I don’t think one can be grateful for genocide. But after a devastating week, I have found some measure of peace. And it’s almost still Thanksgiving. So after a little hard truth about where my heart has been, there will be some gratitude. Without gratitude for even the worst of things, I don’t think I could manage. It’s an important practice.
The slaughter of native peoples and culture, the attempted genocide of an entire people, is always on my mind Thanksgiving week. I remember Rwanda. I have friends holding back that tide in Tigray and Ethiopia right now. Nearly a million Rohingya people fled their homes, running from a similar killing field just five years ago, and tens of thousands were killed nonetheless. Hitler modeled his Holocaust on American treatment of its own native peoples, and millions died. It’s all related and intertwined, and it’s all the same impetus that leads to a dance club massacre -“the other” must die, be exterminated.
The slow in-progress attempted purge of the queer community is heartbreaking to experience. Last night I was honored to offer the benediction in a vigil for the victims of the Club Q shooting, and next week I head down to Colorado Springs for some pastoral care shifts at the spontaneous memorial site Club Q has become. (And yes, they are in dire financial straits so if you have resources, please contribute to the various fundraisers for the bar itself.)
I live on stolen Arapahoe and Cheyenne winter resting grounds just south of what we now call Denver. My neighborhood was used by this land’s native peoples for millennia before my ancestors showed up. I was born on the plains of South Dakota and baptized by a Lakota priest. My grandparents are buried on land that was a Lakota, Dakota, and Yanktoni river route, again for millennia but no more. That genocide is always on my mind each Thanksgiving.
As a white woman with an education and many resources, I have often feared for my safety but rarely for my life. And for that I am grateful.
I am not interested in resting behind that safety. I am grateful for the opportunities to stand in the gaps, speak out for justice, and welcome whatever ripples that may cause.
I am grateful for the opportunities to use my privilege to shift the conversation, or to be a witness. One of the secret superpowers of white women is that if we dress vaguely appropriately for the context, we can slip in and out of almost any room unseen. Really.
I have tattooed around my wrist a reminder from the Gospels that I do not need to prepare ahead of time what my defense will be, when called to account for following The Way. Deep listening, that is listening not only to words spoken but also to words unspoken, movements made, emotions churning -this is the key for my spirit to unlock insight.
Much can be gained by simply listening, and I am grateful for a close mentor who reminds me of this regularly.
This mentor also reminds me that my words carry, and I should mean it when they do. I am grateful for the lesson, although I know my inability to moderate my own volume when in casual conversation is a constant source of amusement.
I am grateful that in the process of selling our home, we were able to make small reparations to the native peoples in the area via the Four Winds American Indian Council.
I would like to work with fiscal experts, policy makers, and some real estate experts to develop a simple mechanism for “Native Reparations” to be a choice in the buying and selling of a home like any other debit and credit against the property. I’ve spoken about the idea with a few folks already -a local councilman, a native leader- and both think it has potential to be practical enough to be effective.
I am grateful that my understanding of God is generous and always had been. I’ve never had to fight for the image of a loving and accepting God, and was incredibly lucky in the clergy people who came into my life as I grew up. Bad theology takes a lifetime and much therapy to unlearn, and even with all those good models, I had some nonsense to slough off to be sure.
But I have a solid foundation of God as love, and for that I am grateful. Love only grows, and the love that is the core of the universe cannot be taken away. A New Testament letter puts it this way. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God. Rom 8:38-39 NRSV
Not death.
Not terror.
Not fear.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God and we are the hands and feet of God. We must hug and hold, wipe the tears and bear the witness. We must fill the gaps and keep ways open, hope a possibility.
And for that, I am grateful.