Wily as serpents and simple as doves: let's listen to our older sisters. What we can learn from the bold actions of three.

I NEVER DREAMT A DAY SPENT IN COURT COULD BE A BLESSING. But it was. I had gone to the Denver Federal Court for the sentencing of Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, and Jackie Hudson--the three Plowshares sisters convicted of sabotage for their symbolic nonviolent resistance at a missile site in Colorado. For interfering with the nation's defense and property damage, these Dominican nuns were given prison sentences ranging from two and a half to three and a half years. In the process they inspired me with their combination of sweetness and steel, faith and facts. These gray-haired women have bodacious courage and long prison records.

They appeared in court dressed in black--not to exploit their religious vocations but to stand with women around the world who mourn victims of war. They entered the courtroom silently praying, "O God, teach us how to be peacemakers in a hostile world." Silent through the court proceedings, they gave eloquent statements beforehand to the press and supporters from around the world.

Their statements and actions made me reexamine my own convictions. I could pray Carol Gilbert's words daily: "I don't fear going to prison. I don't fear loss of freedom to move about. I don't even fear death. The fear that fills me is not having lived hard enough, deep enough, and sweet enough with whatever gifts God has given me."

Don't we all have that fear? Aren't we all called to use our gifts, transforming our homes and workplaces, as the sisters will transform their prison cells--into sacred space? Each of us has a unique arena, and I returned home to grocery shopping, weeding the garden, and sending e-mail with a new reverence for the tasks placed in my path.

Gilbert also quoted Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan: "Know where you stand, and stand there." Simple advice, but how many of us have done the grueling inner work required to establish a solid anchor? The sisters are crystalline in their convictions: Their action was meant to alert us to the 10,455 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. One banner kept score: "Weapons of Mass Destruction--Colorado: 49. Iraq: 0."

Millions of people here and abroad have protested that humanity is evolving beyond war as a way to settle conflict. The sisters said they acted boldly "so that not one child would ever ask, 'Why were you complicit?'" It might seem an airy, philosophical question if they had not given it a human face.

I'll remember Platte, during teary goodbyes suddenly laughing, "Hey--you'd think we were going to prison!" Denied leniency because of age (68) and asthma, Hudson's smile broadened as if to say, "So I'm not old and decrepit!" In her last moments of freedom, Platte spoke kindly to the prosecutor who'd recommended jail to "deter" her.

As if they could be silenced, of the resistance stilled. On their first day in jail, large "citizen inspection teams" visited missile sites in Colorado and around the country. A plane flew over the sites waving a banner: "We found the weapons of mass destruction!"--with an arrow pointing down.

Gilbert, Hudson, and Platte have painted for me a new picture of Jesus' mysterious oxymoron, "wily as serpents and simple as doves" (Matt. 10:16). On the one hand, we are called to do everything we can to make the world better: to educate the young, cure disease, end war, create beauty. On the other hand, much lies beyond our control: the loss of all we hold dear, the deaths of those we most love. We live in the tension between the two, inspired by Platte's words, "Whatever sentence I receive today will be joyfully accepted as an offering for peace."

SO THE WORD CONTINUES TO BE MADE FLESH AND DWELL among us--even in courthouses and jails. After the sentencing, I stopped at a copy center across the street to reproduce the sisters' statements. "You're part of that group?" asked the clerk. Afraid to be labeled a crazy peacenik, I nodded hesitantly. "Then your copies are free," she said. "This issue needs to be resolved." In a bright, gratuitous human connection, we agreed that no other issue took precedence.

The national dialogue continues, in the restrained style of the court, in the more dramatic protest. As I walk freely into each day, I remember the imprisoned sisters. I pray to live harder, deeper, sweeter myself.

By KATHY COFFEY, a writer in Denver. Her newest book is Immersed in the Sacred: Discovering the Small Sacraments (Ave Maria Press, 2003).