OUR HISTORY IS BEING RETOLD

         

 

Our history is being reshaped as the people from the margins of society are demanding that their story become part of the accepted story of Canada. 

 

History is always being retold and reshaped. Consider your own family. There are memories and personalities from your family history that are never mentioned. It is only years later, when you are already close to seventy, that you discover that the reason that your family had so little connection with your Grandfather’s sister and her family was because the husband was very addicted to alcohol and had caused many problems for your Grandfather and the rest of the family. Their solution over the decades was to keep a safe distance between the families. 

 

This did not mean that there was not history in your great-aunt’s family. Your family refused to recognize it or to deal with it. As you are discovering your larger family’s story, history is not being invented, it is just being recognized. 

 

We are living through such a historical shift in Canada. Our First Nations peoples are clearly saying that we do not want to be considered as second-class citizens. We have our history. It must become part of the Canadian story, no matter how painful it might be. 

 

Women are demanding that their story, their contribution to the Canadian fabric be recognized and integrated into the history. There have been some very powerful women who made a significant difference to their family, community and country.  Women are making their presence felt.

 

The Asian, the black, the Arabic and Indian people who have emigrated into the Canadian fabric are demanding that Canadians recognize their story: their struggles to be accepted, the racism they encountered and the contribution they have made to the Canadian people.

 

Whenever you hear of someone telling their story and memories, (beginning with your own family’s story), always ask: And what is being left out? Who is missing? Ask the family on the margins of your own clan: And what part of the story are we ignoring? What part of the family story are we reluctant to deal with? 

 

In your parish community, whose story do you not pay attention to? Is it the family who suffered the suicide of the father leaving a mother with four little children? Is it the couple whose son is homeless, living in the east side of Vancouver, and caught up in the drug culture? 

 

And we have to ask how much of the story of Jesus do we not pay attention to? What parts of his story do we not make a part of our lived story?  What part of the history of the Gospel is not a living part of your church community?