Some thoughts I shared on Memorial Day at the nuclear weapons plant in Kansas city:

Still…

On this Memorial Day, here at the entrance of this Edifice of Apocalypse, we choose life, even as we did more than a decade ago when this was a productive bean field, and we stood before the earth movers to halt their un-natural despoilment and destruction.

More than 160 arrests have since been made as PeaceWorks and its peacemaker allies have nonviolently “crossed the line” to witness of Life and Love, insisting that the crime of trespass was not theirs. The ones who truly “cross the line,” threatening humanity, they said, are those who manufacture weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction.

Still… the drumbeat of nuclear war continues. For 75 years, Kansas City, in the very heart of America, has been the very heart of the US nuclear arsenal, now crafting 80 percent of the components needed for weapons of global destruction. Millions may die with the use of even a few hundred of the some 12,000 weapons in the world’s nuclear arsenals. The poet wrote of the world’s end “by fire or by ice,” but nuclear weapons do both—killing outright with fiery mushroom clouds, killing eventually with radiation poisoning and nuclear winter. Hundreds of Kansas Citians have already been sickened or have died from contaminants at the old Bannister plant—a plant now abandoned, yet “polluted into perpetuity,” paved over like a scab that will never heal. “Downwinders,” directly subjected to radiation from the thousands of nuclear tests globally, add to the untold tally of death and disease—and each of us alive today may have been impacted with cancer and other ailments in ways yet unknown.

Still… some 7,000 employees with an annual budget of a billion dollars are busy “modernizing and refurbishing” the US nuclear arsenal, devising yet more enhanced means of annihilation. And the earthmovers are once again on the move, more than doubling the current 192-acre behemoth with an additional 245 acres—a $3-billion-dollar project planned to add 2.5 million square feet and 1,000 new employees in the next decade. It defies imagination, but make no mistake: it’s very real.

Still… some of even the most staunch advocates of “nuclear deterrence” have awakened to the futility of a “you wouldn’t dare” game of escalating bluff and bluster. In 2007 four elder U.S. statesmen went public in the Wall Street Journal to recant their early devotion to nuclear deterrence, saying that this article of faith is no longer valid. These were the very architects of deterrence—Kissinger and Schultz, Perry and Nunn, (secretaries of state, a secretary of defense, and a senator), once known as The Four Horsemen of Nuclear Apocalypse. But today, they have a totally different legacy—the Nuclear Security Project. Working with partners around the world, the NSP (and I quote) “seeks to galvanize global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for reducing reliance on nuclear weapons, ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”

Still… the Biblical vision of John the Revelator remains a grim warning—the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—conquest and war, pestilence and death. Each of these four would be the grim outcome of a major nuclear exchange. John’s vision became the closing chapter in that “Good Book” of Christian scripture, now so twisted that many pray for tribulation and destruction to usher in their personal salvation, raptured joyously into the arms of a loving Jesus as millions “left behind” writhe in torment.

Still… the true Spirit of Jesus, the peaceful one, and kindred spirits of all description, lift up an alternative kin-dom of One-ness where each person, and other kind, and the Good Earth itself, are cherished as sacred manifestations of Life and of Love. This vision of the Beloved Community, a term popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., echoes the nonviolent message of Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Malala Yousafzai, and many other prophetic voices arising worldwide. The biblical author of Deuteronomy said it clearly centuries ago: “I have set before you this day life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Still… on this day of remembrance, we struggle to remain hopeful in our desire to choose life, as division sunders our global community, and threatens our beautiful planet. “May you live in interesting times,” some say. Is that a blessing, or a curse?… Or maybe both, as we try to live into that creative tension where we are stretched daily, yet not broken?

So we have spoken up, and we have acted up, believing with Brother Martin that ultimately “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We can help that bending.

Still… the questions remain:

Can we yet, in hope believing, envision this bean field turned from death-dealing, and restored to life-giving?

Can we yet dare believe our world will release its suicidal grip on nuclear weapons?

Can we yet stand together boldly on the right side of history?

Let us, individually and collectively, lend our small weight toward the tipping point of a world free of war and its weapons.

In can be so. There are ultimate forces for good in this world, this cosmos, we know not of, inviting us into creative partnership.

So in this moment, may we, believing in Life and Love, simply be still. —Jim Hannah