We all live below the same sky, breath the same air, stand on the same Earth

We all stand on the same Earth

In December, I shared Christmas dinner with my daughter, her husband, their two dogs and my wife.   We spoke with our daughter in Portland by phone.   A simple and familiar family evening, sharing our lives, celebrating our past and anticipating a shared future.   Christmas is special in my family, a time for sharing love, celebrating life, birth, and a holy time.   We went outside, looking up at the full moon, wisps of clouds obscuring the stars, infusing a glow to the sky, and around us colored lights wrapped trees and porches.  Returning inside, we made pierogis, a traditional Slavic potato dumpling, and honored our parents who are no longer living by sharing a traditional Christmas meal.  

Under that same sky, breathing the same air, standing on the same Earth – are our mothers, brothers, sisters, ancestors and children – who are afraid, who are hurt, who are violated and killed.  Under the same sky, breathing the same air, standing on the same good Earth.   Victims already of spoiled sacred land and water, of punishing storms and vicious droughts, of the grasping greed of companies immorally sucking the Earth dry.  

Over 50% of refugees are children

A few examples:   As my family shared Christmas, in nearby Montgomery County Maryland, an emergency meeting of mostly Hispanic immigrants packed a room.  Fear of recent immigration raids brought them together. Families who came here to escape violence, poverty, gangs, destruction of their lands and waters – they fear to send their kids to school.  Students are afraid they'll be deported from their classrooms.  People are afraid to go to local stores for fear of being targeted.   Juanita Cabrera Lopez, FACS’ former outreach manager, now organizes Mayan and other First World Peoples to confront the big businesses and governments that despoil sacred lands and waters in Guatemala and Mexico to plant palm oil plantations and dig out minerals.  Degraded earth and water force families to move to survive.  The UN estimates that more than 50 million refugees crossed national boundaries last year, and 38 million people were forcibly uprooted and displaced within their own countries.  Just over half of all refugees are children.   More children and families will be uprooted by war, disease, violence, poverty, environmental degradation as the climate becomes more disrupted. Raiding families who have come to the US to escape violence and give their kids a better life is counter to every value that our religious traditions stand for.     

We all live below the same sky

Another example: In Fredericksburg Virginia, a few days before Thanksgiving, a community meeting discussing expansion of the Islamic Ummah of Fredericksburg was disrupted and broken up by bullies.  “Every single one of you is a terrorist. I don’t care what you say.  You can smile at me, you can say what you want, but every Muslim is a terrorist,” he shouted. “Shut your mouth, I don’t want to hear your mouth.  Everything that I can do to keep you from doing what you're doing will happen.”   A deputy sheriff ended the meeting.   A member of the mosque said to the press: “It is so sad that people are so ignorant, and unfortunately I understand their fear, all of us have fear, including the Muslims, because the people who did [the Santa Barbara killings] are not Muslims.”  She continued: “Why did your great grandparents come here? Because of religious persecution and that’s exactly what you are doing to us. We try to do everything nice to please God, to please humanity."   Muslim parents are afraid to send their children to Sunday school at the center because of the threats.   A few days later, a hoax explosive device was found at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in the Falls Church, Virginia.  Are we not all children of God?  Are not all of our children precious – our legacy and our hope?  Two weeks after the fake bomb was found, members of FACS joined hundreds of Christians, Jews and Muslims at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in solidarity.  Two truckloads of blankets, coats and sweaters were gathered for refugees.   We all stand on the same earth, under the same sky, and honor our sacred brotherhood.  

On the West Coast, the Lummi and other native peoples in the Pacific Northwest are fighting against an enormous proposed coal port, one of the largest in the world, which would destroy a 3,500 year old Lummi village site and important native fisheries in Northwest Washington, near the Canadian border. Master carver Jewell Praying Wolf James fashioned a 19 foot totem pool that is journeying more than 5,000 miles across the continent.  Tribal leaders, spiritual leaders of many faiths are speaking out against the juggernaut of energy development and energy transportation.   The Lummi and First World Peoples in Alberta and British Columbia are confronting threats to their lands, air and water from the enormous increase in US and Canadian fossil fuel energy extraction – the Alberta tar sands, coal mines in Montana, the fracked oil fields in Dakotas – and the drive to send these carbon polluting fuels to markets across the world.   Their fight is for us – we all live under the same sky, breathe the same air, stand on the same good earth.  And our faiths call for us to fight with them, for all of us and for our children.

I will close with words from Jewell Praying Wolf James, the Lummi totem pole carver: 

You ask, what can we do?

We need you to talk to your congregations, talk to your children, that God created the earth and therefore it’s sacred.

You are the ones who vote your politicians into office, they are the ones who can tell the regulators “no!”

We’re calling on everyone to use your voice. Do you need permission to stand up?

We have to do this:

One people

One time

One place,

One God

One prayer!

With Blessings

Eric Goplerud
Executive Director,
FACS