By Elizabeth Hofrichter
Prelude music: Native American flute music
Scripture: Micah 2:1-2 (Day 62) and Proverbs 4:23- Most of all, watch over your heart, because it is the wellspring of life.
Devotional Reading/Reflection:
As many of you already know, I am currently in seminary. One of the classes I am taking is called Ministry Across Cultures. We just finished reading A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, by Ronald Takaki. As I spent time relearning the history of America through the perspective of indigenous people and people who immigrated here, slaves and indentured servants, I was deeply troubled. And as Nancy pointed out when she shared a reflection on the Doctrine of Discovery, I realized this isn’t what I was taught.
In a similar way, as I have been reading the meditations in A Grounded Faith, I am experiencing all of these emotions being stirred up. What do we do with that?
Randy Woodley talks about The Harmony Way. Since we don’t have an English word that translates this sentiment, the best we can do is read entire books about it, meditate on a devotional for a month, learn other similar words, and spend time and action reconnecting to our world.
On Day 61, Randy Woodley likens the The Harmony Way to Eloheh, a word which refers to the history, culture, law, and all aspects of life of a community, knowing the importance of community above oneself, and knowing your role in that balance.
These words are also compared to the Hebrew Shalom, a word meaning holistic peace and well-being, a rhythm of community balance and meeting the needs of all, spiritually and physically. According to Cherice Bock, who wrote the meditation for Day 61, she said this “way,” this being, this appreciating Creator and Creation, is “being ourselves within the healthy rhythms of rest and care for people, God, and land.”
So, how did we get to this place where we are out of this rhythm? I (and I assume we) want to return to the Harmony Way, we want to feel and experience Shalom. But instead, we have plotted, seized, defrauded, and extorted. We have built our tower of Babel, and we are watching it fall.
One way the Spirit has led me to settle into this being is through appreciation. We have to get out of the mindset of doing, acquiring, getting, and conquering, and learn to just be. God reveals Godself as the great “I Am.”
I don’t know about you, but part of me when I hear that wants to complete the sentence. “I am What???” But, that’s not the point. We are to find a way to see God in this being. We can appreciate the Creator, the creation, and each other. And more specifically, Indigenous people that have been suppressed, oppressed, abused, mocked, made less-than, and ignored.
As I was thinking about how to do this, the issue of appreciation vs. appropriation came up. I know for me, I am worried about misusing, or offending a culture or people. Appropriation is when we take something from another culture and use it as our own without permission or acknowledgement.
Whereas appreciation is when we acknowledge the source, we learn from a culture, we look for and listen for the divine in it, we sit with it, we just be in and with.
One way of appreciation is through art—both in the making and the observing. When one makes art, we get to sink into a part of ourselves that we typically might ignore, push aside, quiet, or repress.
The author Neil Gaiman suggests this is like weeds. We try to repress them like stomping on them with a boot, but that causes them to spread in unpredictable ways. Instead, maybe we can sit with them, and be—in drawing, painting, in music, in singing and tooting and strumming, in dancing, and flowing, and stomping, in beat, in crafting and weaving, in carving and shaping and molding, in speaking and rhyming and writing and storytelling. So, as we have spent much time unlearning and relearning, absorbing and resolving, let’s find a way to be. To sit with that we have learned and let it out or let it in through these modes of creativity.
Tonight, and this week, that is the challenge. This week I invite you to experience Indigenous art. Try these links with meditative flute music, Inuit throat singing, 2-dimentional art for Visio Divina.
What else can you find? Can you make or engage in some art? Photography? Practice visio divina with God’s great work of art, creation?
In our small groups, we tried Visio Divina together with a piece of art from Oscar Howe, who was a Yanktonai (Yank-tuh-nye) Dakota artist from South Dakota. Visio Divina means “divine seeing,” and is a type of prayer where you can invite God to speak into your heart through the image.
While this is most often practiced with religious icons or paintings of Christian images, it can be used in any art, and I love to use it in nature, as well. It simply begins with an invitation to let God’s spirit speak to you, time spent gazing at art, and time spent reflecting on what you see and what God is showing you. There are no wrong answers. There are no right answers.
I wrote this poem in response to the painful process of relearning American history. The weeds were growing, and instead of stomping them out with a boot, I let them become words.
Now what?
Words.
It all began with words.
The mouths spoke these words.
They said what they said,
wrote what they wrote,
did what they did.
They even saw what they saw
and heard what they heard.
And they did it anyway.
Manifest destiny, was the word.
Manifest
the dest-iny
of getting the best
of these and the things,
these savages that get in the way
make dust of these.
They were entitled to
It’s a right to
get what we want,
when we want
and take it
the land is ours
it is a thing we can grab hold of,
and use and squeeze and scrape and bleed. We need
this land.
It is ours now. This land
is wasted
it’s not being used and abused
and monetized and realized
in the way
that brings gains
and progress and interest and and and and and…
We cannot let this land
go to waste.
Mouths speaking words,
and hands writing words,
and hands making moves
to undo
the work of the rhythm of life.
The natural native
and nurturing movement of living
that must be undone. No matter the cost.
But the eyes saw the cost
and they were okay with the cost.
But we did not see the cost
because they did not write those words
about the blood
and the battles
and the loss
of life.
We did not know that strife.
Well, we know now.
So what.
Will our hands do, what
words will our mouths say, what
words will our pens write, what
move will we make?
The way.
Eloheh.
Harmony way.
The Jesus way.
It has all been twisted away
from the way
it was.
Being in the creation
with the creator God.
Spirit.
The hands and the words and the mouths
that were one
with the land and the Spirit are now
still there.
Barely.
If we listen.
What words did they tell about what they loved
and how they lived
and how that was ripped
from their hands
and their eyes saw the blood
and they heard the scraping
and taking
and squeezing of the land of the people of God.
We get to read these words
From afar
And approach it on our own terms
So it’s our
Turn.
So what
move will we make? What
words will we say? What
will our pens write? What
will our hands do? What what what what…