It took me a while to put this into words –Ruth talked about her Dad, Rene, pointing out that when we have a theology of conformity, then Christianity can run parallel to culture and not cut through it.

I thought of one of my takeaways from the work of Dr. Randy Woodley. He is a Native (Northern) American theologian, and he points out that in Indigenous culture an important value is that everyone we meet can bring us to a ‘conversion’. Everyone will reveal something new of our infinite Creator to us, and this is what Indigenous folks watch for. This is opposite of colonial Christian culture which says that if I read the right version of the Bible and believe the right things, then I am right about everything, ie – I bring conversion to all the ‘lost ones’. And all the ‘lost ones’ are wrong about everything, ie couldn’t possibly bring conversion to me. We white Christians are not great at curiosity as both Osheta and Jer pointed out in their books. Indigenous culture expects that their spirituality will cut through what they know so far and they will have to/get to learn and ‘be converted’ again and again.

I ache to live the Indigenous way in constant anticipation of small conversions brought by the ones I expect to learn from and especially from the ones I didn’t expect to learn from.

I wonder if this concept is present in Celtic/Irish spirituality, because I have noticed other similarities between Native American theology and Irish attitudes. It seems like the Irish maintain some of their Indigenous values. They have fought hard not to become like their British colonizers. (Just fyi, my Dad was born and raised in Ireland, and all of his brothers and sister stayed and raised their families there, so I have some personal experience and also a lot of holes in my knowledge.)