How do we continue to celebrate this day of contradictions? As a people we admire exploration, discovery, and the courage it takes to take risks. At the same time, we are ashamed of the slave trade that developed after Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" to replenish the coffers of Ferdinand and Isabella.
This morning's Scripture readings provide an interesting look at the intersection between discovery and slavery.
In the first reading from Galatians, Paul speaks of two
covenants as two ways of living one’s life:
one way leads to slavery and the other leads to freedom. He says we have a choice.
We can live as slaves to our fears, our anxieties, our frustrations and
disappointments or we can live with a freedom that wells up (by God's grace) from deep inside.
It is still a choice, an open choice, that each of us must face. And yet, we naively think that we are all already free. None of us likes to believe that we are under any kind of inner confinement. We like to believe that our minds are clear, our motives are pure, and our actions are more or less authentic. But, St. Paul reminds us that we are prone to "slave" thinking, biased and prejudiced in a way that reinforces our own needs and wants over the concerns and challenges of others. He suggests that we all start as slaves.
And whether one is a slave or not is not a function of whether good or bad things have happened to you. Bad things happen to good people and, surprisingly, wonderful things happen to bad people. Circumstances are relatively the same for those thinking like slaves and those thinking like men and women who are free. Both get sick. Both face troubles. There are slave-thinking people who are rich and free thinking people who are poor.
Slavery and freedom are attitudes of mind and heart that interpret events
differently.
The difference is found in our disappointments and
discontents.
We are slaves when we live our lives from an attitude of
deep disappointment. We are slaves when we demand that life be other than it is.
We demand that our superiors be more understanding, our sisters more
accommodating, our health better, our days longer and our joys more enduring
than they are. We convince ourselves that life hasn’t been fair to us and we
can’t be what we need to be because of the bad hand we’ve been dealt. Because
of this, we are slaves to our desire to have another world, another set of
circumstances. We are slaves of our distorted and unrealistic expectations of the
world.
Freedom begins the moment we accept the world as it truly
is. We can certainly wish that the world were freer from pain and suffering.
We can definitely desire that we didn’t have to deal with bias and sin as much
as we do. But, realizing how the world truly is, freedom means working within
the world as it is given, with the graces we receive. We don’t fight it with
our anger. We don’t get back at it with our grudges. We don’t escape it with
our cynicism.
St. Paul reminded us last week that, even after having been
brought up to the third heaven where he experienced a mystical union with God,
God let stand a “thorn in the flesh,” which Paul asked to be released from.
But, Christ told him that “my grace is sufficient for you.” And, Paul was fine
with that. Paul was free with that.
So, today we have a choice. We can start the day as a slave
to our disappointments or we can be free, because life (as it is) is good
enough – good enough to bring enough love and hope, goodness and kindness from the God who is
taking care of us, each and every day.
And so, we can celebrate Columbus Day as a real choice in a real world. We can reject slave thinking so as to discover a more beautiful world without bias, prejudice or discrimination -- against anyone.
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