Pace e Bene

Lightning East to West

Pace e Bene staff member Fr. Louis Vitale, 77, began serving a six-month prison sentence on Monday, January 25 for nonviolent, prayerful protest calling for closure of the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. On February 25 he was transferred from Crisp County Jail in Cordele, Georgia, where he has been held for the past month, to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.  You can write to him at the following address:

Louis Vitale #25803-048

USP Atlanta

U.S. Penitentiary

P.O. Box 150160

Atlanta, GA 30315

To see updates from and about Fr. Louie, please click here.

February 22, 2010: Lightning East to West

Lent has now begun.  Fr. Bob Cushing visited on Friday.  He came late (11 a.m. instead of 9 a.m.) and the deputy said lunch trays would come at 11:30, so we would have a half hour.  So I hastened to begin. 

An even greater spiritual energy, such as compassion, could transform this world into the “peaceable kingdom”

We opened with communion together.  He shared creative ways he guides people into Lent.  He himself resolved to drive the speed limit.  I told him of Jesuit spiritual director of mine who took that approach, which forced him into the right lane on the freeway behind a tree trimmer trailer.  A large limb fell off, forcing him to go off the road and to roll his car, suffering broken bones.

This is not a problem for me.  I do not drive and surely not this Lent. 

We talked about criticism and pride.  He shared ways of anchoring ourselves in Jesus – having a “conversation” with him at the end of the day (something like doing a daily resentment inventory in AA).

On Sunday I missed being in church.  The two of my cellmates who are Christian wanted to do a “Bible service/prayer call.”  If there was one for the jail we were not included, being in “seg.”  They have different rhythms. 

I got together with each of them separately.  We focused on the Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent (Luke 4:1-13), the Temptation of Jesus in the Desert.  What are their experiences of temptation in their lives? 

This did not sound like the list taught by Mother Teresa’s sisters to the children at St. Boniface, but theirs were real.  Then we prayed for their plight and for those they had offended, and what Lenten resolutions would help them.  Change.  I was glad to be here.

Now Lent has begun.  I walked into the cell and looked out the small window.  It is raining hard.  Suddenly I saw flashes of lightning for the first time since I came back.  I thought of my experiences last time. 

Then I was reading Jim Douglass’s book, Lighting East to West.  Einstein’s E = MC2 — describing physical energy that can cause a nuclear explosion which could bring about the end of the world. 

But Einstein insists there could be an even greater spiritual energy, such as compassion, that could transform this world into the “peaceable kingdom” forecast by the prophet Daniel.  As I meditated on that in my cell here two years ago I opened my eyes, unaware of a storm outside, and found the window full of lightning – as I looked out it filled the sky “from east to west” – an amazing enactment of the biblical description.

The lightening appearing this morning was only sporadic flashes, far from my 2006 experience.  But it seemed a holy sign of that “theophany” I had experienced before.  My spirit soared as I said “Yes,” “Thank You” to the Creator.  I am in the right place.  The promise of that peaceable kingdom is realizable even in the midst of the current wars. 

In 2008 I went to Assisi on my quest, to hear God’s call and prayed before the San Damiano cross, as did St. Francis.  I was reassured of a call to be a “peacemaker.”  That call also becomes clearer here as I read Paul Moses’s recent book, The Saint and the Sultan, as he so clearly posits the unfolding clarity of Francis’s call as a peacemaker.  That message is symbolically reaffirmed as I begin Lent 2010. 

I could suddenly be moved anytime – but I shall carry these experiences with me.