Merwyn De Mello: July 7th, 2024 - 8th Day Faith Community Reflection:
Thank-you Bill and Eighth Day Faith Community for inviting me to share this morning.
The July 4th national holiday, fanfare and symbolism is meant to evoke feelings of nationalistic pride and power.
I have been pondering upon the alternatives to these notions of pomp and glory. Can there be a day that calls us to a celebration of togetherness, of our diversity of our oneness with creation? Mahatma Gandhi wrote, My idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be, the whole of the country may die, so that the human race may live. There is no room for race hatred there. Let that be our nationalism.’
The flag of India has a Chakra in the Center, a white band representing peace and truth with life in movement; the top saffron band represents renunciation of material gain; the bottom green is the relationship to soil and plant life. The national anthem of India, written by poet/philosopher Rabindranath Tagore draws on values of love, beauty and resilience. Tagore had composed a poem in the early 20th century, envisioning a nation where intellectual freedom, unity, and the pursuit of knowledge are valued. It emphasizes the importance of community, breaking down barriers and embracing diversity, fostering a society where individuals can strive for perfection without hindrance.
My work in the DC Metro area is with people seeking refuge from conflict and structural violence, who arrive at our shores, and are thrust into a sophisticated and sinister brand of violence. I am concerned when nationalism and a nationalistic construct correlates to a justice derived from a particular historical context and political identity. Nationalism and empire are intertwined. A reconceptualization is urgent. Decolonization is not about severing connections, but about the renegotiation or the rearranging of the nature of those connections and the reallocation of power in existing relationships.
I have recently been on 2 pilgrimages. A pilgrimage is a significant journey to a meaningful destination, both outer physical and within oneself.
My first pilgrimage for all of April, was to Oak Flat, Tonto National Forest, in Arizona. Known as Chi’chil Bilgagotiil, this sacred land of the Western Apache tribe is threatened into extinction by a large multinational copper mining company in league with the Federal Government. The plan is to turn this site into an underground mine that would cause it to collapse into a mile-wide, 1,000 feet-deep crater, ending Apache religious practices on it forever. With a Community Peace Team-member we walked the nonviolent path of Justice and Peace. We accompanied Apache Leader Wendsler Nosie and other Native Americans on a spiritual pilgrimage; entered into relationships of trust, listened to stories and shared own experiences. It was a ministry of nonviolent resistance and deep presence; as Nosie describes ‘getting to know the land and its inhabitants and letting them get to know you.’
My 2nd pilgrimage from which I have recently returned was Franciscan-led to Assisi in Italy. With 36 fellow pilgrims we walked miles upon miles in the spiritual pathways of Saints Francis and Clare – to their homes, sacred sites dedicated to them, and hermitages, hearing their stories of physical and spiritual struggle, sacrifice and compassion. Most meaningful for me was the time set aside for contemplation and reflection. I do not believe that the attraction to these saints is only to their holiness, poverty, detachment or even identification with Jesus Christ. They were dedicated to the construction of an alternative society, where the common good was pursued, in a continuous quest to overcome everything hindering that goal. They were marking out a dramatically new culture where the infinite worth of every person was honored and the common good could become a reality and not simply an abstract ideal.
Contrast this with July 4th type Nationalism which pursues political interconnection predicated on the subordination of certain members of society, and grants privileged groups prerogatives and permission to deny the same to the others. Nationalism embodies morally objectionable political relations, and is closely related to oppression of minorities and to technologies of racialized exclusion.
On the last day of my pilgrimage in Assisi, I sat by the cave, deep in the forest, to where St. Francis came for rest, contemplation and spiritual renewal. In that nature haven, I pulled out my journal and reflected on Wendsler Nosie’s words:
People wonder why Indian country cries all the time. Why are we crying? Why are we so frustrated? People came here, made laws, said follow these laws, and they are the first ones to break them.
It blows me away how they are real loyal to their political party and then they are real loyal to the American flag. If you look at those entities and you look at their foundation, it has a lot of blood on it. And how can you be loyal to that? The only loyalty I have is to what God gave the world. It is what God gave us – that’s where our loyalty should be.”
Francis of Assisi acknowledged the role he played in violence. That was at the root of the compassion he had for perpetrators of violence. He did not rail against the war-making of others, as if he had nothing to do with war, as if he were innocent of war. He strove for peace knowing that he made war.
There has to be a new narrative, a new birth. What we call a healing. We have to look at ourselves. If we do not, how are we going to heal? You cannot look at people and prescribe the antidote. You have to look inwards, at yourself. Each person has to look at themselves and heal.
Can we imagine (and rebuild) a Church/ a People of God that will model nonviolence and right relationships and help move our broken world from a paradigm of perpetual violence to a new nonviolent way, to a community of interdependence?
A Case for Utopia
by Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement
The world would be better off
if people tried to become better,
and people would be better
if they stopped trying to become better off.
For when everyone tries to become better off,
nobody is better off.
But when everyone tries to become better
everyone is better off.
Everyone would be rich
if nobody tried to become richer,
and nobody would be poor
if everyone tried to be the poorest.
And everybody would be what [she] ought to be
if everybody tried to be
what [she] wants the other fellow to be.
Tagore, Rabindranath: Where is the Mind is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.