As some of you might know, on the 2nd of September, I spoke at my church, Whitewater Christian, about our annual mission trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

All-in-all, I felt like it went pretty well (there were no lightning strikes, and nobody suggested cancelling my membership!).

Anyway, my daughter shot video of it on her phone. Unfortunately, her phone is an Iphone 8, and my computer’s a PC, and apparently they don’t play well together. After several days of struggling and cursing, we finally figured out how to get it off her phone and onto my computer. Sadly, it’s also a huge file, and I can’t figure out how to shrink it enough to be able to share it here (I was able to put it on the Facebook).

I decided that I would go ahead and post the text here, for those of you are interested. Enjoy!

Also, I welcome any comments about what I had to say. If, at the end of it (presuming that you make it to the end of it), you discover an interest in joining us next June, or wanting more information, just give me a holler.

And now, with no further ado, here it is:

 

Ever since I volunteered to do this, I’ve thought long and hard about what I was going to say up here. I have frequently wished that I’d thought about that before I volunteered – I could’ve saved myself and you all what may be a really weird and uncomfortable experience. However, I didn’t, and here we are.

Like I said, I’ve thought a lot about what I was going to say. I could recite mountains of horrific statistics, but statistics reduce people to numbers, and only tell part of the story. Besides, all you’ve got to do is Google “Pine Ridge Indian Reservation” and you can find all of the horrible statistics you want.

I could talk about the history of the Sioux people—the wars, the broken treaties, the 180 or so years of oppression they’ve faced. I could talk about the death of Sitting Bull, Wounded Knee, the Dawes Act, the Indian Schools that took children from their homes, cut their hair and beat them for speaking their native language, the other ways we’ve tried to force assimilation on them, the way, every time we found something on their land that we wanted, we just laid that Eminent Domain on them and took it. In all honesty, if you’re interested, that stuff’s pretty easy to find on your own. Also, even all of that stuff only paints part of the picture.

I could talk about whose fault it is that things are as bad on the Rez, and why so many of them stay there (spoiler alert: it’s mostly—not all, but mostly—our fault), but that’s only just another little bit of the picture.

I thought, well shoot—I can just tell them stories about what I’ve seen out there (and you all know how I love to tell stories). I could tell you about the young woman with 4 little kids walking about 25 miles one way on a scorching hot June day, just because she had no money, and had heard that someone there had free diapers.

I could tell you about the two older women, each pushing a grandchild in a stroller, on a 30 mile, one-way walk on a below-freezing day in mid-winter, to get to the nearest Western Union office because someone had sent them money for food.

I could tell you about the two boys who were on the school bus that discovered their father hanging from a tree along the road side.

I could tell you stories that would break your hearts, but again, those are only part of the picture.

Or, I could tell you stories that would make you feel really good about yourselves for helping to keep this thing going: about how we picked up that young woman and her kids, got them something cold to drink, took them to camp for supper, loaded them down with diapers and food, and gave them a ride home—how we picked up those two older women and took them where they needed to go.

I could tell you about refurbishing churches and community centers, building wheelchair ramps and outhouses, about feeding hungry children, and comforting the heart-broken, mowing playgrounds and parks, about the smiles on those dirty faces, and how they light up and come out of the woodwork when that Whitewater Christian Church bus pulls into Potato Creek, and how they cry and we cry, and they chase the bus begging us not to leave every year at the end of the week, and we could all go home feeling good about ourselves, but even the good stuff is only part of the picture.

I’ve been studying the Sioux people for as long as I could read, and I’ve been going on this trip for, I think, 14 years, and I have to admit that, even with all that I only know bits and pieces of the picture.

All I can really talk about is what I’ve seen, and I’ve seen some amazing things.

See, I’ve come to believe that this little group is about a lot more than just helping the Sioux. I’ve come to believe that this group, for me anyway, is representative of something a whole lot bigger, something that can help not only the Sioux, but the whole country.

I see and worry, as we all do, about how divided this country has become. Liberal VS conservative, Christian VS Muslim, gay VS straight, religious VS secular, etc., and those divisions can be broken down even further, until it’s literally brother VS brother.

We’re all so obsessed with being right, so proud of our beliefs and opinions that we’re willing to put them above everything else, no matter the cost.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all political on you here, but I think you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, a few years back, I was trying really hard on the trip to post what we were doing on the Facebook every day, to try to keep folks informed, and hopefully generate more interest for the following year.

And it worked—sort of. I got a message from a girl I went to high school with, saying that what we were doing sounded great, and that she and her partner Lisa, would love to join us the next year. She just wanted to know if them being Quakers would be a problem.

Well, I have to admit, I handled the situation badly. I think I hurt her feelings pretty deeply, and I feel really bad about that. Anyway, Dave and I spent a lot of time talking about it. After all, this is a Christian mission. We have a lot of very conservative Christians come on this trip. Often times, they bring their kids, and other people’s kids. Did we want to risk alienating individuals and possibly even entire churches to let a gay couple come on the trip?

Now, Dave and I are both pretty upfront about our own weaknesses and failings. We both know that we’re no better, and our sins, even the ones we still have the energy to commit, are no less evil than anyone else’s. We’ve also had alcoholics, drug abusers, gluttons, liars, gossips, speakers of profanity and obscenity, the selfish, and the prideful on this trip, and that’s just the guys in the front seat of my truck. I don’t know what the rest of the group gets up to, and I don’t want to know.

We’ve also had gay folks on the trip, and it was never an issue. We’d just never had a gay couple before. What would all those good Christians think? How would they explain it to their kids?

The more we discussed it, however the more we realized that all too often, we can’t get the Christians to come, and those that do come rarely come back.

Then we asked ourselves, Who are WE, to say who can and can’t do the Lord’s work? Who are WE to tell someone, No, WE don’t approve of your lifestyle, or your habits, or your issues, and so you aren’t good enough to help us try to help these people?

So, we came to the conclusion that anyone, conservative or liberal, republican or democrat, Muslim or Christian or atheist, Baptist or Catholic, gay or straight or whatever, is welcome to join us, as long as they’re willing to work with a Christ-based mission.

We don’t ask anyone to hide themselves. We don’t ask anyone to pretend to be anything they’re not. We don’t ask people to LIE just to “fit in”. It seems hypocritical to drive all the way to S. Dakota to “minister” to people who are often alcoholics, drug addicts, transsexual or gay, people from broken homes, people in broken homes, the neglected, marginalized, and ostracized, if we are ourselves neglecting, marginalizing, and ostracizing people who just want to help.

Who better to witness to an alcoholic than an alcoholic? Who better to witness to a kid who’s been neglected and abused by his family than someone who has been neglected, abused, and cast out by their own family?

The thing I’ve come to believe is this: this mission is about way more than just helping out the Sioux. It’s about ministering to everyone who comes into contact with us, whether they’re outside the group, or a part of it. I think that’s true of any real ministry.

We, as Christians, have to be willing to get out of our comfort zones, and Pine Ridge is about as far out of the standard middle-class mid-westerner’s comfort zone as you can get.

This year, we were invited, as a group, to attend the Sun Dance. That’s never happened to us before. It’s kind of like inviting a bunch of Buddhists to Easter services at the Vatican. We were deeply honored.

Now some would say that it’s a pagan ritual, and it’s certainly not a Christian thing, but I could see some eerie parallels between it and Christianity. First, there is a crosspiece lashed to the tree that is essentially makes it a cross. The tree has to be carried in by hand, much like Christ carried his own cross. Of course this being about a 30 foot cottonwood tree, it took a lot of us.

The dancers all wore sage crowns, and twists of sage around their wrists and ankles, the crown and twists wrapped in strips of red cloth. Now I don’t pretend to know what they represent in the Sun Dance, but they reminded me of the bloody crown of thorns and the piercing of Christ’s hands and feet.

Shoes were not permitted. It reminded me of the bible, where God told Moses to take off his shoes, because he was standing on holy ground, and when he later told Joshua the same thing.

There were some parts that I kind of wish Christianity had: Some of the dancers had a rope with buffalo skulls tied along it attached to piercings in their backs, and they crawled on their hands and knees, 4 times around the Sun Dance circle, dragging those skulls. If the rope didn’t pull free in those 4 rounds, then others would assist the man to pull hard enough to rip the skewers out, freeing him from the rope

It was explained to me that these were guys who had committed some grievous sin/offense in the past year, and this was how they atoned for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I know that Christ has paid the price for our sins. I know that, through him, we are forgiven. The problem is not with Christ, but with me. There are things I’ve done, for which I believe Christ has forgiven me, that I cannot seem to forgive myself for, and I often think that, if I can’t let it go, if I keep my regret and my secret shame alive, can I really be forgiven? I hope that makes sense. I think we’ve probably all got things like that that continue to haunt us, even after we repent and ask forgiveness.

I’ve always wished that we had some way of clearing the slate for ourselves, so, even though I saw that part of the Sun Dance as unnecessary (from a Christian viewpoint), I can see value in it.

That’s the thing about getting out of our comfort zone: THAT is how we learn, not only about others, and what the world looks like through the eyes of others, we learn just as much about ourselves, and what we think and why we think the way we do. It’s how we grow.

But you don’t have to go to a Sun Dance or a sweat lodge ceremony to get out of your comfort zone on the Rez. I love the look a middle-class, mid-western, middle-aged, Christian mom gets on her face when a grubby little 5 or 6 year-old Sioux kid tells her to go commit an obscenely impossible act to herself. That’ll shake you out of your comfort zone really fast.

Those kids will test you. They’ve been let down by so many people, that they’ve learned to not trust anyone. They’re just like us—they want to be loved, but have been so beaten down and abused by the world, so let down by those they should be able to depend upon, that they’ve often decided that they are the problem, that THEY are unlovable.

I’ve seen 10 year olds tell us that they’re possessed by the devil, or that they’re evil. And they often do their best to prove it, acting up, starting fights, hitting our people and other kids, cursing, and generally raising hell, and making themselves and everybody else miserable.

And I’ve seen those same shocked, middle-class, middle-aged, mid-western soccer moms persevere, with love and loving discipline through a really tough week.

Finally, I’ve seen both those kids and soccer moms weeping and clinging to each other at the end of the week, because those soccer moms had to go home.

That’s another great thing about getting out of your comfort zone—if you stay out of it long enough, it grows to encompass where you’ve gone. Your world is much, much bigger and better. You find, if you go often enough, that people you once referred to as “Those people” become actual people, with names and everything. They become part of your circle of friends, and even family, and you become part of theirs.

Now, people often ask “what did you accomplish on the trip?” or the ever-popular, “How many baptisms did you have?”, “How many souls did you save?” A harder question is “are you doing any good? Are you making any difference?”

The truth is, I don’t know. I believe we are. Granted, it often feels like we don’t accomplish much. In 15 years, we’ve only had two baptisms, and those were kids who were part of the group. We’ve saved 0 souls—only God can do that.

As far as “are we making a difference, or doing any good,” there’s no easy answer for that. Only the Sioux and God can really answer that. I believe however, that it is not our job to worry about the harvest. Our job is to plant the seeds, and to try to nourish them as they grow. The harvest is God’s job.

I do know that being involved in this mission has done me a lot of good. It has humbled me. It has made me aware of how blessed I am. It has made me think less of myself, and more of others.

It has made people who are marginalized, and ostracized (and I’m talking about our people here, not the Sioux) feel loved, and accepted, and part of the family of God, sometimes for the very first time.

I’ve seen this trip open the eyes of our youngsters to injustice in the world, and to how much, and how blessed they are, to have full bellies, and a roof over their heads.

I’ve seen it force Christians to really use those Christianity muscles, again, sometimes for the first time.

I’ve seen people make pretty serious sacrifices to continue being a part of this group, and never ask for credit.

That’s the thing about this group that I was talking about earlier, how it represents for me something thatis good, not only for us, or for the Sioux, but for the whole country. It brings us together, and it’s not about US or what we think: it’s about God, and serving him.

In our group, we’ve got wild-eyed hippie liberals like me and staunch, even rabid, conservatives. We’ve got the old and the young. We’ve got the gay, the straight, and the really confused. We’ve got biblical literalists and those who think much of the bible is meant as allegory. We’ve got Fundamentalists and progressive Christians, regular church-goers, and the unchurched. We’ve got people who are, at best, on the fence about what they believe. The one thing we all have in common is a willingness to put our differences aside and work together, with love and acceptance, to accomplish the will of God. A dedication to something greater than ourselves.

Just think what a country this could be if we could all do that.

Finally, I want to say this: Whitewater Christian Church is only a tiny country church, and yet the seed YOU planted 15 years ago is still growing. It has not only continued but, because of the work you’ve started and supported, has sprouted new seeds. Two churches in Tennessee have, for the at least the last 3 or 4 years, started going out their own trip to pine ridge. Another little country church in Spartanburg has started their own annual mission trip to Appalachia.

Missions aren’t just for missionaries. You guys are all an important part of this mission group. Whether you go with us or not, this whole thing would have dried up and died years ago. Your support, your contributions, your prayers are what makes all these things I’ve talked about possible, and I thank you, deeply and sincerely.

I hope that you feel a little bit better informed about what’s going on with the group now. Does anyone have any questions?