Notice During the Covid-19 Outbreak
In solidarity, we at the Interfaith Peace Project stand together in these times of heart break and upset. Some of you may have lost friends or family members. Some of you may have lost your job and your income; some may be working overtime to help with the crisis. Some of you may be home and alone and some may be trying to figure out a new way to live. Please let us know how we can help. If you would like a phone appointment with any of us, give us a call.You may call or email Tom at:
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RECOVERY
by Thomas P. Bonacci, C.P.
by Thomas P. Bonacci, C.P.
As the United States begins the process of healing and recovery, we pause to listen to the voices of the poets who can touch our hearts, challenge our behavior, and transform our spirits.
After four years of relentless assault on the indigenous, the poor, the migrant, and anyone perceived as “other”, we need to recover our vision as a people, rededicating ourselves to the time-honored principles recognizing the dignity of every person.
Pope Francis invites us to learn wisdom from the indigenous who are friends of the Earth, living in the mutuality of life with reverence and respect.
Hear now the voice of Joy Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States (appointed June 2019). A member of the Muskoke/Creek Nation, her poems help us in our endeavor to heal and recover. Consider these powerful verses from her poem, “For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet”:
Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.
We will now look back over these past four years realizing the need to “call our spirit back” so we may be a people of justice and liberty for all. We will remember who we are as a people who desire to repent of the sins of our past generations who too easily accommodated their prejudices and fears. We will realize our own indifference and complicity need not be the end of the story for “we will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.”
We no longer need to make enemies to live in peace. We no longer need to destroy the Natural World to live in harmony. We no longer need to live in fear for we have one another as companions. Let us walk together on this road of life amazed at what we can do together. Again, Joy Harjo says it best when she writes:
The quantum physicists
have it right; they are
beginning to think like
Indians: everything
is connected dynamically at
an intimate level.
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