Ramblings and Reflections

Newsletter 7
February, 2004

Dear Friends,

At Clear Creek County Jail, Sisters Jackie, Carol and I prayed together each morning with an open invitation to women prisoners to join us.  Carol placed all the pictures of children, which we had received in our mail and those from prisoners, on the table before us.  These reminded us that our Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares actions held children close, that the hammering and pouring out of our own blood on the missile silo lid and tracks are for all the victims of wars and injustice, for the children and for Earth herself.

I continue this practice here, praying over each picture that these little and young ones will lead us, that they will learn a new, loving and nonviolent way, that their lives will connect with families throughout the world, that they will reject all war, all violence, all practices of subjugation, patriarchy, oppression, demonizing domination and discrimination.

In these mornings as I pray the mantras of my faith, I cannot get the images of other children out of my mind.  I am moved by the pictures in my mind, like a history lesson that wears away at conscience of:

1. children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, their flesh strips hanging and burned bodies searching, screaming, diving into water already poisoned
2. children in Vietnam under napalm and Columbia under fumigation sprayings
3. children left as refugees and orphans on the barren lands and city streets
4. children malnourished, starving, thirsty, experiencing forced poverty in a world with plenty
5. children sickened from the effects of U.S. warheads with depleted uranium used as the modern weapon of mass destruction, slow death with leukemia, cancers, lack of medicines
6. children traumatized by constant bombings of their countries:  Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, countries throughout the world
7. children addicted, born of parents addicted, frequently abandoned as incorrigible
8. children afraid to go to school where guns have shattered safety and children scared to walk and play in their neighborhoods in fear of kidnappers or rapists
9. children born with mutations and defects from environmental devastation near the maquiladoras
10. the list is endless

From America magazine  April 21, 2003  A wounded Iraqi boy, Ali Ismael Abbas, 12, in a hospital in Baghdad.  A missile strike obliterated his home and most of his family.

Are these not the pictures brought to us by Kathy Kelly, Jerry Zawada, Cynthia Banas, et al, when they returned from Iraq?  Are these the photos released after interventional wars are over and the Truth Commissions have spoken?  Do we see, do we hear, do we feel the pain, the cries, the loss, the suffering?  Do we care passionately enough?  Do we weep?  Do we struggle and work hard enough to save lives?  Do we suffer the little children to come unto us?  Will we be strong and courageous enough to live our lives so that others may live?  Do we love children that much?  These are my questions, in prayer.

Thank you to the newest bearers of the following gifts:  The Holy Man by Susan Trott, They Stole Our Country:  We’re Taking It Back by Walter Pietsch,  Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand,  The Emptiness of Our Hands by Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray, New Creation by Halkes, An Arrow in the Wall by Voznesensky, Keeping Women and Children Last by Ruth Sidel,  Pilgrims and Seekers,  and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency  by A.M. Smith, and some New Yorker and National Geographic magazines.  I’m reading each book and passing them on to other women.  We are grateful!

Thank you to all friends of Fr. Bill O’Donnell!  Presente! to this blessed peace and justice maker – Jan. 2, 1930 to Dec. 8, 2003.  You, who loved him, continue his legacy.  Letters in abundance came to this prisoner.

Thank you for your desire to send me basic items:  clothes, shampoo, soap, stamps, etc.  All of these are blocked in the mailroom and returned to you.  I’m sorry about that.  When a set of stamps, a piece of paper, an undetected postcard makes it past the screeners, I celebrate your resistance.  I sent a couple money orders to Mary Casper or Jonah House if they crept into the prison through the mailings.  We have no use for money here.

If you wish to receive my newsletter via e-mail, please request past and/or future ones from Mary Casper:  mcasper@mindspring.com  (Mary’s note:  Thanks to all of you who are spreading the word by forwarding the newsletters to others!    If you are receiving both an e-mail copy and a copy from me in the mail, let me know so I can remove you from the postal mailing list.)

Always Grateful,

Ardeth Platte  # 10857-039
Federal Correction Institute
33 ˝ Pembroke
Station, Rt. 37
Danbury, CT 06811

if we dug a huge grave miles wide, miles deep and buried every rifle, pistol, knife, bullet,  bomb, bayonet,

if we jumped upon the fleets of tanks with tool boxes, torches, unwelded them, dismantled them, turned them into scrap metal

if every light-skinned man in a silk tie said to every dark-skinned man in a turban, I vow not to kill your children and heard the same vow in return

if every elected leader agreed to stop lying

if every child was fed as well as race horses bred to win derbies

if every person with a second home gave it to a person with no home

if every mother buried her parents, not her sons and daughters

if every person who has enough said out loud, I have enough

we would grow silent, still for a moment, a lifetime

we would hear infants nursing at the breast, hummingbirds hovering in flight

we would touch a canyon wall and feel the earth vibrate

we would hear two lovers sigh across the ocean

we would watch old wounds grow new flesh and jagged scars disappear

as time was layered upon time we would slowly be ready to begin.