Bonnie Whitlow and Norma General

March 20th, the next "Mexico Day" on my list, I found to be one of the most interesting days of all the trip, but it wasn't located any further away than a little spot on the Six Nations reserve just outside my hometown that I had never been to before.

Most of the day was a presentation by and dialogue with Bonnie and Norma, which was a fascinating reversal for me. Not that I ever evangelise as much as I could or even should, but I'm not usually actively evangelised either, and this definitely was different from discussing things with door-to-door Jehovah's Witnesses. Also, I had remembered reading about how evangelists going way out of their own culture usually only had a breakthrough when they could find a parallel to some Biblical theme in the culture in which they were working.

I think I already came up with adequate words in an e-mail to Bonnie about a week after our meeting:

It was an interesting afternoon last Saturday, because you were evangelising us in the same way some of us seek to evangelise you. I think we can both use each other's evangelism, because you are closer to the truth in some matters and we in others, and it's been God's pleasure to make it this way so that neither of us becomes arrogant thinking that we have all the answers (as your ancestors and my ancestors both thought.) That's not to say that truth is relative, or that parts of the Bible are invalidated by what you say--it's just that you have a better grasp of the spirit behind the letter (again, in some areas more than others) than we do, because we are clouded by our cultural lense.

(About the parallels, she later gave me a book lead that turns out to be available online too: http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/iro/parker/.)

Anyway, it definitely makes sense that the majority of we who call ourselves Christian would in no way be able to evangelise Six Nations peoples as they were presented to us that day, because they act more Christian than we do. In an interesting twist, I think Western-minded truth-seekers would migrate to Six Nations spirituality (as many do in the vague popular movement toward nature and such), but they would unfortunately probably stop there before coming to the full realisation of the reality of Jesus Christ in the world, because Christians who really are a light in the world are spread, and once one is comfortable in a worldview (even a new one), one usually stops searching. This is how I've spent nineteen years beside a better example of how to live without ever noticing, and could've easily spent nineteen, thirty-eight, or fifty-seven more if not for the inclusion of a meeting with our Aboriginal friends as part of the pre-trip days.

For all we cry about freedom of religion in order to generally supress it in schools, we've done powerfully well at caging it within an aura of irrelevance. The very fact that it's not mandatory where, say, English and math are within our K-12 school system implies to any student that it's not worth studying in order to live more successfully in the "real world." Sure, we were taken on a trip to the reserve in sixth grade or so, and the general sentiment was "that's nice," but we were more interested in whether we'd be back in time to play wall ball before hometime. Contrast that with our three or four trips to App's Mill for ecological education/games once every two or three years, continuing into high school.

Our collective lack of seeking to understand where people are really coming from is why September 11th was hardly more of a shock to me than the second season finale of 24. Unfortunately, of the few who really are seeking to understand, some still are only doing it in order to control. While you can't mandate a good heart, you can stamp out many misunderstandings without too much effort. (This is while we're still within the K-12. After that you have to expend much more effort un-learning first, go on campaigns, buy media attention, and so on. Watch strategies on getting people to stop smoking, and see if it isn't more effective to quit before you start.)

In later entries I'll get to Mexican indigenous peoples. There are many differences, but hopefully this time around I'll see some similarities and balance it out when I write here.