Anglican Indigenous Sacred Circle 2000
A "Thank You" Letter

Immersion in an unfamiliar culture can be a deeply rewarding experience. One hears new languages, learns new histories, and returns home with fresh eyes. It is one thing to travel as a tourist. It is another thing to move into a new land in response to an invitation of friendship. Something in the invitation binds me, not in an abstract way to the culture (as something from which it is nice to take pictures or souvenirs), but in real ways to my friend. For me to receive the gifts that her culture has to offer is to receive in a deeper way the gift of her friendship. As I enter into her home I learn more about her language, cherished stories, and values. I see more fully who she is, in both how she celebrates life and experiences its brokenness. Returning to my home I see the gifts and the brokenness of my own culture with eyes transformed by the immersion-experience of friendship.

This year, I received an opening to such friendship in the invitation to participate as one of eight non-Aboriginal "Partners" to the Anglican Indigenous Sacred Circle. In our Partners' orientation and debriefing sessions, we reflected together on the gift of this invitation. What a joy it is to walk along with a people as their dream emerges. What a difficult journey it is to listen deeply with the heart to stories reflecting the sufferings that are the legacies of the residential schools and generations of oppression. What an honour it is to witness the healing that is taking place, to witness resurrection, then, like Mary Magdalene, to carry the responsibility to tell what we have seen. Like the gift of God's grace itself, the invitation to partnership has become a transformative force in the lives of those who have accepted the call. And like grace, it is wide: the invitation is extended to the whole church.

On the last meeting-day of the Sacred Circle, the Partners were invited to speak about what they had learned and hoped to bring home to their own dioceses. At the time, along with my reflections, I offered a few words of gratitude. But the weeks have moved along, and many of the gifts of the Sacred Circle are only now making themselves felt. Further words of gratitude are needed. So, to those who extended the hand of invitation, to the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples and to Huron Lenni-Lenape, Algonquian, Iroquoian Council, I say: thank you

Thank you for sharing with me your own deep gratitude for the gifts of God the Creator. In my own busy, noisy life, I need to be reminded to pay attention to these gifts. To open one's eyes to the beauty and fragility of creation moves the heart with gratitude. In countless ways but especially in our worship services and tree-planting I witnessed this deep gratitude flowing from you. And a life lived in gratitude is a loving one that carries much capacity for healing what is broken in the world and in our selves. Yours is a gift that the church and the whole of creation need to receive.

Thank you for opening my heart to your pain and to grace. In the faces of those who told of sufferings from the legacies of colonialism, of the schools, of present-day racism, I saw faces of Jesus crucified. Through your stories of healing, I saw the grace of resurrection. I would not have recognized the resurrection if I hadn't heard the depths of suffering. And I would not have been able to hear you if I had not been able to confront what is broken in me. You provided me with a loving place to be able to reach into my own pain and then to be graced with glimmers of a resurrection that is our common hope. Vi Smith, an Elder, once said that the church needs to hear the pain of Native people, and that hearing it will cause pain. Others have observed that in order to hear the pain of another, one must know one's own need for healing. I often fear that we as church have a difficult time hearing the voices of Native people in our midst because we are too often unaware of the ways in which we are diminished and damaged by the destructive forces in our culture. The witness of your own truth-telling and rising up from pain to build community and family and pride is a gift that the whole church and world needs.

Thank you for deepening my understanding of the gifts of the Spirit. As St. Paul talks about them, these are the gifts that nurture community. "Community" has become a cheapened word in our society, and yet we all yearn for it. We all yearn for loving relationships, for justice, peace, healing and reconciliation. In the context of the Circle, the values through which the Holy Spirit moved were the values of your culture: honesty and the courage of truth-telling, love, honour, respect, humility. The Circle conversation places honest relationship first before common projects or concerns, agendas or structures. I have become more aware of how competitive and shallow so many of our usual communication patterns are, how emptied of meaning so many rich words have become. It becomes all too easy in our world to turn relationships into commodities. You remind me that Jesus who is Lord is also the one who calls us into that friendship with God and with each other, and that the Spirit truly is present where this graced relationship grows.

I learned how to say "thank you" in another language, with a new heart shaped by friendship. It is not my language, but as I cherish my friend, the language is beautiful to me. And so I say again, miigwech. Here is my friend. I'd like you to meet her.