Gavel Gamut

By Jim Redwine

(Week of 26 October 2015)

INSTITUTIONAL MEMORIES

Peg and I are in Osage County, Oklahoma for our family’s farewell to our old church building. The red brick and stained glass seem smaller now but its significance has not waned. Our Disciples congregation merged with the Presbyterians and their building is newer and less expensive to maintain.

I have not been involved in the church for many years although once upon a time the old structure defined much of our family’s life. Boy Scouts, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, Sunday church services, Sunday evening Christian Youth Fellowship, Wednesday choir practice, Easter Sunrise services, Thanksgiving and Christmas cantatas were our obligation and enjoyment.

My three siblings and I were baptized in the baptismal located behind the choir loft at the highest point in the sanctuary. My oldest brother and my sister-in-law and my sister and brother-in-law were married there. Our father and mother had their funeral services in that comforting atmosphere. Mom’s funeral was in 1991. Dad’s occurred in 1964 and, at my Mother’s insistence, was the first time African Americans were allowed in our church.

Each of the four children in my family still receives a copy of the church bulletin even though none of us has lived in our hometown for over fifty years. When we read about the church’s closing my sister and sisters-in-law, who have maintained their church connection, contacted the pastor and church board and asked if our family might say goodbye. They graciously said, “Sure”, and went far out of their way to make us welcome to return for one last celebration. For me, it brought to mind lessons I learned more through osmosis than study. The same is true from having grown up on the Osage Indian Nation.

Americans see ourselves as championing the right and protecting the downtrodden. We are the Big Brother to the world, at least in our minds. But, we have a blind spot about Native Americans and their current similarly situated counterparts, Palestinians.

We took Indian lands and gave them to white people. To justify this we said it was our god’s will, Manifest Destiny, much as we justify giving Palestine to Jews, who claim their god gave Israel to them. Because Indians did not develop the land the way we were used to in Europe, we said it was a sin to let the land lie fallow. We have used the same rationale after 1917 to help Jews usurp Arab land.

Probably the worst excuse we came up with to remove and exterminate Native Americans was that they were savages. When Indians did not just go away, we decided their resistance was terrorism. And, when the Palestinians resist the occupation by Jewish Israelis, we categorize their actions as terrorism, not patriotism.

Perhaps we side with the Jews, not only because of what Hitler and Stalin did in Europe and Russia, nor because some fundamentalist Christians see the supremacy of the state of Israel as a necessary precursor to Christ’s return, but because we have a subliminal, national memory based on our own actions toward Native Americans. In other words, our collective guilty conscience may cause us to turn a blind eye to history and a hard heart toward the evidence.

For example, in the current crisis eight innocent Israeli Jews have been killed by Palestinians and forty Palestinians have been killed by Israeli Jewish police and military forces. The Israeli government claims nineteen of these forty were somehow connected to the attacks on the Israelis. Apparently, twenty-one innocent Palestinians lost their lives. However, all we in America, especially the media, appear to care about is placing blame on the nineteen.

Those deaths, all of them, are tragic. The situation is tragic. The solutions are difficult and time consuming. One thing we know for sure, what has been tried since 1948 does not work for Jews or Arabs and unlike America that eliminated and marginalized Native Americans, and Nazi Germany that tried to exterminate Jews, Slavs, homosexuals and others, there are too many Palestinians and other Arabs for any final solution other than peaceful coexistence. The first step down this already long and twisted road is for Americans to live by the creed we cherish, justice for all instead of vengeance for some.