I don’t know about you, the person reading this blog, but me - I must confess that this past year has been a pretty discouraging time here in the U.S. and, from what I can tell, around much of the world. This blog is about “journeying inward,” to find spiritual stamina and groundedness and from that grounding to “journey outward” to be engaged in community and in the world, to live out and make real the values and truths discovered in the inward journey. And then, continuing, from the experiences, challenges and victories of the journey outward, to journey inward again for clarity and renewing – an ongoing, inward and outward moving. While the description sounds individual, the best practice is that it be a shared, communal movement of people together. And it does not need to be only people sitting in the same room together, but people sharing their experience through all variety of media and across distances of place and time – people that may not actually know each other personally, but who gain nourishment and encouragement and hope from each other’s reflections and actions.
But this past year has been a tough one, for myself and for many people I know. Here in the U.S., the unanticipated election of a president whose name I refuse to put in print, and so refer to as #45, has turned out to be more disastrous and demoralizing than we ever imagined, as our hearts sank watching the results come in on election night. While this administration has for the most part been a failure on the legislative front, they have moved at lightning speed to - in the words of former White House advisor and now critic of the President, Steve Bannon – “deconstruct the [so-called] administrative state.” And, in so doing, they are successfully setting aside and undermining policies that have taken decades to achieve. UN Human Rights Spokesperson, Rupert Colville, in a video posted by the United Nations, correctly characterizes the views expressed by #45 as going “against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the holocaust.” He goes on to state that the views of this “political figure” (he too refuses to offer the dignity of giving a name) “open the door to humanity’s worst side . . . encouraging and validating racism and xenophobia.” So, that is what we are living here in the United States, a reality that impacts not only this nation but people and realities around the world.
I have also watched, over the last year and a half as my “heart country,” Brazil, has progressed down a similarly (if not worse) destructive path. Initiated by a U.S.-supported parliamentary coup that removed the elected president from power, the imposed government moved quickly to set a course that clearly favors a wealthy, powerful and corrupt minority while under-cutting and removing policies that benefit average citizens, targeting especially those programs that benefit and provide a safety net for workers and the poor. And it is not only here in the U.S. and in Brazil. Listening to the news it seems that much of the world is in crisis.
 |
| FAITH TRADITIONS SPEAK OF "SIGNS OF THE TIMES" |
Faith traditions speak of “signs of the times.” Within the gospel tradition of the Christian faith, in being questioned by the religious authorities of his day, Jesus responded to them with a challenge. “Looking at the sky,” he said, “you know how to judge the weather, however you do not know how to judge the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3).
As a kid, growing up in the outback of Brazil, I was pretty good at predicting the time and weather by looking at the sky. Trying to understand what is going on in our world, and attempting to envision what our present choices might mean for the future . . . well that’s a bit tougher! In this regard though, Ignacio Ellacuría - President of the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador from 1979 to 1989, a leading voice in Latin American liberation theology, and a martyr for justice – provides a helpful framework for consideration. In his essay titled “The Historicity of Salvation,”[1] he offers two lenses for looking at the world. There are, he suggests, “actions that kill life, and [on the other hand] actions that give life.” Those actions and systems that kill life, he refers to as “sin;” and actions that give life, he names “grace.”[2]
These qualities, he argues, occur not only within personal, individual actions, but are expressed systemically as well. “Some social and historical structures,” Ellacuría argues, “objectify the power of sin and serve as vehicles for that power against humanity, against human life,” what he refers to as “structural sin.” By contrast, other “social and historical structures objectify grace and serve as vehicles for that power [that] favors human life,” which he refers to as “structural grace.”[3] Sin and grace are not to be understood here “primarily from a moral viewpoint . . . but from the perspective of that which makes God’s life [absent, or] present among human beings.”[4]
Although I never met him in person, through his books Ellacuría has become a mentor to me. I have found his thought to be inspiring and deeply profound, offering a theology and faith that nurture my own; that are not about “pie in the sky,” but a following of Jesus, in a grounded “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth . . .”[5] way. His reflection on sin and grace, I believe offers a concrete way to read the signs of our times, a critical criterion for discerning where and how we are called, as people of faith, to place ourselves in this world.
Where are the places and what are the actions and structures that negate life, that literally kill, in our world? And where are the places and what are the actions and structures that give life, that bring life in our world? We will consider these questions in my next posting.