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Last night we named the problem right That our dualistic world, Western christian worldview has us trapped in a cycle of disconnection from the land from our bodies from each other from the rest of Creation, a cycle

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of disintegration, right. Disintegration that is unsustainable not only for a damaged earth, but for us as humans who want to be peacemakers who want to do justice in the world. So if the problem is

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separation and disintegration, then the solution is re connection , right? Reintegration with the land, with our bodies, with each other with the community of creation . And I suggested that for those of us here

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in the United States, at least our indigenous neighbors carry the medicine that we are in desperate need of medicine that can help get us out of our spirituality of conquest and offer an alternative vision of a world

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that is living and free and that we are an important and good part of along with all of our human and more than human kin. Now I am no teacher here. I am a student like a

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kindergarten student, y'all in this new to me way of seeing and being in the world. I'm just at the beginning of what I'm sure will be a long journey of unlearning and relearning from my native teachers

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from my plants and animal teachers. So I'll admit that I hesitated to begin this work in my congregation and I hesitated to talk to y'all about it this week. But I think this is actually the role

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of the preacher to be a learner publicly, to be converted publicly again and again to catch a glimpse of the holy spirit and sprint after her learning as you go and trying to pull your people along with

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you. There's a Tv show called Reservation Dogs. Has anybody anybody a fan? Yes, it's a very highly rated award winning show about a modern day native community in Oklahoma and all the actors and producers

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, the writers, everyone involved in telling the story is native. It is hilarious and tender. It's a really special show and in one scene the teenage main character Bear is complaining about his new job to

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his spirit ancestor Guide who shows up to visit him and offer ancestral wisdom. Occasionally Bear is frustrated that he doesn't know how to do anything in his new roofing job and no one is really teaching him.

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The ancestor Guide says ah yes that's the native way of teaching. We've got this traditional native pedagogy of just get out there and learn buddy. Except he doesn't say buddy. He uses a more colorfully explicit

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term of endearment. But yeah just get out there and learn buddy. So that's what I'm trying to do and I want to be up front about that and that's what my congregation is doing as well.

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I hope that that's what some of you will do Because even as a kindergarten student in this new way of being and seeing I've got way way more that I wish I could talk to you about than we

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have time for tonight. I'm not going to do a 45 minute sermon. I know someone who's joking about that because I was baptist but I promise I won't. So my learning started with a land acknowledgement

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a lot like the one we offered yesterday in the prayer. I was at an alliance of Baptists gathering . Don't worry. Those are the fun back. They do exist. And Claudio carnivals who some of

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you might know offered a beautiful and ritualized land acknowledgement that involved pouring local soil on the altar and offering gratitude to the original caretakers of the land. And that was the first time I had ever seen or

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heard anything like that. And it inspired me to go home and learn about the history of the land where I lived at the time and the native communities that were still present there. So I know from

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experience that land acknowledgements are one way we can help reframe our vision of the world we live in and inspire curiosity. So that's where I started with UBC , my congregation down the street. I don't know

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which direction. Every sunday, our land acknowledgment helps locate us. It helps ground us in a specific place in a specific history as we acknowledge all the indigenous inhabitants who came before us and who are still

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here, which seems to be a surprise to some people actually now if that's all that we do as one indigenous consultant that I worked with recently said and I quote big whoop it has become almost trendy and

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predominantly white progressive spaces to offer an acknowledgement, listing tribes expressing gratitude and moving on as if they've checked something off their social justice to do list without a further thought about the communities that they have supposedly honored

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as everybody been a part of that Yeah, our native neighbors at the university of texas and at the indigenous Cultures Institute in San Marcus and elsewhere encouraged us to not only acknowledge indigenous land but to make commitments

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. In light of that acknowledgement. They're gentle push had the book of James ringing in my ears right be doers of the word not merely hearers who deceive themselves of course commitments have to be made in a

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relationship, that's the whole point and they're able to hold us accountable so it takes a little more and I am so so grateful for the undeservedly generous native teachers who have been willing to befriend me and my

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congregation, my church's commitments were composed under the guidance of caltech in elder Maria Roca, she is the executive director of the indigenous Cultures institute in SAn Marcus and you should all look them up, Follow them

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on social media, read everything on their website immediately , well not quite immediately but very soon so she helps us come to these and I want to tell you a little bit about them and how they're shaping

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our congregation alright, our first commitment is about being aware of the history of harm done to indigenous people in central texas specifically and across the world. And the repercussions of that harm. It's been amazing to

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find out how little I knew and what incorrect pictures I was given and what history was withheld from me in my rural texas public education. But it's maybe even more amazing to me that I made it through

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three higher ed degrees in religion without ever learning a thing about the church's active participation in violence against native americans. I hope your education was better than mine . But if not, may I recommend reading Roxanne

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Dunbar Ortiz's book and indigenous people's history of the United States. It will rock your world. One thing that Dunbar Ortiz reminds us of is that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did,

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they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. So awareness is the first step toward responsibility and responsibility is a necessary step toward reconciliation and relationship. So we're getting

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there right baby steps. The next commitment is about learning from indigenous ways of seeing the world that deepen our connection to our bodies to our communities and to the lands, Our quality tech and friends who,

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by the way have been living in central and south Texas and northern Mexico for at least 14,000 years. That's like what can be recorded, but they say they've always been here. They call this the natural

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way. So that's what we call it at our church too. It's a world view and a way of living that is based not in accumulation of wealth or land or prestige, but in relationships with nature

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with each other with ourselves. And those relationships are all tied up in each other. Maria told me about, she talked about caring for the earth and receiving gifts of pure whole foods that nourish our bodies

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. She talked about sharing that nourishment and taking care of the whole community, right? She said we can learn so much from indigenous communities about the connection we used to have to mother earth and to each

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other and we can have it again. Cherokee author and theologian, Randy Woodley calls it the Harmony way . He emphasizes the importance of restoring the relationships that exist among creator humans, animals and the earth.

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The Harmony way is rooted in respect for all in generosity and hospitality and a lifestyle of gratitude, especially to the earth. The harmony way he writes, cares about the most marginalized because how we treat those

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who are most in need reveals the heart of who we are. He compares the harmony way with the concept of shalom in the hebrew bible, Robin wall Kimerer, who I quoted last night talks about this

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concept of the natural way or the harmony Way in terms of reciprocity, the earth gives to us and we have something to give back to the earth. Each member of creation has a gift and those gifts

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come with responsibilities. Water has the gift of life and the responsibility to nourish the plants to make up most of our animal bodies. Plants have the gift of photosynthesis and the responsibility to provide nutrients and clean

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air for all of creation. These gifts invite us into a relationship of reciprocity and respect. She gives a really specific example of reciprocity that I find fascinating . It has been found that there are enzymes in

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the saliva of buffalo that actually promote and enhance the growth of prairie grass. Isn't that cool? The grass feeds the buffalo and the buffalo feeds the grass reciprocity. Okay, it's a whole new way of

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seeing and we can actually fit into this way of being in the world to maybe not with our saliva , but for example, she talks about sweetgrass. Uh one of the sacred plants of most indigenous peoples

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in native in America anyway and sweetgrass thrives it really just around the native communities that use it. It's a plant that thrives when it is used. If you leave it alone and you don't touch it,

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it dies out. It has to have this reciprocal relationship that humanity brings to it in order to thrive . Reciprocity. Our last two commitments are about learning from our native led groups in our area now and

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standing in solidarity with our native neighbors as they seek justice. And this means for us following the work of native communities in the news and on social media , working with consultants and bringing in guest speakers to

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lead us. It means attending and supporting local powerhouse and following the lead of our native community in the re education that we are doing and with our material support as well. Standing at the ready making it

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known that we are friends and allies, which is something that Maria reminded me is not cannot be assumed especially about churches. Even now, my congregation was so honored to be called on for an ally action

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. Recently we are now riding to the president of the University of texas weekly asking him to return the remains of three of the Yukon garza bands, ancestors who were removed from their resting place at the sacred

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springs and put into a collection at the University of texas. The collection is not rare. Museums and universities have these boxes and boxes of indigenous remains on shelves in libraries and museums. The University of Texas

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has over 2000 remains. They're asking for just these three that they can really know are their ancestors. You can learn more about this. It's a years long effort and it's ongoing and you can learn about

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it by going to indigenous cultures dot org or you can search the hashtag return the remains but our commitment to solidarity is helping us do meaningful justice work. That is blooming out of relationship not off of a

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to do list. So all of these commitments learning our history, engaging with creation and gratitude and reciprocity seeking reconciliation and justice alongside our native neighbors. These things are small, but they're reshaping our world,

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view our way of seeing and being in the world now. Does that solve everything? No, but we're not looking for an antidote. We're starting a journey and if we can return to our scripture cocktail

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, just briefly, a journey is exactly what jesus sets us on in his great commission. It's a lot easier to see when we read through an indigenous lens. The First Nations version says, so now

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I am sending you into all nations to teach them how to walk the road with me, initiating them into the life of beauty and harmony, Jesus says , I will always be with you. Your invisible

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guide walking beside you until the new age has fully come beat on the ground, add to the mix first Corinthians 15, but have that natural way as your perspective have that in the background as you read

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first Corinthians 15 and it's way harder to read a bifurcated body versus soul. Instead, what will probably notice is the picture paul paints before that bit of seeds blooming and the beauty and diversity of humans,

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animals, birds, fish, the sun, and moon and stars. Paul paints this picture of the community of creation with humans as just one parts and he honors and celebrates every body human and non human

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. We skip over that part to get to the philosophical bit. I think maybe we would read onto that philosophical bit and not see a separation of body and spirit, but the beauty and spirituality of body

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when we sink are the roots of our identity into the earth in the community of creation that is alive , we see things differently. We recognize wounds in ourselves that we didn't even know were there and we

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can begin finally walking toward healing and restoration for ourselves . Our communities for all of creation. Remember beloveds that we are all indigenous to this earth. Humans may have been kicked out of the garden in the

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beginning of our faith story, but there's no need for us to keep guarding the old keep outside y'all . We are invited in to be a parts, the good parts of our natural world to become human

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again in braiding sweetgrass. Alright, this is the last time I'm gonna tell you from this book by Robin Wall camera. But well I told you not to go buy your dream catchers on amazon last night

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. You should absolutely go by braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Camera on on amazon tonight or at your local bookstore preferably. But let's be honest, if you're not gonna do that, just get it. However

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, you need to get it. Okay, She tells a story about Onondaga lake. It's a sacred site of the Onondaga people in Syracuse new york that was taken over by the state, breaking legal treaties

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of course, and it was used as a dumping ground for industrial waste. Slimy white sludge foot's thick now cover the banks and the ground of the once beautiful land and they have poisoned the sacred waters.

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I checked today and even after a lot of work on it, you still can't eat much of the fish. If you're a woman under 50 you're not supposed to eat them at all or a child under

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15. The damage is so deep and all encompassing that no amount of restoration efforts will ever bring it back to what it was before. But she insists that despair is not the answer. Camera writes about

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weaving through the fields of reeds, the mostly forgotten white sledge banks to see the restoration efforts. Not too long ago, scientists and crews were dredging sludge on one side of the lake and Onondaga people were

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praying and dancing on the other. And as she walked in the sludge, she remembers seeing an intrepid plant that had taken root here and there and where the plants had taken roots. She dug a little

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and the soil beneath wasn't pure white like the rest of it, but a pale gray, little by little. The plants were changing the land. She noticed. Then a few small ant hills piled up

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with white crystals and she knew that the ants were doing their work to clean the soil too, I think about our broken relationships to creation and to each other kind of like Onondaga lake decades, centuries of

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the toxic sludge of colonization and capitalism and isolation from other species and damage done by fossil fuels and greed make it seem impossible to restore sometimes I know, but despair is not the answer. Restoration and reconciliation

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after all that has been done in our world will be slow, will have to be patient with ourselves and each other, and the earth may never be what it was in the past. But neither will

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we as we unlearn and relearn our history as we build relationships with each other and with our native neighbors as we sink our identities into the land in which we live and find ways to offer care and reciprocity

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with the earth as we practice seeing trees and hills and bays as living and free beings Beloveds, those tiny intrepid plants that take root in our toxic sledge hearts will begin to change the soil. They will

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begin to change the soil, of our relationships, of our communities, of our reading of scripture. Our Children's futures. This is good medicine! So beloveds consider yourselves commissioned. Go walk and teach others

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to walk the life of Beauty and harmony. Pay attention to new teachers, pay attention to the world right here beneath your feet and jesus himself will be with you walking the path beside you on your journey