the process, and wisely left me to sort out my position. For that I am even more grateful now than I was then, appreciating as I have come to do how rare that is.
The Garveys were heir to the long tradition of Roman
Catholic pacifism. (His father, John said, had died “reconciled to everyone
except Henry Kissinger.”) My objections to the war were not religious, but Vietnam was
not the last time we arrived at the same place by different roads. It is
probably unavoidable that a person of faith will tend to understand unbelievers
in terms of what they don’t understand, just as unbelievers will understand the
devout in term of what they won’t admit. It is impossible to say religion
wasn’t an aspect of my friendship with John, because it was so central to who
he was. But it was not a topic. I respected that he had come to his position
after a lifetime of study and reflection and he respected that I had, too.
In one of John’s last notes to me he said: “My
own writing has dwindled as the financial need to make a living from it has,
and the idea that I have anything to say that people need to hear seems more
and more vain.” I know the feeling. He added, “I am working on something, slow
growing, about faith and doubt and the need for doubt, the proximity of
agnosticism to the only belief worth having . . . but it’s coming slowly.” I’m
very sorry he didn’t get to finish that book.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2015.
