Making Houses Our Home

 “Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” - Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Lakota

Internalizing thoughts at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation issue keep me pondering on several things. I ask myself several questions like “Are these things real?”, “What made the government become seemingly lenient to this issue?”

Of course, it’s a painful reality and it’s really getting in the nerves! Stories are crystal clear of the idiosyncrasies of the authorities. But to have an unbiased view of the issue, I did try to look at things from the other side. But I just ended up asking myself again, “Do we really need to have people endangered, displaced or killed, for an intent on industrialization?”, “Do the “powers that be” never consider what life is, or to be specific, what home means?

While reflecting on this contested issue where many lives are in danger and people are deprived of their rights, what can we do as fellows to our fellowmen? Let me share my thoughts about building a home, where everybody feels it as a space, a long-lasting place of solace.

• Coming home means not being alone. When one has a home, it is where family are expected to find company; it is where friends are expected to go to and feel welcome. When someone comes home, they must not have a feeling of being alone, rather, home must give a sense of togetherness. Coming home must make people feel they are in a place of comfort.
• Be there and do care. Being home means more than being physically present. It means listening about how a family member has been through. Home is not just a space. It is where one finds listening ears.  Through this we’ll call our spaces a home.
• Rebuilding without harm. When we try to expand our place while having an objective to enlarge our space for comforting others, let us do this without doing harm to our housemates and neighbors. Let us carefully make our plans, bearing in mind that we are not alone. Building a home means extending grace to our neighbors.
• Let resources be shared. Everybody has a right to access environmental resources for necessities, like clean water.  When we build or rebuild houses, let us consider that others are not harmed.  Let us bear in mind that this world is not ours alone. It belongs to many. Let us preserve a clean ecology, like clean, uncontaminated water which everybody can share.
• Having the neighbor identity. Here, let us not just take the word neighbor as a label, rather an identity.  It is an Identity in the sense that you do what a true neighbor really does. A neighbor opens his doors when someone is in sorrow. Being a neighbor means being a listener to every burst of emotion that a neighbor couldn’t bear. It is becoming a shelter when one is homeless; and becoming a Good Samaritan to others who are in need despite differences in race, culture or creed. More than a label, neighbors help one another in times of need.

More than the man-made physical structures, let us remind ourselves what really matters after all - life. Let us encourage one another to make a home where there is life. Let us create a place of comfort for everyone who needs it. And let us build structures which next generations will call their own. Let us build houses we can call home.

As I come to reflect on these injustices and as I yearn for hope, I am reminded of a hymn – “to take it to the Lord in prayer “. In all of these turns of events – either in joy or in sorrow – let us continue to share to our neighbors what really matters, not merely seeking what satisfies ourselves. Let us share God’s love in our neighborhood!

Kevin John Maddela

EYA Intern 2017

National and Religious Partnership for the Environment

Blog #3