Who to believe?

First, you are to think always of God,

of Wankan-Tanka. Second, you are to

use all your powers to care for your

people and especially for the poor.

Black Moon, Hunkpapa Sioux

Long, long ago it seems, I was told--no, warned--that I should be careful around Native spirituality because it is, well, enchanting, but not as profoundly beautiful as it sometimes seems from the outside--and maybe especially by white-liberal types (meaning, someone like me).  

The "warn-er" was herself Native, a sincere Christian Cherokee, a writer named Diane Glancy, who has made it her dream to draw out the stories which delve into spirituality, both Native and Christian--and Christians in Native settings.

This morning's little reading in a book Barbara gave me for Christmas, 365 Days of Walking the Red Road, started with this quote by a man whose name I'd never seen before.   

But some approximations are too difficult to look past. For instance, those qualities of living--spirit-filled living--held up as exemplary by the "Red Road," include virtues like humility, respect, generosity, and wisdom. The kind of life sought on the Red Road is a spiritual, ethical life. For quick reference, run through the "Fruits of the Spirit" (Galatians 5): Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Self-control. It's long, maybe a bit more comprehensive, but basically we're all talking the same language.

A decade ago, I did a book for Rehoboth School and Mission in New Mexico. I interviewed families who had been influenced by their experience there. One man, a retired lawyer, told me that before his father had sent him off to the mission school, his father warned him about listening too closely to talk about the white man's god, but he also told his son that he'd grown to like the people who ran the school and did the evangelical work on the reservation. He liked them not because they were Christians but because those white people believed in the same things his people did--something his own people called "the Beauty Way." If his son would go to school there, he'd learn about living spiritually, ethically--and his father greatly respected that way of life taught in the mission school.

Want a shorter catechism? How about Luke 10: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Now look up there at the top at the sermon delivered by someone named Black Moon. 

I'm not about to run out to Marty, South Dakota, try to find a Native church, and join up; but what I'm saying is that life itself, in a variety of avenues I've taken, has taught me to be far, far less sure of the Beauty Way is or has been in the tribe from whom I come.

One of the most conservative men I ever knew, Rev. Cornelius Van Schouwen, writing from the beleaguered country of France during WWII, couldn't help but feel at least something of what I'm talking about, even though the contrasting way of life is not Native--it's simply to believe where GIs worship and why.

The war teaches one to love the brotherhood of all Christians. As a chaplain, you don't ask a soldier what denomination he belongs to, but rather if he is a Christian.

Here, Van Schouwen is at his most theologically lenient. I am tempted to say it is the  moment at which he seems least sectarian through the years the diaries  present us. But a realization of the brotherhood of all Christians does not linger. 

 I can't help wishing it had.