Conflicts of celebration
In Australia we have Australia Day. It falls on January 26th. Some people call it Occupation Day.
It should not be celebrated at all, for it only celebrates colonisation.
When the colonising population celebrates their colonising, we, the colonisers, continue to poke salt into the open wound of horror.
How wonderful would it be to create a day that people could celebrate as a whole nation? All people included. Inviting a moment to come together as a whole and consider how to be better at creating a collective future. In order to do that, we must reconcile the egregious acts of our past AND sincerely seek a different future, one where all people are considered valuable and worthy.
We revere the Enlightenment as a moment in history. Yet, for more than half of the world, the Enlightenment enabled horror, slavery, and extermination.
Tell me, what exactly is enlightening about genocide, slavery and mass exploitation and appropriation?
Christmas Day is lost to me. The dominating Christian narrative has forgotten the words of their Messiah. To love thy neighbour as thy self. There was no – select the neighbour – caveat. Exclude all these types of people. Indeed, their Messiah deliberately spent time with the prostitutes, poor and diseased and slammed the tax collectors. But let’s conveniently forget about that as we stuff our ranks with extreme wealth and white privilege and send women back to the dark ages.
Today in Australia, it is November 29th. In the USA it is a day earlier, and Thanksgiving. I do believe a day to give thanks is of value. But when we forget the Source Idea and the field from which this Thanksgiving Day was forged, we perpetuate the violence of colonisation.
The more beautiful world we know is possible will not come until we reconcile our past.
Photo Taken November 29th 2024, Article written November 29th 2024
