I have now acquired the book, Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier by Heriberto Araujo. It is a powerful and wrenching book that tells about the battle waging in Brazil for decades that resulted in numerous assassinations and vast destruction of the rainforest.
Its section on Sister Dorothy Stang is very valuable for it places her story in the context of that war and reports how her death, which got international attention, awakened the government to fuller action and response.
Sister Dorothy’s brother David, who brought my attention to the book above shared this reflection with me, giving permission to share with our DM readership.
Traveling in the Amazon for ten years helped me realize what awesome people Chico Mendez and Dorothy Stang were/are and this book confirms certainly what I saw; great people and horrific people. I am angry that these horrific people killed my Sister Dorothy who always told me, “I love Brazil, the people of Brazil and God’s Great Creation, the Amazon.”
My sister Marguerite and I traveled to Belem Brazil less than two months before her murder. Dorothy received the Human Rights Award in December of 2004 from the Brazilian National Association of Lawyers. They saw Dorothy fighting for the legal rights of the poor. For me she represents the hundreds of other activists who have been killed together with the thousands of poor who have been murdered in the Amazon.
While with her she spoke out clearly to the press about this corrupt class of men in the Amazon, in the State of Para. This book will tell the story of Chico and Dorothy much better than I. There is one exception: Dorothy has an American Blood Family and we her Family also have a Brazilian Blood Family in Brazil as she is buried in Brazil and her blood flowed in the land of the Brazilian Amazon.
After Dorothy was murdered, a Brazilian priest slept on top of her grave for weeks to make sure her body was not dug up and thrown into the woods. Finally, troops were sent into the area to protect the poor. Many of the poor soldiers hugged me and had their picture taken with the brother of Dorothy Stang. Often they had tears in their eyes. These soldiers knew and felt Dorothy Stang.
I cannot leave out also the fact that when I went to Anapu to her Celebration of Death in February, 2005, thousands of people hugged Dorothy’s brother with tears and fear for their lives, tears of unbelief, trauma that now the killers will again control their lives.
See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest (2015 edition), pp. 341-343, 433, 448.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jennifer Listug, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: Ibama and the Federal Police are fighting a criminal group responsible for illegally extracting and trading wood from the Gurupi Biological Reserve and the Caru and Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Lands, in Maranhão, Brazil. Felipe Werneck – Ascom/Ibama. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
How do these stories of Sister Dot inspire you?
Recommended Reading
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug
In the midst of global fire, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct every day and national and global economies totter – the planet doesn’t need another church or religion. What it needs is a new Order, grounded in the Wisdom traditions of both East and West, including science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in one sacred vow: “I promise to be the best lover and defender of the Earth that I can be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a forward by David Korten, this collection of essays by 21 spiritual visionaries including Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the diverse and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a community now evolving around the world.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not only calls us home to our true nature as Earth, but also offers us invaluable guidance and company on the way.” ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and author of Active Hope.
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4 thoughts on “Standing Up for the Rainforest and its Peoples, continued”
Matthew, Today you speak again about the book: “Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier by Heriberto Araujo.” In it you say, he has a section of Sister Dorothy Stang which places her story in the context of the war on the amazon, and reports how her death–which got international attention–awakened the government to fuller action and response.” Dorothy’s brother David, said that Dorothy received the Human Rights Award in December of 2004 from the Brazilian National Association of Lawyers. They saw Dorothy fighting for the legal rights of the poor. But Dorothy’s brother, David said: “For me she represents the hundreds of other activists who have been killed together with the thousands of poor who have been murdered in the Amazon.” Then you close with: “I cannot leave out also the fact that when I went to Anapu to her Celebration of Death in February, 2005, thousands of people hugged Dorothy’s brother with tears and fear for their lives, tears of unbelief, trauma that now the killers will again control their lives.” Finally, the question you have for us today is: “How do these stories of Sister Dot inspire you?” I feel that I am not worthy, or willing to die as Dorothy was. I will be no saint, but I believe that she is a “martyr-saint.”
The stories of activists, has expanded my awareness as to the complexities within the long struggle of survival that has been unfolding within humanity; which has mostly been selfishly focused on human needs, wants and desires. With the exception of Indigenious People, the human context of survival has lacked the conscious awareness of the reality of our interconnections, inter-reliance and interdependence with the all and the everything of creation.
There is definetely a reckoning, and an awakening beginning to collectively emerge, revealing the life giving truth, that survival is an all inclusive concept, beyond selfishness; in which we must seek to meet the needs of all the other creatures and the Earth itself.
Everything that exists is a necessary contributing partner within the story of survival. All that which exists, is deeply influenced either positively or negatively due to the choices we humans are making. We can choose to either accept the reality of the needs of the whole, and collabroatively respond in creative, imaginative, transformative and sustainable ways, or we can choose to deny the reality of our interconnectedness, inter-reliance and interdependence, by selfishly continuing to destroy that which maintains and sustains the existence of all life. Simplified… collectively and individually, will we choose sacred relationship with, which leads to life, or dominion over, which leads to death?
Jeanette, Today you write: “We can choose to either accept the reality of the needs of the whole, and collaboratively respond in creative, imaginative, transformative and sustainable ways, or we can choose to deny the reality of our interconnectedness, inter-reliance and interdependence, by selfishly continuing to destroy that which maintains and sustains the existence of all life.” It is all about choice. Will we choose to do the right thing? Either / Or…
Thank God Lula da Silva, lover of the Amazon, Indigenous peoples, and social justice, won the recent Brazilian presidential election! Now Brazil, especially the Amazon and its’ Indigenous peoples, can begin to heal and repair the previous destruction. God’s Divine Love~Wisdom~Peace~Justice is a long, painful, but joyful journey in our hearts~souls and around the world in our Sacred Mother Nature/Earth to help bring about God’s Queendom~Kingdom on earth as it is in the Heavens….
🔥💜🌎🙏