52. Pitch Your Tent
I mentioned in #13 having a couple of years when I went to the national Clown, Mime, Puppet, and Dance Conferences. I heard the following story at one of those events. And it is true.
There was an Episcopal bishop in Wisconsin. He was invited to a national symposium on hunger and it was being held at a very posh retreat center in Westchester County in New York State. It felt like a real dilemma to him. He wanted to be at the symposium. He wanted the opportunity to have input on the issue of world hunger. But he also felt that there was something inconsistent about holding the event at such a posh center and he didn’t want to participate in that. He spent some time with the problem and decided how he could turn it upside down.
He registered for the symposium. He went and participated fully. He did not register for a room there. Instead he took a tent and camped out on the grounds of the center, as a visible reminder to everyone and to himself of the inconsistency.
I love it when something can be acted out to show the concept in a physical way. In my estimation this is also a good example of non-violent resistance.
