Babel Scattered

The following was written for a Chicano History class I'm taking right now through my local community college.             The “Indigenous Problem” of Porfirio Diaz’s regime fascinated me in that dark way history’s ugly sides often do. That lesson functioned as a cautionary tale of the real, tangible impact, to all sides and parties, of systematic discrimination and its targeted destruction of a group’s narrative agency. However, the unintended consequences of Diaz’s move to replace the Mexican working population provide another lesson, a pragmatically optimistic trust in the resilience of humanity and our innate tendency toward agency and self-determination, the very tendencies that, once the many layers of prejudices, of injustices, and of imperialist vices are stripped away, form the core of the original American experiment.               Porfirio Diaz, dictator...

                Narratives, the fundamental stories that define and shape a belief system, make religion accessible and relatable. They are the practice and the practical of theology. They show relatable situations with realistic characters whose actions and responses are either examples of what to do or what not to do. In this way, stories are our means of reflecting on the fundamental questions of religion: Why are we here? What happens after we die? What constitutes good? What defines evil? These are complex questions, and narratives frame them in terms we can understand. A child can understand the moral of “The Tortoise and the Hare” long before they can discuss stamina and perseverance. Narratives are catchy, attractive, and memorable. Nearly every influential religious figure excelled as a storyteller. The parables of Jesus are among the most recognizable passages in the New Testament. Later thinkers, from Rumi...