Of Spirituality, Compassion and the Work of Justice

Anyway, the group came to a site where a number of indigenous people had been brutally murdered and buried, disappeared, as they said in those days. The site marked their mass grave, which had been uncovered after the hostilities had ended. There was a plaque listing the names of those who could be identified.

For the speaker the shocking thing was how many of the murdered shared his family name. He spoke, and quite movingly, about how he realized with only a bit of difference in the course of family history, he could have been one of those in that terrible grave.

He told us this was a signal marker on the way of identifying with the poor, with the disenfranchised, with the oppressed.

It was an important moment.

And one he suggested, we all need to find in our own lives, in our own way.

I agree. With all my heart. When we know the poor, the disenfranchised, the oppressed are ours, that with only the slightest shifts in the course of events, us; we have opened the way of love, of possibility, of hope for this poor and broken world. Nothing quite like understanding who the family is.

But, I felt there was one other point hanging out there, which he chose not to address. Now, the homiletic venture is a difficult one. Among the difficulties is time. One simply cannot explore every aspect of something that one may say, particularly as in this case, where it was to set up another issue he wanted to explore with us.

But…

In this particular story the thought that hung in the air for me was that while those dead shared his name, they probably didn’t share his genetics. The name was Hispanic. They were Indians.

And I was uncomfortably aware that there were probably many more people in the government, in the military, in the very paramilitary that committed this particular atrocity that shared his quite common family name.

And that is a lesson we all need to learn, as well.

The oppressor is ours, as well. With the slightest shift in situation, the oppressor is us.

In the great web we are all joined, the hurt and the whole, the lowly and the high, the good and the bad. As it says in scripture, the sun shines on us all.

As does the dark night.

So, my point, the one I think we need to also take away, is that it is terribly, terribly important to see our identity with the oppressed. And, it is terribly, terribly important to see our identity with the oppressor.

As we see, perhaps not see, as that metaphor isn’t quite enough for the significance of this point, as we know from the bottoms of our feet to the tops of our heads, that whole thing the whole thing is us, how we are part and parcel of the great mess; that a genuine healing wisdom can birth.

And we come to this realization a hundred different ways. On a trip to Latin America, or to the Holy Land, any of them, on a hard Zen meditation retreat, in a conversation, on a walk, preparing dinner, washing a child, maybe reading a few words on paper or a screen. Who knows? Here’s some good news. If we take the slightest effort to open ourselves, grace takes over and opens the world and our hearts. And in a heartbeat we notice the connections. And the joy, and the hurt in it all.

With my own first noticing of these connections, I at least, have then felt a need to reach out, to be of some use, to try and heal the hurt, to try and heal the world.

It isn’t the whole reason, but it is a big part of the reason that took my spiritual journey to a serious Zen practice and along the way to Providence and to here at the First Unitarian Church.

After all, not only am I a part of it, I am responsible for it.

As, dear one, are you…