A Few Thoughts from Our Pastor

When we were still at The Cabin and everyone was scoping out options for a new meeting space, Mary Loncar and I went to the Ute Museum to talk with its executive director, CJ Brafford . She was nothing if not wildly hospitable. As CJ gave us a tour of the spaces we’ll soon be using, she opened all the closet doors and flicked on all lights with happy flourishes. CJ even went on an exhaustive search to find a spot to store our keyboard, going so far as to suggest that her building manager could install special shelving to keep it safe while when not in use.

Back in CJ’s office, Mary and I were asking our last questions and offering our gratitude for CJ’s hospitality when suddenly CJ swiveled around in her chair, then spun back just as quickly, her arms thrust outward. In each hand, CJ held out a pair of chopsticks — parting gifts for her two visitors!

This giveaway reminded me of a trek I made through South Dakota more than 20 years ago. I was there with a group of nine others to visit five or six Native communities and learn of their efforts to reclaim both language and culture. Partway through our trip, we found ourselves in the home of a family preparing to send off several men on a 4-day vision quest. At the end of the evening, one of the hosts made his way through the house, offering everyone gifts. Even the newly-arrived strangers received something; my gift was a buffalo tooth.

CJ’s spontaneous gift-giving charmed me immensely and took me back to that modest home so many years ago, reminding me that in Native culture there is a deeply-rooted desire to give. I think about my own culture with its very different focus and I’m humbled as thoroughly as I was that night 20-plus years ago.

As we prepare to make our move to The Ute, we do so mindful that we are not renters so much as guests. We are privileged to be using a facility dedicated first to understanding the history and culture of a people who were here long before any of us were, and then, preserving and celebrating those cultures now.

When we settled on The Ute as our next venue, my counsel to Leadership was this:  in our first month at The Ute, let us ask for nothing except to meet. We have not entered into a business arrangement so much as we’ve landed, like the pilgrims, on a shore already occupied. Let the way we come and settle in be different than the unfortunate history that hasn’t enough been told — of people who came to a new land and despite thousands of years of being occupied, felt the land and all that it bore was God’s gift to them.

Part of our sacred work as Christians is to build mutually respectful relationships. Where we encounter relationships that have been torn asunder, we understand our calling is to be agents of healing and reconciliation.

We cannot undo the painful past in our part of Colorado that saw a whole people removed and transplanted on a reservation in another state (Utah). But by the way we step onto the property and into our relationship with The Ute, perhaps our quiet sensitivity and gentile ways can bear witness to Jesus’ prayer and our denomination’s motto “That they might all be one.”

Yours on the journey,