For the
35th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the
atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than
200,000 people. It has been 74 years since these awful events occurred.
Other organizations involved in the commemorations will be Homewood Friends
Meeting, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Prevent Nuclear
War/Maryland and the Baltimore Nonviolence Center.
NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION
on Friday, August 9, 2019
5 to 6 PM Join the Friday peace
and justice vigil organized by Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St.,
Baltimore 21218.
6:15 PM Savor a potluck dinner
with members of the peace and justice community in the basement of Homewood
Friends Meetinghouse. Bring a dish to share, and consider reading a poem
or performing some music. Remember the work of Dr. Dick Humphrey.
7:15 PM Les Bayless of the Silver
Spring Three will speak on the 50th anniversary of a remarkable draft board
raid. Patrick O’Neill, a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares, will discuss the
current legal situation for the seven Roman Catholic activists, including
Elizabeth McAlister, arrested at a Trident Submarine Base in Georgia on April
4, 2018. McAlister has been imprisoned since the arrest. The evening will be
dedicated to showing the link between an earlier time’s draft board raids and
today’s anti-nuclear Plowshares movement.
RSVP at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast
dot net or 410-323-1607.
Aug 8,
2019
We need to fast from violence in ourselves
and our nation
by
Alex Mikulich
20180807T0905-19212-CNS-HIROSHIMA-ATOMIC-BOMB.jpg
A girl
releases paper lanterns on the Motoyasu River facing the gutted Atomic Bomb
Dome in Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 2018, to commemorate the 73rd anniversary
of the world's first use of an atomic bomb in war. More than 75,000 people were
killed in Hiroshima when the United States dropped the bomb near the end of
World War II. (CNS photo/ Reuters/Francis Mascarenhas)
As Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorate loss
of life and devastation of their cities Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, I find Trappist Fr.
Thomas Merton's chilling anti-poem, "Original Child Bomb," worth
re-reading in light of Gospel nonviolence and the chaos of the Trump era
(listen to a narration or read it).
"Original Child" refers to the
name the Japanese gave the atomic bomb. Merton's sardonic subtitle invites
"Points for meditation to be scratched on the walls of a cave," as
the Original Child blew us back to pre-human times. As I meditate on Merton's
etchings on the walls of a cave, I am struck by three points that call us to
face violence in ourselves (the anti-poem is divided into 41 sections).
First, by writing in a cold, bureaucratic,
detached, yet reverent tone, Merton held a mirror to America. "Original
Child Bomb" recites facts and the deliberate steps that political leaders,
generals and scientists took leading up to and during the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although Japanese leaders were seeking a negotiated end
to the war, their overtures were rejected by the United States.
These leaders were rationally following
the "logic of events." They thought that dropping the atomic bomb was
the most merciful way of ending World War II and, perhaps, ending all wars
forever. In section seven Merton declares "Lucky Hiroshima! What others
had experienced over four years would happen in a single day! Much time would
be saved, and 'time is money!' " The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had
no say in their fate.
Recall, too, on the cusp of World War I,
in his essay "The War to End All Wars," H.G.
Wells wrote that "It is a war to exorcise a world-madness and
end an age … For this is now a war for peace."
Despite the best intentions of military
and political leaders, to the contrary, use of the Original Child ultimately
prepared the way for more violence and possibly the destruction of the world.
Violence begins with the hubris that our good intentions can control the use of
force.
Second, "Original Child Bomb,"
rehearses the religious faith and reverence that leaders had for destructive
violence.
20171231T1446-1813-CNS-POPE-NAGASAKI-WAR.jpg
This
1945 photo taken after the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, Japan, was released
December 30, 2017, by Pope Francis. The photo by U.S. Marine Joseph Roger
O'Donnell shows a boy carrying his dead brother on his back as he waits his
brother's turn to be cremated. (CNS photo/Joseph Roger O'Donnell via Holy See
Press Office)
Upon the successful detonation of a
plutonium bomb on July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Merton cites a
semi-official report of the event that quoted the New Testament. " 'Lord,
I believe, help thou my unbelief.' There was an atmosphere of devotion. It was
a great act of faith."
As the bomb was being "assembled in
an air-conditioned hut on Tinian," records Merton, the bomb's handlers
named it "Little Boy." He ends section 22: "Their care for the
Original Child was devoted and tender."
Indeed, as a people, as a nation, our
worship for our military might and weapons has only deepened over the seven
decades since we dropped the Original Child. As former Defense Secretary James
Mattis stated earlier this year, "we are all aware in this
country of the President's affection and support for our military."
Our own affection is expressed not only in
fireworks on Independence Day and in military air shows but also in
regular spending increases for nuclear and other weapons programs.
Third, Merton's anti-poem implicitly warns
that the tragedy of our time is not the malice of war criminals as much as it
is our own propensity to become war criminals ourselves. He makes this warning
explicit in many essays including "War and the Crisis of Language."
Perhaps President Donald Trump's love for
military dictators reflects more about who we are as a nation than we
are willing to admit. We seem to have forgotten our national history of
genocide of First Peoples, of slavery, of unending racial terror against
peoples of color.
Despite claims to the contrary, we must
face our long history of our national faith in violence.
Lost in the chaos and confusion of the
Trump era, amidst explicit fomenting of racial
violence against congressional representatives and their cities, is
the fact that the world is, perhaps, at greater risk of nuclear war and
terrorism.
Indeed, lost in the news of this past
month is the fact that the United States formally confirmed
its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
(INF) that was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987.
In its 2019 Doomsday Clock statement that
it is "two minutes to midnight," the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists warns "of the devolving state of nuclear and climate
security" because of "a qualitative change in information warfare and
a steady misrepresentation of fact that is undermining confidence in political
structures and scientific inquiry."
While apocalypticism is dangerous — there
are strains of evangelical Christianity that are
explicitly inviting such violence — we are in a qualitatively
different space and time that calls for a renewal of a depth of Christian
adherence to truth, what Gandhi called Satyagraha.
Satyagraha begins with a deep sense of our
own need to fast from violence in ourselves and our nation. That means orienting
our entire way of life and being to oppressed peoples everywhere and to God.
Pax Christi International's Catholic Nonviolence Initiative offers
such an opportunity to pray, fast and prepare for a life of nonviolence and
civil disobedience.
Now, more than ever, as the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorate the loss of life and devastation of their
cities Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, it is vital for people of faith and justice to join
the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan in his call for Ten
Days of Prayer for Peace (Aug. 6-15). Renewing Pope John Paul II's Hiroshima
Peace Appeal of 1981, Mitsuaki Takami, Archbishop of
Nagasaki, invites us to "build peace by being deeply involved in
the integral development of all while seeking the realization of the abolition
of nuclear weapons."
Perhaps this is how we can begin to hear
and honor the voices of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who call
for a commitment to nonviolence and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Alex Mikulich is a Catholic social
ethicist.
Source
URL (modified on 08/08/2019 - 3:00am): https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/decolonizing-faith-and-society/we-need-fast-violence-ourselves-and-our-nation
Links
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[1] https://www.ncronline.org/join-conversation
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center,
325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email:
mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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