“Christ is the image of God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, visible and invisible…all things have been created through him and for him… and He holds all things in unity.” (Col. 15-17)
“In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but in him. All that came to be had life in him…The Word was made flesh, he lived among us.” (John 1:1-4; 14)
I connected these two passages about unity from the feast of Christ the King and Christmas when I was reflecting on my experience at the Tienda de la Casa Comûn in Rome in October.
Such unity and interconnectedness were particularly apparent through the ways Amazonian people that I met communicated their oneness with their biome. They brought leaves, fruits of the land, a fishnet and a canoe, maps and images of their martyrs who had died protecting the land and water, using them in their prayer and presentations. Their joy and energy as well as their messages expressed their love and concern for life - all life - in Amazonia.
In one of our sessions Father Fernando Lopez, SJ, spoke of his experience as a member of an “Equipe Intinerante Amazonia” – an itinerant team whose work includes protecting Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation (PIAV). The working document for the Synod on Amazonia describes these peoples and their vulnerability as follows:
57. In the Amazon territory, according to data from specialized Church institutions (e.g. CIMI) and others, there are between 110 and 130 different Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation or “free peoples.” They live on the margins of society or in sporadic contact with it. We do not know their proper names, languages or cultures. That is also why we call them “isolated peoples”, “free”, “autonomous” or “peoples without contact.” These peoples live in deep connection with nature. Many of them have chosen to isolate themselves because they previously suffered traumas; others have been violently pushed aside by the economic exploitation of the Amazon. The PIAVs resist the current model of predatory, genocidal and ecocidal economic development, opting for captivity in order to live in freedom (cf. Fr.PM).
56. Some “isolated peoples” live on exclusively indigenous lands, others on indigenous lands shared with the “contacted peoples”, others in conservation areas, and some in border territories.
Vulnerable peoples
59. PIAVs are vulnerable to threats from agro-industrial enterprises and from those who clandestinely exploit minerals, timber and other natural resources. They are also victims of drug trafficking, infrastructural mega-projects like hydroelectric dams and international highways, and illegal activities linked to the extractivist development model. 1
Vulnerable peoples voluntarily isolate themselves from the ‘development projects’ of the destructive and invasive capitalist world. Their lives depend on their communities, on the natural Amazonian life around them, and on people of compassion who see and respond to their vulnerability.
I have often heard of the image of a fish in water knowing only its watery world, as an image of how we live and move and have our being in God. This image of voluntarily isolated peoples living, moving and finding their being in the vital and vibrant world they know speaks to me of what is essential. They live, conscious of each other and of that life-sustaining world, even in the face of violence.
St. Paul calls us to find our life in Christ – the One in whom we live and move and have our being – and to do so in as radical a way as the Indigenous Peoples who live in voluntary isolation. We are also being called to stand in solidarity with them and to respond to the suffering of the earth and its peoples in Amazonia. If we can see the face of Christ in the peoples of Amazonia and in Mother Earth, we might more freely live and express our unity with all creation.
The Working Document for the Synod of Bishops and a future document sharing the fruits of the synod will no doubt call us to live the unity and interconnectedness that our faith reveals to us.
1. INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS Working Document THE AMAZON: NEW PATHS FOR THE CHURCH AND FOR INTEGRAL ECOLOGY for THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE PAN-AMAZON p.23
Photo Image from Vatican News.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2019-06/vatican-synod-bishops-amazon-instrumentum-laboris.html
