In the words of Wendell Berry:

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.   

Over the past few years something has been stirring in my heart springing forth from two unique and distant fountainheads.  The first flows out of Wendell Berry’s Sabbath Poems that have challenged me to pause and reflect on the beauty of the land I reside on.  His walks among nature and quiet contemplation of the earth’s beauty pull at an inner desire to turn down my noisy life to better tune in to the “still small voice of God”.  The second flows from the indigenous voices that cry out from David Grann’s haunting account of systemic injustice in his book Killers of the Flower Moon.  His words honestly demonstrated the humble relationship the Osage people had with the land and how it was exploited by white businessmen who felt they had the right to own the ground they stood upon.  

It was not until the Native writer and teacher, Lenore Three Stars, quoted the poetry of Wendell Berry to our cohort that these two streams converged in my mind, running together into a wider river of thought.  The wisdom and historical struggle of indigenous peoples that we seek to understand is not separate from our call to steward the land around us.  Lenore stated, “how you are connected to the land is deeply important to native identity”.  To understand the people who lived here first is to also understand the land.  To pursue justice for the people who lived here first is bound up in the pursuit of environmental stewardship.  To harm the land we are on is to harm the people who call it home.  To heal the land we are on is to pursue reconciliation.  The two are united in relationship with one another.  

Now here I stand at the confluence of these two streams, feeling the equal weight of invitation into reconciling relationship with indigenous land and neighbor.