We are very sorry to share the sad news of the falling asleep of Jim Forest, a member of our Advisory Board. In his quiet, gentle way Jim was a true warrior of Christ, a warrior of peace. The words of Apostle John, “perfect love drives out fear”, could be said about Jim. He was a great and generous friend to The Wheel, and we are orphaned today together with so many people around the world who have been blessed with his love and wisdom.
Our hearts go out to Nancy and to Jim’s family. May Jim’s memory be eternal, and his soul dwell with the blessed!
We offer the following reflection by Jim’s long-term friend and colleague Alexander Patico.
A Remembrance
I was privileged to be asked to take over coordination of North American activities of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (of which Jim Forest was the co-founder and international secretary) for several years, after retiring from my career in international education. Thus began a mostly long-distance, but deeply soul-nurturing, friendship.
Jim Forest had the perfect name. Strong, plain, devoid of frills; just like the man himself. He went for days or weeks in his plaid shirt and old tweed jacket, somehow well-dressed for every occasion.
Jim was a gentle man, whether talking to a small child or a high official. He was a man of rare discernment, who rarely made mistakes in human relations, and when he did make them, he learned from them. He was a person of constancy — holding on to friends over many decades; remaining close to Roman Catholic rites and institutions, even as he became an Orthodox Christian; treating a homeless, hollowed-out shell of a man the same as he treated an archbishop.
The author of charming and instructive children’s books, about the real St. Nicholas and the real St. George (rather than their popular counterparts of Santa Claus or the Dragon-Killer), Jim may have eventually written his own version of The Emperor’s New Clothes — I can guess how it would have been different: the clever little boy would have seen through the Emperor’s situation, but would somehow have sorted things out without having to embarrass the monarch. Jim embarrassed no one, even when they stood for what was anathema for him. “Speaking truth to power” might have been tattooed on one arm, and “More flies with honey” on the other.
I heard Jim speak to dozens of audiences, at a Catholic Worker house in Maryland, a monastery in Kentucky, a seminary in Pennsylvania, a ranch in California. Monks, politicians, bureaucrats and scholars all got the same Forest treatment: a careful and sympathetic hearing. Jim distilled the lessons from his many contacts and experiences, all grist for the mill of his impressive literary output. I’ve read a dozen of his books, beginning with his biography of Thomas Merton, and ending with Jim’s autobiography, titled with one of his favorite quotations, “Writing Straight with Crooked Lines,” which I think he said was from a Portuguese proverb on the way God uses his flawed creatures for good. In each book, readers find a welcoming and well-constructed prose that avoids all pretension; not a word that does not do its job and carries its share of the load.
Literate, well-traveled, and endlessly curious, Jim was anchored in his origins in little Red Bank, New Jersey. (On a visit there, Jim shared with me that his town also produced William James “Count” Basie.) His later work with the Catholic Worker Movement was grounded in his childhood, his organizer parents, and the poor and working-poor of his own neighborhood in Red Bank.
After he found himself in The Netherlands many years ago (to take a job with the Fellowship of Reconciliation), he ended up staying. He regularly returned to the United States to see family, attend conferences or go on speaking tours — even during the years when he had to have regular sessions hooked up to a dialysis machine before he received a new kidney from his wife, Nancy. He seemed to be comfortable living in a nation that had fewer automobiles, fewer skyscrapers, fewer nuclear bombs, and fewer hungry people than the country of his birth. While Netherlanders gained a productive and enthusiastic resident, those of us back in the States continued to benefit from his peripatetic and giving nature. Burning bridges was simply not in Jim’s nature; building them was more his style.
The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh taught Jim that he should wash dishes as though each dish is a part of The Sacred. Jim was a little reticent on the question of whether he ever really learned to do that. But judging from the way he treated people, I’m strongly inclined to think he did.