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The True Peace
The first peace, which is the most important,
is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship,
their oneness, with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize that at the center
of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit),
and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.
The second peace is that which is made between two individuals,
and the third is that which is made between two nations.
But above all you should understand that there can never
be peace between nations until there is known that true peace,
which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.
Black Elk, Oglala Sioux & Spiritual Leader (1863 - 1950)
The first peace, which is the most important,
is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship,
their oneness, with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize that at the center
of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit),
and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.
The second peace is that which is made between two individuals,
and the third is that which is made between two nations.
But above all you should understand that there can never
be peace between nations until there is known that true peace,
which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.
Black Elk, Oglala Sioux & Spiritual Leader (1863 - 1950)
This past Monday, we celebrated Columbus Day. Now, all of us know we’re supposed to be a little uneasy with this nowadays in deference to being politically correct with Native Americans. We were all taught in childhood to commemorate the discovery that launched the possibility of our great nation – plus, we all got the day off of school. Contrast this happy occurrence with the raft of current writers who have begun to apply the word genocide to the story of our country. At the root of this tension lies the Doctrine of Discovery, or, as we have come to know it: Manifest Destiny.
Only four years after Columbus’s momentous discovery, King Henry VII wrote the original Doctrine of Discovery, which said in no uncertain terms that Christian explorers had full right to subjugate any lands and people they found in their conquest of foreign realms. This doctrine is what set the wheels in motion for how our society, our government, and even our churches function in regards to the various native populations of the United States from that time until today. This doctrine is still the basis for many legal decisions even now.
This means that for all the native peoples on this “new” continent, the Europeans became the “great white father” of their God-given lands. Their options were to gently acquiesce and move quietly aside (and often this wasn’t even enough) or to be exterminated by the colonizing and pioneering forces. Even in our own times, the options have changed little – Native Americans must simply cease to exist as Native Americans if they are to participate in US civic life. Should they wish to maintain their ancestral stories and continue to live them out, they must do so at the expense of having a voice in our society: they must become invisible and uncared for.
This Doctrine of Discovery has increasingly come to light in recent decades as a deep tear in the fabric of American history, and much work is being done even now to uncover its far-reaching effects and acknowledge the damage done. In the last General Convention, the Doctrine was officially repudiated by the Episcopal Church as being “fundamentally opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and the church has been urged to proclaim this fact and to begin to explore the history of indigenous peoples throughout the domain of the church, as well as assist these peoples in their struggle for sovereignty and human rights.
In exposing the Doctrine of Discovery, however, we have done little more than to tear a tiny pin-hole in the shroud that Isaiah portrays as “covering all peoples,” and if we squint our eyes and look carefully through it, the picture that emerges is disturbing. This Doctrine of Discovery doesn’t just exist on paper; it is not in our past. No, the Doctrine of Discovery is a part of each and every one of us.
I’m sure Christopher Columbus was a really charismatic guy – and his passion for exploration was fervent enough to convince not only his entire crew of sailors to sail recklessly toward the edge of the earth but also enough to rope the King and Queen of Spain into financing this lunacy. But charisma and passion aren’t enough to get government funding –Columbus tapped into a far deeper part of humanity: the same one that creates things like pyramid schemes, free trade zones with impoverished nations, and sub-prime mortgages. It is the need to have our stuff, our convenience, our leisure without knowing the real cost. Or perhaps even more to the point – without PAYING the real cost: in labor, in money, and in emotional concern for others.
The Doctrine of Discovery that lives inside us is this: when you find good stuff that’s cheap and a long way off, bring it to us and don’t tell us how you got it. Deeper still is the Manifest Destiny in our hearts: that it is more OK for us to pollute, exploit, oppress because we are the rightful masters of the world, and most of the cultural vices we study: racism, sexism, xenophobia – exist in support of this belief. This is the shroud Isaiah was talking about – the concealing power of sin and lack of vision that keeps us from seeing the image of God in the other; that hides the deep truth of our fundamental connection as living beings. This is the false foundation upon which much of our society is built, and it seems we don’t have any choice but to participate: we turn on our air conditioners and help lop off another West Virginia mountaintop. We reach for a bite of chocolate and end up paying the guys with rifles who capture African children to work as slaves on cocoa plantations. A pair of my shoes sends another few ounces of leather tanning chemicals down a river in India: a computer sent for recycling taints the groundwater of a Chinese village with heavy metals; our new smart phone sends another Malaysian deep underground to scratch out precious metals in an unventilated and unsafe mine that will ultimately take years off her life. Every day we are consigned to launch Christopher Columbus yet again – though now he looks more like an Asian stock-trader or an oil engineer in the Amazon Basin.
How did we get here? What can we do? Where does it all end?
Good questions.
If there’s anyone who knows what it’s like not to have an easy answer, it’s the Israelites. Isaiah’s prophecy comes to us from a world not that unlike the world of the oppressed in our day. The history of the Jews is a history of slavery, oppression, exile, and destruction – they intimately know what it is to know the story of how things ought to be and to try to proclaim that story amidst horrifying circumstances. Isaiah speaks out in a world dominated by powers that destroy lands, nations, families, and spirits and he has the GALL to say that it all comes to fruition in a “feast of rich food” and “well aged wines strained clear.”
And we, as Christians, as Americans on the profiting end of this worldwide system of oppression, as a “palace of aliens” with a “noise like heat in a dry place” have the gall to proclaim his story. But it IS our story: in many ways our powerlessness is a dim mirror of the people we unthinkingly exploit. Just by living our lives we take part in systems that spread unbelievable mayhem around the world. The difference is that we have at least the power to speak the truth and to look for ways to opt out. If we bury our heads in the sand, we only make it worse; instead, we must continually open the wound, continually examine ourselves and our effects on others. It is hard work. It is a life’s work. In the midst of it all, we can still hope in Isaiah’s message: “the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth.”
This vision, however, cannot leave us looking for some pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. The call of the prophet is always a call back to the covenant: the covenant whereby we lament our wrongdoing and repent; the covenant that gives the land a rest; the covenant that tells the people how to care for the orphan and the widow and the stranger; the covenant that reveals the deep order of creation. The tribe of Israel cannot simply abandon their identity and go along with whatever ruling empire is trying to subsume them, comfortable in the knowledge that God will make it right someday: they must continue to live out the story. The Sioux people cannot give up their history on the land; they also must keep referring to the world around them as “all my relations” in their regular prayers. And we too cannot ignore the wrongs of the past as we continue to benefit from the ill-gotten gains of our forefathers, or wait for the day when our government figures out how to keep us from spreading destruction with our every action. Instead we are called to KEEP TELLING THE REAL STORY: to seek out the truth, to expose and nurture the deep connectedness of all people, and to keep poking holes in that unholy shroud with our actions and proclamations; and to participate every day, with our whole selves, in the great feast that is God’s eternal goal.
Amen.
Penetrating insight, convicting content. Very good!
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