Jim Uttley
What a year 2015 was. With its highs and lows, good and evil, many are glad that we have closed the door on one of the most volatile years in recent memory.
As we stepped across the threshold of a new year, there was a lot of fear, anxiety, and yes, trembling. Not only are we confronted with the fear of the unknown but also we're trying to do battle against what Judith Herman calls "The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud...."1
There are those who say that we must forget the past and move forward in the present advancing into the future. Some quote verses like Isaiah 43:18: "Remember not the former things...."
The truth is that what we are today is because of our past. As adults, our behaviors and attitudes have been shaped by our experiences as children-good and bad. Until we are willing to face this fact and deal with those childhood experiences, we can't truly change our behavior.
The New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that "childhood fears and adult traumas are stored differently in the brain than happy memories." He goes on to tell us that the symptoms of these experiences "differ according to the nature of the hidden memories."
"Some people dissociate from their experiences, detaching themselves emotionally from their surroundings...as though they are actors trapped in many roles at once..." Brooks writes. "Some suffer from nightmares, or numb themselves through substance abuse, or have their emotions powerfully undone by certain triggers."
2015 was a year where people across North America dealt with a lot of memories from our past that still are not healed. Nowhere did we see this more clearly than in events surrounding how we deal racially with one another. In the United States, race relations between African Americans and mainstream society as a whole revealed that there is a lot of hurt, anger, and hatred that has gone unhealed since the days of segregation if not back to slavery.
In Canada, people began speaking out about the injustices between the dominant or settler society and Indigenous peoples. This was seen clearly with the issues concerning missing and murdered women and the inequities in dealing with an issue as necessary and simple as the need for clean water on the Shoal Lake 40 reserve. How anyone in leadership could allow such travesties to happen over decades is almost beyond comprehension.
Brooks reveals in his December 15, 2015 column entitled "The Year of Unearthed Memories" that "peoples and cultures also have to deal with the power of hard memories. Painful traumas and experiences can be passed down generation to generation, whether it is exile, defeat or oppression."
Exile as the abandonment of Indigenous children to Residential Schools or the Sixties Scoop; defeat as in the massacres of Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and Cypress Hills; or oppression as in the continued inequities in our legal system and economic landscape in regards to First Nations peoples in both the United States and Canada.
In December 2014 Canadians saw events begin to turn a corner and as Mr. Brooks writes, "acknowledge past wrongs and move forward into the light."
First was the election of Canada's National Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde. Then in October, the election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the swearing in of thirteen First Nations Members of Parliament, gave Canadians hope that maybe, just maybe, we can begin to turn injustices of the past into rays of hope for the future.
The year concluded with the release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its challenge to Canada as a whole to begin to right the wrongs by acting on the 94 recommendations of the report.
2016 is going to be a very challenging year, especially in the United States. It's a presidential election year and as never before, it seems that the wounds of the past are being ripped open once again, dividing the American people as never before.
Sadly, it appears that if the early polls are a show of what's in the hearts of the voters, we have truly lost the principles on which America was founded. Many, including followers of Jesus, are speaking and acting as if this land has always belonged to them. Again we have not repented from the sins of our ancestors. Unless you have Native American blood running through your veins, your ancestors were immigrants, foreigners, and aliens to this land.
If we truly had learned from our past, we would be accepting refugees with open arms. To her praise, Canada has and hopes to reach their goal of 25,000 by March.
Certainly our governments must be prudent and thoroughly process all applicants but it is disgraceful to turn our backs on the suffering seeking shelter on our shores simply because we are afraid.
As you look through this issue, we hope you'll take time to read all the articles. But we encourage you to read two articles. First, J. Lee Grady's "Seven ways to bless immigrants instead of bashing them" on page 7, and Helen Worm's story "Learning to love and accept myself helped me overcome fear" (page 10).
"Do not be afraid. My peace I give to you." -Jesus
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2016!
1 Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, 1992. BasicBooks
