roots

It started during a discussion about native peoples around the world and how the English and Spanish “Christians” pushed them out. One lady spoke of the Maori, another spoke of Canadian tribes. These ladies are walking the old trails of the indigenous cultures to see what they can learn of the spiritual heritage of these people. One person said they knew someone whose Native grandfather sat in the Canadian forest one night waiting to die when he received a vision of Christ and was healed. When the first missionaries arrived, these people had already incorporated images of the cross and of the man with the wounds in his hands, feet and side. The missionaries told them they had to lay all that aside and embrace the new religion. What was that about? Even since John Fenn posted that bit about how God has revealed Himself to Gentiles through the ages, I can’t help wondering.

I don’t know whether this story is true, but today we hear many stories similar to it. We have been hearing how God has been reaching Muslims through dreams in our day. How does God prepare a people to receive Christ? Were there not righteous Gentiles that God sent Peter and Paul to?

I decided to give it a go myself after looking up the Native tribe who gave their name to the town I live in. More is available now than when I was a child learning these things — still not enough. I don’t know what they believed, but they were a semi-settled people who farmed about 200 acres. How uncivilized could that be? They built 30 houses on the banks of a spring and lived here in the spring and summer, moving to other places in their range the rest of the year. I wondered what happened to them. I came across a video of a lady whose father had traded with them. According to the video, the group entered into a U.S. treaty in affiliation with the Wichitas after they had “fallen upon hard times”. They subsequently moved to a reservation in Oklahoma.

I wondered what that meant, “fallen upon hard times”. Why did they need to look to the U.S. Government for help? They never needed it before. Did the influx of white settlers make it impossible for them to farm? It was said in one account that they had “caused trouble” for the whites on the Trinity River. I’d like to know why they “caused trouble”. What did they believe they were doing by it? Are they happier now or do they wish they could go back home?

I wondered where they fit into this concept of a spiritual heritage. Some people in the original discussion suggested that those of us who can’t walk in the physical footsteps of Patrick, Columba, and Aiden ought to seek ancient paths through the host people of the land we are in. This presupposes a rootedness to the land itself. I wondered what kind of paths those might be? Did God speak to the natives or only to those whose hearts were turned towards Him? Can we really assume that all ancient paths are safe to walk in?

The native tribe I researched had some ways that didn’t make me feel particularly comfortable. It was said that they were occasionally given to cannibalism. One wonders how enlightened they could have been? Perhaps they already had some concept of eternity or redemption. I remember an obscure story in my family about someone who had been given the shin and foot of one of the enemies of this people with friendly instructions: “Eat it. It will make you strong.” Perhaps they might have at least grasped Holy Communion in that case.

What’s behind the stories? Who and what were these people? And why, after all the trouble to dispossess these people from the land, do we name everything after them as if doing so lends some ethnic pride to our communities? What illogical behavior. Is it some kind of consolation prize to them? They are never heard from nor welcomed again.

I drove to the site where this tribe is said to have had 30 houses. I had to see for myself. I’m not for absolutely certain it was the place, as there seems to be some dispute on the exact location. I decided to go to that place deliberately — it was rather deserted. I hoped, as a woman alone, I would not be assaulted. There was no place to park on the street, so I risked a spot behind a vacant building. I walked a short ways until I came upon a stream. If this was the place, it was uglified by the litter, the bottles, the cans, and milk cartons. Part of the ground had been hollowed out and reinforced long ago with concrete. The sedimentary rocks formed a perfect hollow for defense and looked like good arrowhead material. I could imagine that long ago before the land was cleared children must have formed beautiful memories playing along the stream banks and listening to the soft gurgling of the water.

I stood for a few minutes. “Well, God, is this it? Is this the place?” I pulled out my Irish penal rosary beads (alas, I got them because they remind me of those in bondage)and prayed for this people I have never met but whose land I occupy. I asked God many things about these people in the next few minutes. Perhaps one day He’ll answer all my questions.

Back at home, I pulled out the make-believe pipe for a make-believe smoke and a think about the whole idea of “roots” and “heritage” and what that means to us. Some who live in the lands of their ancestors have a great sense of being rooted there, and the means by which they received their faith seems tied to that land. Others of us can never go back exactly to what we were because we aren’t the same people as our ancestors — we are so mixed. I’m not even sure we are supposed to go back to exactly what things were. I read once that travelers leave their land because they are not typical of the ones who stayed behind. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Some people left who didn’t want to go — like the convicts who settled Georgia in the U.S. and Australia.

But….I keep thinking of Tolkien’s words, “Not all who wander are lost.” Sometimes I even like being a bit rootless. Well, how can I really use that word? I obviously know more about my roots than maybe any three people put together. I find them immensely important for knowing why I am here, yet my roots are not rooted. I would have many disagreements with those I came from, too. What is that about?

I guess I have mixed feelings about the earth itself. I don’t think of God as immanent in the earth. I think of Him as transcendant, the earth being His fingerprint, and He being immanent in His people. I do consider history in the earth as so many echos that one can still hear. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” so I am prepared to expect rootlessness and wanderings as part of the deal. I don’t think it means resigning oneself to dualism, but to recognizing that all things are ours, yet we are not owned by them.

Speaking of “land”, there are so many concepts of land rights. Scriptures acknowledge land rights of a family. Is it because God believes this or because He worked within the understanding of the Hebrews? Some would take it as a blueprint. Native Americans had no concept of land ownership. Australian aborigines believe their people belong to the land. It matters from a cultural perspective when cultures clash, but does it ultimately matter to a God whose kingdom is not of this world?

We have to be practical, but we also have to be incarnational. I plan to go back and have a study of Bruce Olson. Much as I agree with Brian McLaren that we ought to be evangelical, incarnational, missional, etc., I’ve had my fair share of disagreements with emergent church, too. (Come to think of it, Rick Warren and emergent church tactics within the institutional churches do rather remind one of the methods of the original missionaries in this land — “Become like us or out you go.” I meet many people who have been displaced like this.) Bruce Olson is the one man I can think of who actually embodied all these things. As far as I can tell he never hashed out a theology or a formula. He spent his time praying and actually listening to God. I’m coming to believe that God just wants us to trust Him and look to His hand as a dog looks to its owner.

Now, as I finish this thought, it occurs to me that maybe I ought to consider myself a “Bruce Olson” among the “natives” in current North America. The church culture here looks pretty wild and untamed to my eyes these days.

I really didn’t know whether to post these thoughts here, but I didn’t have time to do it justice otherwise. I’m off to do other things for a while after this.

In tracing back the lineage of the ancient church in Britain, I find that it was more Orthodox than Catholic in the beginning. There is now a British Orthodox Church that is under the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was founded in a bid to bring the Isles back to its first church.

I did further investigation and I find a more rigid structure in the present Coptic Orthodox Church than I think ever existed in ancient Britain. I suspect that the strict structure never got a foothold there, that the Coptic Orthodox Church has undergone some shifts since the original carriers of the Gospel made it to the British Isles and that what we are seeing of today’s Coptic Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church are results of serious changes very close to (but not identical to) the root of the Church. It is nearly impossible to distinguish that there ever might have been a time when geographical divisions with bishops did not exist, but the earliest records indicate this new kind of governmental division to be a serious change. The Lord sets the solitary in families, not in geographical divisions and not in institutions.

My suspicions are that to place oneself under the Coptic Orthodox Church might be to go back to the historical roots on the one hand but to negate them on the other (historical changes in the mother church and the lack of direct influence of the mother church on the British church in the beginning). There is great reason to suspect that the entire idea of what is “the Church” had shifted very early in Church history, judging by The Didache’s account of how to recognize an apostle-prophet. That in itself throws great suspicion on the idea of dioceses and parishes with a top-down structure. It simply does not exist in The Didache. Others might argue that it is a matter of the Church coming into maturity after The Didache was written, but I think that Church history shows that the Church did not mature — if anything, it was fairly well dumbed down in many ways by overbearing structure. We’ve seen the evidence of that in our own day.

All said, I think that God has had people in all places at all times. Many practices developed in the various strains of church through the centuries that are worth recognizing. It may sound a little odd, but sometimes I think that when the Lord said, “I was in prison and you visited me,” it applied to crossing the lines of religion and helping our fellow believers in captivity. But that is my fleeting thought.

In centuries past, people could not just cross the lines and fellowship with one another. We have technology and access to information to thank for some of the barriers breaking down. God deals with individuals in various ways and in His own good time. In bygone days, people did not seem to realize that they could not beat new opinions into people and so they unwittingly oppressed one another in the name of God. One’s conviction is like one’s own blood. It is a holy thing and we should never attack that which is sacred by earthly means. Those who love the truth will find God, and they do not have to have perfect understanding in all matters of the faith to be known of Him. Was it not while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us?

Isa 51:5 My righteousness [is] near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust.

We don’t all have exactly the same place in the Christ story, I will grant you. We don’t do the same things and we aren’t supposed to. But we all have a place in a storyline leading through our spiritual fathers back to the foundation laid by an Apostle. My roots lie with Mark and with those who “wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” (Heb. 11) Community for me rarely can be found in a large mass of people at a religious service. I find community upon recognition of that common Spirit in others. Some walk alongside me, some apart and some try to walk on top of me. I prefer those who walk alongside.

When God first told me I was a Nazarite, I did not get it. I argued with Him and found that He knew things about Nazarites that I never dreamed. It was the unfolding of that realization in a particular context in my life that taught me I should look to the Egyptian desert for clues. Later, I saw a loose connection between Nazarites and what are today called nuns and monks. Nazarites, though, never organized into the strict orders of Roman Catholicism. They had no requirements of celibacy, poverty, obedience (unless they vowed such for whatever reason) and could be married, single or divorced. The vows they took could be for a season or a lifetime. They might even be called of God from birth. Yet, in the New Testament, Jesus later warned against the taking of vows.

The same influences that worked against the the ministers of God also confused the legitimate roles of the Nazarites. We see the effects of fallen flesh administering the things of God in the extremes of asceticism and self-indulgence throughout Church history. We also see the top-down organization of ministers coming in soon after 100 A.D. They no longer “walked alongside” their disciples but had regard to a line of succession. Men look on the appearance, but God looks at the heart.

When I first suspected that my line led to the Apostle Mark, I knew the implications. The line is Coptic, loosely speaking. (Coptic means “Egyptian”.) But today’s Coptic Church is not the Egyptian Church of the first century, though it descends from it. Like the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, it has added on so much unnecessary human habit that it has, frankly, weighed itself down. I think this is a result of “oldness” generally. I have considered the possibility that if I, in all my perfectionistic zeal, were multiplied millions of times through the ages so that I made up the whole of a Church branch, it would still stagger under the accumulated deposits of my fallen flesh. The beauty of the earliest missionary journeys was that the further from Jerusalem and oldness, the fresher was the foundation.

Some verses from God to the isles in wait:

Isa 42:10 Sing unto the LORD a new song, [and] his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof.
Isa 42:11 Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up [their voice], the villages [that] Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.
Isa 42:12 Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands.

Isa 49:1 Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.

Isa 66:19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, [to] Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, [to] Tubal, and Javan, [to] the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles.

Shalom and amen.