Dear Siblings,
In today’s Advent reflection, I go back to Br. Bruce James’ reflection from last week, his concerns and depression over the violent and dark turn our country has taken. (Not just our country…just saying…) His reflection butts up well against today’s Gospel reading for Catholics: Luke 21: 25-28, 34-36, which talks about end times. It seems somewhat ironic and out of place to be reading a scatological passage on the first Sunday of Advent, but the Catholic Church does those kinds of things. Certainly, the reading reflects much of what is going on in civil society today and much of what Br. Bruce James shared last Sunday.
In a one-paragraph L O N G aside, I offer some politically oriented thoughts about aspects of racism/anti-racism from someone nearly always completely apolitical in spite of or maybe because of spending 8 years in the US Army and perhaps as well as a result of living in a highly racially tolerant (fairly racially oblivious) community. First thought: the arguments about whether the US is becoming less democratic in this decade overlook the fact that the US was not founded as a democracy but as, based on what Benjamin Franklin supposedly answered when asked what the Constitutional Congress had given the people, “a republic, if you can keep it.” That would indicate that we were not intended to be a direct democracy though such can be found in places like my small Maine hometown of 501 people where the entire town gathered annually to decide all questions of matter to the town and three selectmen were “selected” to carry out the decisions and nothing more, but, at most, a representational democracy, the question becoming IMHO, then, not if the US is becoming less democratic, but whether we are failing or succeeding in keeping the republic and has our political system become more or less representational. Second thought: the arguments advanced that the Declaration of Independence phrase, “all men are created equal,” spoke to individual equality are most likely out of keeping with the reality of the time when that phrase likely meant that all populations are created equal [as in the people occupying the territory of what is now the US vs those occupying the territory of Britain]; it would be hard to argue that it even meant literally all men since only land-owning (rich) men originally had a right to vote while all others had to fight for that right, with Black people (slaves at the time) each being counted only as 3/5 of a person and Native Americans not considered at all (excluded even from the 14th Amendment) until the 1924 Snyder Act and 1968 Indian Bill of Rights. Last thought: given this history, it is difficult to argue that we have ever not been a White Male Supremacist nation. Only after serious disruptions (Civil War/Reconstruction, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1960s/” Second Reconstruction”) have we “patched” our constitution, which from its first signing until 1861 deliberately provided support for a “slave-holding republic” and excluded Native Americans, to consider some egalitarian accords to those who are not WMS. Those, however, are add-ons, grudgingly “given” in many cases by WMS who assume that it is their right to give or not give. The “core” of the nation is not and never has been a shared land. Not recognizing that, again, in my humble and unversed opinion—is what makes so much of today’s unrest bend toward violence. Decrying the divisiveness of today’s society ignores our origin as a divided nation and our continuation as such. The “states” were united. The ethnic groups and genders were not and still are not. It is difficult to fight against racism without having a vision of what a shared land looks like, or should look like. MLK had a dream. Some of his dream has been realized, some has come and gone again, not all of it has been realized. Incredibly, 60% of a century has passed since then. Life has changed for better and for worse. Perhaps it is time for a new dream, one with no tougher a goal than to change the very core of our nation from a country of exclusion to a country of inclusion. [‘nuff politics except to say that as Franciscans, we are well situated by temperament, belief, and awareness to be a positive force in the task of changing the national core.]
The reading for today ends with the verse, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” There is a dawn coming, and Advent reminds us to prepare for it, just as we prepare for the first coming.
How do we prepare for it? In answer, I offer the symbolism in the Solstice observation that Old Mission San Juan Bautista shares with the community every year as Advent ends and Christmas brings a bright day.
In the early morning, the church and the earth are still dark, as in this picture, where Sula the Mission cat waits in the darkness for people to arrive.
Outside the church, sharing their original land with the community that lives there now, the Amah Mutsun Indian Tribe (a dwindling scattered group of Native Americans, whose last full-blooded member died in 1930 and is buried at the Mission, and who once were the main population of San Juan Bautista, built the Mission, and died in great numbers from smallpox brought in by outsiders) play drums, welcoming the dawn; in good weather (i.e. almost always), they dance. In 2012, the bishop became involved and offered a public apology to the Mutsun for the way in which the Catholic missionaries treated them during the founding of the Missions. In spite of the past, the Amah Mutsun actively and joyfully participate in Mission celebrations and even offer rain dances on the Mission lawn when we have a season of drought. (Two years ago, they had to cancel at the last minute because of rain!)
The community, a 50/50 amicably blended mix of Anglo and Hispanic locals, nearly all Catholic, along with visitors (there are always visitors – the dawn never fails), led by the Mission priest, recite the rosary as the sun comes over the horizon, sends its rays through the arms of the statue of St. John the Baptist (after which, of course, the town is named), piercing the window of the choir loft, and reaching out to the tabernacle, from where it flows, like a river of molten gold, down the center aisle of the church, as can be seen in this picture Carl took a few years ago.
In this way, every year (please come visit) the Advent and the future come together; the dawn kicks out the dark. The end and the beginning make a circle with the Tabernacle in the center.
Now, if we can just do our part and hold it (everything and everyone) all together in the interim, changing our core to inclusion and our environment to peace, so that we will be prepared when comes that time we know not when!
Wishing everyone a blessed Advent!
Betty Lou