A Call to Ask Questions

by Ray, Times-Union (Albany, NY)

http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/A-call-to-ask-questions-4721259.php

Albany’s main newspaper asked Ray for this short op-ed, since he will be lead-off speaker at the Kateri Peace Conference at Fonda in upstate New York (Aug. 16-17): theme is The Moral Imperative of Activism.

(See 2-minute video overview of the conference here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Hl0BxiHvk

Ray felt honored from the start at being invited to spend two days with later-day prophets — including blood, as well as spiritual, descendants of Catholic Worker Dorothy Day. Watching democracynow.org on August 9 added poignancy — and brought Ray to tears.

Amy’s show included a report on the commemoration Friday of the 400th anniversary of the first treaty between Native Americans and European settlers who came here as “newcomers to the forest,” in the words of Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation. Oren Lyons, who helped establish the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in 1982, added this:

“We’re concerned about the future, we’re concerned about the Earth — seven generations hence — and the conduct of people .. We wonder, how do you instruct seven billion people as to their relationship to the Earth? Because unless they understand that, and relate the way they should be, the future is pretty dim for the human species.”

Maybe it was the arrival on Aug. 6 of Ray’s and Rita’s ninth grandchild that brought on the tears and fears over what kind of future awaits little our youngest granddaughter …and her children…and her children’s children (if by that point it still makes sense to bring new life onto our mistreated Earth).