Last night Corky and I watched several segments of Michael Woods' BBC/PBS series "Conquistadors". As with all of Woods' historical works, the narrative is compelling and the video is beautiful. I love the way he tells the story, using present-day footage, in this case, of Latin America. This particular series is full of pathos, and is ultimately tragic. The story of Cabeza De Vaca is the most provocative. Cabeza, a "gentleman conquistador" (an oxymoron!), after a shipwreck is transformed by his experience of living with the Indians. He discovers that they are human. Most interesting is his transformation into a kind of healer/shaman. Upon his return to Spain, Cabeza documented miracles of healing among the Indians, the result of prayer for the sick.
Cabeza's story is a glimpse into what might have been. As Woods recalls the words of one Aztec priest: we could have accepted that there was One Almighty God but we could not accept that He had authorized the Pope to claim our land. But what if the Spanish conquistadors, and the later French, Dutch and English, had simply lived among the Indians, learning from them, respecting them and preaching the Gospel of Jesus, not the values of an institution? And what if the Gospel had been presented with no association with greed for gold? How might the Kingdom of God been advanced? And how much more like the Kingdom would the western church be today?
No comments:
Post a Comment