Lessons from The Four Corners

I alluded in my MacWorld stream of consciousness post last week to a spectacular course I took at the seminary I attend.  The course focused on taking a group of 12 pastors & seminarians, from all types of faith, ethnic & geographical backgrounds, through an experience and a teaching of Christianity experienced in a Native (or First Nation) context. 

Each day we started in shared worship study, using a format called Gospel Based Discipleship, which was sensational at drawing out a shared conversation around Scripture.  It was just astounding to witness folks from so many different background engage so quickly in an experience of The Gospel message.

My full notes are below - here are a few threads that are still nudging around in my soul:

We all come from somewhere, reared in or against a culture that hosted us and formed us.  It is easier for me to see this with folks who come from exotic or far-a-way places than it is for me to understand that my social location has a huge impact on how I understand God and community.  The wonder of the Incarnation is that God pitched tent with us - not just back then but here, now, in our lives - distributing the Temple into a thousand nodes.

All the trapping that we use to somehow capture God - the liturgies, the theologies, the doctrine and dogma - are more like sand paintings than they are like granite monuments.  Traditionally most sand paintings are destroyed shortly after their completion, as a metaphor of the impermanence of life. The sands are swept up and placed in an urn; to fulfill the function of healing, half is distributed to the audience at the closing ceremony, while the remainder is carried to a nearby body of water, where it is deposited. So much of the strife and battles among peoples of faith tend to be about maintaining the myth of permanence.

In one of those cool occasions of timing, my youngest daughter Katie was doing a school assignment these past few weeks - a diorama on the very same Navajo culture that I studied with Debbie, Mark & Steve.  Here's the artist and her work:

 

As we bounced around this week tracking down the stuff she needed to make this, we actually talked about Navajo culture and what we share with them in terms of our beliefs.  This little outbreak of synchronicity reminded me of the importance of touching, of creating, of spending time - in my go-go life, I so often turn away from being present with my own context, let alone slowing down to really listen for the God present in so many folks around me.

 

Christianity in a Native Context

 

Steve Darden: Navajo teacher

Mark McDonald: Episcopal Bishop of Alaska

Debbie Royals: facilitator

 

Overview Mark

Most of us have only experienced xianity in 1 cultural context

     staying inly within 1 context often translates to word made freeze dried

Sometimes difficult to understand Gospel outside of context in which they have received it

    Our communication can be focused only on context, making Gospel impenetrable

 

Imagination much more important than intelligence

Knowledge is knowledge, not power

Identity: often most important of what we carry

Native (dine) POV typically focuses on sets of 4   
    Anglo world typically focusses on sets of 3

• 4 Gospels: holographic image of God Incarnate
• 5 things in our body are white: brain, teeth, eyes, white blood cells, bones
• Communal 4-fold: Receive, bless, break, share
  • Mirrors Adam & Eve: take, break, abandon, hide
• Preaching: birth, death, resurrection & coming again

Directions Steve

East: thinking     West: understanding     North: belief/insight     South: knowledge

Black                  Green                         Red                             Blue

 

East

• East appears in Scripture 3x more      than other directions
• Navajo hope placed in East
• Philosophy, blessing way, corn,      soft goods, physical identity, spiritual-scared, light

 

South

• Pay attention, learn as you learn      best, psychology
• Faith: blue corn
• Gift of water
• Types of knowledge: sacred      (relating to ceremony)
• Hunter tradition

West

• Maturity
• Love (yellow corn): physical,      emotional, mental, spiritual
• Clans structure
  • Leadership: see for the people,       ears for the people, mouthpiece, stick carrier/story teller
  • Medicine person: lead rituals
  • Philosophers: dependent on       blessing way ceremony
  • Artist
• Keyed to baptism Eastern      tradition baptizes facing west
  • Tied to renouncement &       absolution

North

• Black coloring: night-time, mother
• Belief into motion
• Tobacco as sacrament of insight
• Physical

Missiology Mark

Sand painting theology

Identity is a dynamic thing

 

Traditionalists                     Nativists                         Accomodationists

     

du

 

• Study the nativists, so often they      show a way through and ahead

•  Jesus is redirecting the      ceremonial traffic: saying that rather than everyone coming into the      temple, people should go out in all directions

• Navajo ceremony: can not even      begin it until you find someone to help you with it – building community      is intrinsic to the activity
• Modern evangelism is typically is      about re-directing traffic back to the temple
• Terra nulias: assuming that people have no sense of      the sacred before intentionally engaged
• God’s presence always triggers a      violent response from empire painting      in contrast
  • Empire almost always a reaction       to God in humanity (for example: Jesus, Moses)
• Conversion begins with the      evangelist – begins with staying somewhere & eating/living with people
  • Tempting to view salvation as       comfort & cultural acceptance

 

Enculturation: Word of God deposited itself in a culture done by God theological term

Haphazard, non-linear, recursive, non-logic based

Liberation always the product of enculturation

Liberal Prot: typically in Greek philosophy & European culture

Oftentimes adaptation or translation

Example of Gospel enculturation: LORD OF THE RINGS, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez

 

Contextualization: happens thru planning & process often a reflection of the group in power

More meaningful to view contextualizing as a starting point to enculturation

 

Books: Chant of Life, Mark McDonald, Steven DeNiro, Richard Rodriguez