"THANK YOU"

“THANK YOU”

            “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is ‘Thank you,” that would be enough.”  That quote from the 13^th century known as Meister Eckhart  seems appropriate in this week of Thanksgiving, with all our ambiguity about the holiday, and with many of us dreading visiting family members whose political views are different from ours.  The holiday in America originated in 1789 when George Washington proclaimed it so after the Constitution was ratified.  Although Thomas Jefferson did not celebrate it, many folk did.  Soon after the huge Union victory at Gettysburg in 1863,  President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.  That held until President Franklin Roosevelt changed it to the 4^th Thursday in November, which is where it stands now. 

            Most Anglos in my generation grew up with the pleasing images of Native Americans and Anglos eating together in peace at the first Thanksgiving.  As we know, the reality was much different, and once I learned that alternate reality as a young adult, Thanksgiving has never been quite the same.  It was one demarcation of Anglo self-congratulation on our having accomplished so much in such a rigid and fierce world.  Unable and unwilling to name the backs of the ones upon whom we built our “kingdom,” we have assumed that Thanksgiving is a national holiday to be revered by all who love America.  I am noticing this year for the first time that Thanksgiving is about America and not just about gratitude in general.  I guess that I have been a dunce and have not noticed how much of American religion is built on Thanksgiving.  Out of the hardscrabble of life, we of Anglo heritage have built a new nation in the West, a “city upon a hill,” as Puritan minister John Winthrop once called it in the 1620’s. 

            To paraphrase Robert Frost's poem "Birches," let no power hear my misgivings and swift me away to a land of starvation and famine.  Indeed, Robert Frost is a prime example of this issue.  In his poem “The Gift Outright” the first line is “The land was ours before we were the land’s.” Published in 1923 and also read at the inaugural of John Kennedy as President in 1961, Frost expresses this sense of Anglo entitlement that is at the core of Thanksgiving.  But, as I was saying, let no power misunderstand me and take me away.  I am a reforming Anglo, but the power of Thanksgiving is rooted deeply in me, from gathering with family and friends to the good smells of food cooking to the holiday from school and work, to the sense that there is possibility at the heart of life.  My mother was a big Thanksgiving fan (and even bigger fan of Christmas!), so it is imprinted in me.  As I write this, we are in Michigan with our family. I just asked my granddaughter Zoe what she liked about Thanksgiving, and she said “The food – yes, family, too – but definitely the food.  I love the food!”

            Yet I must return to the Meister Eckhart quote and refine it with a quote from the great philosopher Shug Avery in Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize novel “The Color Purple.”  When the abused and defeated Celie is looking for a new vision, Shug comes along and begins to lift her spirit and her imagination. As they are walking through a field one day, Shug urges Celie to note the vast array of beauty in a world that seems engulfed in ugliness.  Shug puts it this way:  “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”  That book helped to change my life, too, and I also believe that it offers a window into a new vision of Thanksgiving. 

            At the heart of our lives should be this attitude of gratitude.  I hate to put “should” with “gratitude,” but in my own life, I have found that seeking to practice the attitude of gratitude can begin to shift the way we orient ourselves to life, to one another, and to ourselves.  I wake up each day and seek to feel grateful for the day that I have been given, even if I dread it greatly.  If I’m not feeling grateful, I seek to locate the source of the blockage and examine its power in my life.  Most of the time it works to lessen the sense of anxiety.  So, wherever we are geographically and spiritually in this week of Thanksgiving, let us remember that one prayer and the color purple.   Let us say “Thank You!”

"WHO BELONGS?"

“WHO BELONGS?”

            Our daughter Susan lived in Albuquerque from 2005-2008, working in an Americorps program and then working for the Albuquerque public library.  We visited her while she was there and saw many wondrous and strange sights – the Sandia mountains (10,000 feet), Los Alamos, Truth or Consequences, Santa Fe, Taos, and Ghost Ranch, among others.  As I think about Native American Heritage Month, I am reminded of visiting the Acoma Pueblo, about 60 miles west of Albuquerque.  It is one of about 20 tribes or pueblos in New Mexico.  “Pueblo” is a Spanish word for village or town, and in this area, it refers to housing built on the flattop mountains called “mesas.”  One of the many striking things about the landscape of New Mexico was its lack of trees, so you could see these flat mesas from hundreds of miles away.

            Acoma Pueblo is built atop a sheer-walled, 367-foot sandstone bluff in a valley studded with sacred, towering monoliths. Since 1150 A.D., Acoma Pueblo has earned the reputation as the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America.  Throughout the land, from the waters of the Atlantic to the shores of Puget Sound, others have come and gone, but the Acoma have stayed in the Southwest.

            The area only averages seven inches of rain per year, and one of the docents on our tour told us that they pray sincerely for rain every day.  Though they would not put it this way, I was struck by their Calvinist leanings.  We asked them about sharing political power, and they replied that the men were the ones who held political office in the tribe.  (I don’t know if women are ineligible to run, or if it is just traditional).  When we frowned at learning that only men held the political power, our docent indicated that they had their way of controlling that imbalance – they are matrilineal.  The women own the property!  To paraphrase the old Loretta Lynn song, “don’t come home oppressing with loving on your mind.”  When we asked what happened when the men made a bad political decision, she indicated that they would have to sleep outside.  They aren’t kidding either – the property passes from mother to daughter or to nearest female relative.  They had a great distrust of centralized power, and in their culture, there was a balance of power, with checks and balances.

            We then learned of their horrible interactions with European powers – in 1599, a Spanish army killed over 500 males and some 300 women and children, in a massacre to subdue them.  This massacre destroyed over 13% of their population, but the Acoma people did not let it crush their spirit.  Though it did limit their autonomy, the Acoma remained strong and vibrant and refused to yield their culture to the Spanish or to anyone else, although the Spanish and later the Anglos oppressed them and tried to acculturate them.  As we sadly know, this history is the same across the United States – the scourge of white supremacy took so many destructive and deadly forms.  And, as we see in today’s world, it still does.

            We visited the Acoma Cultural Center at Sky City, and we learned some of this history and of the Acoma (and other peoples) attempts to reclaim and to live out of their culture.  Because of their history with those classified as “white,” they are loathe to interact with white people, except (and this is a BIG exception) to give us tours and to take our money.  They have a hotel and a casino for Anglo (and other) money, and its main purpose is to recover, to preserve, and to deepen Acoma culture.  They have annual sacred rites, in which they join with the other pueblos in the Southwest.  Our docent emphasized that Anglos were not welcome to attend those because they did not want to be tainted any more than possible by the destructive powers of Anglo culture.   She also emphasized that they would not allow other Native American cultures which had interacted too much with Anglo culture.  When I asked her about tribes like Cherokee and Creek (the tribes familiar to me in Georgia), she said definitely not. 

            So, on a hot dusty summer day on that mesa in that Native American territory, I was called on to recognize my own history as a person classified as “white.”  Though we have provided many benefits to humankind, especially the idea of equality (which of course, we acted like we did not believe), I was struck by the many similarities of our destructive hand in slavery and in the massacre of indigenous people.  It called to mind Nahum’s prophetic words to end his prophecy in the Bible about the Babylonians:  “For who has not known your endless cruelty?”  

"VETERANS DAY"

“VETERANS DAY”

            I was talking with a financial advisor on Friday about a possible investment, and he said that he would get back to me today with some possible alternatives.  I replied:  “But, that’s Veterans’ Day – will ya’ll be open?”  He said:  “Yes, we will.  I don’t like it, but the stock market is now open on Veterans’ Day.  It used to close, but some time ago, it started being open on Veterans’ Day, so we have to be open.”  I thought to myself:  “Wow, I knew that capitalism reigned, but I did not realize how complete its victory is.  The markets in America not even closing on Veterans Day, which we say that we revere so much.”

            I have a very complex relationship with Veterans’ Day.   My mother’s almost-fiance was killed fighting in World War II, and my father, whom I never knew, was a World War II veteran also.  Though we never talked about it, I’m guessing that my mother married my father on the rebound on Christmas Day, 1945.  I was born 11 months later in November (yes, I counted the months in my previous puritanical days). And, of course, without that rebound, I would not exist!   I recognize and honor the many sacrifices that veterans and their families have made over the centuries for all of us.  I don’t believe that slavery would have ever ended in the South without the Civil War, and I recognize that Hitler’s march across Europe, and his rampant racism, was stopped by veterans of ours and many other countries.  So,  on this Veterans’ Day, I remember the likelihood of war and give thanks for those who seek to preserve peace and freedom (if not equality).

            Yet, in talking about World War II, the complexity begins to enter.  Hitler was created by the vengeful and shabby treatment of the Germans after World War I.  So, by the time that Hitler got rolling, war was likely a necessity, but what if Hitler had never gotten rolling?  Millions of people were killed in World War II – could they have been spared by a better peace at the end of World War I?  That complexity continues to roll through American history also, as our military veterans have often been used to subdue and oppress Native Americans on the land, have been used to

enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, have been used to slaughter African-Americans, as they were in my home county in Arkansas in the Elaine Massacre. Our friend and favorite songwriter Robin Williams penned in an early song entitled “Adam Rude” a powerful lesson in this history.  It was about an agent on the Indian reservation in the late 1800’s, an agent who was corrupt and stole property and land from the Native Americans:

“The Army promised shelter, the Army promised food,

But the Indians don’t get neither on account of Adam Rude

With their families slowly dying, brave warriors they do grieve,

And then they paint their faces and raise their lances bright,

It’s me the lowly private who’ll have to risk my life.”

            And then there is my own personal history with Veterans’ Day.  In 1970 I decided to withdraw from seminary and to challenge the automatic exemption from the draft that ministers and seminary students had.  I was among a group of people who felt that if we could challenge the draft-exempt status of church-related folks, then we could deepen resistance to the Vietnam War.  The draft board in Helena was glad that I had offered up my body to the sacrifice of the Cold War.  I was faced with three choices (other than going into the army):  become a conscientious objector, go to Canada, or go to jail.  I felt like the CO was an educated person’s draft exemption, but the other two options did not seem feasible.  I actually loved my country, but I felt that the Vietnam War was not an honorable cause for our country.  After several months of wrestling (and after being AWOL for the army physical), I decided to seek conscientious objector status.  I was approved for that, and I worked at Opportunity House in Nashville as my alternate service, which the CO required.  Opportunity House was a halfway house for men getting out of prison, and I learned a lot there about the injustices of the prison system in the USA – I learned a lot about myself, too!

            So, on this Veterans’ Day, I give thanks for those who have served in the Armed Forces, but I also recall that we often use our military for unjust purposes, so that gives me great pause.  Especially in these days when we have an unstable person as President, it especially gives me pause.  It’s complicated.

"NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH"

“NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH”

            This past week, Caroline and I were in Baltimore to see Susan and a play that she was directing at University of Maryland Baltimore County called “Hunting and Gathering.”  Since we were in Baltimore, Caroline wanted to travel across the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore to seek to find some of her Wallace relatives buried in Manokin Presbyterian Church cemetery in the 1600’s.  “Manokin” reminded me of the Native Americans who have largely disappeared from the Eastern Shore:  Nanticoke, Wicomico, Choptank, Tuckahoe, Pocomoke, and others.  These were names seen on streets and rivers as we passed by in our search.

            We did not find any markers for the “early” Wallaces, though “Find-A-Grave” indicated that they were buried somewhere in the cemetery.  There were no markers earlier that 1820, so they have faded away.  We had tried to make contact with the church, but we had no success.  The church had been founded in 1683 by Francis Makemie, with whom we had familiarity from our Norfolk Presbytery days.  We did spend the afternoon in Easton on the Shore, a small town that is seeking to claim Frederick Douglass’ heritage as part of its own.  It has a statue of him in the square, and there were banners everywhere in the square marking the 200^th anniversary of his birthday (a guess at best, since he never knew the year of his birth, but guessed that it was 1818-1820). 

            While he has been reclaimed, the Native American ancestors have not.  We got a taste of that disappearance when we went into a used bookstore in Easton to seek to find some postcards to send to our granddaughters.  The white, male proprietor of the store noticed my Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, and he asked me if we were from Baltimore.  When I replied that Susan was but I was not, he asked why anyone not from Baltimore would wear the cap of the last place baseball team.  I replied that it was a gift from my daughter and also that I could not wear the cap of my home team, the Atlantans, until they changed their racist name and images.  He looked puzzled and asked if I meant “the Braves.”  When I replied that I did, he then launched into an explanation of why the name “Braves” and its accompanying tomahawk chop and images were not racist, but were rather honoring the fierceness and courage of Native American peoples. 

            My response was that the Atlantans had not consulted with the Native American tribes of the land (mostly Creek and Cherokee) about their opinions of the baseball traditions.  Indeed, the comments of Native American culture are that such usage is demeaning and racist, especially since those tribes do not receive any of the millions of dollars generated by the use of their images.  He replied that the Native Americans should not be insulted by it, because it was not intended as racist.  Since I did not know him, I wanted to add, but I did not, that it was arrogant but not surprising of us white men to believe that we knew better about the opinions of other cultures than those cultures themselves did.  We have pronounced it, and it must be so. 

            As we enter Native American Heritage Month (or American Indian Heritage Month), let those of us who are classified as “white” be reminded of our terrible history in regard to Native Americans.  Let us remember our emphasis in the system of race that our intentions are much more important to us than the outcomes of our actions.  As this Anglo man stated, if white folk didn’t express an intention of racism, then our actions couldn’t be seen as racist.  Lest this seem like ancient history, it is the current SCOTUS position.

            But, as we enter this Month, let us also consider the many positive gifts of Native American heritage, and at this time in our lives, none seems more important that their reverence for Mother Earth compared to the Anglo ravaging of the earth.  As the icecaps and glaciers melt;  as the fires of the West burn;  as the typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes blow;  as the temperatures and sea levels rise – in light of these and so much more, nothing seems more vital to all of us to go back and learn from these cultures who understand the powerful and complex links between all circles of life in the earth and the universe.  Our ancestors and our grandchildren cry out to us to learn and live this respect.