Boston and Rhode Island visit

I'm back from my vacation in Rhode Island, visiting my girlfriend Patty. Here are some pictures.

Empty Mirror

Holding the camera like a crucifix
To ward off the evil the mirror betrays
I pray that the two sides of the split
Can be rejoined
And the mirror become silent and still
And empty

The Statues and Rosaries of Kimo Kolona

The Statues and Rosaries of Kimo Kolona

The flesh, the flesh, the flesh
The smell of lotions and musk
The look of tan lines and thighs
The shaking of wet summer hair
I didn’t need God back then
I had His lost child

"We Go on Record: the CW Resonse to Hiroshima" By Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, September 1945, 1.

Summary: (DOC #554) Denounces the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and is outraged at the jubilation in the press. Juxtaposes words and images that contrast the evil of the bomb's destruction with God's creative love. Keywords: pacifism, war
Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; "jubilant" the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.

That is, we hope we have killed them, the Associated Press, on page one, column one of the Herald Tribune, says. The effect is hoped for, not known. It is to be hoped they are vaporized, our Japanese brothers -- scattered, men, women and babies, to the four winds, over the seven seas. Perhaps we will breathe their dust into our nostrils, feel them in the fog of New York on our faces, feel them in the rain on the hills of Easton.

Jubilate Deo. President Truman was jubilant. We have created. We have created destruction. We have created a new element, called Pluto. Nature had nothing to do with it.

Created to Destroy

"A cavern below Columbia was the bomb's cradle," born not that men might live, but that men might be killed. Brought into being in a cavern, and then tried in a desert place, in the midst of tempest and lightning, tried out, and then again on the eve of the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ, on a far off island in the eastern hemisphere, tried out again, this "new weapon which conceivably might wipe out mankind, and perhaps the planet itself."

"Dropped on a town, one bomb would be equivalent to a severe earthquake and would utterly destroy the place. A scientific brain trust has solved the problem of how to confine and release almost unlimited energy. It is impossible yet to measure its effects."

"We have spent two billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history and won," said President Truman jubilantly.

The papers list the scientists (the murderers) who are credited with perfecting this new weapon. One outstanding authority "who earlier had developed a powerful electrical bombardment machine called the cyclotron, was Professor O. E. Lawrence, a Nobel prize winner of the University of California. In the heat of the race to unlock the atom, he built the world's most powerful atom smashing gun, a machine whose electrical projectiles carried charges equivalent to 25,000,000 volts. But such machines were found in the end to be unnecessary. The atom of Uranium-235 was smashed with surprising ease. Science discovered that not sledgehammer blows, but subtle taps from slow traveling neutrons managed more on a tuning technique were all that were needed to disintegrate the Uranium-235 atom."

(Remember the tales we used to hear, that one note of a violin, if that note could be discovered, could collapse the Empire State Building. Remember too, that God's voice was heard not in the great and strong wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but "in the whistling of a gentle air.")

Scientists, army officers, great universities (Notre Dame included), and captains of industry -- all are given credit lines in the press for their work of preparing the bomb -- and other bombs, the President assures us, are in production now.

Great Britain controls the supply of uranium ore, in Canada and Rhodesia. We are making the bombs. This new great force will be used for good, the scientists assured us. And then they wiped out a city of 318,000. This was good. The President was jubilant.

Today's paper with its columns of description of the new era, the atomic era, which this colossal slaughter of the innocents has ushered in, is filled with stories covering every conceivable phase of the new discovery. Pictures of the towns and the industrial plants where the parts are made are spread across the pages. In the forefront of the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a chapel, a large comfortable-looking chapel benignly settled beside the plant. And the scientists making the first tests in the desert prayed, one newspaper account said.

God, Our Creator

Yes, God is still in the picture. God is not mocked. Today, the day of this so great news, God made a madman dance and talk, who had not spoken for twenty years. God sent a typhoon to damage the carrier Hornet. God permitted a fog to obscure vision and a bomber crashed into the Empire State Building. God permits these things. We have to remember it. We are held in God's hands, all of us, and President Truman too, and these scientists who have created death, but will use it for good. He, God, holds our life and our happiness, our sanity and our health; our lives are in His hands. He is our Creator. Creator.

And as I write, Pigsie, who works in Secaucus, New Jersey, feeding hogs, and cleaning out the excrement of the hogs, who comes in once a month to find beauty and surcease and glamour and glory in the drink of the Bowery, trying to drive the hell and the smell out of his nostrils and his life, sleeps on our doorstep, in this best and most advanced and progressive of all possible worlds. And as I write, our cat, Rainbow, slinks by with a shrill rat in her jaws, out of the kitchen closet here at Mott Street. Here in this greatest of cities which covered the cavern where this stupendous discovery was made, which institutes an era of unbelievable richness and power and glory for man ….

Everyone says, "I wonder what the Pope thinks of it?" How everyone turns to the Vatican for judgement, even though they do not seem to listen to the voice there! But our Lord Himself has already pronounced judgement on the atomic bomb. When James and John (John the beloved) wished to call down fire from heaven on their enemies, Jesus said:

"You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save." He said also, "What you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto me."

[The following text appeared as an introduction to this article when it was reprinted in the July-August 1975 issue of The Catholic Worker.]

(This August marks the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. On that day a new age of fear was unveiled. Each year the U.S. budget provides more and more money for arms, B-1 bombers, Trident submarines. Towns across the country are prospective sites for nuclear power plants. It is for each of us to resist, as far as we can, this movement of power, and fear, and destruction. One very immediate way is war tax resistance, highlighted in this issue of CW.

In September, 1945, Dorothy Day wrote the following position statement on the atom bomb. We reprint it now as a reminder of our responsibility to preserve life. Eds. Note.)

This text is not copyrighted. However, if you use or cite this text please indicate the original publication source and this website (Dorothy Day Library on the Web at http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/). Thank you.

The Three Francescos

A man with an umbrella walks in the rain past the former Saint Francis of Assisi convent, now a museum, in Old Havana, Cuba, on July 24.

Me and my friend Barbara Gabriel

In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel

love I get so lost, sometimes
days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
when I want to run away
I drive off in my car
but whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
the heat I see in your eyes

love, I don't like to see so much pain
so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

and all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
the heat I see in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes

When I Have Not Rage by Leonard Cohen

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents’ room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes; I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name.

The Dove by Leonard Cohen

(painting is: The Dove whisperer by Renate Dartois)


I saw the dove come down, the dove with the green twig, the childish dove out of the storm and flood. It came toward me in the style of the Holy Spirit descending. I had been sitting in a café for twenty-five years waiting for this vision. It hovered over the great quarrel. I surrendered to the iron laws of the moral universe which make a boredom out of everything desired. Do not surrender, said the dove. I have come to make a nest in your shoe. I want your step to be light.

Leonard Cohen

A Place of Love

Why are we so concerned with how and who we love?
I’m more concerned with how and who we hate.
I know, I know, it runs contrary to the
Will of God – As if any of us can really know that.
I know, I know, if it was 500 years earlier,
I’d be branded a heretic and made to suffer
The consequences – which wouldn’t be pretty.
Well I may not know the will of God,
But I know what Jesus said – “Love thy neighbor”
And who is my neighbor? You are.
So when you see me beaten and bleeding for my
Heretical thoughts – Pour wine and oil on my wounds.
And take me to a place of love.

This morning I lit a candle with no particular reason in mind

I called the picture "The Candle of Hope"
It's a hope for many things, too numerous to mention
But one I will divulge
It's a hope for You and I My Love
And the hope of a warm September evening
This is our small flame
Let's turn it into a bonfire
That burns bright and hot
Sensual and delightful
Long and glorious

What I'm Reading - Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series)

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.”
Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan is a Jesuit priest, poet, and peacemaker, whose words and actions over the past 50 years have offered a powerful witness to the God of Life. Fr. Berrigan, along with his brother Philip, was one of the Catonsville 9, arrested and imprisoned in 1968 for destroying draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War. But this was only one step along a journey of faith. Through this selection from his many books, journals, poems, and homilies, a chronicle of Berrigan’s life and work unfolds, from the early steps in his vocation, to his decision to cross the line and go to prison, his ongoing witness for peace, and his extraordinary commentaries on scripture and the life of radical discipleship.
(From the back cover of the book)

Available on amazon.com