by Darlene O’Leary, Executive Director of Galilee Centre in Arnprior, Ontario.
Introduction
It is such an honour to be invited to share in this celebration of experiences, of learning, of vision, and of hope. To be able to open our minds, hearts, and spirits to the realities of the world beyond us is essential to deepening our understanding, our compassion, and our faith. I’m sure this weekend will draw on the richness of what has been learned in your many encounters with the people of the Dominican Republic and will guide you in the next stage of your journeys.
I want to talk to you tonight about Faith and Justice in the Global Context by stating first that our voices join those of many people in many communities throughout the world who have been called by their faith to do justice work. Indeed, we join the voices throughout history, as every generation has faced the challenges of living in peace and of building just societies, and in every generation people of faith have responded to those challenges.
In his acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35, Martin Luther King, Jr. stated: “Non-violence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time … the foundation of such a method is love. … I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centred men have torn down, other-centred people can build up.” (1)
There is a wonderful photo of King looking at his Nobel medallion, with a sense of pride and humility at the same time, as if this award was an affirmation, not of himself, but of the path he was on, of the calling he was responding to. He later stated to an audience in Harlem after receiving the award that he wished he could stay on the mountain, but he must return to the valley. “I must go back because my brothers and sisters down in Mississippi and Alabama cannot register and vote.” (2) It was as concrete and practical as that – it was his life commitment. King continued with the non-violent movement for civil rights in the US until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 – 40 years ago. He was 39 years old.
I’m raising the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. because I think in our current context, particularly in Canada, we are in danger of forgetting the importance of the voice of faith in the struggle for justice and the call of justice in living our faith. King was a Baptist minister and an advocate for civil rights. His faith was the foundation of his actions; faith and justice for King could not be separated. He was joined by people from many faiths in the struggle for justice, including Catholic women and men religious, Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh, and others. He was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, whose Hindu tradition grounded his work toward the non-violent achievement of India’s independence from the colonial power of Great Britain.
People of faith have been behind some of the major movements for justice and peace in Canada from the Underground Railway movement to the emergence of the CCF in the Western provinces to the Antigonish Cooperative movement in the Eastern provinces. That voice lives on today, but it is softer, and perhaps a bit less certain of itself. I believe that we need to recover that voice, and we need to speak it loudly and strongly. To do this we need to recover the ground of our faith, the understanding of what justice and peace mean, and the will to act in solidarity in the face of opposition.
The current context could be described as a “kairos moment:” a time of crisis and a time of opportunity. In many ways, we don’t really know how bad things are, but we don’t really know how good things are either. We need to learn both, and to live out of the hope that comes in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles and our celebrations. I want to talk a bit about crisis and hope to try to draw us toward a renewed energy for action.
Current context: where are we in the world today?
The top stories of the day give us a sense of the current context: global food crisis; United States recession and debt crisis; ecological climate change crisis; wars on terrorism; rising costs of oil; water crisis; and so on. And we are not even the ones being hardest hit. It is no coincidence that the poorest and most marginalized are affected by these crises most immediately and intensely.
What is our call to respond? Well, we are first called to notice, to understand, to judge and to act. And we are. The opportunities emerging in the face of these crises offer many signs of hope. Ecological, social, political, and economic consciousness is emerging in new ways, and I believe a new spiritual consciousness is emerging as well. I would like to highlight some of what I find hopeful in these areas of emerging consciousness.
My story
I’ve learned from feminist thought that it is important to claim your own voice, particularly for people whose voices have been silenced through various layers of injustice. It is also important to recognize the lens out of which we view the world, because our view is one of many and involves the biases that come with our contexts. So I’ll name a bit of my own story and lens to situate my view of the challenges at hand.
I grew up in PEI, which to many seems like some kind of idyllic wonderland of red soil and beaches and Anne of Green Gables. It actually is like that, which I only appreciated after I left. Being from the East coast gave me an awareness of justice issues at an early age. People struggled to make a living. My grandparents in Nova Scotia relied on fishing to survive and it was a hard life. They didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was about 10 years old, which was well into the 1980s. You don’t forget these things as a child, especially when you have to go to the outhouse in the middle of winter. But these were important lessons for me.
I didn’t realise it at the time but the area where my grandparents lived, in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, was one of the first areas where Moses Coady and Jimmy Tompkins, both Roman Catholic priests, began their adult education efforts to empower farmers and fishers to take control of their own destinies through cooperative development. This was the beginning of the Antigonish Movement, an adult education movement that lives on today at St. Francis Xavier University’s Coady Institute. Today, the Coady Institute works with people from all over the world to teach community economic development and leadership skills. Their work is a great sign of hope.
Growing up in PEI also made me politically aware in a way that only living in a small province can. I had a doctor in Toronto who was talking to me about PEI once. He said, “PEI must be very progressive. You’ve had the first female premier in Canada and the first Lebanese-Canadian premier in Canada.” I laughed. I’m not sure progressive is the word I’d use, but it is a place that knows the importance of everyone having a political voice. I recall a few years ago, the Ontario provincial election and the PEI provincial election were happening on the same day. There was about a 50% voter turnout in Ontario. In PEI, DURING A HURRICANE, there was about a 90% voter turnout!
For me, being raised Catholic, my faith was not separate from any other part of my life. It was the foundation. I knew this from an early age. I knew that believing in God meant that I had a responsibility to be in the world in a very particular way. I tried to practice compassion and non-violence (which was a real challenge when it came to my sister), and I was drawn to stories of human suffering. I recall being about 12 years old, flipping through a Chronicle of the 20th Century and turning to an article about the liberation of Auzchwitz. I could not believe what I was seeing. It was the first time I had ever questioned the goodness of humanity. Not that I didn’t know bad things happened, but this was different. I still cannot grasp how it could have happened or how we have allowed genocide to continue throughout the world.
Those lessons solidified my conviction of the importance for people of faith to work for justice. I had the great opportunity to go to Mexico during my undergraduate years to have an experience similar to the DR experience. The people I met told their stories, shared their homes and food, and opened their lives to these young Catholic students from Canada. We asked what we could do to help and they would say, “Go back and tell people about us.”
At the time of my visit, the Free Trade Agreement was in the works. We look today to the meeting of the Three Amigos in New Orleans and see our Prime Minister being accompanied to talks on the Security and Prosperity Partnership by the voice of big business, Thomas D’Aquino of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and wonder today if the voices of the poor and of the earth even register with these people who are making decisions that will affect us all. And they are making these decisions in our names.
For me, faith and justice work has to involve intellectual work as well because systematic injustice requires systematic responses. I began my Masters in Theology at Regis College in Toronto in the work of Bernard Lonergan, a Canadian Jesuit theologian. I went on to do my PhD in Theology at Saint Paul University on Lonergan’s Ethics and Economics. I am convinced that this brilliant Catholic thinker has something to say about social justice, although most people who know of him might need some convincing.
Early in his studies Lonergan wrote an essay, which would become a macroeconomic analysis that actually rivals the capitalist analysis. Why would a theologian write a macroeconomic analysis? Well, Lonergan grew up during the Great War and the Great Depression. He knew that the political economics of the day were inadequate, with the capitalism of apparently democratic countries being based on a flawed economic model, and the socialism of communist countries taking on the basic assumptions of capitalism in a sociological model that accompanied brutal, authoritarian governments. “If you want to help the poor,” he stated, “learn economics.” A funny thing for a theologian to say. Lonergan saw Moses Coady and other Catholics moving beyond a charity response to problems of poverty to a justice response, which worked to understand the systemic roots of the problems. For Lonergan, being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible and loving are imperatives for every person to be fully authentic and to reverse the cycle of social decline.
Along with working on Lonergan, during my Masters degree studies, I took some time to work and live at Romero House, a refugee community in Toronto run by Mary Jo Leddy, where interns accompany refugees in their settlement process in Canada. The lessons about the call of faith to do justice at Romero House are so strong and inspiring. Of course, Romero House is named after Monseñor Óscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, who also died for his ongoing and non-violent effort to live out his faith in a quest for justice for the people of El Salvador.
At Romero we began our days with prayer, shared our meals, and walked with the many people who came to the community for help. The stories of our friends at Romero continue to inspire me. We came together from all over the world to welcome the stranger and feed the hungry and to call for a more just and humane society.
Today, in Canada, we still do not have an adequate appeals process in place for refugee claimants, many of whom have their claims rejected because they did not have access to adequate legal support, they could not understand the documents which are the basis of their claims, and so on. In the case of Maoua Diomande, who spent a year in sanctuary at Sacré Coeur Parish in Ottawa, her deportation order was issued after her claim was rejected, but she had no avenue to appeal. It was found that, among other problems, her hearing was not even conducted in her first language. After organized advocacy from faith-based organizations, Maoua’s MP intervened on her behalf, and she was accepted.
My present work at a spiritual retreat centre – Galilee Centre – is an effort to continue exploring the connection between faith and justice, peace, and ecology. All are deeply connected for me. I want to share those connections with you now.
Ecology: our relationship with the Earth
Last year, we had the great pleasure of exploring spirituality and ecology with Jim Profit, from the Guelph Jesuit Centre, and Maurice Lange from the Oblate Ecological Initiative. Participants at these retreats reflected on the connections between self, others, Earth, and God. We situated ourselves in the Universe story, a 15-billion-year old story of which we are a part. We then returned to the very immediate and concrete context of our own life stories, where we grew up and how that informs our own spirituality; how our ongoing relationship or lack of relationship with the earth also informs our spirituality.
I don’t know about you, but my fondest childhood and adulthood memories involve being outside, wandering through the woods, swimming in the ocean, camping. These are times that I have experienced a deep sense of freedom and connection. I wonder how our children will have those experiences if the air is too polluted to breathe, if the water is too polluted to swim in, if the woods are too filled with garbage to walk in?
Thomas Berry states: “We should be clear about what happens when we destroy the living forms of this planet. The first consequence is that we destroy modes of divine presence … To lose any of these splendid companions is to diminish our own lives.” (3) We are in need of what I consider to be a “radical de-centring,” a shift of perspective that would move from ourselves as the centre to ourselves as a part of the story of the universe. A shift that would allow us to understand who we are as people in relationship and as belonging to this universal, cosmological story.
Being situated in the story of the universe and of the earth gives us our proper context and shifts our perspectives beyond ourselves. This is ultimately a spiritual shift that has ethical implications. How would we live differently in this world if we situate ourselves as part of the Universe story? Would we have a deeper reverence for all of creation, ourselves, and each other? Berry has stated that we do not destroy what we hold sacred. It is important for us to reach into our own stories and our own experiences to continually find that sacred connection and to live out of it. This is happening and is part of the emerging spiritual consciousness of our context.
Spirituality of active non-violence
Another part of this new spiritual consciousness is the renewal of a spirituality of non-violence. Our connecting with the sacred leads to a commitment to making sense of life and living compassionately and non-violently with all creation. We have the great honour of hosting the Jesuit author and activist John Dear at Galilee in August. John was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and endorsed by Desmond Tutu for his ongoing work for justice and peace. John joins so many voices of faith leaders who continue to call for our governments and all social bodies to act non-violently to work for justice. In his work, he identifies people from whom we can gather inspiration for faith and justice work: Dorothy Day, Phil and Dan Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Corretta Scott King, Oscar Romero, Henri Nouwen, Ignacio Ellacuria, Dom Helder Camara, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, and others. What a list!
John Dear structures his wonderful book Living Peace: A Spirituality of Contemplation and Action by beginning first with the “Inner Journey” of grounding ourselves in spiritual practices, connecting daily with the sacred, with God, Earth, self, and others. We then are drawn into the “Public Journey” of speaking and acting and living for justice and peace. Dear states: “This lifelong journey toward inner peace requires regular self-examination and an ongoing process of making peace with ourselves. It means constantly examining the roots of violence within us, weeding out those roots, diffusing the violence that we aim at ourselves and others, and choosing to live in peace. … As we make peace within ourselves, we can learn to make peace with others.” (4)
Of course, for John Dear, this spirituality of non-violence is a call for contemplation and action. He goes on to state: “If we do not address the violence in our world, our inner peace is an empty illusion. Likewise, we cannot seek peace and expect to help disarm the world while our hearts are filled with violence, judgment, and rage. Our work for peace cannot bear fruit if it is rooted in violence.” (5)
The “Public Journey” of this spirituality of non-violence and reverence for creation is different for each of us. But it is an imperative. It was the path that Jesus took. It was the path that the early Christian community took. I just had the opportunity to attend a small workshop with Rita Nakashima Brock, a feminist biblical scholar and art historian. She was promoting her new book, Saving Paradise, and she spoke about her curious discovery that in the art of early Christianity there consistently are images of paradise and resurrection, but none of crucifixion. This led her to an extensive investigation of early Christian art and writings which leads to a vision of the early community that is non-violent and grounded in the sacredness of this world as paradise. The suffering of the world existed clearly for them, and they were persecuted for their faith, but what compelled them as a community was the experience of the living community of God and the living paradise of this earth. They were a people of resurrection and hope. Only after Christianity became adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire, did images of the crucifixion emerge, and gradually a theology of atonement opened the door to the shift from a non-violent Christianity to the brutality of the Crusades and the absurd acceptance of violence, in various forms, in Christian societies.
Call to action: inspire and unite
Grounding ourselves in a spirituality of non-violence and reverence for creation involves a call to action, a public journey in faith, to community building, to making connections. This is because, ultimately, our full humanity is not realised outside of our relationships with God, others, and creation. And the diminishment of creation and of humanity is the diminishment of ourselves and of our relationship with God.
This doesn’t mean that we all have to become a Gandhi, or a King, or a Aung San Su Ky. In fact, I think we have to recognise what I think all of these great figures knew and know: that the movement for faith and justice is never solitary, and it involves a commitment to a way of life that slowly turns into communal and social shifts. The point is not to take on the world by ourselves, but to recognize that we are only our true selves in communion, in relationship. From that stance, so much is possible.
Conclusion
In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech entitled “Unfulfilled Dreams” where he reflected on the challenges of the calling to work for justice. He spoke of the struggle of another great man of faith, Mahatma Gandhi, who maintained his commitment to justice and non-violence, even though the world around him was still acting otherwise. King understood the profound heartache of knowing his vision would not be achieved in his lifetime. He stated in the speech, “And I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable.”
It is clear, however, that King knew that one of the greatest joys of life is working for justice, no matter how difficult or insignificant the work may seem. Of course, King was a leader in one of the most significant movements for justice and human rights in history. But in his speech, his humility is clear as he makes the point that even though the goal may not be achieved, that does not make the effort insignificant.
I want to end with King’s voice of hope to lead our way with his very modest statement: “Get somebody to be able to say about you, ‘He may not have reached the highest heights, he may not have realized all his dreams, but he tried.’ Isn’t that a wonderful thing for somebody to say about you?”
- Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, by Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in Charles Johnson and Bob Adelman, Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., 40 Years Later, His Life and Crusade in Pictures (New York: Time Inc. Books, 2008), p. 88. Also, John Dear, Living Peace, p165.
- Ibid., p. 88.
- Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), p. 11-12.
- Dear, Living Peace, p. 11-12.
- Ibid., p. 14-15.