Observing Columbus Day

Observing Columbus Day

Written by Dan McDonald

            Columbus Day is now controversial in America. Some think it remains an important part of the story of our nation, while others wish for a name change to “Indigenous People’s Day.” I am not sure how much wisdom I can shed on the subject, but will try to express myself while hoping the best for our shared future.

            I think our memories of Columbus should be complex enough to view his celebrated place in our history as controversial. On the positive side, he was a man of conviction willing take on a risk filled venture to prove that the world was round, and one could reach the Far East by traveling west from the Western lands of the European continent. He was brave enough to risk his life for his convictions. The academic world of the day probably generally believed in a round earth, but there was some doubt upon the matter. So for being a man willing to test his convictions with a daring expedition, give Columbus that much credit.

            The truth about Christopher Columbus is much more complex. He proved to be a man, who yearned for extravagant titles and extreme authority over the inhabitants of the lands he discovered. The same Spanish government which conducted the Inquisition came to regard Columbus to be a corrupt and excessively brutal governor over the areas where he had been allowed to become a governor. He remarked in his discoveries of the people living on the Caribbean islands that they would make good servants or slaves because of their friendliness to Columbus and his crew. Is this the sort of person we wish to describe as a hero, one who finds the friendliness of a people a good trait as they will be easier to subject to servants or slavery?

            Columbus was undoubtedly a man of his times. His Europe was emerging from its simpler times with a sense of an emerging culture that was mandated for an exceptional work in human history. There was a sense that their advances in science, and their embrace of Christianity made it proper to believe that their place in the world was unique and they were meant to govern that world. The reality is that what Columbus represented would be represented with more or less nuance by many among the Europeans reaching the newly discovered hemisphere.

            It should be noted that history is full of horrendous results from the boundaries of differing cultures. In our world Kashmir can be a violent place where Islam and Hinduism meet. Relationships between Christians and Muslims between Islam in North Africa and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa can be brutal. Recent events show the likelihood of brutality to be set off along the borderlines of Kurd, Turk, Syrian, and Christian in Syria. When I was younger the boundary lines between Communist and Capitalist led to wars in East Asia, parts of Africa, and Latin America. We might think nothing in history had ever taken place like the conflict between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples. But unfortunately this is a horribly recurring theme in human history.

            The reality is that no one wishing for good simply wants to let the bad events of our history to move forward unchanged. We know that the Indigenous people were suppressed into servitude in their own hemisphere. We know that as white Americans filled the continent in the United States, the territories of the indigenous people were reduced and forced to be lived out on small and generally inferior lands and soils. We know that in addition to the suppression of the Indigenous people, there were vast numbers of Africans brought via the Atlantic Passage to slavery and numerous instances of degradation. The history of the Americas is like that of what a Puritan once said of family trees. A family tree can be a glorious thing if enough branches are cut off when one is boasting of his family. Our national accomplishments occurred alongside shameful acts, as is true among all the nations and families of human history.

            My hope on this Columbus Day is to see the need for an extension of the hope our Constitution’s preamble expresses. It was a hope, in its writing pretty much limited to the Europeans who had come to the Americas. The hope was for a more perfect union. That is the hope we should now yearn to be increasingly realized for the numerous men and women who were here when the Europeans came to the Americas, or for all the varied cultures of the varied places from which the varied people of the Americas came. Our goal should be the flourishing of all men and women in our lands of North and South America. We should find it deeply disappointing if one group of our peoples flounder rather than flourish. We can recognize that many things were gotten wrong since Columbus came. But the reality is that Columbus came and now whatever blood line flows through our veins we need to yearn to see all men and women flourish who are the descendants of these varied tribes, nations, and tongues that have come to call the Americas home.

 

When I'm Sixty-four

Will I still matter when I am Sixty-Four?

By Dan McDonald

 

          Michelle Van Loon wrote an article that inspired this response. Her work entitled, “Your Peak Life Now: How to Face Career Decline with Grace and Faith” focused on how careers often peak around age fifty. A peaked or declining career can be frustrating. This blog focuses on the nearing retirement part of life which is mentioned also in Van Loon's article. I recommend Van Loon's article, which emphasizes an Ecclesiastes perspective, which can be read here.

            I am now 63 years old. I can remember when my father, around the age of 63 declared he was going to retire. I was around 23 then, and could not quite understand why he would retire when in only a couple of more years his benefits would be much better than at the younger age. His reply was fairly simple, saying “I am tired.” Now that I am at 63 I understand the feeling. We can call this time of life the “I am tired” years.

            My Dad's retirement years are now a model for retirement I hope to make use of in approaching my retirement years. He carried within his life the sort of work ethic which characterized many whose working careers began during the Great Depression. They faced a world where finding work was a challenge. The importance of finding and doing work came to be written in big letters in their evolving DNA as workers. Retirement, for my Dad, could never mean the end of work. It could only mean changing what sort of work he did that seemed appropriate to the challenges which came with his entering life's sunset years.

            Retirement meant he left the production welding his factory work. It meant cutting back from his years of working the farms of numerous farm owners. It meant cutting back to a less than full sized farm, where he raised a few head of beef cattle and a fairly large garden, and did some welding jobs for neighbors who had broken farm implements.

            I saw my Dad make important changes during his retirement years. His new place in life offered him opportunities as well cutting back on the amount of time he had once devoted to his work. My Dad, in earlier years had a work bench that was disorganized. A small corner was devoted to being a work space which could be enlarged by shoving around piles of disorganized tools and materials. Once he was retired he began to organize everything. Maybe he simply hadn't had the time to keep things organized. As a retiree, his work bench got cleared off and there began to places for tools, materials, and his work area became thoroughly organized. Maybe he was able to do this because instead of being owned by his work in life, he could begin to work with time to do his work in a more planned method.

            His growth in being organized soon began to make an impact on my parents' home. My Mom was the sort of housewife who loved to spend hours in the kitchen. We certainly ate well in our home. When it came to keeping a house clean and organized, my Mom was much more tested in those aspects of life. My Dad, practicing his growing skills of organizing and straightening soon began to bring those practices to the house. Their relationship had experienced ups and downs, but as my Dad began sharing more of the household duties, their life began to be more of a partnership, and in my estimation their treatment of one another blossomed to greater depths as they cared for one another in those sunset years when life has special reflections within an environment of increasing levels of pain and suffering. They saw one another in the vulnerabilities of older age, and became somewhat more appreciative of each other's challenges.

            As I am now 63, I am finding my Dad’s approach to his retirement years a helpful pattern for me to imitate. I look forward to a different work pace, new emphases, and goals more fitting my “I am tired” years. This is true to the life realism recognized by the writer of Ecclesiastes, which Michelle Van Loon's article so well addressed.

            Rather than telling you all the things I want to do in my sunset years, I will encourage you to wonder when the time comes when you reach the tired years, what sort of approach will you employ to bring joy and purpose to your experiencing of the sunset years?

            I enjoyed listening to the Beatles when I was young. Now I am wondering what life will be for me in a few months when I turn sixty-four. How will I live when I am sixty-four and more years old? We adjust to varied phases in life. We learn to acquire skills and plans to match the varied phases of our lives. Whether one is twenty-four, forty-four, or sixty-four we face the opportunities for new experiences and the challenges we face in our varied life phases. The Book of Ecclesiastes offers wisdom beneath the challenges of life's phases. There is something grand and also difficult at every turn in life's flow. Life offers something wonderful at 64, though maybe it will come with more aches and pains and weariness than we knew at 44 and definitely more than most of us knew at 24.

Fifty Day Season of Encouragements

A Fifty Day Season of Encouragements

A 14^th century Greek icon of Christ’s Resurrection

            Long work hours coincided with my observation of this year’s Lenten season. My additional lifetime poor housekeeping habit joined in to create numerous moments of frustration, looking for something that should have been resting in its place, but was instead where I last placed it. By the end of Lent I discovered that sometimes housekeeping can be one of our more important spiritual obligations, especially if poor housekeeping means looking for things creates frustration and keeps you from other tasks in life. Poor habits that have formed over a lifetime can be difficult to overcome. Struggling with them can necessitate a source of abundant encouragement. This year I have especially discovered that Eastertide, which follows Lent, is an excellent source of encouragements.

            “Eastertide” is a fifty day period beginning on Easter Sunday, concluding on Pentecost Sunday, and including Christ’s ascension on the fortieth day following Easter. Whether you follow the Christian calendar or not, following the Biblical chronology between Christ’s resurrection and the Holy Spirit’s descending upon the Church at Pentecost offers us many encouragements.

 

            1. EASTER SUNDAY

            We can imagine the struggle and sufferings that were felt by Jesus’ followers when he was crucified and laid in the tomb. Some had hoped he was the Messiah. In the early morning on the Sunday following his execution, a group of women who had followed him, took spices with them in hopes of honoring his body in the tomb. They were surprised when the stone was moved away and the tomb was empty. Perhaps the gardener could say what happened. Then they discovered he was not a gardener, but the Rabbi and spiritual master they had followed. He was alive. He had been very dead on Friday. But now he was alive. It was a confusing utterly joyous moment. In time they might think of their thoughts of him as a gardener being a beautiful metaphor for how in him a dead human body can be planted in the ground and perfect body that will live eternally will be brought forth in the great day of the Lord's harvest. Perhaps no music played on that day but ever since choirs have sung marking the occasion “He is risen!” “He is risen indeed. Alleluia.” This is our first great encouragement of Eastertide.

            2. FORTY DAYS OF LINGERING

            Following his resurrection, Jesus spent forty days on earth, sometimes described as his days of lingering. A central feature of these days is how Jesus visited his disciples who had stumbled, fled, and failed Jesus in his time of arrest, trial, and execution by crucifixion. He visited them all; Simon Peter, the other disciples, and finally Thomas alongside with all the disciples. Like Joseph who had been sold into slavery by his brothers, Jesus told his disciples how though they had failed him, that this was arranged by God so that through him they could be delivered from the powers of sin and death. Isn’t it encouraging as we struggle with our flaws and failures to know how for forty days Jesus lingered and one of his highest priorities was encouraging his disciples who had stumbled when he was in his most precarious hour. Consider how this should encourage us to follow him through all the situations we find ourselves facing in life, including our own weaknesses that betray us and those around us.

            3. HE ASCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS

            On the fortieth day following Easter, Jesus ascended into heaven. (Acts 1:1-11). He was enthroned above every power and principality. He had overcome sin and death and now serves through all the ages as our great high priest interceding on our behalf.

            There is a great and beautiful mystery regarding Jesus’ ascension and his being seated on the throne of grace, bearing the name “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” In the incarnation Jesus was born fully God and fully man. He had descended to earth to join in his body the fullness of Deity and the fullness of humanity. In the ascension he returns to heaven continuing to live his life in fullness of humanity as well as fullness of Deity. He has overcome sin and death. His intercession of spoken prayers would be as powerful if he remained silent and simply sat in fullness of his humanity with all present knowing that for those following him, the day would come and they would see him and be like him. His perfected humanity seated in the heavens above is our inheritance in Christ that shall be ours in the great day for which we await. This is the encouragement of the day of Ascension so spoken by St. John who declares “When we see him, we shall be like him.” He has ascended forever uniting God and redeemed humanity in the unity of his being on our behalf.

            4. THE GIVING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON PENTECOST (THE FIFTIETH DAY)

            The journey of Eastertide reaches a foundational conclusion with Pentecost Sunday. The Spirit of God descends upon the Church. The sign of tongues falls upon the disciples as they preach the Gospel to men and women gathered from many nations for the Pentecost. On one level it reverses the curse at Babel when the nations were divided by different languages and could no longer understand one another. It is also an undeniable encouragement to the disciples of how God in his grace would be with them as they proclaimed the Gospel to all nations, tribes, and tongues of our diverse humanity. The Gospel has a vision for all people, ethnicities, and colors. In God's kingdom we are brethren and neighbors. Instead of dividing people with varied tongues, the Spirit of God will enable the joyous uniting of each into His Church. There is also a beautiful symmetry regarding the beginning of Christ’s incarnation and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. In the incarnation the Holy Spirit visited Mary and overshadowed her and enabled her to conceive and give birth to Jesus, the Son of God. Christ filled the virgin's womb as each portion of his human body took shape in Mary's womb. As the Holy Spirit empowered Christ to be formed in Mary's womb, he is now commissioned to bring forth the character and image of Christ in our humanity as we follow Christ. Christ's humanity is the image we are to bear, and Christ's image is the what the Holy Spirit in the incarnation and in our transformations seeks to bring forth out of our humanities. The mercies of God are new every morning and the depths of the mystery of our transformations from corruptible man to eternal bearers of the image of God in Jesus Christ are as full of mystery and grandeur as the ineffable glory of the depths of the Living God.