Clergyman and activist William Sloane Coffin Jr. has long been one of my heroes. His calling to work for peace and social justice has been an inspiration to me. One of his important positions later in his life was to be the leader of SANE (National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy). But it is very important to remember that Coffin, even though he was known as an ardent opponent of the war in Vietnam and as a tireless campaigner against nuclear weapons, was also a veteran of World War II. When that war broke out, Coffin enlisted in the Army and became an intelligence officer, working as a liaison to the French and Russian armies. That’s when he began hearing stories about life in Russia under Joseph Stalin.

Coffin returned to Yale after the war but then joined the CIA when the Korean War began. It was then that he became disillusioned with the CIA and with American foreign policy, and he began working intrepidly for peace and social justice.

Last fall, I was delighted to hear a great story about Coffin. I met a man who lived in a house in Cambridge, Mass., when he was a student and helped with chores in exchange for room and board. The woman who owned the house was dating … roll of the drums … Bill Coffin! I loved hearing how Coffin would come to the house to see the woman or to pick her up for a date. While he was waiting, Coffin would sit down at the piano in the living room and play some classical piece flawlessly. What a great scene! (As an undergraduate, Coffin went to Yale University and enrolled in the School of Music in order to study piano.)

I thought of Coffin last week when I saw on TV a Ukrainian man playing a piano courageously on the street in Kyiv. How wonderful and inspiring — a few moments of sanity and beauty during an incredibly insane and ugly time.

While I heard Coffin speak publicly several times in Vermont, I missed the lone chance I had to meet him personally. I was serving St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Fairlee and belonged to an ecumenical clergy group that met each Wednesday morning for prayer, Bible study and conversation. One of our members knew Coffin and invited him to come to one of our meetings. (In retirement, Coffin lived in Strafford.)

I was excited to have the opportunity to listen to him and ask him a lot of questions that were on my mind. During all the years I was a member of that group, I never missed a meeting on account of illness. Lo and behold, the Wednesday morning that Coffin was coming to our meeting, I woke up, felt terribly ill and knew I should not go. What a disappointment. Not too long after that, Coffin died, so I missed the one opportunity I ever had to meet him in person.

As I watch the horrors unfolding in Ukraine each day, I wish I could talk with Bill Coffin and ask him to help me think about this unimaginable tragedy. He is the one who wrote in his book A Passion for the Possible, “Having bitten the nuclear apple, there is no returning to innocence. It’s hard not to conclude that humanity has outlived war but doesn’t know it.”

Coffin was realistic about the human condition. He had personally seen war in all its awfulness. He was once asked, “Are you a pacifist?” His reply: “No, I’m not a pacifist. The vote is 51-49.” That is pretty much where I am these days, aching for peace but acknowledging that a genocidal madman like Vladimir Putin is neither reasonable nor compassionate.

Jesus compared King Herod, a brutal petty tyrant, to a fox (Luke 13:32). It seems to me that Putin is more like a ferocious weasel. A few years ago, a friend of mine was distraught because a weasel had invaded a chicken coop and relentlessly killed every chicken there. My friend called weasels “the Nazis of the animal kingdom.” He asked an old-timer if he had a large Havahart trap that he could borrow to catch the weasel. The old-timer said, “If you catch that weasel and take him someplace else, he’ll come back. You have to shoot him.”

I wonder what Bill Coffin would say about that weasel. I wonder what he would say about Putin. I wish I could ask him right now. I wish I had some answers right now. I just pray that God, like a mother hen (Luke 13:34), will be present to all Ukrainians in this indescribably tragic time.

John C. Morris is a retired public school teacher who taught for almost 30 years in three different Vermont elementary schools. He is also an Episcopal priest and served three different congregations in Vermont before retiring from St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Fairlee in 2013.