Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting - Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting"

"We are all survivors of Hiroshima." (Robert Jay Lifton)

Reliving memory, reviving hope, works of the Holy Spirit, re-membering, re-calling, much, and far back, as we can; piercingly piecing together, new, different ways, all yet disfigured, dismembered, destroyed and deadened in us;
learning to listen, to, with, for Specific and General Dead, in and after the bombings, (Seventy percent war casualties now civilian!), speaking their language with us, "filling us in -- filling us in," (Daniel Berrigan) lest we dare try to "speak normal, words in the normal order," ever again! (Mark Kaminsky)

"It may be only by descending into this hell in imagination now that we can hope to escape descending into it in reality at some later time." (Jonathan Schell) War, violence first fettering failures of our imaginations: We are no good at creating weapons we then do not use? Or do not use us?

Of kings and worldly powers, David perhaps without peer, revered, respected, only retrievable root of Messiah; now covenanter turned coveter, arrogant by dint of power-position, right of might, doing what hardly ever is kept, by self or other, from being committed, uncovered, or covered up: "Do not be disturbed by this," David to General Joab, uncritical carrier-out, royal plot, betraying Uriah, loyalest subject-soldier of all: "Do not let this thing appear to be evil in your sight." No longer trusting in our own perceivings, what's being done in our names, without counsel, advice, or consent -- Is evil ever only if and how we behold it? How we are beholden? Beheld?

"More than one hundred seventy thousand people died instantly or within hours. Few of them were soldiers." (Susan Adams) How do we wonder where God learns to weep? Wars in our times, our technologies, lingering limitlessly, festering infinitely -- in every vacuous dissemblance, self-assured unawareness: "In a hundred years, nearly two hundred million civilians have died on this beautiful Earth of armies, governments, causes, and platforms." Any escaping Creator's anguishing as any parent? World's Children remaining best hope?

To go in the direction of the threat, to face the enemy with our precious lives,
and the lives of our children and our children's children in our hands, to seek humanity in the hearts of our enemies -- this is the great work of mothers and nations . . . A dead enemy cannot be our friend. (Jeanette Rankin)

Ours only atomic bombings world ever has known, or disowned? Only destructive use, ever, very Energies of Creation! Universe! Life Itself! Work of remembering all the more sacred, renewed every breaking of bread, every sharing of cup: Remembering Me! Remembering Them! Neither rejecting past nor projecting future horrors, assigning no blame, assuaging no guilt, acknowledging Humans, youngest, most precocious, precarious Species, like Icarus now challenging Sun, Creation's Source and Substance . . .

This fire represents the power of the sun, the power of light and heat, the energy that knits together the nucleus of the atom itself, the basis of all matter. For billions of years these great matrices of energy have upheld all existing things, the sun bringing light and warmth to our planet, causing all things to grow, the energy locked in the nucleus of the atom, holding together the foundations of matter itself . . . (Rosemary Reuther)

Nearing waters, bearing witness, insatiable thirstings, atomical victims; one day whole world holding breath for rescue of sailors off ocean floor; next day for safe return astronauts from outer space; who held breath then, held breath there? World's Life Continuum fragile, unstable, every last nation subject-hostage, nuclear terror -- Starting with us? Ending with us? Imaging Who?

Tolling bells, folding cranes, holding sunflowers, mixing ashes with waters, reenacting loving remembrance, active resistance, to "the human war with ourselves, the war against earth, against nature." (Denise Levertov) Trees rejoicing, our slightest attendings, lifeoffering light enveloping world, not condemning but saving, yet we, to this time, opting for light that destroys -- ever noticing war does not work? Weapons, for all trillions we spend on them, useless to God in us? Calling Earth "Home," depending on her disarmament, while never disclosing, uncloseting guns of our own bedrooms?

We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, war, of course, continues, because waging war is, by its very nature, total -- but waging peace, by our own cowardice, is partial . . . There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because making peace is at least as costly as making war -- at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake. (Daniel Berrigan)

Daring dreams, walking waters, step or two at a time, falling, flailing, trying, dying, uncertainly as any other; those doing least to cause bombings suffering most, even self-blaming; those causing most suffering suffering least, never self- but victim-blaming, weapon-excusing, -exonerating. Hauntings, huntings of horror, of hope, no matter how battered the boats of our lives, all we ever have held to, all holding us, shaken, shattered to shards, Jesus looming, ghostily, still modeling, step at a time, as we sink.

We are holding candles: we kneel to set them afloat on dark river as they did in Hiroshima. We are invoking saints and prophets, heroes and heroines of justice and peace, to be with us, to help us stop the torment of our evil dreams . . . Windthreatened flames bob on the current . . . They don't get far from shore. But none capsizes, even in swell of boat's wake. The waxy paper cups sheltering them catch fire. But still the candles sail their gold downstream. (Denise Levertov) Still the candles, all of us, in every land, of every age, sail our gold downstream -- and up?