Ammon Hennacy

Ammon Hennacy, Catholic Worker and Christian Anarchist is one of my favorite characters in the Catholic Worker movement in the 20th century. Today someone sent me an article from the Salt Lake City Catholic newspaper called The ‘One Man Revolution’. The ‘One Man Revolution’ is a phrase that many of us have used to describe the spirit of the Catholic Worker and it is also the name of a book Ammon wrote right before he died in 1970. The book consists of seventeen chapters with each one devoted to an American radical. These included Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, Mother Jones, Clarence Darrow and Albert Parsons.

Here are some quotes from his earlier book, The Book of Ammon, that describe a little of his way of thinking. “[T]he only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority.”
“We really can’t change the world. We really can’t change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The best way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!”
“Too many of us dissipate our energy by being ‘for all good causes,’ attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions — all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves… We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.”

Now days the words “Socialist” or Anarchist have taken on a different meanings but the truth that Ammon spoke still rings true. We can only change ourselves and if we took some of the energy we spend ‘for all good causes’ and used it on ourselves we could use our strongest weapons, our spiritual power.

I am guilty of using lots of energy trying to change the world and not changing myself. However, in my elderly years I have started to attend less meeting, sign less petitions, voting and tried to tap into myself and spiritual power.

Some people will not let me out of the ‘bag’ they put me in as an ‘activists’ but that is okay and should not be used as an excuse for not changing myself. All revolution starts with the one man (or woman) revolution.

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