Shirley Way's Letter to Friends

Dear Friends,

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you through Friend Vicki.

I write to you from an empty classroom at Danbury Federal Prison Camp. The halls are mostly quiet now. The guard is off the loudspeaker. Mail-call is over. I have centered and invited the Spirit to guide my words.

My time here is passing with relative ease. I know why I am here. It is right that I am here. It is where I am called to be at this moment. Knowing this, combined with a sense of being upheld and carried, brings me peace.

One of the many gifts for me and all of the women here is Sister Ardeth Platte, a Dominican nun who together with two other nuns poured their own blood and hammered on a Minuteman III missile silo in Colorado. Ardeth was sentenced to 41 months imprisonment and three years probation.

Recently Ardeth has been speaking of Joan Chittister's book, There Is a Season, based on Ecclesiastes 3:1–9. Verses 1 and 4 read: "For everything there is a season, and a time for everything under heaven: . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance." When there is public evil there must also be public weeping.

More than ten thousand gathered at the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, last November. We publicly wept. We mourned the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives at the hands of dictators, military generals, death squad leaders and others from Latin America who have been trained to torture and assassinate at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. And we twenty-seven who intentionally crossed onto Fort Benning together with our families, friends, School of the Americas Watch staff, and former prisoners of conscience again publicly wept at our trial in January—not for ourselves but for our sisters and brothers in Latin America, Iraq, and around the world who continue to be tortured and assassinated.

My faith tells me I cannot sit idly by and say it's okay that my government poisons the minds and hearts of young men from Latin America and young men and women from this country. My government tells them it's okay to torture and kill and then shows them how. In Latin America, the poor, children, and people who work to end the oppression of the poor are targeted by my government and theirs.

My faith tells me I must seek Truth and when I find it, I must speak it, live it. It is really quite simple and easier than we sometimes allow ourselves to believe.

My experience shows me that when I say "yes" to the Spirit, way opens and the service becomes a gift, not a burden. As Caroline Fox (1819–1871) said, "Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee."

In these times of great public evil we are called to publicly weep.

We and our government officials, CEOs, board members of corporations, and shareholders need to witness the pain we inflict on people around the world and on our earth.

When we hurt others and our environment, we hurt ourselves. There is but one Christ Jesus, one Spirit. She lives in all of us. We carry the pain we inflict on others in ourselves. Before we can begin to heal, we must allow ourselves to feel.

I am holding the Yearly Meeting body in the Light as you gather together. May the Spirit move among you. May she be heard.

In peace and with much love and gratitude, for without my faith community I cannot hear, cannot follow.

Shirley Way