If Nuns Ruled the World Read Online Free

concrete from the wall with small hammers.
    â€œJust a little. It wasn’t violent,” Sister Megan told me as she remembered mustering her strength to bang on the wall. “Violence was not an option.” She was adamant that the protest not be violent. “Even if we were attacked by dogs after we broke in, I would have just raised my hands,” she said. “I would have let the dogs take me down.”
    Leading up to the break-in the trio had held conversations about whether they would be shot by guards. That was a risk they were willing to take.
    They had brought with them six baby bottles filled with human blood (siphoned from three living humans supportive of their cause) and poured them onto the building before conducting a liturgical ceremony with white roses, lit candles, and the breaking of bread. They had chosen Sunday for their break-in as much for its spiritual significance as for the fact that they believed there would be fewer guards on patrol. When a guard finally reached the three trespassers at 4:30 a.m., they did not flinch and instead tendered some of their bread to him as an offering.
    That guard, Kirk Garland, a sturdy man with a broad face weathered by the lines of Southern living, was authorized to use deadly force, but at first it all appeared so innocent. All Garland saw was an old woman and a couple of unshaven men. Maybe they were just a painting crew. Then he saw the messages spray-painted on the wall behind them. He read the words and when it clicked that these were intruders he called for backup. Five minutes later a second security guard appeared, this one brandishing an M16 weapon. Sister Megan sang “This Little Light of Mine” as she was placed in handcuffs. The last time that she looked at her watch, it was a quarter to five in the morning.
    â€œThey were passive,” Mr. Garland would later say during his testimony against them after he lost his $85,000-a-year job, just four years from retirement. Sister Megan would later express remorse at her involvement in Mr. Garland’s dismissal, saying she hoped he would find another job in security, preferably somewhere less destructive. “Like a bank,” she said.
    For the Y-12 break-in, Sister Megan, Mr. Boertje-Obed, and Mr. Walli were charged with destruction and depredation of government property, both felonies. The intrusion caused $8,531.67 in physical damages, according to Y-12 officials. It took 100 gallons of paint to cover up the spray-painted graffiti and human blood and to repair the fences. The security breach also damaged Y-12’s credibility as a safe haven for special nuclear materials. If a little old nun and a couple of out-of-shape middle-aged men could get that close to the heart of the complex, what was stopping the terrorists?
    â€œAll three of them were elated that they were able to do so much,” said Ellen Barfield, a fellow peace activist and the one phone call Sister Megan made from jail after the arrest. With a flick of her hand, Barfield added, with none of the gravitas the statement should have required, “Plus, they were mildly pleased that they were still alive.”
    Frank Munger, the Knoxville News Sentinel senior reporter who covers the paper’s Department of Energy issues, has been on the Y-12 beat for three decades. He told me that in the aftermath of the July arrest, plenty of residents of Knoxville thought that the guards should not have hesitated.
    â€œYou heard people say they should have shot them,” Mr. Munger said nonchalantly during my visit to the offices of the Sentinel . Sister Megan really likes Frank Munger. He became her de facto biographer after she was arrested, and she talks about him like a proud mother, bragging about how thorough he was in his reporting of Y-12, even when it painted her in a less than pleasant light.
    â€œHe is a very special person,” she confided. “Special” is a vote of confidence from Sister