July/August 2001

Walking with Jesus into the Desert

by Janet Chisholm

The Desert Story is about a search for God. According to the Bible and the desert fathers and mothers of the early church who intentionally went into the wilderness to live a simplified life focused on God, the Desert Story is about journeying -- about being tested -- about encountering God. Today, we know that the Desert Story is also a story about violence and the Bomb.

I want to share reflections about my journey, the desert, the Bomb, and the temptations of Jesus.

My journey in the desert began when my parents moved to Las Vegas many years ago. It was a small town with only 18,000 residents and two modest hotels. They were seeking a warm, dry climate where my father's health would improve and they could raise their children. We came from Portland, Oregon, a lush land of greenery and rain where I played on soft lawns, and trees and flowers were everywhere. The change for me was very dramatic. We moved into a small motel room surrounded by naked earth, where I was expected to play contentedly. It was oppressively hot, and there was only one scruffy tree for shade. This certainly was no Promised Land of Milk and Honey, but a Land of Dirt -- and Sunny! Before long the natural beauty of the desert touched my soul. The sky reaching from horizon to horizon was filled with the drama of clouds and wind. Tall, colorful mountains surrounded the valley. The oases held streams and shady cottonwood trees, while the flat ground provided thorny mesquite bushes in which I could create a hideaway and block its entrance with a tumbleweed. I discovered the bursting flowers of springtime -- yucca, belly flowers (seen only when we got on our bellies), the red Indian paintbrush, and more. When I was older, our family bought a horse. As a teenager, I was allowed to ride alone, all the way to the mountains. It was thrilling and liberating to jump the ravines and gallop for miles across the unfenced desert. This was like the Holy Land, I was told -- like the desert where Jesus had walked. No wonder I felt healthy and whole, free and safe to explore and act boldly, convinced this was a sacred land. And each year our family drove north along the main highway. We joined church friends on a desert hilltop to hold an Easter service and watch the dramatic sunrise, with its spreading and brilliant colors slowly filling the heavens of God's beautiful creation.

During my elementary school years, there were many other occasions when our family drove north along that same highway. We rose early, just as we did for the Easter sunrise service. We drove out early, before dawn, while it was still dark, to get a good parking spot on the shoulder of the highway. We and hundreds of other families -- cars full of children -- our grandmother, too. It was the chance of a lifetime to watch the bombs go off. The newspapers and radio described the exact route to follow to get as close as possible. And they told us it was safe.

Everyone got out, put on dark glasses, and waited. There was a great hush -- we were afraid to blink and miss the spectacle. It was the hint of morningÉa creeping glow was visible above the horizonÉwhen finally a light exploded into the dark, there was a powerful sound forced into the air, the ground shook. Slowly dark billows tumbled out and rose: the mushroom cloud. And they told us it was safe.

As a Las Vegas High School freshman, I researched the effects of radiation on the human body. Recently my mother was cleaning her garage and found my paper on the project. I had analytically reviewed photos of Japanese who were said to have survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, of US doctors treating them and gathering data about exposures. I spent time in the local Atomic Energy Commission office and interviewed Edward Teller (not realizing his renown, I asked my simple questions about his research). It was the Sputnik era, and we were being encouraged to major in chemistry and physics if we had talent, because the US wanted to catch up with the Soviet Union. I was doing my loyal best -- studying rocket fuels and design, taking all the science and math courses I could get. It was expected that the brightest students take the hardest courses. Prove yourselves! And during my early school years, the nuclear testing industry employed the most people in town: it was the best place to get a good job. Despite the overwhelming evidence of sickness and dying that I summarized in the paper, I patriotically concluded with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower about the necessity of nuclear weapons to protect democracy. Years later, when in Honolulu as a Navy wife, the Bomb re-exploded into my personal awareness. Vietnamese children began to be brought to the island, to Tripler Army Hospital, for skin-grafting and prosthetics. I remembered the "survivors" in those black-and-white photos of doctors examining the living victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- shriveled skin, scarred faces and bodies, babies born with deformed limbs. Images from the past: a white American military doctor with a stethoscope against the passive chest of a frail Japanese woman; the dazed children; the cold projections of reduced life expectancy. They were so similar to the films I began to see of these Vietnamese survivors -- the wounded, dazed, crippled, and scarred victims of a deadly rain of napalm and bombs. "Stop this horror!" my heart cried out. But the deadly rain continued. Some of us purchased the films showing the victims. We toured the Islands calling for a cease-fire, for an end to all the killing and violence, an end to the victims who never made the nightly body count reserved for soldiers on both sides.

Later in my marriage, the Bomb touched my personal life again. I went to watch the first firing of a Poseidon nuclear submarine off Key West. With other family members of the submariners involved in the test firing, I watched the extraordinary event from a nearby surface vessel. Its thunderous explosion and horrible power immediately recalled for me the bombs I had witnessed as a child. Others cheered and clapped. I was shaken to the core, and wept.

Just a few years ago, the Bomb came back. There was a lump in my breast. (It turned out to be benign.) When I was scheduled for surgery, I called to inform my mother. With great distress, she told me about some recent studies. They indicated that Las Vegas residents had been exposed to high levels of radioactivity during the bomb testing in the Fifties, from the winds that had swirled in our hometown.

But they told us it was safe.

The silence was suddenly broken. No one in Las Vegas, during the years I lived there or since, had ever spoken to me before about the dangers of the nuclear weapons testing. Mother admitted she had had no concern then. No one seemed to: it was a time to show loyalty and patriotism. (I remember that the first TV pictures we watched were the McCarthy hearings.) Everyone was so trusting. With increasing alarm, she disclosed some of the horrible clues to the dangers: the blasts broke windows and cracked the walls of buildings, tumbled dishware and other breakables onto the floor. There were thousands of insurance claims. But they told us it was safe.

It felt like an earthquake, though it was not an act of God.

But they told us it was safe.

A man who worked for my father suffered from terrible skin cancer and finally had to stop working. He had been the only insurance investigator allowed on ground zero after a blast. He would go around and assess the damage with government experts. He was never warned of the dangers. The soles of his boots would be eaten off after one walk-through; he was always purchasing new shoes. But they told us it was safe.

The sheep in Utah began to sicken and die in great numbers -- and then the families became sick. And so much of our food came from there.

But they told us it was safe.

For me, protesting nuclear weapons is personal. I have often spoken against them and joined others in protest at the Groton Submarine Base, at Electric Boat, at the Nevada Test Site, and at the Pentagon. And I shall continue -- until it is safe for all of us. The desert is holy ground, not a wasteland or a land to waste.

In "desert spirituality," the desert is considered a place of solitude, silence, simplicity and peace; a place of blessing. It is where the focus is on God -- where we meet God, and God meets us. The Bible invites us to follow Jesus into the Desert on a journey of nonviolence -- to listen to God, to confront our own inner violence and the temptations of our time, and to receive an inner peace. The Desert is a place where God disarms our hearts. It is a place that promises transformation, strengthening, and preparation for the struggle for peace and justice. It is a testing ground -- both for nuclear violence, and for principled nonviolence. It requires us to make choices.

In his book, Jesus the Rebel, nuclear activist John Dear interprets the Devil's three temptations of Jesus in the Desert. He calls them the "demons of violence:" Despair, Domination, and Doubt.

The Devil: If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.

Jesus: It is written, one does not live by bread alone.

This is the temptation to despair. Jesus, are you really the type of person you claim to be? Prove it! Show some tangible results, be effective here and now. Aren't you really in this alone? Renounce your patient trust in God and simply act on your own. Just do it yourself!

We can imagine Jesus contemplating quietly and listening for the voice of God. He responds that we are called to be people of hope -- not to be successful, but to be faithful.

The Devil: To you I will give the glory of all the kingdoms and all authority if you will worship me.

Jesus: It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.

This is the temptation to domination. Jesus, you can become a ruler, owner, and controller of others. Wouldn't you like to be in charge of life? To be like God?

This is the seduction of patriotism, militarism, nuclear weapons, and domination over the world's people and resources. Jesus responds with a call to service -- to love of enemies, compassion, and mercy -- and to the worship of God alone.

The Devil: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself from the cliff. God will protect you.

Jesus: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

This is the temptation to doubt. Don't you know, Jesus, that God can't be trusted? If you test God, you will learn that God isn't loving; why, everyone around you knows that He doesn't even exist. It's obvious, isn't it? Look at the world; there is no moral order, no sanity.

Jesus stands firm. He rejects testing God and the violence of self-destructive behavior. He claims we can trust God's love for us and be at peace with ourselves.

Jesus rejects these temptations of the Desert and the drive for power, prestige, or possessions. Then, renewed in strength and with an inner sense of peace, He goes out to minister, to proclaim nonviolence and God's love for all. The story of Jesus' struggle in the Desert sums up the inner spiritual testing that is at the root of nonviolence. We all are called to reject violence and its fallout of despair, domination, and doubt. We are asked to choose sides. If we choose well, we will be strengthened and prepared for public, nonviolent resistance to violence. Of course, there will be opposition: the Empire fights back! Nevertheless, like Jesus we can walk out of the Desert, having been tested, and enter our communities filled with faith, hope, and love -- ready to minister and to take action.

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