If Nuns Ruled the World Read Online Free Page B

presence is like. She projects an aura of calm that washes over everyone near her. Three coffees and an early morning flight had made me jumpy, but she made me feel at ease. There is a force and a vitality that transcends her tiny body.
    Sitting in the basement’s spacious conference room were OREPA’s Ralph Hutchinson, a crunchy Richard Dreyfuss doppelgänger, and Kary Love, an advising counsel partial to black turtlenecks and cowboy boots, who had driven down from Michigan for the hearing. Compared to Hutchinson in his slightly ripped jeans, beard, and hiking sneakers, Mr. Love, who had been trying nuclear disarmament cases for the better part of three decades, looked the part of the dashing antagonist in a daytime soap opera.
    â€œI long ago recognized that were Jesus to return, many of those imprisoned in US federal prisons today for peaceful demonstrations against US nuke weapons would be those with whom he would associate. Megan Rice, I believe, is one of those,” Mr. Love told me.
    Standing, huddled in a corner, were Francis Lloyd, the local Knoxville attorney, and Bill Quigley, a dapper law professor from Loyola University New Orleans.
    Thousands of civil disobedience cases are tried each year, and while the group gathered in the basement was keen to focus on the grander issues surrounding nuclear disarmament, they couldn’t ignore the fact that they were sitting on public relations gold with this particular case.
    â€œWhat they’re asking for is the death penalty for an octogenarian nun,” Mr. Love declared, his voice rising in excitement and his fist rapping on the distinguished dark wood table in the church basement conference room. He wanted no less than to start a petition asking that Sister Megan receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom rather than sixteen years in prison. “Hopefully because of the buzz with Sister Rice, we get enough media attention that people all over the world sign up,” Mr. Love said.
    Everyone in the room agreed that the more awareness they could bring to “the nun thing,” the better off their case would be.
    â€œIf you guys were willing to cross-dress, we’d get more attention,” Mr. Hutchinson said to Sister Megan’s male co-conspirators. “It would be the cute little nun and the not-so-cute other nuns.”
    Sister Megan stayed quiet and wrapped a fleece blanket around her shoulders, even though the basement was a little bit warm. She was the only one reluctant to play the nun card. “It’s not about me. It’s about the three of us, and the message,” she quietly told me.
    The nun card was a thing that commanded attention, though, attracting reporters from the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post for a story that wouldn’t have otherwise gotten much attention outside of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Dan Zak, a reporter for the Post who wrote a pitch-perfect account of the break-in, aftermath, and trial, described it to me as perfect casting for the perfect news story.
    â€œA break-in at Y-12 would have made a splash because of Megan’s age, but you add on top of that the fact that she is a nun, and people really perk up,” Zak told me. “First off you did have this older woman doing this thing, but then she was also a nun, doing something that most people wouldn’t consider nunlike at all.”
    It was strangely warm for November, even in the South, and from St. John’s it was just a meandering five-minute walk across the red and gold tree-lined Cumberland Avenue to the Howard H. Baker Jr. Courthouse in Knoxville’s town center. Sister Megan was happy for the little bit of exercise. “I have to get it in while I can,” she joked, the first of many I’m-probably-going-to-prison-soon cracks she made during our time together. The Baker courthouse is something straight out of a Hollywood movie—pristine, white, and unapologetically antebellum