Not only was I
uncertain why I felt called to take this pilgrimage, I wasn’t sure what I was
expecting when I departed for it. I knew I would encounter very difficult accounts
that would trouble heart and soul. And that did occur. But I also discovered
reasons to hope, people who have endured atrocities and yet continue to fight for
the soul of our world. I find them inspiring. And they have much to tell us
that we need to hear.
The question I am left with is what to do with what I have
learned. I am a pretty decent story teller and writer. I’m told I’m a pretty
good preacher as well. There are places where I can bring to bear my education,
my experiences and my talents to raise our consciousness regarding the way we
see ourselves, each other and “this fragile earth, our island home.” (BCP) My
primary concern now is identifying where that engagement should be.
In another week I will begin my third and final pilgrimage this
summer, this one the most intense, beginning in Warsaw, Poland, and ending in
Munich, Germany. I will be diving into the heart of the Holocaust (visiting
three camps) and the destructiveness of WWII. No doubt, there will be much more
to consider by the time of my return. As always, your prayers and positive vibes
are shamelessly solicited.
Pilgrimage II, Postscript 1 – With Gratitude for Wise
Teachers
I came to seminary on my own. My home diocese, Central
Florida, then (and, sadly, to a large extent, still) was stuck in a common
confusion of revealed religion and a common social prejudice. The commission on
ministry here would never have sent a gay man to seminary, much less agreed to
ordain me. But my calling would not go away. I knew I was called to become a
priest.
And so it was up to me to go to Berkeley on my own, find the
funding to attend (I would pay off the last of my student loans just before I
retired) and find a parish and diocese to allow me to enter its ordination
process. And in August 1991, I drove across the country and began study at the
Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley, CA.
In talking with classmates about where I could go to begin
making the necessary connections to enter the ordination process, one of my
classmates said, “Harry, I think the only parish in this area that will work
with you is St. Philips, San Jose.” So, I began to drive the 56 miles south
to San Jose to attend church there. Soon I was adopted as a parishioner and
would eventually be sponsored for ordination.
Saint Philips, a parish which sadly no longer exists, was an
intentionally multi-cultural parish where the Gospel was read in up to five
languages on a given weekend reflecting the diversity of its membership. I
learned very quickly there that there was no “common sense” to default
to regarding theology, liturgy or human interactions. The learning curve was
steep. But the rewards were enormous.
There was a distinct American Indian congregation at St.
Philips which met with us for social gatherings. Some of their members came to
weekly eucharist. It was from them that I learned the Beauty Way prayer (“In
beauty may I walk…”) and the phrase “all my relations” which would
come to shape my understanding of the Holy.
Sherri and Hank LeBeau were among the leaders of that
community. They were devoted parishioners who later would be ordained
themselves and gracious in their willingness to teach the rest of us the
stories of their people and the history of their resilience in the face of unimaginable
suffering. Indigenous people had always inhabited the Bay Area but many
American Indians had been “relocated” to the Bay Area during the 1950s under
the sometimes less than subtle pressure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The LeBeaus had come from the Pine Ridge reservation in
South Dakota. And it was those stories we learned from them.
Pine Ridge is near the site of Wounded Knee, a massacre of
Lakota people who had engaged in a Ghost Dance ritual, frightening the US
soldiers there who had no idea what they were doing. The result was a slaughter
that would leave up to 300 Lakota men, women and children dead.
Sherri once wept as she related the story of Wounded Knee,
speaking of the sound of babies’ heads popping as they were smashed on stones
by the soldiers. That image has never left me. And I could feel it viscerally
as we stood among the graves there at Wounded Knee last week.
It was at Wounded Knee that I and my travelling companion,
Deidre Jordy, who had also known the LeBeaus, would take our stones we had
brought to the cemetery to remember the deceased, say our prayers, and leave
them atop the monument to the Wounded Knee dead. Those prayers would begin with
our gratitude for our teachers whose wisdom had guided us to this place.
We left Wounded Knee for the nearby town of Pine Ridge where
we would visit a Jesuit/Franciscan school, Maȟpíya Lúta, once named Red Cloud
for the chief who survived Wounded Knee. As we spoke with the tour guide who
told us the story of the school, we mentioned the LeBeaus. Suddenly she lit up,
saying everyone in Pine Ridge knew them and they were widely loved and
respected.
At the end of the tour, we ascended the hill where the
cemetery on the campus was located. As we stood at the foot of the monument to
Red Cloud, Deidre noticed the LeBeau name on a cross just across the path from
us. It was their family plot. I felt chill bumps on my skin. We had come to pay
our respects. And the LeBeaus had met us there.
Sherri was the teacher who taught the parish the sacred
practice of smudging. It became a regular part of our eucharists and we were
instructed on how to use our hands to bring the sacred smoke over and around us
to purify ourselves before taking communion. At my diaconal ordination in 1994
at St. Philips, Sherri had given me an abalone shell and some local cedar for
smudging. She had also given me sacred tobacco packets tied in swaths of
colorful cloth. I still have those today.
At the end of the liturgy on the Overlook at Sand Creek,
participants were given the opportunity to be smudged and anointed. I readily
engaged both. But as I walked away from the smudging at Sand Creek, I found
myself in tears. I realized as I it was the first time I’d been smudged in a
liturgical setting since my days at St. Philips.
Sherri and Hank had been with us this whole week. And they
had shown up to say goodbye as we left Sand Creek.
This day I am grateful for good teachers who so generously
shared their wisdom, their culture, their history, their spirituality, their
lives. May you rest in peace, Hank and Sherri. Your presence continues today
among those of us to whom you so graciously gave yourselves.
All my relations.
Pilgrimage II, Postscript 2 – The Church Takes Notice
I am encouraged that the national church found it important
enough for its newsletter to cover the gathering at Sand Creek. This is the
beginning of a long process of dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery and its
ongoing destructive impacts on vulnerable peoples and the Earth itself. As
Sarah Augustine has taught us, telling the truth about ourselves and listening
to the truth tellers is just the first step. But we are taking it.
TBTG.
Pilgrimage II, Postscript 3 – Why It Matters – When a Virus Becomes a Plague
On our guided tour of Maȟpíya Lúta, the Jesuit/Franciscan
school once named Red Cloud for the chief who survived Wounded Knee, our tour
guide stopped by a small medicinal garden and adjacent greenhouse. There she
told us the story of the COVID pandemic at Pine Ridge.
While Americans from coast to coast were effected by the
pandemic, the impacts on Pine Ridge were far more severe than most of us knew
or could even imagine. The death rate on the reservation was twice that of any
other population group, the highest per capita mortality in the country. The
lockdown, in turn, caused additional nutritional deficits in this food desert
(the closest supermarket is a three hour trip) in the 46th lowest per capita
income county in the country and exacerbated pre-existing health problems.
The Reservation lockdown happened overnight. This would help
protect the residents from exposure from those outside the reservation in a
state whose governor refused to close down public sites, shunned masks and
criticized those fighting the pandemic at national health agencies. A
motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD, would draw thousands of unmasked riders to
that town after which COVID cases statewide rose six-fold. Six celebrants would
later die.
Pine Ridge residents would be heckled and jeered at when
they finally began to depart from the reservation wearing their masks to buy
badly needed supplies. And the lockdown itself had serious ramifications for
the reservation which saw a jump in teenage suicide attempts and deaths.
But the greatest loss from COVID, according to our guide,
was among elders who proved particularly vulnerable to the disease. “We were
losing our stories of who we were, our wisdom, as they died,” our guide
said. When the people began to appeal for help from the ancestors, they were told
“you know what to do already.” That led to the creation of the medicine
wheel herbal garden and a return to the health ways of the ancestors.
I lost four friends to the COVID pandemic. At a very basic
level, the message from the privileged who held power was that this disease
would only impact vulnerable peoples – elderly, those already suffering from
compromised health conditions, and the poor. In other words, those who were
disposable. Like my friends. And the elders of Pine Ridge.
That is why this pilgrimage matters.
Pilgrimage II, Postscript 5 – A Hymn to Peace
Both our Zoom preparatory gathering and the assembly the day
before going to the Sand Creek site began with this sung prayer. It is quite
beautiful. I will always remember this pilgrimage when I hear it. Have a
listen.
Pilgrimage II, Postscript 4 – Why It Matters – Apache
Stronghold
Within days of my return from this pilgrimage, a decision
from the U.S. Supreme Court provides tangible evidence of the ongoing damage
from the Doctrine of Discovery that continues to be inflicted on
vulnerable peoples and the Creation itself. The SCOTUS refused to grant certiorari
to hear the case brought by the Apache Stronghold to stop the destruction
of a Native American sacred site.
As a recovering attorney, I find myself disappointed in the
refusal of SCOTUS to hear the case though in this day of courts stacked with
Federalist Society ideologues I don’t know why I would be. I do find it a bit
amazing that I resonate with the dissent offered by Neil Gorsuch, with whom I
rarely agree but who is spot on in his arguments here. But he was right.
The Court here and at the Appeals Court level is relying on
a decision in which the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is being
interpreted as applying to constraints on an individual’s beliefs alone. This
is a very limited vision of religious freedom. Gorsuch hits this nail on the
head when he notes the analogy of the Apache Flats religious site with the site
to a cathedral where religious rites are conducted. How does one exercise
religious freedom (ultimately a First Amendment right) when the very place where
that exercise would occur has become a strip mining crater?
This vision of the Creation as simply a supply source of
natural resources for an ever greedy capitalist machine is a death sentence,
ultimately. It’s not just Native Americans, the de facto, perhaps last
gasp, defenders of the Creation who are at risk, it is all of us. We
need to reconsider many aspects of our lives, from our vision of a religion
based solely in cognitive belief systems to the peoples who inhabit sites with
natural resources in demand as mere obstacles to profit. Most of all we must
reconsider notions of “progress” which feed into an addictive cycle of ever
increasing demands of “this fragile earth, our island home,” a cycle
that is increasingly pointing the lifeworld as we know it toward extinction.
As my teacher, Sarah Augustine puts it, “I am so hungry.
Starving. Hungry for justice.” Justice for vulnerable people. Justice for
those of us who care about them. And justice for the good Creation itself. May
that hunger be sated.
[Image: Arizona Republic, May 14, 2024]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely
an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth
holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected
don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to
complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2025
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment