Telling Stories
While there is no story at all
unless it has at least two sides,
when it comes to ego's narrative lines
and epic paragraphs,
we have great difficulty in casting ourselves
as other than a one-sided protagonist story,
which others might see as including too much self-indulgent glory.
Winona LaDuke
tells a worship story of the Anishinaabe
defending their sacred home
with support from the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
against further mining investments of commodifying Earth antagonists,
represented by the State of Michigan.
This story is about copper mining investors
against people who worship Earth
as sacred Habitat,
Elders of one EarthTribe extending family,
across species,
and back across first dawn of Time.
You have already guessed who is winning.
Why is that?
The quality of our spiritual and ecologically healthy lives
depends on questions
challenging competitive one-sided empowerment assumptions.
But, you are right, I suspect,
if you guessed that both sides often lose
when we join arenas of competition.
The RepublicanRuling White evangelical Christian
State of Michigan
ruled against the Anishinaabe
and against their own sacred Scripture
and spiritual experience.
Water and land, they said,
cannot be sacred,
cannot have spiritual development significance
and deep and rich and wide meaning
because a protected place of worship
must be inside a building.
I don't have a PhD in King James Bible Studies,
but I do have a Master of Divinity degree
from a duly licensed
and officially accredited Christian seminary
in the U.S.
and I'm fairly sure I remember
Christian Worship takes place,
rather uniquely,
in human hearts and minds and bodies,
wherever they might happen to be located
in space and time,
inside, maybe, but, for many,
preferably outside.
Most of the history in the Bible
is worship outside history.
Surely rock gardens were Eden's first cathedrals.
Why would the State of Michigan pretend otherwise?
Why would KingJames Bible thumpers
and HellFire prophets,
patriarchal evangelists
and patriotic disciples of God's omnipresent Love
allow their regulators and legislators
and executives,
acting in their HolyScriptures name,
tolerate such a clear misrepresentation of worship
as taught and lived by JesusChrist,
pretty much outside
and especially sweating blood in gardens
and walking on sacred water?
Why accept such an absurd misconception of worship
without economic or political
or personal or vulnerable question
this is patently absurd one-sided stealing
for money-making redistribution purposes
from spiritually rich to feed toxic desecration
to all residents of Michigan
and Lake Superior
and Turtle Island.
Absurd to confine worship indoors
to anyone
from anywhere
who has had the natural-spiritual experience
of being born
from any sacred matriotic womb
of God's EarthTribes.
Intolerable rape of Truth
to any healthy Christian
with opportunities
to worship outdoors
while reading Psalms
and Proverbs
and natural-spiritual Sacred Parables
about harvesting grace
planted in seeds of divine gratuity.
What is truly healthy faith
within our buildings of worship
is merely a pale reflection
of truly spiritual experience
derived long before we built buildings
as defensive shelters
against sacred elements
of MotherEarth.
I have known authentically patriotic Christians
to find more freedom worshiping God
on sacred rocks
born of spirited Lake Superiors
as compared to claustrophobia while boxed up inside
binding fear and threat constraints
of evangelically booming buildings
and fundamental absence of spiritual discernment constraints.
Worship, like Wonder,
looks for God's Healing Justice and Peace,
to let go of stuckness
in Retributive Vengeance is DivinePower
over Lake Superior commodification issues
about who and what and where
is most biblically saved
after God's Word
has spoken first and last outdoor spiritual experiences,
voices of Earth's sacred natures
and divinely-inspired Great Spirits.
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