DAN BERRIGAN’S lament ("Letters," March-April 1999) about the general’s clothes in his post-repentance picture suggests several things to me: 1) people who have been used to looking at America’s military through the bars of America’s prisons see it somewhat differently than those who have looked at it through its own eyes, 2) it’s a challenge to be equally understanding of the inmates and the generals (should we be?), and 3) perhaps repentance has to be measured with a micrometer as well as a yardstick.
The prophetic vision in Isaiah 9 sees the boots and garments of warfare "burned as fuel for the fire." I think it is good to pray and act that vision into the present rather than leaving it all for the future, but as the wag said, "Time is nature’s (God’s?) way of keeping everything from happening at once."
John K. Stoner, Akron, Pennsylvania
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