Yesterday morning, in the brisk October air, more than a dozen congregants from our church gathered with scores of others for the CROP walk in Aberdeen. It was the first annual walking event claiming Harford County as one of the Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty (CROP). CROP walks are geared to raise money for projects that support people all over the world struggling with poverty and hunger. A percentage of the monies raised benefits folk right here in Harford County, while the other funds raised help support international projects. Run by the Church World Service, it is an interfaith effort to bring about basic healing in the world—the sharing of resources so that the people may live.
What a great way to spend some time on the weekend before Columbus Day. It is today, October 12th, that is reported to be the day that Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492—516 years ago. Since then, the ripple effects of that meeting of worlds and the responses to marking that day vary as widely as there are cultures in the Western hemisphere.
It is only recently, though, that historians of the United States have acknowledged the less than smooth meeting of worlds and devastating upheaval that the presumption of "discovery" can bring. Still Columbus represents a part of the soul of this nation. Only Columbus and Martin Luther King, Jr. have their own holidays, expressly observing their contributions to the development of this nation. Whether one thinks it is a shining side or a shadow side, the phenomenon of Christopher Columbus, and all that he represents, happened to us all.
To give a sense of the different cultural approaches to Columbus Day, I share with you varied titles of this day of celebration in the Americas. In many Latin American countries, Columbus Day is named Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), commemorating the beginning of the intermingling of the Spanish and indigenous races and culture. From that day forward, a new people was to inhabit and influence the lands. It was never to be the same again. In Costa Rica, the day is known as Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures). In the Bahamas and Columbia, it is named "Discovery Day," whereas in Venezuala it is named "Day of Indigenous Resistance."1
And, of course, there are countless opinions about Columbus Day amongst Native Americans. George Tinker, a man who describes himself of mixed blood, part Osage tribe and part Lutheran, offered one such perspective at the Columbus Day quincentenary summit in 1992:
You have to understand that from an American Indian perspective, celebrating the Columbus quincentenary is in fact celebrating Indian genocide. Indian people like to remind white Americans that the only thing Columbus discovered was that he was lost. About half a world lost.2
I come to Columbus Day as a personal discipline, both cultural and religious. As a Euro-American, this day reminds me that it is important to be aware of the actions, motivations and attitudes I set in motion by my way of life, and whether they make sense to a just and compassionate world. Who am I including in my world view and who might I yet learn from to widen my embrace of humanity? How do I resonate with multi-culturalism? Am I welcoming of difference? Am I paying attention to assumptions of power given me simply by my cultural birth?
I do not proscribe to the guilt-blame ritual often offered to whites and people of color, which keeps us in a spiral of regret and resentment, blocking true repentance and the learning from it or healing forgiveness and the deepening because of it. What is past cannot be changed, neither can it be denied. It can, however, be reconciled in our choices from now on.
Religiously, as a Unitarian Universalist, Columbus Day offers me the caveat of religious power and the danger of claiming a faith—and, by extension, a people—superior to that of others. We who have a history of being labeled "heretics" know the importance of interfaith encounters. This is a day to remind me to practice inclusion of varied religious responses to this world in which we live and to defy religious persecution or prejudice that seeks domination by demonizing others. It also reminds me to learn from others; to learn with gratitude and humility, which the explorers, on the whole, did not.
Though, again, you cannot turn back the clock. Columbus lived in Columbus' time. Expansionism, gaining power by acquiring wealth and territory, were the norms of Europe, as they have been with other civilizations before and after. As a result of the need for wealth and power, and the self-made assumption of ownership, Columbus' four voyages to the Americas set in motion the displacement, murder, death by imported illness or exile of some 80 million indigenous peoples. These actions were primarily justified as actions in the name of Christ.
This does not vilify Christianity as a whole, but it does illustrate, quite starkly, how vital it is to examine our religious presumptions. Organizations like the Racial Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches, preparing for the 500th anniversary of Columbus Day in the 1990's, offered important materials to round out our understanding of damaging assumptions and behavior of those times and claim the healing and reworking of world view that is needed for peace and justice in the world.
We can see 1492 as a lost opportunity for discovering the world in which we live as a rich, multi-cultural enterprise of being. Columbus' people glorified acquiring wealth and claimed the building of nations. They carried with them a sense of a superior way of governing with the presumption that God was with them. The indigenous people were meant to step aside and let the superior nation lead the way toward their salvation. Illness, death and even servitude was collateral damage. Any of this sound eerily familiar? How much have we actually learned?
There are global organizations, the Unitarian Universalist Service committee being one of them, that see our collective enterprise of being as interdependent and ours to manifest. The choices we make affect the lives of others. The resources we have are not products to own but abundance to share. The vision of a world made fair and all her people one includes an intention for the common good, shared power, and fierce love of justice. What do we do when we encounter other cultures? What do we do in the sharing of our own territory, whether physical or spiritual?
We are challenged with paradigm changing choices fairly regularly. The lessons of Columbus can be regularly applied. Many have agreed that our nation's response to the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 was a missed opportunity. I would say it sent ripple effects around the world, far more rapidly than in Columbus' time, but just as profoundly, to change the way we regard one another, the way we see power, and the way we justify our actions.
Discoveries are often violent acts. They pierce through our assumptions and force us to let go of things as they were, entering a new, vulnerable phase of what will come. In our need to control, we respond in kind to the violence we feel and lash out. We think this is attached to our survival and so, good. Often, our first impulses from shock are out of fear. The next unchecked choices we make then set into motion varied forms of violation.
The devastation of that day when 3000 people were killed by a systematic criminal impulse was a time when we could have seen that there is something very wrong with the world we are manifesting rather than simply claiming ourselves under attack. I'm not saying that there is any justification for the brutal acts of 9/11. What I am saying is that the brutal acts were symptoms of a broken world still guided by a conquering mentality, still responding to acquisition of power, still presuming a God that takes sides, still demonizing the "other."
Our response at that time was not to focus on common ground—on all the nations and cultures in the world that could plainly see the criminal, indefensible nature of the attacks—but to create, as soon as possible, a common enemy. And we're good at that, we humans. We're good at claiming the "other" as unworthy and dangerous to our well-being. You just need to take a look at political rallies occurring right now for the nation's presidency to see how easily we demonize. Too often we delude ourselves into thinking we are getting something done by hating someone.
So why was the CROP walk a good discipline for Columbus Day? We walked through a neighborhood for a little over three miles, taking ourselves onto streets we hadn't seen before, claiming to those whose political lawn signs may or may not reflect a vast difference in worldview that we all need to help stop hunger. We walked with the millions that have walked and will walk for a simple message to all in our lands that we can manifest a shared life eliminating poverty of body and spirit through the nourishment of our bodies and the actions of our caring hearts. This is common ground for any culture and faith.
The connection can be more literal. James Loewen reminds us that "Almost half of all major crops now grown throughout the world originally came from the Americas" as explorers brought back food and seeds to their homelands.3 So the moment of connection of cultures created an opportunity to feed the world. And, truly, any time we meet one another, expanding our sense of life to include the other in mutual strength, we nourish the world.
There is another opportunity—the global shaking kind—that can help us see the interdependence of our multicultural world. The reverberations from Wall Street, a result of a complicated network of choices in cities and towns, amongst individuals and companies are now vibrating in each of our lives. This is a wake-up call to what we choose to value, how we face our realities, and what we claim as success. It is an opportunity for discovery, right now, of a world no longer linear with horizons we think we can control, but a network—a web—of interaction, made whole not by dominance, secret dealings and acquisition but by mutuality, open communication and intention for the common good.
So Columbus Day is a gift of reflection and praxis—a day to consider what we have learned, and what we can do with what we have learned. For blessings abound each time we welcome that intention toward a world made fair and all her people one.
Copyright © 2008 Lisa Ward. All Rights Reserved.