There seems to be a screaming cacophony playing itself about, a cry for reconciliation – both within the walls of my small world here and in the lands beyond them.
Middle Eastern news reports speak of sham democratic elections in Iran, now leaving the country in a spotlight of quandary. Drug wars and the hands of narco-politics are replacing affiliations formerly held by Westerner’s who thought of Mexico as a convenient and safe winter getaway. Nepalese in Kathmandu question the legitimacy of their new government as Maoists refuse to bow out of office quietly and threats of returned Civil War are rising. Accounts of soaring unemployment rates and bankruptcy have become the background hum of our days where fret and fear are hyper-inflated to full capacity.
The momentary ground I sit on is one at first glance disparate from those making headline news – but a closer looks reveals common cries emanating from worlds sitting in counter hemispheres.
Unlike the streets of Tehran, rural Alberta hosts few protests to challenge voter efficacy – but as I walk through my known avenues of ‘home’, a thousand silent rallies march about in my mind. The causes differ, but I believe them worthy of a voice. I’m sad for these streets – for the stories and lives that flow through them. I’m sad for the fight here. I’m sad for failed marriages, for brokenness in families that I knew so well - for the happiness that I remember they held. I am sad both for what has changed and what has not. I am sad for the knowledge that much of what I now see, really has always been. Like the Iranians, my prestige for where I come from is suffocating under a truth that continues to ripen and expose, I am sad for the realization that our home can also possess our hell.
Narco-politics is a foreign term in my prairie town. We do not commonly experience the carnage that comes with drug related violence, nor do we witness known political corruption where a shiny profit can be turned for an easy exchange. Transactions of substance are calculated differently here – but they are not absent, and they certainly are not free of death. Relationships are severed where a bar stool is more worn than the empty seat at a dinner table. Addictions and their harrowing consequences are passed off as being recreational pastimes in a town where it is commonly said “there is nothing else to do.” ‘Fun’ and ‘amusement’ however seem temporary, withering under the reality that control is lost to the user, now a slave to a substance, mastered by a need. Like the people of Mexico I see that those I once respected and believed to be outside of it are not, I see that we are all people bound by addiction, myself no different, and that our worlds and are securities are contoured by the vices we wish to be free of.
Neither war, nor serious conflicts have touched the ground of my country for centuries. We have sent men to fight many fights, but we live mostly free of the the fear of national violence. I sleep at night with the sounds of prairie winds blowing the leaves outside of my window and coyotes barking into the black – I do not know the sounds of a country in terror. However, when I curl into bed at night to end my day, I cannot deny my internal conflict – a civil war within myself, a wanting to be good, an ongoing brawl to knock down my demons. Like the Nepalese I recognize that in spite of heartily seeking peace my old tyrants will surely rear their heads, I acknowledge that power is never easily dissembled. Like the people of Nepal my hope is that goodness will prevail.
Media fixations tend to center themselves on corporate bankruptcies and government bailouts – but the global recession has left no corner of the world untouched. The bounty of Alberta’s oil money has dried up with the receding sea of drilling derricks that no longer adorn (or disfigure) our wheat fields. Our highways are given the grace of a lightened load where service equipment traffic continues to decrease - but our pockets feel much lighter as well. In times of terrifying economic uncertainty these headlines are not far from home – and the question they pose is more paralyzing than the financial fear attached to them – will we dare to ask “who are we without our money?,” “Who will we be when we cannot afford the toys and the lifestyles that we use to define ourselves?” I am certain that one can recover from the downfalls of economic regression – but less sure that one can recover from living as a stranger to oneself. I pray that we will ask ourselves who we are and that our answers will provide reconciliation to reality, to ourselves, and to one another.
A thousand stories. A thousand subjects. A thousand lands.
Different, yet the same.
Segregated, yet connected.
Theirs, yet ours.
Humanity cries for reconciliation, for wholeness.
I know it only in their stories because I know it also in mine.
audeamus – ‘let us dare’ to recognize our collective humanity.
May we see that our torments are communal, that foreign grounds bear familiar wounds, and that reconciliation is possible.
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