A Cross in the Sky
in a
Heavily-Burdened Land

We were sitting on the ground or on small benches to pray and meditate, when someone gently tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward the sky...where white clouds had formed a cross. Amazing, we thought, and how timely

We had gathered at the Nevada Test Site during the Christian celebration of Holy Week to protest the creation and testing of nuclear armaments for the "defense" of the United States. However, what we witnessed was environmental degradation, the desecration of sacred Native American land, and the dangerous use of billions of dollars, which are so needed for health, education, housing, conflict resolution, and many other social needs.

That day even nature seemed to echo President (General)Eisenhower's famous "cross of iron" speech, given almost a half-century ago (in 1952). His words were prophetic:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.... This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under a cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Before I could dig my camera out of my backpack, the wind moved the clouds, the cross disappeared. But its symbolism, in a heavily-burdened land, touched my heart.

Have there been signs in nature which spoke to your heart? Signs which amazed you? Challenged you? Motivated you?