Happenings of The Lamb

Happenings of the Lamb

Inaugural Online Newsletter
Fall 2013

"You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you."  Isaiah 26:31

We, at The Lamb Catholic Worker plan to put out a seasonal online and snail-mail newsletter (four times a year) with inspirations, happenings, updates, and needs of our budding community.  It will be "organic," so to speak, and may evolve or change over time.  We'll trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit through the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate heart of Mary, St. Joseph, Guardian of Truth and purity itself,  Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.  We are also upheld in prayer through many of you Sick and Suffering Co-Catholic Workers offering up, powerfully, the pain and suffering of your illnesses and other crosses for us, in addition to Pope Benedict Emeritus' prayers (as he has assured us with a letter and picture sent [that we framed!]).
WE ARE PRAYING FOR OUR HOUSES, please pray for this too!  We long for a home for the poor here in the tradition of the Catholic Worker. One of us has prayed several years for this particular set of large abandoned houses to renovate modestly and call our Catholic Worker home. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, we need a miracle!  With that in mind, here are comforting words from God through sacred Scripture today:
INSPIRATIONS
"God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor." (Psalm 68:6-7) - the Psalm refrain!

"The father of orphans and defender of widows
is God in His holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the forsaken;
He leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
A bountiful rain you showered down, O God,
upon your inheritance....
in your goodness, O God, you provided it for the needy. "
(Psalm 68: 4-5, 6-7, 10-11)

In the same spirit was the moral of the Gospel today from Luke: (14:1,7-14) "When you hold a lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they invite you back and you have repayment.  Rather, ... invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be for their inability to repay you.  You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

 “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the Cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’” 

— Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement

HAPPENINGS
PRAY FOR SYRIA!  We must mention that first.
What exactly is our community doing while in this holding pattern waiting for our first monetary donation, or our first house of hospitality for mainly foreign-speaking homelss women and children?
First, we are building community and commitment.
To describe, we are setting aside more and more prior commitments (even good ones), to make time to be together in prayer, common meals, and extra time for particlar tasks to get this off the ground.  We are committing to living a pure and prayerful life, one embracing Lady Poverty, to ready ourselves for when we can move into a CW house.  Some already live together at The Lamb Catholic Worker Volunteer Corps House here.
We are building a base of Apostolic work commitment to the poor now:
--We are baking cookies for 175-180 men and women and serving them at the Open Shelter
-- We are committing to time sorting and giving away clothes, as well as distributing food at the Bishop Griffin center at Christ the King parish
-- We are assisting a family of 10 in trying to live a normal life by giving them food and diapers once a month, taking the children to mass, bringing them to the Lamb Volunteer Corps House for brunch or dinner, and taking them places (Ohio State Fair, swimming, etc.)
-- We are assisting a group of very low income boys every night with a snack after school, tutoring, sharing lives, sharing their poverty
-- We are committing to a Catholic presence at least once a month at the E. Broad St. Founders abortion facility. We pray the Rosary for these women, men, unborn babies, other children on their families and their situations, in addition to some sidewalk counseling.
--We have committed to Sunday CCD to the population at Christ the King Church
--We have gone to Appalachia with the Appalachian Project for 11 days this summer to build a house for a poor family of 11, to split and pile a winter's worth of wood for a widow and her 3  children, etc., etc.
--We are looking toward seasonal Clarification of Thought - gatherings for ourselves and the wider community on topics of social justice, with a presenter and discussion
UPDATES
We strongly desire to do a LOT more though, especially direct hospitality for and with the homeless in a Catholic Worker community. Our greatest update is that our EIN, or Tax I.D. number - 46-2489540 for our nonprofit corporation, is finished and ready to be utilized!  We have four stellar priests on our board as well: Msgr. Marv Mottet of Davenport, Iowa and Columbus priests, Fr. Denis Kigozi, Fr. David Schalk, and Fr. Justin Reis.  We cannot begin in a larger more authentic manner without you though.  All of you 9,800+ people from around the world who have viewed our online site- please remember us on your prayer list and on your charitable donation list, if possible.  We need a large amount to purchase the abandoned city block (basically) that we feel the Holy Spirit has in mind for this. While we have received the volunteer corps house, two dressers, two beds, and a set of single mattresses, our hands are tied right now until we get funding (although there are other avenues we are pursuing). Please, please pray for us.  Pray only that God's Will be done, nothing more and nothing less. Without God, we cannot succeed, but with God, we cannot fail, as Fr. Schalk said in his homily today.
Community status update: Elizabeth McFadden, Steubenville recent graduate and Master's of Social Work student at Ohio State, recently joined and moved in; and Andy Pasternack temporarily went on to Columbia University for a year for grad school.  We all have no doubt that he will be back though, especially when this gets up and running.

Our Needs
Four sought-after houses and large lot in between for city gardening (current value approx. $180,000.00)
Two or three sets of bunkbeds and their mattresses for our volunteer corps house

SOME GIVE BY GOING; SOME GO BY GIVING.
Your greatest gifts are your prayers and fasting for us!

Build the Kingdom Here: Store Treasures in Heaven

     THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus - Our dearly, dearly loved Fr. David Schalk gave a moving homily today at Christ the King Church mentioning "The Lumber Song."  The Gospel today is about not storing up treasures for yourself - even though this is what we all tend to do these days here in America (Luke 12:13-21).  It was the parable of the rich man who could never be satisfied with the wealth he had and so, wanted to build better and bigger barns to store even greater wealth.  He then planned to sit back, and take selfish pleasure in his accomplishments by resting, eating, drinking, and "being merry." This parable was introduced by the first reading today: "... seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Seek what is above, not of what is on earth" (Colossians 3:1-5). 
          Fr. Schalk told the story of a similar man who died and went to heaven.  He was taken to where he would spend his eternity, passing beautiful mansions along the way.  Finally, they stopped at a small shack, which was where he would be for eternity.  He asked, "But why?  How could they be so different?"  St. Peter said, "Every good deed, selfless act, gift to the poor, giving of time to build the Kingdom on Earth - these all were their lumber for their houses.  Looks like this is all you have."
       It reminds also of the Gospel: "Do not store up riches on this earth that moths and rust can destroy, but store up treasures in heaven..." and "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  How much more Catholic Worker can you possibly get!  Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin are celebrating in heaven this homily and this song!

The Lumber Song lyrics (by "Eli")
Said a friend to a friend one day,
Was a man who passed away
St. Peter met him at the gate
Pete said: "Walk with me if you will
I'll take you to the house you built"
Man said: "I can't wait!"
Passed a mansion made of stone
But with each new house he's shown
They get smaller by degrees
Stopped in front of a two room shack
Pete said hope you're happy with that
Man said: "How can this be?"
Pete said:
Chorus:
That's all the lumber--that's all the lumber
that's all the lumber you sent
Looks like the builder--man he's got your number
That's all the lumber you sent 
(intro)
Man didn't know what to say
poor guy was blown away
Said: "you mean this is what I deserve?"
Pete said: "I'm afraid it's so
It's too late but now you know
Shoulda done better work"
Said: You mean not lie and cheat
and helpin' old ladies across the street?
Pete says: Well, that's a start
Remember that man back in that great big house?
He found out early what it's all about
Built that place with his heart--as for you (chorus)
Bridge:
What if that man was me
And I failed that miserably
You're showin' me things I don't wanna see
(intro)
St. Peter if you can
Send me back to earth again
Is that somethin' you can do?
Pete said: It ain't up to me
If it was I'd like to see
How you plan to improve
Said: I'd love God and fellow man
Take a wife and make a stand
Be the givinest guy I can be
And when I get back to this neighborhood
There'd be a big gigantic pile of wood
And I'd say: What's this I see?--You'd tell me (chorus2x)

Love of Dorothy Day, Friend of the Forgotten

 THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus --
"This blindness of love; this folly of love - 
This seeing Christ in others,
everywhere
And not seeing the ugly,
The obvious,
The dirty, the sinful - 
This means we do not see the faults
Of others,
Only our own.
We see only Christ in them.
We have eyes only for our Beloved,
Ears for His voice.

                               - Dorothy Day,
                                Duty of Delight, p. 80

Our Community's Birthday! "We Have Done So Much With So Little For So Long, We Are Now Qualified To Do Anything With Nothing" - Blessed Mother Teresa

 THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus - This labor of love, the Lamb Catholic Worker, could never be better described than with this Blessed Mother Teresa quote!  There have been years of tears and perseverance in this service to our Lord and Savior.  We have yet to receive our first donation, besides Monica's house for the Lamb Catholic Worker Volunteer Corps House, which she gladly gives to move this mission forward.  Really, this endeavor is eight years in the making if you use the starting point of when it came to Monica in June 2005 at a six-day silent retreat.  She and others believe that it was from the Holy Spirit - to open a three-house Catholic Worker community for battered women and children of foreign descent: Casa Guadalupe, Casa Romero, and Bakhita House.  Later the idea of a fourth house- Loaves and Fishes House - was added for food collection, processing, storage, gardening equipment, and space for meetings and hopefully exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Finally, a fifth house idea has come along - The Lamb Catholic Worker Volunteer Corps House - in the model of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps houses, where volunteers can live apart in community while serving at the houses of hospitality by day.  For now this means fundraising and renovation once the properties are obtained for these volunteer community members. We are now at the brink of beginning!

        The property was found immediately after that silent retreat and is currently still abandoned and ready to be transformed.  Monica was in the process of raising the last few of her five children these past eight years, and, while she did constantly put the word out, she could not actively pursue it as she would have liked, especially working towards it alone.  For the past two years though, she has stepped up the soliciting and flinging the seeds of it far and wide, with an explanation of this mission  in the December 10th issue of the Catholic Times (2010). She brought Msgr. Marv Mottet in town in July, 2011, (so holy Blessed Mother Teresa came to visit him in Iowa) of whom Monica had lived in community with in a D.C. Catholic Worker.  Msgr. Mottet educated for three days anyone interested in the Catholic Worker way and this mission for a battered women and children Catholic Worker community here in Columbus.  A priest, deacon, several seminarians and others came. It has been the talk of eastside Catholics since, and especially because in January of 2012, she began the website/blog of The Lamb Catholic Worker, while soliciting members more fervently. She has printed and given out many of the articles to eastside priests and others. With her last child just graduating from high school, and with more time on her hands, this newly formed community is hopefully on the brink of beginning this endeavor!
        In the spirit of Dorothy Day and Blessed Mother Teresa (from the quote) she has somehow been able to do this past stepped-up ten months of on-line solicitation without a working computer! Thank the good Lord for public library computers, which have been very beneficial. She is also grateful for walking this technological path of the poor, in all its frustrations.
       We do not have the start-up funds, the four sought-after abandoned houses and numerous lots between and around them for city farming, nor anything else material. So, we basically have no place, no funds, no other resources (beds, furniture,..), and no hospitality thus far.  What we do have though is each other - a budding community, and a vision of what we feel God has in mind for this Catholic Worker and this city, a multi-house Catholic Worker community mainly for battered women and children of foreign descent. Best of all, we have four stellar priests on our Lamb Catholic Worker nonprofit corporation board: Msgr. Marv Mottet of Davenport, Iowa, spiritually directing it from afar; Fr. Justin Reis, retiring this year from St. Peter's Church here in Columbus, as well as from his full-time Diocesan priest position; Fr. Denis Kigosi from Uganda, pastor of the very multi-cultural St. Thomas the Apostle parish and a long time priest of the Columbus diocese, and Fr. David Schalk, pastor of Christ the King Church, a large mostly Hispanic one. Bravo to all of them!  May God bless and protect them.  Dorothy Day always stressed so eloquently: "Don't worry about being effective.  Just concentrate on being faithful to the Truth," and these wonderful priests are our role models in their committment to the Truth and to the Catholic faith.

       Who else is a part of our community and what kind of people?  First, we have Jotham, former seminarian, current youth minister, ardent gardener, and student at Ohio Dominican University double majoring in Philosophy and Public Relations/Marketing; Tony, Doctoral student at OSU in Economics leaving this week for study in Tanzania for the summer who also has served for over a year with an inner-city live-in project of huge city gardens on the west side; Paige, in Tanzania for most of the summer with a family to learn the culture; Beth, Forestry student at OSU and current volunteer for the summer at a camp for inner-city behavioral and attention-deficit children and teens; Andy, former CFR seminarian, soon to be Master's Nutrition student and hopefully, an eventual medical school student; Jonathan and Kate, all-around wonderful people, and their three girls: Rosie, Carolina, and Genevieve; and Monica, former Catholic Worker (although it never leaves your blood) and ESL teacher in a public school system, recently joining a school six blocks from the prospective sight!  There are others as well who heavily support us like Josh, Abbie, Dory and others, to which we thank profusely.
       We have formed ourselves into community on May 1, the eightieth anniversary of the Catholic Worker Movement and the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, patron of the Catholic Worker, after having met for months (some every two weeks) in discernment. This was quite a holy day and night, mostly from the graces of St. Joseph's feast day and the Catholic Worker anniversary. 

 

      While all of us went to mass separately that day first, it then proceeded with the blessing of the St. Joseph cords by Fr. Denis, as well as the blessing of the house.  Then we had the dinner that we always do first, then the praise and worship in a semi-prayer meeting structure (at pretty high decibels!), the sharing of any news and updates of the progress, and the brainstorming of where to go or what to do next (hopefully led by the Holy Spirit!)  We made time to make our St. Joseph cord pledges and prayers, which are a modified version of the St. Joseph confraternity. We chose three strands representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, braided together and three knots representing Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, for their overseeing.  We also made our Catholic Worker time committments (from 3 mos., to a year, to a lifetime) to the Catholic Worker Rule and Living Out the Lamb Catholic Worker Mission. Pray for us as we commit ourselves to the St. Joseph cords for purity in mind, body, soul, and speech surrounded by a bombardment of the opposite in society.  It is quite a battle out there! We have committed to meeting about every two weeks until this gets off the ground, when possible with our commitments.  We crowned Mary with a flower band made by the Boydens, on this first day of the month honoring Mary.  Please intercede for us, Mary,  before your Son!

          We ask also that you please pray, fast, and offer up sacrifices for us (especially aches and pains), and for the women and children enslaved in the cycle of violence here. Dorothy Day, friend of the friendless, please pray for them and for us!  Dorothy Day once said and lived the following: "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes from community." Also, stemming from the summary of the law, the prophets, the commandments, and all in our sacred scriptures is the Catholic Worker way of life: "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength .. and love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12: 29-30). The Catholic Worker life is the life lived by the early Church of the Book of Acts and all of the epistles: "[We are] always carrying about in the body, the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our body." (2 Cor. 4:10-11, June 14th reading).

         You do not have to go overseas to be a missionary! Here in Columbus we have the second highest Somali refugee population in all of the United States, and an even more huge and expanding Hispanic immigrant population, in addition to many other cultures of whom I have had to study in my recent two-year role of district-wide ESL Department coach. The need is very great indeed for supporting the battered and abused among these (and other) populations, but we "trust in the slow work of the Lord," as Teillhard de Chardin emphasized. Come Holy Spirit!  Fill us with the fire of your love!

       A final note is that we have a new Catholic Worker garden, Isidore's Garden, that Jotham planted behind the Lamb Catholic Worker Volunteer Corps House.  We will keep you posted!  We have been composting for the first time and it is ADDICTIVE!  Tony is the expert at this, as well as Jot with the gardening.  It is great practice for our huge city gardens coming. 

       Here are some final images on the walls of the Lamb Catholic Worker Volunteer Corps House (on Brookside Dr.)  to inspire you! 

May 1st, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker - Birthday of the Catholic Worker Movement and The Lamb Catholic Worker

THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus - Pray for us as we commit to The Lamb Catholic Worker community on May 1st, with promises, pledges, and the blessing and bestowing of the St. Joseph cords (see "links").  This day is the 80th anniversary of the Catholic Worker Movement. We decided on three cords together to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and three knots representing Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Many devout Catholic sisters and others were accustomed to signing all correspondence  with J.M.J.; so, we are continuing this practice for the overseeing and protection of ourselves and our community by Jesus, Mary, and St. Joseph.  Nothing signifies better what it means to be Catholic Worker than embracing Lady Poverty, or trying "to be the poorest so that everyone is raised up," living out the Beatitudes, and hospitality to the homeless.  You could also summarize Catholic Worker in the words St. Francis answered when asked to codify or organize the Franciscans more:  simplicity and the folly of the cross.
       We need heavy prayers, particularly from you "Sick and Suffering Co-Catholic Workers," or those with the most severe suffering (physical, mental, spiritual), because you are our prayer warriors.  See our article on this under "Older Posts." We will hold you up in our prayers as well and want to know your stories. We ask our moral leaders to pray for us as well, and people of all faiths.  This community will mainly serve our city's immigrant women and children, which is something of which people of all faiths can pray.
      Since the Catholic Worker model is so closely aligned with the early Church communities of the Book of Acts and the Epistles, we especially ask guidance from the Holy Spirit, as He had guided those early Christians with the fire of His love!  A miracle is in the works for a Muslim friend who has entrusted a healing of stage 4 metasticized breast cancer (in her brain, liver, and spine by last fall) to the intercessory prayers of Mother Mary (Mariam) and Dorothy Day, one who loves all. 
       God's mighty hand has reached down in His great love. She had been told last September by her original doctors that there was nothing else that can be done and to make her arrangements. I immediately asked for intercessory prayers from Mary and Dorothy Day.  I also went in proxy for her in December to pray with Fr. John Stowe at Our Lady of Consolation Shrine in Carey, Ohio, bringing back holy water for her.  Instead of her cancer moving swiftly with the soft tissue of the liver and brain, the liver cancer has shrunk in half ( by April) and her half-face paralysis/palsy is miraculously going away - she can now close that eye and use her whole mouth in a smile.  She recently told me that she has been sprinkling the holy water on her bed every night since I gave it to her (in December), and I did not even tell her to do that!
       We are trying to collect the medical records to go toward Dorothy Day's beatification.  Just think that little old Columbus, Ohio and The Lamb Catholic Worker may be associated with beatifying this most holy woman.  It would not be surprising that Dorothy Day would be a key part of a miracle that healed a Muslim woman, too.  Please continue to pray for my Muslim friend and for us, Mother Mary and Dorothy Day!
        Also, God had recently placed in our path an elderly, holy, Dominican priest associated with the Dominicans at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Zanesville, Fr. Emmanuel Bertrand, who had been a missionary to the Middle East for 30 years in Pakistan.  After hearing of our endeavor, he enthusiastically suggested that we ask for the blessing of Pope Francis for this mission we are trying so hard to move forward.  We have done so.  Also, he explained how in many Middle Eastern mosques there are statues of "Mariam," Jesus' mother, who is revered for her holiness (in part, the veil). I thank the Holy Spirit for steering him my way and have given a written request for Pope Benedict Emeritus' blessing as well, whose final large public address included praise of Dorothy Day and her work.  We are hopeful!  Come Holy Spirit!
                      

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and St. Lawrence, the Martyr

 THE LAMB CATHOLIC WORKER, Columbus -  Yesterday was the feast of St. Lawrence the Martyr (Aug. 10) who was grilled alive, yet was filled with the grace of God to the level of having humor.  “The story goes that even as Lawrence was being burned alive on the gridiron, he said [to his executioners]: ‘Turn me over, I’m done on this side.’” (Word Among Us, Aug. 10, 2012).  His courage and good humor are seemingly attributed to the first reading on his feast day: “God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that … you may have an abundance for every good work.” (2 Cor. 9:8).

       Some of these good works have been done very recently, on Aug. 6^th and Aug. 9^thacross our land by many faithful peacemakers in commemoration of the horrific bombings of the innocent civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan during World War II.  My father, Tom Siemer, was among the protesters, having given a peaceful witness at the Pentagon both days (at 82 yrs. old!), exhausting himself.  He is a former weapons dealer who feels he has a lot of making up to do over his sin of participating in the “military industrial complex,” a money-making set-up for war productions (many times selling to both sides of wars for profit).   Let’s just say he made himself a channel for war instead of a channel for peace, as the St. Francis song goes. His theme was not, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me,” but, “let there be war on earth and let it continue with me.”

       His heart is of pure gold though and he has spent the last thirty-five years spreading Christ’s peace message across the world, especially among Catholics, and particularly in the realm of weapons of mass destruction and the potential ending of the human race (and all life as we know it) - with the massive unimaginable radioactive clouds that would spread across the entire planet from more modern nuclear weapons. Fr. George Zabelka, the former military chaplain over those who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki also spent much of his later life boldly speaking out against weapons of mass destruction.  He agreed with Pope Paul VI at Vatican II that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity, which merits firm unequivocal condemnation" (80, 81).  He was a good friend of my father who marched with him across Ohio for nuclear disarmament.
       The concept of what its technology was turned into was so upsetting to one discovering/inventing scientist, Albert Einstein (splitting the atom), that when he saw what his contribution was being turned into, he stated:  “If I had known, I would have been a clock-maker."  Moreover, those "tiny" weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pinheads compared to the blast and destructive level of current ones. 
       Modern weapons of mass destruction and their magnitude of blast, damage, and death are so counter-creation, so counter-sacred human life, and so counter-God that in creating this new man-made unstable element for the periodic table – Plutonium - scientists could name it after nothing else but the Greek "god" of hell (or Hades), Pluto.  And to think it was not a part of God's plan of creation (which is all very good) - we did it with our own hands.  We brought hell to Earth.

       Why St. Lawrence and the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  He was grilled alive and they were grilled alive. Furthermore, there are several Catholic connections.  To begin, Nagasaki was the Catholic center of all of Japan, thanks to St.Paul Miki and the other Japanese martyrs long before.  In addition, an entire religious order of sisters was wiped out in one day as well as most in another order. Some there had a quick death, but most, a very slow and painful death of radiation sickness, deformities (for the fetuses in utero during the radiation blast whose DNA was altered forever), leukemia, and other cancers.

                              

       My heart is filled with joy to see my fellow Catholic Workers doing prayerful and peaceful demonstrations against weapons of mass destruction in service to Jesus, the Prince of Peace. I am also proud of the leadership of our Catholic Church in the area of weapons of mass destruction and disarmament:
“One of the most serious [challenges] is increased military spending and the cost of maintaining and developing nuclear arsenals. Enormous resources are being consumed for these purposes, when they could be spent on the development of peoples, especially those who are poorest. For this reason I firmly hope that, during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to be held this May in New York, concrete decisions will be made towards progressive disarmament, with a view to freeing our planet from nuclear arms”
         -address of His Holiness Pope Benedict [emeritus] to the Members of the Diplomatic Corps for the Traditional New Years Greetings,
“With the persistence of tensions and conflicts in various parts of the world, the international community must never forget what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a warning and in incentive to develop truly effective and peaceful means of settling tensions and disputes. Fifty years after the Second World War, the leaders of nations cannot become complacent but rather should renew their commitment to disarmament and to the banishment of all nuclear weapons.”
            -address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Japan on their “Ad Limina.”
       Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. (91 yrs. old), another of the stalwart “greats” in the Catholic peacemaker (and poet) world exposes this theme of firey death poignantly in his poem, "Shadow on the Rock":

Shadow on the Rock

At Hiroshima there’s a museum

and outside that museum there’s a rock,

and on that rock there’s a shadow.

That shadow is all that remains

of the human being who stood there on August 6, 1945

when the nuclear age began.

In the most real sense of the word,

that is the choice before us.

We shall either end war and the nuclear arms race

now in this generation,

or we will become shadows on the rock.

                              

        Having just spent my third of a three-week retreat at the grave site of Thomas Merton (Brother Louis), in honor of his life work of theology and holiness, in addition to his unwavering peacemaking (he was mentor to Fr. Daniel Berrigan), I ask his special intercession at this time of building two new nuclear weapons facilities in the United States. Also, pray against nuclear energy, with all of the wind, water, and solar sources to tap all around us, as there is a direct connection of the nuclear power business and nuclear weapons business.  They cannot make nuclear weapons without the spent and highly radioactive "rods" from nuclear facilities. May we be channels solely of love and of peace, and not of danger, destruction, and bad stewardship of this beautiful world God has made.
       At this outdoor site above, where these famous men are conversing and planning peacework,  I also meditated and prayed.  Pray for us, Fr. Dan and Brother Louis!  St. Lawrence and St. Francis also pray for us! Mother Mary, Queen of Peace, intercede for us before your beloved Son!