The Sit before the Change

Only when we sit in the shadow, dwell in and contemplate the shade alongside and with others in similar contexts with parallel stories holding space together willing to name our great fears, losses, and laments, cycled for generations, can we begin to see a new emergence an open invitation to change, a call that comes only after the sit

--

For a variety of reasons, I write about Scripture less and less these days. But somehow, Sunday's lectionary found its way into my morning meditations, pulling the chair out from my normal reading of poetry and a good novel. 

What felt like an abrasive disruption became a nudge to my own stanza above, shaped by this lection: 

"The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat together in the region and sat together in the shadow of death [Ps. 23], light has dawned. From that time, only after sitting with them, Jesus began to proclaim, 'Now is the invitation to Change.'"

--Matthew 4:16-17 (my own paraphrase]

This Land Is Not Our Land: Talking to Our Kids about Indigenous People's Day

This land is not our land.

When we took our family to the Poconos (“river between two mountains”) this summer, we talked quite a bit about First Nations and Indigenous people. We talked about how the region being called Shawnee (“southerner”) was the misappropriation of Indigenous people who lived there, who were actually Lenape (“original peoples”). We talked about the same river we canoed that day was traveled by people who were eventually forced out. We talked about kindness and theft, belonging and power. We talked about how the water had a story to tell if we dared listen.

It wasn’t as profound of conversation as you may imagine, but it was just that. We talked and acknowledged and learned together about where we lived and who used to call this land home before they were exiled out.

Every year, I am reminded of where we live and the Indigenous names often overlooked…and mispronounced. Again, this land is not our land.

Related Reads

20 Local Native American Place Names and What They Mean

Kaitlin Curtice 

Richard Twiss. (also, a post the late Richard Twiss commented on before he passed)

When Your Daughter Finds a Statue and Challenges All You Know: A Belated Mother's Day Post on (Indigenous) Womanhood