The Broad and Narrow Way--finis

The truth is, I wouldn’t even be thinking about it at all, but just last week I ran into The Broad and Narrow Way again in an unlikely place, this one a Roman Catholic version (Martin Luther beckons on the left side of the fence).

The Jesuits who came to the Dakotas gave The Broad and Narrow Way their own name, Two Roads, and found it a great blessing on mission outposts among the Lakota. People seemed fascinated, drawn close by drawings that were not unlike their own winter counts. Black Elk, a Lakota holy man who was present at both Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee, found The Broad and Narrow Way convincing enough to become Roman Catholic himself, even though he had long before been known to his people as a holy man.

What many found in Two Roads, the Catholic version, was an evocation of the symbolism they’d always read into their own visions. “For fifty years I have looked for the road I should walk,” one old man said. “Now I have found it.” Those two paths meshed into the geography of their own inner cultural life and brought many to the church.

Black Elk himself became a renowned catechist, who, history says, created something of a religious awakening by toting with him his very own Two Roads. Throughout the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, he’d visit the tiny churches and preach the gospel.

Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala features Black Elk speaking to children on its cover, and a side panel of Two Roads. Amazingly, Black Elk's in it too. We all are, one way or another.

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For a long time I couldn’t help but think that it takes many, many years to unlearn what you’re taught in Sunday School. Seems a harsh appraisal, I know, but there’s some truth in it, don't you think?

Then again, tonight I’m thinking that it’s a great blessing some of the best of all that kid stuff never, ever leaves.

I'm in that thing--I really am. And it's in me.

But I've got to remember it's my son's. I will.