My return to Ground Zero: Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base, WA

  

With Bernard Herberholt (left) 

The impulse to action quickens my blood all of July. I wake up at night to begin all over again a vision of civil resistance: the road unspools, forking, passing bunkers, my adrenaline surges re-entering a distant memory of trespass onto the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base where trident submarines dock and 2,000 nuclear warheads are stored 17.26 miles from Seattle. In three days, skipping out on swimming at the pool with family, I finish Ben Austen's book Corrections: Prison, Parole, and the Possibility of Change (Flatiron 2023). I determine this priming for direct action that would lead to months in jail is false light. 

 

False light, in the parlance of Ignatian spirituality I share with my wife Emily, refers to the pattern of deception in prayer that takes on the appearance of the good and just and true, while sapping strength. False consolation absorbed Inigo of Loyola while experimenting intensely in prayer while pursuing a holy, devoted, study of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis. In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the experience of false light was forewarned--Ignatius--in his days at Manresa Cave had plunged into depths of forlorn despair and was practicing extremes of self-neglect, that he forbid his later followers. He also experienced during studies in his forties, in preparation for priesthood, nights of late spiritual ecstacy that prevented him from fulfilling his ordinary exertions of administering to hospital patients or caring for others. In sum, false light is stated in the exercises, a guide for spiritual directors, occurring oftentimes in place of genuine spiritual consolation: a gambit of the evil one, if you will, distracting someone from pursuing a greater good for the glory of God. 

 

"Even zeal for good, when the enemy meddles with it, tends
to imperfection ; for example, our inclination to exterior pen-
ance tends to disobedience, to the injury of health ; love of
prayer, to the neglect of zeal for souls ; zeal for souls, to dis-
tractions, attachments and sensuality ; humility* to a want
of spirit in taking the initiative. But it is to be carefully
noted, that this aim does not immediately come out clearly,
for the enemy often adapts himself to the peculiarities of a
man’s character, to his favorite virtue, thoughts and inclina-
tions ; he clothes himself, as it were, into our very selves, or
even into an angel of light, and comes in by our door, that
he may go out by his own." --Rules of Discernment of Spirits for the Second Week

 

When I visited the Kitsap-Bangor entrance, I brought a friend. We vigiled for a transformation of the nuclear economy on an overpass July 17, 2026. It's the anniversary of Congressman John Lewis death date. 

 

Before hand we walk the grounds of Ground Zero, passing a newly inaugurated Buddhist shrine to approach the fence. It's tipped with three lines of barbed wire. Faded origami cranes dangled on a string left on the fence from the 80th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I kneel down and collect several fallen cranes. 

  

 

Below, action statement for base entrance overpass picket, our "Good Trouble."

 

Mindful that true peace is waging justice. Observing the demise of the Voting Rights Act, we rise with the spirit of Congressman John Lewis. In community with those days of “Good Trouble”  

As the United States wages war on Iran, breaking ceasefire to kill more innocent people.

As leaders shred the 2017 peace accord with Iran and eviscerate the human dignity enshrined in peace negotiation process.

On this day we unite for peace the intention of Ground Zero, a hollowed shrine next to the , and monument to Dr. King’s “Nonviolent Coexistence or Violent Coannihilation.”

 

Searching for the context of this space where a Peace Pagoda at the edge of a multibillion Trident Submarine base, we are called to have a human experience in the face of an apparatus that threatens to vanish humans from the earth.

We hold vigil at the Bangor Kitsap Naval Base on this 17^th day of July holding signs:

 

NOTICE: This Facility is Engaging in Activities Prohibited by the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

 

Abolish Nuclear Weapons: GroundZeroCenter.org

Stop the War 2026

Fight Poverty Not the Poor: There are 140 Million Poor and Low Income People in the Nation

PoorPeopleCampaign.org

We carry in our possession two books:

Arthur Laffin's The Risk of the Cross: Living Gospel Nonviolence in the Nuclear Age.

Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario

 To read more of this account of conscience regarding an act of civil disobedience I took:

Fatigue of Resistance: Hiroshima Day, King of Prussia, PA

Archive for What End: Nuclear Disarmament or Abolition? 

Peace is Built with the Mind: The Nine Dot Problem 

Abetted by Quaker Clearness: Praying with the Church for Peace and Nuclear Abolition