There is a plethora of sayings that link knowledge of one’s future with knowledge on one’s past. For Marists, we are blessed with a rich recording of our history, and the values that underlie this foundation, in documents and stories that fill libraries across the world. Many of you are familiar with some of our foundational documents:Water from the Rock, In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat, A Heart That Knows No Bounds. Others that you may not be as familiar with, but are still important, includes Evangelizers in The Midst of Youth, Gathered around the Same Table, or even The Constitutions of the Marist Brothers. I will talk more about these in future editions of Jacob’s Well, but today, I would like to introduce (or revisit for those who know) a set of documents that contain some hidden treasures of our Patrimony. Marist Notebooks
Marist Notebooks are a collection of articles, produced since 1990, written by some of the greatest Marist historians of the Institute. Now, I know you might say, how are these articles relevant to me? Like I said, the future is shaped by the past. Why is Montagne an important symbol for the Marist family? Because his story was researched and presented by one of the writers in Marist Notebooks. How do we know so much about the personal spirituality of Marcellin Champagnat? You guessed it: it is covered in these books. The Notebooks even contain the ongoing controversy about the boy who died twice: is Jean-Baptiste Montagne the dying boy who inspired Marcellin? Ask Br Michael Green about that one or read about in Edition 35!
The best place for the resources for this is on the International Marist Brothers website. Here is the link: https://champagnat.org/en/library/marist-notebooks/
I will highlight a couple of really good articles in the coming weeks as well.
Finally, not directly related to this, but related to our times, I would like to share a poem from one of my favourite poets of the 20th Centuries: Maya Angelou. This poem, written in 1995, is beautiful and stark and fills me with hope. May it help to take your next step, in these times of hesitancy.
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
Maya Angelou