Our theme for November is “What does
it mean to be a community of story?” Of course, stories can be
truth-telling, or truth-hiding. Many of you know I have mixed
feelings about the Thanksgiving holiday. I am very much in favor of
gratitude. But the stories we tell about the holiday have been used
to hide the truth about a deep crack in the foundation of our nation,
and have distorted and corrupted the high ideals we cherish as the
basis of our American democracy.
Of course, I am speaking about the
colonization of this continent, a destructive process unparalleled in
history. Millions of Indigenous people were killed, or died from
disease unknown to them. Land was stolen. Treaties were signed and
then broken, and then never talked about again. Most of our senators
and representatives in Washington know nothing about the legal
responsibilities of our federal government to the Indigenous nations
within our borders.
Why should we care? Those of us whose
ancestors were among the settlers of the continent? We have
benefited from this colonization, but we have also been harmed by it.
Colonization is at the root of the many of the problems that all of
us are facing now: the destruction of the natural world, climate
change, oppression of one group by another, the overarching greed
that has bankrupted our economy. I don't believe we can fix those
problems without revisiting our history.
Sadly, churches were a large
contributor to colonization. I am part of a new project here in
Maine, called “Decolonizing Faith.” A few clergy colleagues and
I, under the auspices of the Wabanaki REACH program, are exploring
the history of colonization, and the role of the churches in it. We
recently spent a long weekend with a few partners from the Wabanaki
people having deeper conversations about the impacts of colonization
on Wabanaki people, and building trust for future work together. We
hope that we might begin to envision how churches could help in the
process of de-colonization, joining together with Indigenous people
for the benefit of all people.
Our next plan is to create and hold
day-long workshops for people in faith communities to explore these
questions together. But we realized this topic is so huge, that
perhaps we should start by encouraging people to attend the Ally
workshops that are already being offered by Wabanaki REACH. These
workshops look at the history of U.S. Government relationships with
Native people, explore the dynamics of systemic racism, and ask what
non-native people can do as allies. Once people have this basic
foundation, they will be better prepared for looking at how churches
were involved in the problems, and how we can be part of the
solutions.
I would encourage folks to sign up for
the ally training to be held in Falmouth on Saturday November 12, or
in Augusta on November 19th. You can email
Barbara@mainewabanakireach.org
or call at 951-4874 for details and more information. These trainings
will be a prerequisite for the first Decolonizing Faith workshops we
hope to offer this winter.
On another note entirely, some of you
may have noticed that we've moved the chalice and the candles of joy
and concern to the side table for worship. Part of this is due to my
allergies—I often find myself reacting to something in the
sanctuary during worship, for example, by coughing. One of our
members suggested that it might be the oil burning chalice or candles
that were triggering this, and that made sense to me. So we moved
them further away from the pulpit. I think it looks nice on that
table. I am also exploring beeswax candles for the chalice, rather
than lamp oil which is a petroleum product—wouldn't that be more in
line with our ecological vision of weaning ourselves from petroleum?
Affectionately, Rev. Myke
