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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
In Genesis, after God created night and day, the Earth, seas,
sky and all of the animals, He was pleased with what he saw. Could we say the
same about what we are creating in our yards or our contributions to public
spaces? There are two simple steps to aid in the care of creation:
