I have been reading John Lewis’s memoir Walking with the Wind and could probably copy into this blog almost every passage. But this one caught my attention in light of the current situation in our country:

When I care about something, when I commit to it, I am prepared to take the long hard road, knowing it may not happen today or tomorrow, but ultimately, eventually, it will happen. That’s what faith is all about…. Some battles are long and hard, and you have to have staying power. Firecrackers go off in a flash and leave nothing but ashes. I prefer a pilot light—the flame is nothing flashy, but once it is lit, it doesn’t go out. It burns steadily, and it burns forever.

This need to stay with it, to hold tight, must grow stronger in all of us, I think. Right now with the “quiet” health crisis of COVID 19 when we are not rushing out to buy essential items and finding empty shelves, and we do not see so many lines of people waiting to get into the store themselves; when we can find lots of hand sanitizers, digital thermometers, disinfectant wipes, and TOILET PAPER; these days make us relax, make us think it’s not so bad anymore. We have seen what thinking that way has gotten us. Who needs to wear a mask, right?

We apply some of that “quiet” to the issues of the protests and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and we speak about how it will all be over soon and we can stop talking about racism. Then there is another police shooting, of a Black suspect or a police officer, and we are smacked right back into the chaos.

Many of the books I am reading now, written in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, could have been written today in 2020. Very little has changed and very few white minds have conceded how much evil exists because of the systems in which we live, get educated, make a living, raise a family, pray and socialize.

Over the next couple of months we are going to have to dig deep inside ourselves and find out just what it is that makes living in a democracy a good thing for everyone, not just a few. It will sometimes be painful, sometimes hurtful, but if we do it for the best reasons it can only be helpful and life giving.

Those of us who are labeled “Baby Boomers”, those folks born between the years 1946 and 1964, are legion and are living longer so we are impacting all levels of our economy, our society, our churches.

We benefited from the “The Greatest Generation” returning from WWII and moving the economy into an incredible upward trend, again at all levels. We blew it in the 80s when we got greedy and now are facing our role in Climate Change, the housing market, the bank closures, the educational system, and so much more; and an awful lot of us are in denial of our responsibility for these things.

But we are also “Busters” of some of the myths around what has made our country great. Yes, maybe we do argue with the younger generation too much and try to make them think the same ways we all used to, but some of us are truly “woke” (that is not a typo), and we are the inheritors of Vatican II, the Civil Rights act, anti-war protests, questioning everything and anyone in authority. We cannot and will not take anything for granted anymore.

We have read and learned more about the “sin history” of this country than we ever did in our classrooms of the 50s, 60s, and 70s; a lot of us don’t know what to do with this new found knowledge. It has been frightening, disturbing, uncomfortable to say the least. But we have been learning it and have decisions to make. What will we do with what we now know and how can we use what we now know to make a difference?

As always, I have turned to reading and have found books I never saw before but maybe that was only because I am ready for them now. Among them are Walking with the Wind a memoir by John Lewis. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibraim Kendi and Fire on the Mountain by James Baldwin. We thought we were pretty cool in the 60s when our class had to read Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. I remember being present in Washington in 1972 for the inaugural Mass celebrating the creation of the National Office of Black Catholics, and it took me a long while to understand the need for such an office. I mean, wasn’t a Catholic a Catholic? Little did we know we had barely scratched the surface of race relations, racism and what it really meant to be white.

If we persist in our resistance to inform ourselves, to “re-educate” ourselves, we will never understand why athletes kneel on their playing fields; why “All Lives Matter” is really a sign of ignorance not of support; why avoiding difficult conversations about race or LGBTQ issues or the right to life in all of its aspects will achieve nothing.

As Dominicans we are challenged to do our homework and by the principle of disputatio which expects us to listen to all sides, to hear all sides. True practice of this leads us deeper and challenges us to listen more deeply. It does not demand that we agree with everything we hear but that we have learned where someone is really rooted. How many of us just throw up our hands, shake our heads, walk away and consider the other person too liberal or too conservative and pretty much a lost cause?  As Dominicans we must challenge others, family, friends and other Dominicans to make sure that what we are preaching is giving the message of truth and not just of “well this is how I learned it” and “so it must be true”. All around us so many are fearful, feeling hopeless and having great doubts about how God could really be present in the midst of all this. So, we have a great challenge facing us as women and men of the Truth. God is good!

Today we celebrate St. Martha. We know all about her as the practical woman doing the things that needed to be done – like cooking and serving the guests. But there is much more that we can learn from Martha. There was a depth to her that we don’t hear in Luke’s account of her.

In John’s passage Lazarus had died and Jesus wasn’t there to keep him from dying. When Martha heard that Jesus was on the way, she ran to meet him.  Her conversation with Jesus that day revealed her understanding of the depth of the meaning of life and death and resurrection.  She knew that Jesus could bring someone back to life after the person had died. She may have been present at one of those times. But she knew more. She had come to realize that there would be new life after a person’s time here on earth.

But there was even more. Martha had come to believe that Jesus was more than a holy man of God who could work miracles. She was able to profess her belief in Jesus as the Messiah. She was able to say, “I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

We so often judge Martha only on the Luken story. Her sister, Mary, had chosen the better part – sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to his words. But John’s passage tells us so much more. Here is what these two readings teach me. It is so easy to judge a person by one perception of her/him. There is so much more that can be revealed if we just give the person a chance. After all each person has been created in the image of our loving God. So there is much good in that person whether or not we agree with the way they live their life, their political views, their race, or anything else that may be “different”. Recently I read this prayer on Facebook.

Dear God,
Give me eyes that see the best in people
A heart that forgives the worst
A mind that forgets the bad
And a soul that never loses faith.
Amen.