Radical Discipleship in Stolen Lands

In Ojai Valley this week, I've joined 150 activists and animators, radicals and resisters, for a five-day seminar exploring the hurt and hope of indigenous peoples.  This Bartimaeus  Kinsler Institute is the love offering of radical Christian disciples--who intend to "unsettle" or "de-colonize" faith and scripture and then to animate radical discipleship and beloved community in the service of justice, reparation and renewal for the earth.  Among the 150 are therapists from Ontario, aboriginal organizers from Austrailia, indigenous pastors from Minnesota and Oregon, emerging church leaders from Philadelphia, and Catholic Worker farmers from Wisconsin and Los Angeles.

It's humbling--and jarring in the right way--to be reminded of my privilege and plunder as a "white settler."  Bruce Cockburn's iconic song ("Stolen Land") comes to me this week, over and over and over again.  "Kidnap all the children / put them in foreign systems / bring them up in a no man's land / where no one really wants them."  Indigenous elders like Robert Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota), Jim Bear Jacobs (Mohican), Brooke Prentis (Wakka Wakka) and June Lorenzo (Laguna Pueblo) insist on the integrity and vitality of their many traditions and the urgency of solidarity, repentance and reparations.  For folks like me, there's nothing easy about this, no simple fix for the uneasy and "unsettled" conscience.

Brooke Prentis (Wakka Wakka, Aboriginal Christian Leader)

Is indifference an option?  Is innocence even relevant?  Among the 150 in Ojai this week, there's a deepening commitment to relationship, to connection, to struggle.  Who's innocent and who's culpable...not so much the issue.  Whether to dive under the covers (or under a rock) and forget about these "stolen lands" and the peoples betrayed...not an option for radical disciples.  Instead, the way back to the dynamic and life-giving soul of the gospel is the way through these "stolen lands" and into radical partnership and humble solidarity with indigenous peoples themselves.  Teacher Ched Myers suggests that coming to grips with the destruction of native peoples and the genocide that followed the European project in the Americas is essential for all the work ahead of us.  What kinds of guests have we been?  What kinds of guests will we be?

All of which is hard, hard, hard going.  Even and especially among folks who care so much, who open their hearts to all this pain and so much injustice and absurd colonial history.  It's one thing to attend a seminar where we're pumped with information, even new ways of speaking and exploring faith and ethics.  It's quite another to show up (to really SHOW UP) for a community experience of deep truth-telling, confession, mercy and connection.  Building capacity for social change, for transformation and honest-to-God justice is hard work!  And at the midpoint of this "seminar week," I'm aware of the fraying of spirits, the exhaustion of bodies, the testing of new alliances and friendships.  Such is the discipleship project, after all.  Jesus promised us the crossings would be stormy, the coalitions would be tested hard.  There's no short cut around this. 

Artist and Friend: Robert Valiente-Neighbours

So tonight I pray for the 150 here--Presbyterians and Oglala Lakota, Catholic and Laguna Pueblo, Mennonite and Wakka Wakka--in a boat together, crossing the Sea of Galilee, praying for courage and wisdom and faith to see the journey through.  I pray for every spirit in this camp who's found it hard today: hard to listen, hard to be patient, hard to imagine meaningful progress and true reparations.  I pray for indigenous friends, for the bold and steadfast indigenous leaders here this week: for their spirits, for their bodies, for their communities of love and sustenance.  And I pray for the others, especially the settler folk like me, and for our creative, patient, courageous commitment to the way pioneered by Jesus, by the indigenous jewish palestinian jesus.  The way of satyagraha and agape.  The way of eucharist and jubilee.  The way of mercy and shalom.

May all of this lead us to repentance, but not just repentance and apology.  May all of this lead us to jubilee re-arrangements and reparations, to the kin-dom of God on earth as in heaven!

"Black Elk" by Robert Two Bulls