Dare You Face Facts? by Muriel Lester

1940, Harper & Brothers

Muriel Lester was born into a privileged English family of Baptist Protestants. Her religious and social convictions led her to give up her comfortable surroundings to live among and serve the poorest working-class people of London. She later became a pacifist and a friend to Gandhi, traveling around the world to speak against war and encourage peace. Learn more about her here.

Dare You Face Facts?, published under the approaching bombs of WWII, dares us to seek justice and put others before ourselves, concretely, not just in words, and to see the folly of imperialism and war. To Muriel, this was how she followed the teachings of Christ.

Muriel dedicated this book "to the common people by whose sweat our grain is produced, our livestock tended, our houses built, our clothes made, our furnaces stoked, our factories manned, and who keep the world sane." She exhorts us to train ourselves "to be aware of the unspoken, deep-hidden needs of your fellows. If these are untended they form a fertile soil for war, fascism and communism. The happiness of free citizens depends on the happiness of their fellows." (p 20-21)

My friend Sue introduced me to Muriel Lester, after her mother, an amateur historian and genealogist, discovered their family is related to her. I've been fascinated by this astounding woman ever since.

I wish I could follow in Muriel's footsteps. She didn't look away from the truth as most of us do when it's unpleasant. Unafraid to live differently, she said, "if we hold on to our privileges and possessions, even though we subscribe heavily to charities, we will have war." (p 9) I'm afraid to give up my comfort and my life. I'm afraid to take a stand and to be ridiculed. I tell myself, if I were to lose everything, all my family, then I would give everything up and go serve others, because I wouldn't have anything else to live for. I don't know how to be like Muriel. But I believe it's the true and right way to be.

If you'd like to know more about Muriel, you can read Ambassador of Reconciliation, this 1991 collection of her writings which summarizes her ideas.