They Came Out of the Sky

Images of military power in the skies abound these past few days, both at home and elsewhere. I cannot listen to a radio or turn on a TV without seeing it. In fact, it is here, in Columbia, Missouri, on my own street last Thursday, at our airport over the weekend, and downtown this morning, Memorial Day, on prade. It is elsewhere, too, to more violent effect.


Last Thursday, members of the St. Francis Catholic Worker and other members of the peace oriented community stood in silent protest as Columbia College, a private liberal arts college located across Wilkes Blvd from St. Francis House, staged a militaristic tribute to veterans and ROTC on their campus. The event centered around the opening of a veteran’s center on campus and the award of a $100,000 scholarship fund for veterans, as well as designating the first military recipient of that scholarship money.


Countering this act of faith in war, Catholic Workers engaged in an act of faith in peace just outside the chain link fence the surrounded the Columbia College soccer field. Our action included two masked men in orange jumpsuits standing silently on the roof of the St. Francis van while they and others held signs. Our signs protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they protested the military mindset that has pervaded our country even into our schools and churches. Our signs pronounced hope and warning: “To reach peace, teach peace, not war” “You can’t love both your enemies and kill them” “Who would Jesus bomb?” and others.

The official service included the dramatic landing of a team of parachutists called the “Screaming Eagles,” who dropped from a military aircraft onto the soccer field. These “Eagles” also performed Saturday and Sunday at the infamous “Salute to Veterans Memorial Air Show” and are scheduled to make a final appearance this morning at the Salute to Veterans’ Memorial Day parade on Broadway in downtown Columbia.


I woke up this morning to a report on NPR that commandos from the Israeli military had rappelled down from helicopters to land on the flotilla of ships transporting aid to the people of Gaza. The official story at 6:30 am was 10 dead and several wounded when the soldiers fired weapons on the gun-less activists on the ships. (While it appears that some of the activists on board may not have been pacifists, it seems clear they did not carry guns.) By 9 am, the spin was starting, but we also knew that the death toll appears to be at least 15 and the wounded number in the dozens.


Meanwhile, on CNN, word from Staten Island, one time home of Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day, an Ospry air vehicle messed up a landing for a Memorial Day celebration of the works of war, ripping up tree branches and sending them into the crowd. Several were wounded, but none dead there, as far as I know. What can we do? We can be witnesses, we can proclaim the news, but we cannot stand silent. Death is coming out of the sky and people are applauding, even as others are killed and injured by the military machine.
All of this is so far from the Memorial Day of my childhood, spent grave hunting in cemeteries, seeking markers for my family’s dead, who did not die in war; praying the rosary and remembering those we had loved and who had loved us, then enjoying time spent with the living.


In the midst of all this, I spent several hours this weekend reading of author Anne Rice’s return to faith. She concludes her memoir by saying that her return to faith caused her to realize that the most radical thing that Jesus taught us to do is love one another, friends and enemies alike. She rightly says that this is radical because it is also much harder than it looks. As I struggle to love Israeli commandos and flotilla members, peace activists, wounded vets and flag waving military enthusiasts, the sinners and the saints, I pray in the words given to three Portuguese children at Fatima, when a vision of peace appeared in the sky above them:

Oh, Lord Jesus, Forgive us our sins, and save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy.

Peace be upon you.

Ruth O’Neill