June 21, 2007

By Dr. Mary C. McDonald, Secretary of Education, Superintendent of Catholic Schools

Ghost Dancing originated in the late 1880's. It was a ceremonial religious dance practiced by several tribes of Native Americans who believed that the Ghost Dance would bring back their way of life, resurrect their customs and their culture. The tribes faced losing their freedom, their homes, their beliefs, in fact, their very existence to the civilization that was being forced upon them by those invading their territories. The Ghost Dancers danced to bring back the past. They believed the salvation of their future was not in a new creation, but in the restoration of the simplicity and happiness of the way things used to be in the past. They believed that the more they danced, the more the Great Father in the Sky would roll back the earth, covering the invaders and all their works, and the earth would be just as it was before the anyone came. It didn't happen and the movement died out at Wounded Knee. There are times when I feel great empathy with the Ghost Dancers.

Have you ever been at a point in your life when you feel as if everything was over, that you had nothing left to give, nothing to do? Have you ever felt devastated by the loss of a spouse, a child, a friend, a job, your home or belongings? Have you ever been in that place where the circumstances of the present were so painful and difficult to accept because they changed everything you knew, everything you have, everything you believe, and everything you have grown comfortable being?

It is a place, like the Ghost Dancers experienced, when our faith is in our past, and our hope lies in resurrecting that past for our future. There is no faith in the present and that lack of faith affects our attitude and how we act in the now. We find it difficult to believe that things will ever work out. Our lives seem to be subjected to an alien domination of fear and uncertainty that is changing everything we know. It is in these times that we could be tempted to become Ghost Dancers. We might not ask for the earth to be rolled back; but, we ask, at least, for time to be rolled back, back before our present circumstances, so that our lives would not change and everything would be like it was in the past.

If, in the present, you have come to a point where you think that everything is over, then that will be the beginning. The present belongs to God. It is in the pain of that void that God calls us to new life, a new beginning, a new dimension of our existence. Regardless of the feeling of long-suffering, the temptation to just give up, or to not see beyond the present circumstances, God is still at work in our lives. Without patience, without faith that God is in the present, His work in us will not be accomplished. We will miss what He is planning, what He is building in our lives. Don't make the present the spot in your life where you stop believing.

Know that God is in the present. He is in the sadness, in the loss, in the rejection, in the changes, even in our doubt that things will ever work out.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, "I know the plans I have for you…plans to give you hope and a future."

It is this promise that strengthens us and makes us more determined to trust Him to work in our present, to make the future even better than the past. Don't let the despair of a present situation project the nostalgia of the past into the future.

Don't spend the present Ghost Dancing. Instead, take the hand that life deals you, whatever it might be, and win with it, by trusting God in the present.