- Binding Together -

Sunday, March 7, 2010

- It is difficult to understand religious conflict when you don't understand religion -

In a time and place I could never have imagined, surrounded by people I’ll forget I made sense of a thing called faith.

In the village of Corazon de Maria five Canadians, an American priest and a French translator joined the community for a service. We entered the small but stunning church, decorated in flowers, candles and pine needles and were invited to sit at the front of the service. We introduced ourselves to the community and thanked them for welcoming us and inviting us to share this day with them.

“I am here,” as they would say in their native tongue.

The service was beautiful and full of music and laughter and stories of liberating figures in time. They spoke of forgiveness, community and following a path of goodness. They read from their bible and did communion. At the end of the service they asked us to share how our hearts felt.

Gary Warren, founder of Quest Internacional, said that sometimes people from the north are outsiders trying to come in. Today we were all together as a community, on the inside, together.

I thanked them for sharing a piece of their faith and tradition with us. I told them how much we appreciated it and how we would keep this faith and their faces in our thoughts and our hearts as we continue our journey and will bring it home.

We were honoured with an invitation to a meal after the service. We were privileged to sit at the same table as the priest and organizing members of the church. We shared a delicious meal of chicken in broth with rice and tortilla’s. We sat as friends and discussed our different countries and communities that seemed worlds apart.

“Do you have poor people like we do here,” the Decan asked.

Perhaps we do, I thought. But our wealth is mainly materialistic and we aren’t rich like you are. You are rich in culture, tradition and faith, something I envy.

After the lunch we spent time with the community, played with the children, spoke with the women, took pictures and laughed. It was probably the best experience I’ve had so far on this year’s Quest.

We then sat with the priest and discussed many things including the base of religion, religious conflicts, liberation theology, women’s rights and roles within the religious community. We talked for over three hours and made sense of things I’ve only ever wondered.

The topics were broad, the conversation was deep and the meanings were real. Each individual in the room had an experience and something to share. We spoke of words like religion, faith, conformity, expression, guilt, judgement, liberation, dictation, experience, togetherness and relationships.

I could share with you what I discovered and what it meant to me or I can share with you some of the things that were said and you can discover it for yourself. -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

· “I felt it and I need to know what it meant.”

· Liberation – See with your eye and listen with your ears –read newspapers, talk with people

Think – process, debrief, reflect and analyze

Act –do it critically

· “Get the deposit --- fill the bank” --- your mind is empty and I will fill it as I choose; teacher to students, write this down, remember this, this is right, this is wrong.

· Don’t question authority ... question everything!

· “It is not supposed be sensational. It is suppose to be real, ordinary, it’s what people do.”

· -- To patronize –

· Missionaries, the idea of ‘let me save you’

· “A church should look like its face, like the face of those inside it” --- the priest says he must look like them, not them look like me, because one day I will leave and they will remain

· -- We learn together –

· “To accompany an idea.” --- to go with it

· To let them do it themselves

· “Absolutely scandalous”

· -- killing your neighbour –

· How do you know what you desire? Is it based on a model of what you want?

· “Desire leads to imitation”

· “Similarity leads to competition and rivalry”

· “Conflict comes from a desire to differentiate”

· “I spent a summer learning to kill people in the army and decided to go to the seminary”

· -- Community, argument, appeal –

· You have to feel it

· It is ignorant to history and insensitive to culture

· Indigenous theology /movement

· “Romancey of religion”

· Reconstruct cultural heritage

· -- Bringing people together without fear of prejudice or intimidation –

· “We know this from the part, but what about the future”

· “Dialogue is a key word”

· -- You don’t need to conform –

· -- CAN’T I BE IF I WANT TO BE? –

· “If the focus is right”

· Companion Soul – divine presence, someone accompanies you.

· -- Question oriented – answers will come later, if at all –

· Couching vs. Refereeing

· --Religion Vs. Faith, System and Structure vs. Relationships, Form vs. Content, Faith vs. Reason

· “Religion can bring out the worst in people”

· -- I want to save the world from obnoxious Christianity –

· Acceptance vs. Judgement

· “Express yourself to the universe”

· Zen – silence, stillness – clarity

· Healthy religion = search mode

· Quest, Questing and Questions

· Syncretism – one form mixing with others

· Religion = to bind together

· --they are wise – hold the mystery of contradiction –

· PARADOX

· The tension of exploration: Finding that which is true and devine

· “We are in a constant state of BECOMING”

· -A search for identity –

· “Humility = to be human, to be close to the earth, to be grounded, we come from the earth as dust and will leave as dust”

· Be a part of the whole, not apart from the whole

· “The ears pay attention to the worlds”

· “You can only spit into the wind for so long”

· Zapatistas 1994 –low intensity warfare

· --Vibration of energy –

· “human interaction in the purest form”

· Difference is acceptable... similarity is threatening

· -- Diversity is Biology as it is culture –

· Resemblance and similarity is threatening

· “Ethnographic”

· --I am Here –

· “The best way to help is to understand and to understand we must learn through experiences and dialogue with others”

· Politics of gain and pain are complex