2) Plant seeds of humility

Paul Lim, a historian of Christianity at Vanderbilt, offered Tish Harrison Warren this resolution for the new year in her New Years NY Times op-ed: Plant seeds of humility by "engaging in a conversation with one who is not part of your political, religious or cultural community" but then added this: "with the intention of learning something from them."

Easy for him to say--maybe even easy for him to do. But if you've put down roots in a small town in Iowa, the garden out back offers limited harvest.

Someone asked me lately about my interest in Native America--where did that originate? I could list a half-dozen answers to that question, but my go-to has been that throughout my adult life, I've been fascinated by the phenomenon of belief. How is it, for example, that millions of people can believe Hillary Clinton runs a sex-trafficking ring out of a pizza joint basement? Why did my father, a lovely Christian man, so determinedly despise Roman Catholics? What prompts any of us to believe in, say, "the virgin birth," or, simply stated, to hang tenaciously on whatever creedal foundations shall not be removed from our confessions? How do we get there, and, once there, why on earth do we stay?

Throughout the west of the late 19th century, something called, "the Ghost Dance," what white folks called, "The Messiah Craze," swept through reservations like a prairie fire. When it did, it scared the bejeebees out of white folks--maybe even my own immigrant great-grandparents, who high-tailed it out of South Dakota in 1890 or so. The Ghost Dance gathered First Nations in huge masses to dance and dance and dance for days and nights on end until, as individuals, they would fall into a swoon or trance and delight in very similar visions, resplendent visions of much- loved old folks returning on a cloud of dust raised from the hooves of buffalo also descending from the sky, returning to emptied prairie. White people would be gone. The Ghost Dance was a perfectly beatific vision of their own dreams. Their worlds were being trampled beneath masses of white folks hell bent on their land, something my own ancestors considered their "manifest destiny." 

In an essay, I once called "the Ghost Dance" a "false religion." When I passed that essay along to a friend, a Cherokee writer named Diane Glancy, a lifelong Christian--Pentecostal, in fact--she told me she admired the work but couldn't help asking what right I had to call the Messiah Craze "a false religion."

Something about all of that--the history and the question itself--leaves me humbled and in awe.

I'm not sure why, but the introduction our preacher gave to the Lord's Supper last Sunday was flat-out stunning. I wasn't the only one so moved. There was simply something astounding about how intimately he brought us to the table. I have taken communion a thousand times or more, but something about how he made the bread turn to the body of Christ more mysteriously, more magically, than it ever, ever had before.

He said a number of things, but what stuck with me immediately was the idea that as we lined up before the table and awaited the elements, there was, behind us, a cloud of witnesses, not only those who that Sunday partook, but also millions of others who had taken communion for 2000 years. Just for a moment, I saw the heavens open for the old ones and felt once more the deep reach of my friend's criticism--"what right do you have to call the Ghost Dance is a false religion?"

For a moment, I could feel the desire that fed the faith of Native people throughout the west. For a moment, I'd become a Ghost dancer, a precious, beautiful moment I trust I will treasure deeply and not quickly forget.

I don't know if this year I'll be able to "plant seeds of humility" the way that Paul Lim advises, but I know for sure how to be humbled. What I need to do here, in the place where I live, is simply to drive west. 

Trust me, that's a new year's resolution in safe-keeping.

___________________ 

The Del Iron Cloud Ghost Dance drawing (above) pictures Wovoka, the Paiute, who envisioned the Ghost Dance. The dancers are wearing their ghost shirts and dresses. To the left are the old ones, returning from the Spirit World to their loved ones, as are, of course, the buffalo in the center.