By Adrienne Trevathan
Last weekend was very painful for many of my friends in my extended Native American community. Last Thursday through Sunday, we held a camp for Native youth called “Tipi Camp” in Dixon, IL.
The purpose of the camp was to give Native and non-Native youth a place to share in Native culture and worship. It was also a chance to enjoy the wilderness, sleep in tipis and be in fellowship together. The camp started out well enough with kids piling out of the passenger van and running excitedly into the dining hall. In the first few hours of the camp, however, I noticed that the Native kids were not including the non-Native kids in their conversations and games; they didn’t look like them, talk like them, or act like them. As I thought about ways to approach the situation, I decided to talk with the other counselors that night to see what to do. The following day, I left the camp to return to the Chicago area for a wedding, feeling a bit discouraged and curious as to how the kids would interact while I was gone.
About an hour before I was to return the next day, I received a phone call from the main camp director: one of our camp counselors, Robert, had suddenly died while the group was at a powwow. A million thoughts and feelings rushed through me as I drove into the city to pick up Robert’s wife and drive her to see his body. After we returned from the hospital, we went immediately to the camp so his wife could meet the kids. We had a small prayer and story-telling ceremony around the fire in memory of Robert. As a part of the ceremony, all the kids and adults had to answer the question, “What is my next best step?” After the service was over, I began to notice the way the kids interacted with each other: the non-Native kids were initiating jokes and laughter with the Native kids, who returned the favor and encouraged them to keep talking. Standing by the fire that night with the chill of a recent death, I was amazed at how quickly the kids had bonded. They had realized something bigger than themselves. They had stepped into something larger than their ethnic or cultural categories. It went beyond inclusion. They had reconciled in the face of tragedy.
I am not suggesting that reconciliation comes only through tragedy. Rather, it seemed to me in that moment that it was only through facing something bigger than themselves that they were able to move past the struggle of acceptance and into relationship. Their next best step was towards each other.
As a seminary student, I have heard many professors, students and clergy alike talk of “being inclusive.” The challenge to be “inclusive” seems to fall off the lips of those in favor and those strongly opposed alike. In The United Methodist Church, inclusion has often been the alleged initiator of uncomfortable conversations that force people to think about their notions of love.
To be frank, I find the word inclusive to be lacking. I have a similar problem with the cousin of inclusive, diversity. In my understanding, both inclusion and diversity sound as though they are political maneuvers to be engaged by the powerful despite the powerless. For example, as a woman, I can look at a traditionally male-led annual conference and know that if they talk of "inclusion," they mean the occasional consideration of having a woman or deacon in their midst. Likewise, I have been in conversations with groups of people who begin to talk of “diversity” only after they discovered that I am, in fact, Native American, even if I am not from the largest tribe or have the darkest skin color.
Not to belabor the point too much, I have found more strength and power in the word reconciliation. Reconciliation moves past political maneuvering and towards the depths of relationship. Reconciliation, rather than being dependent upon the favored majority, implies a change of heart, mind and being.
The “catch” about reconciliation – the qualification with its use – must always be connected to that which is beyond our capabilities. In Christian theology and spirituality, (what I sometimes term “GodSpeak”) the ultimate purpose of reconciliation is to bring humanity to God, and God to humanity. Although there are those who insist being smart enough, clever enough or witty enough will bring one to peace, we must ultimately recognize that it is only by the gracious and merciful love of God that we can be in relationship with each other. Try as we may, those of us on both sides of the LGBTQ issue don’t stand a chance at relationship with each other unless we realize that we cannot love without realizing that we do so because God loved us first. Until we are authentic about who we are as created persons in need of something bigger than ourselves, our efforts at conversation across hot-button issues will merely be the maintenance of civility in the face of anemic love.
Reconciliation will also escape us if we continue to use “Us vs. Them” language. Unfortunately, none of us are excluded from this temptation. The old adage “We tolerate everything but intolerance” comes to mind. Put differently, perhaps a good step is to recognize that persons on both side of the LGBTQ argument are seeking to be faithful. If we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, we may discover that using argumentative language is only a hindrance to what God is trying to move us both towards.
As finite beings in a world larger than any of us can understand or articulate, we all have fears. Fear cannot be assigned only to one particular group of people, lest those who are oppressed become oppressors themselves. We all have the capacity to move toward reconciliation, but the first step must be toward our Creator.
As the poet John Donne wrote in the well-known classic Meditation XVII, “Every man’s death diminishes me.” As I think about Robert’s brief time with us at Tipi Camp and in the lives of those youth, I recall stories that were told around the fire about his willingness to serve and believe in the power of humility. Although I mourn his physical death as a loss to this world and our Native community, I am also faced with the astonishing reality of my own choices.
If we kill a gift in another human being based on a category to which we have assigned them…if we fail to know the joy and love of another because we have not taken the time to get to know them…if we cause the death of someone’s only hope, simply because of their “difference,” we diminish not only ourselves, but we diminish who God created them to be, and who God created us to be together. We diminish our only hope at reconciliation.
It is naïve to assume that we will never have differences of opinion or conviction, but perhaps there is something for us to consider as we seek to move towards reconciliation together: What is our next best step? What is your next best step?
Reconciliation and Love's Definition
By Peter L. DeGroote
Jesus’ Prime Directive of loving God and others points us toward reconciliation. Standing in our way is the hopeless jumble of definitions for love that include emotional infatuation, pious devotion to prayer, and much in between.
At the heart of the problem is our theological fracturing of love’s meaning by use of three of Greek philosophy’s several categories:
These categories often lead to wacky conclusions. Three of the more obvious examples:
As for the Bible:
Instead of an objective definition, Jesus told us to take action that would result in our discovery of what he was talking about. Not only did he build the front porch to a household of reconciliation, he handed us the keys to the front door, to a reconciling way of life.
Those keys included forgiveness, turning the other cheek and praying for our enemies, to name only a few.
The prayer for enemies is particularly revealing when coupled with the instruction to love our enemies, a revelation that God does not share our feelings about our enemies. We are pushed along to grasp that loving God means to join God’s expectation and hope for all humanity. Living in harmony (love) with God seems to mean living in harmony with others, with all of God’s creation. This is called reconciliation.
As I explore Jesus’ instructions, the word “love” increasingly falls by the wayside. Its definitions are so broad as to become meaningless. Harmony with God and others, harmony with God and God’s creation becomes useful. Accepting the understanding that God has the same hope for others as God has for me, I increasingly say, honors God by honoring others and respects God by respecting others.
There is much to explore.
Posted in Author: Peter DeGroote, Biblical Commentary, Reconciling Process, Religion | Permalink | Comments (0)
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