Day Nineteen.
WTactualF? Hebrews 1:1.
We welcome, as our featured artist, Kaitlin B. Curtice. Kaitlin is a Native American Christian author, speaker, and worship leader. As an enrolled member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band and someone who has grown up in the Christian faith, Kaitlin writes on the intersection of Native American spirituality, mystic faith in everyday life, and the church. Follow her on Twitter: @KaitlinCurtice.
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.
— Hebrews 1:1
In my back yard, there is a pine tree that reminds me of my grandma.
One day, we were watching Moana with our two sons, and the scene when Gramma Tala’s spirit visits and sings to Moana left me feeling really emotional. While they finished the movie, I wandered out to the backyard to pray.
Grandma Downing is the woman who passed down her Potawatomi blood to me. And while I was praying that afternoon, after I sprinkled tobacco at the base of a tall pine tree, she reminded me of her presence — God speaking to me through my ancestor to remind me that I am seen and known.
Now, I imagine taking this story to a typical American church. I imagine I’d likely be called pagan, animistic, idolater, the very things my Potawatomi ancestors were called.
In the church, we have beautiful stories about our ancestors of the faith. Our saints. We light candles for them. We pray for them. But we do not often hold that same space for ancestors who belong to those outside our church walls. We do not know how to comprehend that a medicine woman who healed her people or a language teacher who kept her culture alive might also be a part of the faith, an asset to the church.
This Advent, my mom sent me a few Christmas presents that belonged to my grandma. I hold the tiny apron that she used to wear and I feel her with me. I feel the hours she spent serving her family, the ways she kept her farmhouse alive to all of us. I keep her story with me because of things like this, and because her story is alive to me, her story helps shape my faith.
I trust that God spoke to her, and to my great-great Potawatomi grandma before that. I trust that God spoke to those who walked the Trail of Death, that in suffering prophets came along to remind those ancestors that they were not alone. I trust the prophets of my own culture, the people who stop to remind us that we belong to the Divine Story, even if we don’t look like colonized, Christian America.
Perhaps the diversity of the Gospel is that we are spoken to “at many times, in various ways,” and maybe that means more than we realize.
Maybe it means that God is diverse, too, and that God shows up among us in ways we do not understand. Maybe our prophets are the rivers and the trees, the humble beasts that remind us to care for the earth that cares for us. Maybe our prophets are the poor, the oppressed, the ones that remind those of us who belong on the outside that God dwells there, too.
Maybe prophets say things we didn’t know could be heard to the people we weren’t expecting to receive those words.
Maybe those words are received in a benevolent way by a world that speaks what is good and unexpected every day.
Maybe this Advent, we need to leave space for that possibility, too.
