Dear Friend,
I wanted today's email to be a brief reflection on our experience of Indigenous Peoples Day, and a local gathering that Krissy and I have been engaged in, as well as an invitation to our next ReMembering Course Information Session/Webinar this Wednesday.
But I must first acknowledge all of you who are grieving for this horrific outburst of violence and conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Today, during the Main Street of Great Barrington (a small town in the mountains of Massachusetts) during the Indigenous Peoples Day March, I walked beside several Jewish friends, some of whom had recently visited both Israel and Palestine, and who had sat in circles of prayer, seeking peace and understanding. "A quarter of me is not here," one man said. How could it be? I replied. Of course. Of course, your mind/heart is elsewhere.
Prayers of peace echo out. The winds hear them and carry them. The waters carry our prayers; when we cry, and when it rains. The stones remember the possibility of peace, even as we keep forgetting it.
Our multi-day gathering, hosted by Alliance for a Viable Future (Krissy and I are on the board and are quite involved), brought in indigenous peacemakers from different parts of what is now the United States, sharing stories, songs, learnings, and prayers. Our theme for this past weekend was Indigenous Peacemaking. (Think: its about circles, it works with the land and the water, and it is not founded on punishment.) amidst other conversations, especially about values and culture, we talked about time: how the colonization of place has also been a colonization of time. Both need repair. I'd say they can only happen intertwined: together.
Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day is an acupuncture point in time/the secular liturgical calendar of the year. It changes how we think of the past and the present, thus creating new possibilities for the future. For maximum effectiveness this point needs to to be linked with other points/holidays: Halloween/Dia de los Muertos/Sawhain; Thanksgiving; New Years; President's Day; July 4; Memorial Day. While all holidays are times for remembrance and celebration, these in particular are moments when we can re-narrate, embody-anew, and find ways to acknowledge time, land, and our communities in fuller ways.
