Lent and Lament

I was reminded of my commitment to this blog today when Google reminded me it was time to renew my internet domain, so I wanted to take a minute to thank you again for your readership and renew the opportunity to read! 

Over the past few months I have funneled most of my creative writing pursuits into poetry, per my last post. While this has siphoned off a bit of the energy to create longer posts - maybe to your relief - I want to share where my heart and mind have been. 

The follow poem was not written for Lent, but I think it has a just place in this season. It was written rather in a state of lament over the loss of human lives, specifically black lives, and my need to recognize these losses as needing public mourning. My black brothers and sisters, as well as other brothers and sisters of color are often cast outside of the Kin-dom of God for white Western understandings of it; passively, ignorantly, or aggressively, but cast-out nonetheless. 

When a people is separate from the whole of humanity for so long, we humans collectively become bitter toward one another. Something is missing. Communion. But, even when we are rejoined, or the idea of reconciliation is considered, we react upon this bitterness with defensiveness, critique, and stubbornness. We might hate how things have been, but we as beings within stasis are used to remaining stable, remaining the same. How can we challenge stasis with the needs of equity? How can we get to where we could be, when we are stuck where we know we shouldn't be? How can we practice the necessary rite of mourning, in a society confused by its activities?

When God's people of the Old Testament were a-wandering through the land that was certainly not the Promised Land, they knew - keenly - that they were not where they could or should be. And, they became bitter. They wanted to be joined with the land once again, as their first ancestors were in the time of Eden. They wanted to be reconciled to God, the god who made Land, and could allow it flourish. 

Seeing God's people in a fluster, God acted out - in Creativity. God called upon the People to do absurd things in order to show God's absurd love. Two stories catch my attention: Mara and Meribah. At Mara, God challenges the Hebrew nation to drink from a pool of bitterness, made sweet by the simple toss of a stick into the well. At Meribah, God allows even the frustrated striking of a rock to bring forth a refreshing stream to nourish the People. God meets the People where they are at, even when they know they are not where they could or should be. 

I recognize this space of placelessness or purposelessness as mournful. We want to be and to do as humans. We want a great work. When that great work cannot be made manifest, we get aggravated. We are at a loss. And there, in that great loss - of a person, of a place, of a thing - that is where God, Abundance-from-the-Void, meets us. 

Here is my meditation in a poem called "lachryphagy," a scientific word which means "the behavior of drinking tears for nourishment," a behavior known to be present in some moths and flies. What can we learn from lament?



***

: : lachryphagy
: : the Founts of Marah and Meribah


A snow of delicate condolences accumulates,
stitching a shroud of solace atop downturned heads,
as a shared loss makes our dimmed domes
a range of memorial impasses.
Stolen and steeled into the firmament,
mourning is hope, heavied, and circumstance cements us into place.

To remember, or distract, we light funeral pyres aloft
but like gestural satire, schizophrenic are the flame’s dances,
sharp and bright, yet unclear and undecided, as we:
to labor our feet for a life celebrated
or mellow our minds,
to meditate on a justice anticipated?

Memories make warmth in this storm of uncertainty,
coercing your cooled, stilled shoulders
past their posture of self-preservation:
a subtle shiver, a conceding shake,
a questioned quiver, a compounding quake,
and the summit starts to move.

Sadness something like anger scales your trembling facade,
razing an unready edifice
with the blaring burden of obvious bitterness,
rending the shroud’s pure safeguard,
where you curled, cloaked in defensible discontent
as reality etches a stairwell down into the valley
of embodied acknowledgment.

The rock was struck,
and the waters poured forth,
and the people, and the beasts
were pleased.

Where snow froze, rain follows further.
I see in you a medicine meant for all of us.

Pools of revelation gather in the oracle’s temple,
your eyes amass tides as salty as the sea
before making their lamenting descent
down the graven face of your holy mountain.

Each new tributary from the hill’s head,
hides a harbinger to happiness and ecstatic release,
whether through endorphin or endeavoring,
the rite of grief will gift gladness, if let flow.

In the flooding of the heights,
head, heart, and hands are washed clean
by vernal conversion; crystals to catalyst,
guilt-built dams to growth-giving inundation.

Once revered, the held headwaters can host
a harvest of new relevance,
not dumb nor proud in its business,
but intent on making riven the rock called reticent.

What ignorance would call innocence or naivete,
confused by the choreography of a danced dirge,
a lament cannot be sent on still feet and set times,
but moved to motion by remembering mouths and intent cries.

To lose is to learn; to forget: regret.
We grow by going down, dwelling upon what’s gone,
precipitating our prayers into sullen streams,
fording into the shallows of our sorrow,
committing to our concave consequences,
and cupping a mindful of commemorations
that we can be nourished by our mourning
and be tasked once again with the mending of the mundane.

A Poetic Pondering

I love autumn. Though perhaps counter-intuitive, I believe it is when life begins. We are introduced to what we have to gain by the demands of what to lose. 

As the air cools, I often hope for more company in my wandering and pondering, and then I remember that I am in the present of ancients who have seen many a day before me, and will outlast the life I have to give. 

Walk with me, with and through them. 

*   *   *

The Monastery

When the sun starts to become sullen

and the evening's shadows boast greedily,

having convinced more hours to spend their minutes

in night's dark hallways,

and a cool crispness rings upon my flesh

as small bell towers rise below struck hairs,

autumn's hymns call me back into the monastery.

It is here that prayers are walked quietly

upon a cluttered carpet of sticks and bones,

where penance is paid in the turning over

of inhabited rocks and the stacking of stones,

and propitiation is but a memory.

I was initiated into this order at a young age,

vowing devotion wonder-struck and worry-free

under the chapel's humbly bowed beams.

Brotherhood beckoned.

I belong with my assured companions,

the consecrated collect:

each characteristically tall and thick-skinned,

resilient, though rough to the touch,

soft-spoken and sure-footed.

Stoics, they teach a simple religion:

spend your days only on growing up, reaching out,

feeding friends, and sheltering enemies.

They are known to keep the feast throughout the seasons,

but it is for this particular performance I eagerly return:

this intentionally tardy liturgy of a peculiar Pentecost.

It is during this rite that even those

who are typically and methodically timid

upturn their many hands skyward

to exalt the heavens with amber eminence

and, with patterned rhythm and ritual,

they ignite their holy heads with flamboyant foliage.

Though sainted as icons of security,

enshrined as pillars for ecological stability,

my brothers immolate their honor for the sake of the cycle,

and present their sacrifice through personal purgation:

they willingly offer down their first-fruits

to feral fauna and to whoever's found forsaken,

for food, for preservation, for investment, for beauty,

so as to shuttle a tithe to the stewards of earth's

ever-asking yet equanimical economies: gravity and entropy.

Once rid of their fruit, nut, and seed,

they loose their flaming garments as a final charity,

to warm and cheer that same cool cloudbreath

that called me here to be a witness.

And so the brothers, those prophets,

rend their recital robes, leaf by leaf,

their unbound folios of wisdom descending,

stripping bare their generous branches

to ready what remains

for eventual resurrection.  

*   *   *

Blessings this autumn to my brothers, sisters, and all those in between. Find warmth in the fires of the Creator's embracing love. 

- Jason

Cultural Submersion

Members of the cavalry standing above the pit in
which they unceremoniously buried the 300 victims
of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

We live in a world of many cultures. Many are living, many are dead, and some are on the brink of fading away. Within these cultures, people, alongside animals, nature, and the Divine, work to create, innovate, construct, and re-imagine what has been freely provided within Creation. Arts and crafts, technologies, languages, performances, rituals, and religions are just a few of the plethora of creative acts that blossom within a thriving culture. But, because we live in a world that like a grand Petri dish holds so many living  cultures (from thriving to barely surviving), these growing co-creations can come to clash. At any such interaction, we humans are given pivotal opportunities of coexistence, violence, upheaval, submission, acceptance, or denial of Others in the face of difference. We have chosen all of these at one time or another. However, we humans seem to be particularly fond of demanding submission and enacting aggression or violence upon the "unknown" because we think that we have fought too hard to obtain what we have come to know or to be. We subsequently build walls to protect from loss, we bunker down to survive estrangement, calculate our strengths, and ready for competition. With our defenses up, we begin to think of diversity as a "despite" statement: humanity persists despite diverse cultures,  rather than seeing cultural diversity as an invitation to communicate, collaborate, and celebrate across humanity.

Well, I'd rather the latter, the invitation. Wouldn't you? I'd rather learn to communicate than to be convinced to coerce or to submit. I'd rather translate compassion than let division transpire in infinite competition and unhealthy comparison. Recently, I was blessed with an opportunity to hone this longed-for compassion when I was given the chance to learn about and from the Lakota people of South Dakota. Over a the course of a week, with 25-30 others, I took a cultural immersion course on the Rosebud Reservation, located in south central South Dakota, bordering Nebraska. The program is a joint project between Sioux Falls Seminary in an effort to further educate their psychology and divinity students about the present realities of our often forgotten Native neighbors, and of Wiconi (wee-choh-nee) International, a Native American Christian organization that focuses their ministry on developing faithful Native followers of Jesus. Wiconi's ministry is unique in that it hopes to liberate and empower American Indians to be fully Native and fully Christian through a critical contextualization of their faith, in positive regard of their cultural (non-Western) heritage.

As with any cultural exchange or immersion experience (a few of my own you may have read about earlier on this blog), it was complicated. I had to contend not only with my personality, but my cultural lens, my personal and inherited (i.e. taught) theology, and a whole lot of thoughts, feelings, and spiritual leanings. I want to take some time to process this for myself, and I want to invite you in to some of this distilling as well. Below are a few lessons learned, broken down into quadrants I've come to philosophize within: Self, Other, Nature, Creator.

Lesson of the Self: Slow down. Shut up. Repeat.

For the past few months I've been doing a quite a bit of reading. There was a handful of books recommended to us for the course, and I plucked another handful to read for good measure. Some discussed Lakota culture specifics, some outlined the historic interaction between Christians and Native peoples in North America, others described Euro-American interaction with Native Americans in general, and some others about land rights and indigenous philosophy of earth and the divine. So, as you can see, I arrived at Rosebud with a lot of information swirling in my head. And you know me, I like to analyze. I was ready with some nifty solutions to their problems, with well-worded apologies, and I was just a few clicks away from sending my resume. I could help these people. Right? Classic White Guy move. But, instead, our professors encouraged us to sit down and absorb. There was still much to be heard.

One of the men that we heard from early into the week worked with a local community center as well as served on the tribal council's treaty committee, let's call him Rick. Rick was Lakota, had a wife and a daughter in whom he saw the hope for future humanity. He lived on the Rez and was recognizably (and reasonably) jaded. And he said so. The way he spoke was heavy, not just in content but in composure. He was not sad, but mad. Rick talked about the trials of reservation life.

The Dawes Ace of 1887 chopped up land that had
been stolen by the Native inhabitants, making it
ready to sell to settlers, and pushing Natives on
to small plots in order to "farm" - an activity not
familiar to local indigenous cultures.

The Rosebud Reservation and the Pine Ridge Reservation to the west are two of the poorest, if not the poorest, regions in the nation. The household income is one-third to one-half of the national average. Historically corralled onto land by laws like the Dawes Act of 1887, which cut up settler-stolen partially-returned land near the Black Hills into farming plots, the Lakota, who have never been farmers, still struggle with a lack of pertinent vocations and employment, with unemployment around 80%. Though family values rank high in Lakota cultural priorities, the Western market and economic structure has left both men and women challenged to fulfill traditional Lakota gender roles, so drugging and drinking are used to numb the nihilism, and domestic abuse often ensues.

Incidentally, to be the balm for Gilead, white folks from around the country regularly flock to Rosebud and shower them with services and sympathy. A church can receive a fresh coat of paint - pick a color, any color - as long as the white folks are around, but the congregation remains stifled. A kid has a selection of backpacks she can bring to school, but no one to receive her when she comes home. Native people have become slick with the slime for Gilead, but they'd rather not attend churches that have no place for their cultural identity and heritage, so most feel they must decide between being Indian or being Christian.

Rick, and many others, have decided to be Indian. In this, they get to move forward by looking back - back to what the White Man has tried to kill in them, back to the ways their grandmothers practiced honorably, back to the way the Creator has called them to be: indigenous. Despite the heaviness and the daunting economic realities, Rick pressed that he wanted to shut the gate, and to tell us to get out: his culture is alive and well. They don't need us, and our help is only hindering their pursuit of cultural self-determination. Within my library of thoughts and contrived solutions, I sat alarmed and disarmed. I didn't know what to do, because I have to do, that is my felt "burden" as a white man, deception may it be. So, I tried to do the only thing I was asked to do: sit there, slow down, and shut up.

In turn, I want to foster this instruction. How can I slow my synapses to consider what I should not do, or things that I could choose not to say? How can I learn to devalue my own intentions and interjections in order to uplift those that have not yet been heard, or heard loudly enough? Physically, how can I slow down to increase my absorption of the lives lived around me? What have I not heard or felt due to haste, self-importance, or even "good intentions"?

Lesson of the Other: Genocide creates a generational curse.

When the some of first Europeans landed on North America in the 15th century, it is estimated there were about 100+ million indigenous folks currently calling it home. Over the course of a few centuries, what would become the American government systematically eliminated the "savage" Natives for their inferior status, for possession of the land, for resources, or even their for their "demonic" identity, according to the Christian perspective of the Western settlers. The weapons utilized ranged from traditional steel and bullet, to sickness, land and resource deprivation, cultural hegemony, and identity eradication. The war against the Indian continues today through the lack of reparations, broken treaties, and cultural submersion through the marginalization of the Native identity and role, resulting in sweeping trends of drug and alcohol abuse and extreme rates of suicide, particularly among teens - those who are already in a heated identity crucible.

Victims were left in the snow for three days following.

Particularly relevant in this history of genocide for the Lakota people is the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. You can read up on it here. In brief, while a group of 350 Mniconjou Lakota made their way through the December tundra to an Indian Agency where they would receive supplies, they encountered a detachment of the settler cavalry numbering 500. The detachment disarmed the Lakota, however due to a misunderstanding, shots were discharged and the military took open fire upon the disarmed Lakota, killing 300 of the 350, while losing a around 30 of their own 500 men, many likely to friendly fire. For their "bravery," 20 of the cavalry were awarded Badges of Honor - the most awarded badges in American history for any one "battle." The massacred Lakota men, women, and children were collected from the snow 3 days later and placed in a mass grave, where they still lay today, at Wounded Knee.

The name "Wounded Knee" is hauntingly apropos; it has remained a deep scar in Natives' minds and communities, and the massacre's demonstrative brutality has crippled those who might walk the path toward healing, maybe even reconciliation. But this is no surprise, for we know that we reap what we sow. Violence begets violence. Death begets death. This tragedy and many other tales of death and forced relocation are told in Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. While I've only read a portion at this point, the title is enough to tell a sufficient tale. Those who live in the communities around Wounded Knee, the reservations of Pine Ridge and Rosebud, still tremble with its loss. It seems as if no time has passed. A Native understanding of time, as it was explained to me, is not linear, as my Western understanding. Rather, stories are told because they happened, not according to when in linear time they happened. The tale of creation is told to remember the Creator, to honor Creator today; the history of Wounded Knee is recounted like a pulse in the pathos in order to mourn for our loss of those 300 relatives, even today.

I cannot help but believe that the long-term affect of this 500 Year War against the Indian is the internalized oppression we see, resulting in abuse of substances, self, and others. Not only has this ongoing oppression stolen physical lives, but it has made the life of a culture itself seem without worth. Lakota tradition can readily imbue young men and women with purpose, rites of passage, and fulfilling vocations, but they are forced to translate them into a Western context, like a fresh water fish flooded by a briny ocean tide and asked to breathe.

Fortunately, from what I can see, there has been some hopeful innovations and adaptations for the survival of indigenous nations. Tribes and nations have banded together in Pan-Indian gatherings at powwows, where diverse expressions in dancing, singing, drumming, cooking, and craft are welcome and celebrated. While each nation is distinct in their cultures, they've overcome the cursed "otherness" with which the US has labeled them, and they choose to come together to celebrate their vibrant surviving, thriving expressions of personal and communal Native identity. Despite the cult of Death that the government and majority society have ritually wrought against them, they dance, they fight, and they live on.

How can I sit still, while my brothers and sisters are dancing? How can I celebrate, while many still mourn? How can I better honor the beloved and creative identities of these brothers and sisters, and empower them to live them out publicly? How does my privilege impede their liberation?

Lesson of Nature: This is about spiritual geography.

Buffalo, one of the most revered animals for the Lakota,
hanging out in front of Bear Butte, a sacred mountain.

Having lived in the Midwest for about 7 years now, I'm used to the topographical flatness. While the sun setting over Roosevelt Boulevard is about the same elevation as it setting over Lake Michigan, there is something a little less romantic the about the asphalt mirage glare compared to the water's mirrored surface. Regardless, I had gotten used to the idea that the "beauty of the plains" is rather bland. Fortunately, I was taught incorrectly by the Chicagoland suburban sprawl. Heading west further into the plains and the hills beyond the Missouri River, I could see why our indigenous brothers and sisters are at awe with this land.

Regarding its vastness made me meditate on the traditional prayer to the Four Winds, or to the Seven Directions: east, south, west, north, to sky (Father Sky), to earth (Mother Earth), to Self (the only thing we ever own). These prayers are said or sung with aid of drum or pipe, as if to engage the actual breath of the four winds, express thanks, and ask for aid. To me, as an installation artist, this is also represents a deep ritual of establishing your Self in Place. Each cardinal direction has a spiritual significance, connecting the practitioners to understandings of history: where help has come from in the past, where their people have come from, and the passage of time. In this way, the Self is also rooted in Time as much as Space through this practice of prayer, remembering that time is not linear.

Another spiritual practice of the Lakota can be observed in a common cultural mantra, per se, that goes "mitakuye oyasin," which translates roughly to "all my relatives." This is the Lokota understanding of how Nature and Creation is ordered. Creator made us all on the same plane; we humans (two-leggeds) must share it with the four-leggeds, the winged, the insects, the animals of the sea. Each of these groups are naturally oriented toward their own nation, or "oyate," in Lakota. The humans confer with the human nation - however difficult it may be for them to agree - and the hawks confer with the hawk nation, the horses, the spiders, the badgers, and so on. While this is not how I was taught, as my elementary ecological training focused on food chains and systems of competitive survival, I appreciated dwelling within this familial cosmology even if just for the week.

Chief Red Cloud

Again, the very nature of the place seemed to press these paradigms into my own consciousness. One visit we took as part of the class was to the cemetery where Chief Red Cloud is buried. I think of Red Cloud as the bold-then-peaceful leader of the Oglala Lakota. He was known for his leadership in the Montana and Wyoming territories who eventually led his people to transition into reservation life. Despite heated conflicts with Euro-American invaders and missionaries, Red Cloud partnered with the Jesuits to establish a boarding school that still runs today; it is on this campus that Red Cloud is buried.

The cemetery sat atop a sunny hillside, what looked at first to be overgrown, but I came to see it as rather naturally tended to. With each step I took on the dirt path, half a dozen grasshoppers took to new posts scattering from my foot's landing. They whistled, whirred, and hummed throughout the green, the gravestones, the memorial flowers and the prayer flags. Red Cloud and his wife lay in the far corner of the lot, surrounded by an unpainted picket fence. A few large grasshoppers had taken a liking to the rough pickets, where they seemingly found pockets of edible growth amidst the aged woodgrain. There, standing in the heat of the day, in the presence of great grandfathers of the Lakota, I was being hosted by the Grass Nation. They tended the yard, they maintained the fencing, they welcomed the guests which their spry flights and whispered songs. This napyard of the dead was their living, thriving kingdom. Upon this great chief's grave, the Grass Nation established a peaceful home. I felt a sense of gentle justice, of quaint homage.

But the Lakota understandings of sacred land are not about smallness, rather there is a grandiosity to the Spirit that is astounding. When talking about his own call to ministry which came through a miraculous land-based whisper from the Holy Spirit, one of our leaders, Corky Alexander, stated, "This is about spiritual geography." This simple statement shook my bones with the same magnetic resonance that turns the very sphere on which we live. I shook because not so coincidentally, the idea of spiritual geography is something that I've been pondering for a few years, and while I cannot tell you "what it means," at its base, it signals that there is more. 

Since growing up until my preteen years in the Pentecostal tradition, I've been familiar with the presence and prominence of the spiritual realm, and what evangelicals often call "spiritual warfare" - again, something I can say I get with my gut, but may not be able to explicate with my words. Simply stated however, spiritual geography means that place matters. We can make place matter more or less depending on our intentions and attention, but in the end, it will be the land that takes our flesh for its own, so I figure we might as well pay attention to our keeper. So, what it means to me in this context is that God allows the land to speak for the Godself, just as much as our created bodies, the melody of birdsongs, or rumbling of thunderstorms. This is not a language to be understood as much to be stood under, and by which to be humbled.

Yet, spiritual geography is not only beautiful, but terrible. For this is a land that has tasted much blood and felt great suffering. Just as the Native pathos wears Wounded Knee like an unhealed scar, the land bears the burden of lives unsatisfied. I don't know fully what to think about spirits and ghosts, but if they carry on, they are carried by this land. Comparatively, there is an understanding in Celtic spirituality of "thin places," where the boundary between earth and the heavens is very "thin", and thus the divine or ethereal can be experienced more easily. For the Lakota people, and seemingly Native cultures more broady, spirituality has always been linked to places, such as the Black Hills, the Pipestone Quarry, and Bear Butte. These are places of power, peace, and prayer.

How can I integrate my physical, geographic place into my understanding of Self, others, and God's work? What does it mean that others, long gone, have also inhabited this place? Why are some places considered sacred by many, but not by others? Why do we meet in churches when God the Creator has claimed omnipresence even amidst the "chaos" of Creation? How can I respect the other "oyates" present in Creation, and promote their flourishing?

Lesson of the Creator: God cannot be brought.

An image of Native students at a boarding school - one of many
of these heinous institutions that were constructed and
organized around the white settler-missionary philosophy of
"kill the Indian, save the man."

Corky reminded us, "Evangelism is not a delivery system, it is a treasure hunt." We needed to remember this. We were a room of pastors, pastors-to-be, counselors, and seekers, who all held our Christianity in common. It was our Euro-American Christian ancestors that had taught this nation that Christianity was a precious package that needed to be delivered, soul-on-delivery, to all the lost savages of the west. Coupled with this calling was the similarly "high calling" of obtaining the land that the Lord had given His holy children. The consummation of this is ideological coupling was the determination of Manifest Destiny: take hold of the promised land that the Lord has granted, it is our duty and our future, and it will be obtained by the spilled blood of the wicked, and the won souls of the obediently righteous. Thus, the empowered pilgrim-settler overtook the land by force, for fear of hell, with the force of final judgement and wrought some god's wrath upon the wild country and its strange inhabitants.

But, I realized that I do not worship this god of my forefathers. That god reigns with Death, the slain enemy of my God, Life. Theirs was a god that knew nothing of resurrection, of redemption. This sounds strangely Old Covenant, doesn't it? Yet, that god is continually worshiped today. Blinded by ethnocentric visions of a Christ who is pale-skinned and purified by the blood of scripted wars and crooked kingdoms, we often believe that we obtain the right to the Highest Good at our own great cost, through violent conquest of the east and west, or by passing cyclical policies laden with faith rhetoric, and by continually suppressing the "strange" for the sake of the plain, the status quo: the known, the majority understanding. When all the pieces are in the majority's contrived order, society is made clean, and cleanliness is next to godliness.

But this lie can be confounded, as it is blatantly unfounded. In reality, the drums, the songs, the dances, and the flutes that the early settlers may have seen, heard, and called "strange" or "uncivilized" were not too far off from some direct biblical examples of worship with flute, lyre, wild dancing of an ecstatic king, and the mournful singing of a lost saint - other stories from that same Old Testament. However, due to their foreignness, the artifacts and expressions of these indigenous cultures were (and still are) labeled demonic, and sentenced to death alongside their makers and practitioners. And so, the indigenous people of North America were (and are) indoctrinated with the lie that God does not glory in their culture, but only the practiced rituals, language, and theology of Western Christianity. You could either be Christian or Native, and while Indians had a target on their back, there was only one option.

If it's one thing Euro-Americans are good at, it is Efficiency (remember, the Cult of Industry?); we were unfortunately quite efficient with the campaign against the Indian. But God is a jealous God. Through the inspiration of the Spirit and the mercy of the Creator, Christ is being redeemed unto the Native believer. A movement is upon us. Though the leadership of prophets like Richard Twiss, creatives like John Maracle and Cheryl Bear, writers and theologians from indigenous and European roots, and the activities of Wiconi International, Native believers are learning that they can be both fully Native and fully Christian. This incarnational movement is called critical contextualization. Critical contextualization (simplified) asks two things of the believer in Christ: What culture did you come from? and how can that be used to glorify Christ? More specifically, it is an opportunity for Native Christians to examine the practices of their cultural heritage and redeem them for Christ-centered worship, rather than throw them away.

I believe that the Creator rewards Holy Creativity. Traditions like the pipe ceremony, prayer to the four directions, the sweat lodge - these practices have been around for millennia. One chief we spoke with even chuckled a little when talking about Jesus, in respect to the pipe ceremony that had been practiced by his people for nearly 4000 years; Jesus is new to the neighborhood. That said, Jesus cannot be just copied and pasted into the middle of these ceremonies, as that would do a disservice to both the ceremony and to Christ (nevermind be considered syncretism by most), remember God cannot be brought. Rather Christ can be revealed through the existing good natures within cultures. This is where the "critical" part comes in.

Casey Church in some of his regalia, holding
 the pipe with which he shared this ceremony.

One particular example I want to highlight is the ritual of the pipe ceremony through which Casey Church, current Director of Wiconi, led us. I am no expert, but I'll walk you through my observations. Casey sat outside, on a small carpet, with a few elements in front of him. Quietly, the ceremony began with the ritual cleansing of all elements by a traditionally revered herb, sage, whose smoke was used to "smudge" (purify, neutralize, consecrate) the elements. The sage was lit and set in an abalone shell. As the smoke rose from the bundle, it was fanned using an eagle feather over the pipe's wooden stem and pipestone bowl, over a bottle of water, over his bible, and over the bag of tobacco he would be using in the pipe, and over himself. This was not done because the sage smoke has any spiritual "power" in and of itself, but remembering that incense is a smell pleasing to God, Casey used it to mark the intention of preparing the space for worship and prayer. The second part of the ceremony involved preparing and loading the pipe. The pipe stem and bowl were attached by moistening the stem in his mouth, and joining it with the bowl. Then, methodically, pinches of tobacco were loaded into the bowl through a prayer to the seven directions: the four cardinal points, the sky, the earth, and the Self. With each pinch of tobacco, Casey lifted it to one direction before placing it in the pipe, starting with the east, then south, west, north, toward the sky, toward the earth, and toward his heart. After the pipe was loaded, it was lit, and the prayer of seven directions was repeated, waving the tobacco smoke over himself as he turned, offering the pipe's mouthpiece to all seven directions, as if an offering of communion, to share the pipe with the Creator of all, and offer thanksgiving. Casey made it clear that only the one true God, the Creator, was involved in this prayer. He closed the prayer time by praying aloud in both Potawatomi and English (for our benefit). Casey concluded that he shared this time with us to edify our experience of contextualized worship, however it was a usually a private personal or corporate Native experience, and it was not meant to be merely a performance. And I'll say that it did not feel simply performative at all, but rather it felt entirely sincere, reverent, intimate and holy. We were greatly honored to be able to witness our Potawatomi brother pray to our common Creator in this way. I believe God was blessed, as well.

This is merely one example of Casey, a Potawatomi, using familiar cultural elements to bring glory to God in sincere worship and attention to Christ. You should easily be able to see how this is not too far from other, Western rites, particularly in the Catholic church: the lighting of prayer candles, the waving of incense, the blessing with water. For me, it is easy to see parallels with my Sunday worship experiences at my Mennonite church, Living Water Community Church, where we sing in the languages of our congregants (Swahili, Nepali, Cambodian, Spanish, French, English), we dance according to how our Central African brothers and sisters learned how to dance, we offer bread and juice or wine to one another in communion, and we offer remembrance and thanks, and hold ourselves in silent prayer to meditate before the Creator who is before and within these living cultures. It's kinetic, and at times confusing or chaotic, but it is at its core Creative - and in that way we live into the image God gave us, as co-creators alongside Jesus Christ, the first, perfect, and catalytic Created One. God is found, never brought.

How can I rediscover God's glory in my own cultural expressions? How can I create a localized, placed practice of worshiping the Creator? In what ways can I encourage the movement of critical contextualization to reach those lost to false binaries? What can I do to uplift the present leaders of this movement while not conflating it with my own cultural needs?

*   *   *

I share with you my experiences and observations of others with a prayer for grace. I am not and do not want to portray myself as an expert in any way, I merely wanted to share some of things I observed, and some lessons that are sticking with me. Take what you will, leave what you will not. Furthermore, if you are a person of indigenous heritage (of which I am not - as white North American-born man of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh heritage), please, please do inform me if I have misspoken, spoken out of turn, said something disrespectful or been insensitive - I am still learning, and have much to learn. Aid in that learning with your critique, guidance, and, if possible, friendship. 

With hope, I pray that God will in fact bless our efforts to creatively worship, if we are bringing worthy offerings before God, and I pray that there would be mercy in our failings, flailing, or fluctuations. Eternal praises that we have a Creator whose nature is love infinite, for I have done wrong, and will do wrong again. But, I want to learn the nature of the Good. To be Good, to do Good. Further, I pray that I and my fellow white folks will be given an abundantly strong spirit of reconciliation and hearts for justice, so that we might bear with our Native brothers and sisters who are burdened by the hurt we have wrought over space, time, land, and souls.

From the Creator of  mountains, rivers, great winds, and wildfires, I ask for a force reckoned within our indigenous innovators that their voices might be heard and formative for the establishing and educating of the Kin-dom of God in the ages we have before us as the human nation, and all our relations. With the stones that cry out, with the streams that sing forth, with the winds that fill us up, with the fires that burn within, may we always allow and be allowed to dance our prayers.

Mitakuye oyasin, to all my relatives, I pray peace.

*   *   *   

Further Reading/Watching and Recommended Sites:
- Wiconi International: Removing Barriers and Building Bridges between Native and Christian cultures.
- Native American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies (NAIITS)
- Some clips from Richard Twiss, late founder of Wiconi International:

....with plenty more on YouTube!
-  Broken Walls, contextualized worship: Christ-centered songs with Native language and instruments. 
- Unsettling Minnesota. A great resource for deconstructing colonial consciousness.
- And a handful of published books that I can point you to, just ask! Or, Google it. 

Plandomized Guess :: An Inconclusive Offering

I have been telling myself since I landed back in Evanston that I was going to write about my experiences while away in Connecticut - at home with family, in Vermont - retreating to the solace of a Benedictine monastery, and in Portland, Oregon - celebrating communion with queer Christians at the Gay Christian Network Conference. But, I just haven't gotten to it. What have I gotten to? I've gotten myself into an emotional mess or two, logical circles, prayerful mumbles, and the typical wanderful wonderings. And, a little bit of art.

Praise be to the Creator, that creativity can be a catharsis. Because, after being home, where I felt both loved and still a bit alien, then being among celibate brothers, where I felt a peace beyond previously-held understanding and yet infinitely familiar, and lastly being with a family of Christian queers from all sides of the rainbow, I came back home here a little raw, a little worn out, and nowhere near conclusive. The connection of these three points, hometown-monastery-queerlandia, in a line made for a geometry I was well studied for, but never truly tested in.

Depending on how well you know me, these three environments seem like they should inhabit entirely different spaces, but truly, they've been aligning within me for a while, but never so much in my outside world as they did within the three-week span of my Christmastime travels. These compiled experiences now came to me in a different form than the floating, lofty ideals that could be quietly (if also feverishly) qualified and categorized within my mind. I came home to Illinois frazzled. My eyes had jolted between these disparate stars quickly to formulate some worshipful constellation, and I was in awe. But wonder has a penchant for confusion, perhaps the investment cost for potential clarity.

Luckily, I both got to and had to make some art. Sometime last year I had signed up to hang a show at the cafe I work at in "February", that then-far-off month. But, that month came quickly after a full January. So, from the road I retired to my studio to collect some old notes, and compose some new sculptures. The resulting show of new and old speaks louder to the process of the past few years than I can right now, even through the lens of the past couple of months.

So, here's a taste of my visual and non-prose work.

You find images of the pieces part of Plandomized Guess, as well as descriptions of their materials and a collection of  methodological notes. Intermittently are whispered some poems and haiku personally written. What's below is effectively (or ineffectively) a show scrunched down into a blog post, so you may want to take it in doses or in an intentional session. Take your time. 

A syntax note: I use two particular symbols as tools for rhetorical juxtaposition. In general, I utilize "::" to symbolize the continuation of or through something, or as a device of comparison. I utilize "//" to symbolize the interruption of a flow, or as a device of contrast. I also use it below as a notation of the materials used in each piece as if to say the specious "idea" was interrupted and thus incarnated by the material. I use both of these symbols below accordingly, and I will likely use them in the future as part of rhetorical play and analysis in other posts.

Chew slowly, swallow with a grain of salt, spit out if necessary.

::

This is a collection of work examining discernment.
Discernment is the processes of finding Truth,
at least that truth which is congruent
with clarity or comprehension.
There are no straight lines in Nature,
yet we have consecrated our post-Industrial existence
to the grid; the grid is efficient, it is effective.

There are no such grids in Nature,

yet the idea of the grid is present:

everything has its place, and nothing is wasted. 

But, that does not mean that all goes as anticipated.

Growth may occur on created trajectories,

But, development must be rendered within and against,

elsewise be set back and oppressed, by chaos.

It appears - in the growth of the blossom to the sun,

the yearning of the child to the parent,

the flight of the bird toward its nest,

the weaving of friend into companion,

the call of life to the fulfillment of calling,

it appears that these processes are reckoned

both as planned pursuits as well as random guesses;

murmured measurements to be scried from the cosmos.

Take a moment today
to listen to the murmurings,
that you might, in Time,
ascertain the Truth
ascribed to you.

::

TIME, THE DEMURE DICTATOR

Chatter woven on the looms of Time

tell me that this too will be borne, worn

distressed, attested to, and retired.

This, too, shall pass.

The gossip of locusts reminds that

even the Fate’s feeble hands 

have undetermined, terminal paths,

leaving dirges unsung, swarms unflung

until the eccentric eternals 

levy the various variables

that will make for one’s colorful demise.

When all you've got is weft and warp,

dimension is essential; growth, gridded;

illusions, immeasurable.

(The art of making a life.)

As such, my story is spun, one thread,

plucked from the fields of Eon’s cotton mind,

twiddled between the cosmic spheres,

raped by gravity in unwarranted orbit.

Like dark slaves forced to sing as they twirl, 

they thin Time’s boles 

in their tyrant-tested touch.

And so my history is sung to me, 

as if I’d never heard.

But, all we can know

is that which has been.

The silk script wrought betwixt the spheres

possesses no premonitions, 

no whispers of predestination that it can - 

in some unfounded kindness - make explicit, 

as it is written upon today’s weave.

No, this loom, these weavers never surrender

such frivolous pleasantries 

to the mortal meanderer.

If unwavering are their fickle fingers,

then unforgiving will be their detail,

however unplanned the next yard of time,

knit from uncertainty. 

::

INTERNALIZING EXTERNALITIES

:: AN AMBIVERT STRUGGLES 

TO FIND THE PROPER CONTEXT

//burlap, canvas, cotton string,

found death, internal ramifications, 

external expectations, gravity

Plan: introverts gain energy from time spent along
      extroverts gain energy from time spent with others
Guess: social beings must reconcile the energies 
      to turn in and to turn out
Discern: use the external boundaries of the blossom
      to create quadrilaterals
      use the internal center of the blossoms
      to create triangle vertices
      embrace ambivalence to promote reconciliation

::

MIGRATORY THOUGHTS

:: THE MEETING

//burlap, wire mesh, metal wire,

string, nature, nurture, 

yearning, space, pegboard, etc.

Plan: 4 burlap birds, 2 steel birds (not pictured)
      cubes have 6 sides (2+4), and 8 corners (2x4)
Guess: we have similar ends, and differing means
      it could have been different
      we could be the same
Discern: create an alternative trajectory for the 2 steel birds,
      with 2 white string lines
      create an alternative trajectory for the burlap birds,
      with 4 twine lines
      create a common end point, 

      with steel mesh and jute burlap
      expose the reality of difference within similarity 

      extrapolate 2 cubes from 3 planes:
      1 plane for each of the possible separate trajectories
      1 center plane for the possibility of commonality

::

//From each point a line, 

divorced from reality.

Glory to God: Seen.//

::

PYTHAGORAS FLIRTS WITH PROMETHEUS

:: A QUESTION OF EFFICIENCY

// twine, wood, found death, cotton string, 

gravity, levity, canvas, pegboard, growth

Plan: Pythagoras is the father of the right-angle triangle theorem
Guess: constructed thought can destroy us
Discern: utilize the inherent stability of the triangle 

      to formulate a structure of satisfaction, 

      sustaining the blossom afloat

Plan: Prometheus is the bringer of the enlightenment 
      of the gods to humans
Guess: conflagrant emotion can destroy us
Discern: use the ratio of the plant’s stem and subsequent branches to 
      sew the possible developments of growth, if it occurred on 
      a square grid; extend the grid outward with sewn blossom renderings

::

//The god of No name,

seen with No face, yet blindly

heard, the Voice within.// 

::

GRIDDED GRAINS//

CONSCIENCE = CONCIOUSNESS³

:: THE INSIDE, OUT

// wood grain, external points

quadrilateral connections,

individuation, interaction, ink pen 

Plan: rounded wood grain
Guess: what is round can be made square
Discern: use the outermost points of the round grain 
      to find four corners of a square

      extrapolate the four corners of the discovered quadrilaterals 

      to create cubes

100 INDEXES

:: APPROPRIATING APPENDAGES

//wood grain, index finger, space,

ruler, ink pen, patience, promise

Plan: wavy wood grain
Guess: within the grain lays a grid
Discern: use my index finger as measurement 

      to create points along the grain lines,
      connect the points to become lines, 

      the lines to discover the grid

::

SELF-DETERMINED

:: A STRANGER’S FRIED CHICKEN

//napkin, grease, points, line, time

Plan: grease blotches on a napkin, 
      used to clean up from the fried chicken a stranger 
      had gifted me, an open-minded vegetarian
Guess: everything, everyone is connected
Discern: use napkin’s form to create a grid
      use the blotches to create circles (of influence) 
      connect the circles’ centers to calculate interdependence

::

Metric of Mankind,

Womanhood, all Siblings, mine:

Yours, make us; 

align//a line.

Point: keep me guessing,

lead me along, eyes strung taut;

line me not askew,

your Rule, your Letter :: fetter;

leave me naught//not alone.