Reflection
You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:19
As a nation we inhabit this beautiful land which once was the homeland of other people, Although we live in a multicultural society and a global civilization, our present attitudes show that we still need help to remember that, other than Native Americans, we are all immigrants or descended from immigrants. The attitudes evident in present day treatment of immigrants show that many of us still need to understand that we are not superior to others. May we embrace the good that others have to teach us through their values and their cultures. May we appreciate the wisdom and reverence for the earth that we can learn from the indigenous American people and recognize the debt we owe them as a nation for past wrongs.
Prayer.
Source of all life, hear our prayer this day as we observe this national holiday. Help us to have a greater awareness of your magnificent gifts to us, the riches of our land, the splendors of the diverse peoples who form our country. Help us to view all your good gifts with respect and gratitude. Help us to understand that we need the forgiveness of those from whom we acquired this land and to learn to respect it as they did. Heal our divisions and bring us to unity.
Action
Read an unbiased historically valid source of the early settlement of this country and the history of the Native American people. Read the stories of the successive waves of immigrants that came here. Look at your own family origins. Meditate on the meaning of justice and respect for others. Think of the present attitudes in country toward immigrants. What does this say to you?
Suggested Reading
Migrants trust that they will encounter acceptance, solidarity, and help, that they will meet people who will sympathize with the distress and tragedy experienced by others, recognize the values and resources the latter have to offer, and are open to sharing humanly and materially with the needy and disadvantaged.
Pope Francis
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges…”
President George Washington
We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.
President Woodrow Wilson
We are a nation of immigrants. We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life, the driven ones, the ones who woke up at night hearing that voice telling them that life in that place called America could be better.
Senator Mitt Romney
O Great Spirit of the heavens, in the day’s infinite blue and amid the countless stars of the night season, remind us that you are vast, that you are beautiful and majestic beyond all of our knowing or telling, but also that you are no further from us than the tilting upwards of our heads and the raising of our eyes.
O Great Spirit of Mother Earth beneath our feet, Master of metals, Germinator of seeds and the Storer of the Earth’s unreckoned resources, help us to give thanks unceasingly for Your present bounty.
O Great Spirit of our souls, burning in our heart’s yearning and in our innermost aspirations, speak to us now and always so that we may be aware of the greatness and goodness of Your gift of life and be worthy of this priceless privilege of living.
From the Seven Sacred Prayers
Black Elk and others
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
André Gide
My experience in living and working with indigenous people has given me the hope that I have – they have taught me concretely that humans have the capacity to be marvelous, and not destructive.
Juan Pablo Orrego
The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it.
Robert L. Park