Literature: Tales from Nagasaki

He expressed grave suspicions about “angry people” in peace movements. There is a great need for peace movements, he wrote, but only if made up of people with hearts that are at peace. He warned of any peace movement that was “merely political” or ideological and not dedicated to justice, love and patient hard work. Angry shouting in the streets about peace often cloaked very unpeaceful hearts, he commented…. In one place Nagai says all of us are called to “contemplation, which is not difficult. You see children praying this way, for instance, before the crib at Christmas time.” He quotes the Gospel: “I thank you Father for hiding these things from the clever and revealing them to little ones.”… Looking out at the nuclear wasteland Nagai said with the faith of Isaiah, “God will turn (Jerusalem’s) desolation into Eden, and the wasteland into a garden of Yahweh.”

(ch. 26, The Little Girl who Couldn’t Cry, pp. 213-214)