Monday, January 28, 2008

Paul's words ring true to my ears

In the recent months, I've been reflecting on my role as a woman in this society and what God's role is for me. Needless to say, I'm discovering that God ordained Paul's words to be included in the Bible for a reason. Last year, I wrote a paper on how I would explain to somebody why the ELCA allows women to be ordained when the Bible clearly says something about the issue. I explained that while I don't personally believe God calls women to be pastors, He does call women to support the men who are called into ministry. If God wants to call women into pastoral ministry as a way of supporting men, than so be it. But I'm finding that I might be wrong about that. I believe God's call on women is to support those men who are called into ministry. Yet that doesn't mean I can't do ministry. Needless to say, I'm considering (unofficially) working more in the area of children and youth ministry. I really want to teach and work with those age groups, but not necessarily as a pastor. Maybe more so as a youth director. I'm still seeking God's leading on the issue.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Reflections on Pine Ridge, SD

My cross-cultural trip led me to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In preparation of this trip, I read Waterlily and Neither Wolf Nor Dog. The county in which Pine Ridge, SD is located is the poorest in the nation with an average annual income of $4,000. Basketball is a way of life for people on the reservation as the Red Cloud basketball teams are posting winning records this year.
While at Pine Ridge, we had an opportunity to participate in some of the ministry being carried out. People in the community come to the retreat center between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to receive sandwiches for lunch. At 3 p.m. students come to the retreat center after school to hang out for an hour and play ping pong, pool, jump rope, color, etc. There is also a retreat center being built near Makasah Presbyterian Church in Oglala. We also had an opportunity to assist with projects out there for a couple of hours every day.
One defining characteristic of the culture is poverty. This was seen in many of the places we visited. One such place was the student dormitories at the school in Pine Ridge. Both buildings are condemned due to problems with asbestos, yet students are still living in one of the buildings while the other building is boarded up and non-usable. Another way poverty can be seen is through the addictions. All I have to do is step outside the retreat center and at least 2 hair spray bottles can be seen in the yard. Due to the reservation being a dry reservation, people are addicted to hair spray. Local artists came to the retreat center daily looking to sell items they had made. Some needed money to get to Rapid City for surgery while others need money for diapers for the children. Others probably just used the money to feed their addictions.
Another defining characteristic of the culture is their generosity. I say this because of my experience I had at the funeral some of us attended. Instead of the family receiving gifts from those showing their support, the family gave gifts to those who came to show their support. The family had enough gifts to give everybody in attendance 2-3 gifts. Food was also something they gave to those in attendance. We couldn’t turn down the food given to us, so anything we couldn’t eat we were to take home and share with others. The most amazing thing was taking into consideration the average annual income for families on the reservation. These people don’t have much to give, but they give what they have. This is what Jesus Christ talks about in the gospels.
The third defining characteristic of the culture, in my opinion, would be their understanding of what it means to live a Godly life. As I was reading the book Waterlily, and even as I listened to the stories of people living on the reservation, I discovered that selfishness is not necessarily a part of their vocabulary. They are always giving to others and never receiving, and yet they are people who don’t have much. Another thing I noticed through the reading of Waterlily is the way they lived off of the land and took care of it. The way we’re trying to clean up the environment now pales in comparison to the way the Indian tribes took care of it before the white race arrived.
I’ve always known that I’m white, but the time I spent in Pine Ridge and the surroundings parts of the reservation taught me the depth of what it is to be white, and what that means to the Oglala Lakota tribe. I became conscious of the fact that many generations ago, my race, and possibly my ancestors, were the reason that land was taken from the Indian tribes across the nation.
Another cultural reality I learned is that our government is a big government, no matter which party is in control of what happens across the nation. Until the government officials in Washington (both Democrats and Republicans) understand what took place from 1492 to 1890 according to the Lakota perspective, they will never understand what those people need. And yet it’s not me they want an apology from. They want an apology from the government.
Until going to Pine Ridge, I’d never been on any kind of a mission trip, whether in the United States or overseas. I thought mission trips were trips taken to places where people need to hear the gospel, places where Jesus Christ has never been proclaimed. My visit to Pine Ridge altered my view. I believe we need to still send people to places where the Gospel hasn’t yet been proclaimed, but we also need to send people to places and cultures that will assist in rounding out their current beliefs.
Reading Waterlily and hearing peoples’ stories allowed me to understand our environmental problems and what God meant when he said to take care of the earth. In the book of Genesis, God created humankind out of dust. The Lakota tribe understands that. They understand what it means to take care of the earth. They have no clue what we mean when we talk about owning land. They don’t have a word in their language to describe land ownership.
My time on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has encouraged me to focus on the environment in my ministry. I believe the church has a role in assisting people to clean up the environment and stop global warming. Our role is to introduce people in our culture to the Lakota people in Pine Ridge and the surrounding communities. Though they don’t live this way anymore due to the U.S. expansion of the 19th century, they still hold the same beliefs that are mentioned in the book Waterlily. They haven’t forgotten that they have been put here to take care of the earth while our culture has forgotten and sought bigger and better things. The only way to save the environment, I believe, is to learn from the Lakota people and work our way back to simpler living when we didn’t need so much stuff.
This experience has also encouraged me to look at mission trips a little differently. I have been under the impression that we proclaim the gospel on mission trips to people who have never heard it. Yet what I noticed during conversations with the Lakota people is that they were already living out the gospel long before white people came to share the gospel with them. They understood (and still understand) how to live in community like the people in Acts 2. When the white people showed up, they shared Jesus with the Lakota people, but added other things to the gospel in the process. What I hope to challenge people of my culture to do when they take mission trips is to develop friendships with the people whom they’re hoping to share the gospel. Next, I hope to challenge them to discover the stories of the people with whom they’re spending time. The final thing is to discern where God is leading. So many times I think we find ourselves in a position where we think sharing the gospel will be easy. Not necessarily. Mission trips need to be times where we’re open to God’s leading. When that happens, we find that we learn more from the people with whom we wanted to share the gospel.
I’m going to continue with the community aspect of ministry because it is something that impacted me greatly. While in Pine Ridge I heard that homelessness is not a word they’re familiar with because nobody on the reservation is homeless. If someone doesn’t have a house and they have family in town, they go live with their family. Families take care of each other in ways that I don’t think our white culture does. It very much defines the term “Godly living”. I believe families within the church are capable of doing the same. Many people have enough resources to take in a homeless family but don’t. Homeless families instead are living in homeless shelters and we are giving them money but not developing friendships with them and discovering their stories.
I should probably mention something about Godly living. In my culture, godly living is associated with whether or not someone is heterosexual or homosexual and whether or not someone waits until they’re married before having sex. It’s associated with someone who sets an example for others by adhering to their moral beliefs and living by them. While I agree that people must wait until marriage for sex and that homosexuality is a sin, I feel that we need to change our definition of Godly living. Our definition, and the way we live a godly life, needs to stem from the book of Acts where people lived in community and made sure everybody had what they needed from day to day. It needs to include a kind of giving where we’re giving everything we have and not just 10% of what we own, because according to the Lakota tradition, we don’t own anything.
I’ve always wanted to go on mission trips but never took advantage of the opportunities. In the future, I hope to spend time in other cultures around the world. I want to see and learn from people with the hopes that they will teach me something about my faith and theology. I also would very much like to go back to Pine Ridge and spend some more time immersed in their culture. I believe we have a lot to learn from them about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.