Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, December 1, 2024
“Awakening to Creator’s Love and Truth: Transformation beyond the experience of historical trauma and cultural differences”
By Gail Melix/Greenwater, Sandwich Monthly Meeting, Sandwich, Massachusetts
Friends I woke up feeling sick this morning, but so wanted to share my message, so I’m here bedside. I love worshipping with you.
Wunee keesuq Neetop, Good day Friends. It’s wonderful to be back worshipping with you, thank you for the invite…. Nutus8ees, I am, Gail Melix also known as Greenwater. I belong to the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe of Patuxet, Ma., also known by the name Plymouth. I am a member of Sandwich Monthly Meeting located on Cape Cod.
I’d like to start with a thank you to my elders, Leslie Manning and Ken Jacobsen who are holding us and this space in prayer. Ken offered to bring this message for me if I could not make it, and I’m grateful for the offer. Thank you.
In June of this year I was invited to Durham Friends Meeting and shared a message about what it is for me to be an Indigenous Quaker and to hold two faith communities. I shared with you that I need both, I need both to be whole.
I spoke to you about my deepening relationship with Jesus Christ, my excitement when I discovered the First Nations’ version of the New Testament, my despair over Quaker Indigenous Boarding Schools, and the false Christianity that came with colonization to Turtle Island. It felt like there was more to be said, a second part, to bring today, including the power of hope and gratitude. My words have come from a place of unfolding worship from the past week.
What does land mean to Indigenous people? Land means home.
What if the meaning of home is more than the house you live in and the land that you own?
What if home is the Mashpee River running with herring come spring, the circling of osprey, the color of the morning sky over Punkhorn Point, the lay of the land when winter unfolds, the returning of the peepers every spring, the many colors of green in the pines and grass, the scent of warm damp earth and moss under bare feet, the garden waiting for seeds, the wind on the path between Mashpee and Wakeby Ponds, the fire for tobacco offering and prayer.
What if all these things are home? What if the heart of your home is the community you love? What if this is the meaning of home-land?
Traditional Indigenous spirituality is land-based. The beauty of God’s creation is the visible truth of God’s existence. The web of life on earth includes all living beings, who are our relatives We are connected and interdependent on one another for health and survival. When you realize you belong to a family of…. Life on earth, this is the beginning of right relationship with Nature. My father would say, “You take care of the Land and the Land will take care of you.” Land is a living breathing spiritual entity central to traditional beliefs, practices, and ceremonies, including song and dance. Everything is sacred. Nature teaches us and heals us; she provides us with opportunities for joy and delight that we can experience through our five senses… Sometimes I wonder if our sixth sense is our God sense, our birthright knowing of who we belong to….
The Harmony Way, a teaching for humanity, has been passed down through generations of Indigenous people as part of the original instructions for how to live in peace. Peace within ourselves and with all of creation, all forms of life. Peace and harmony are partnered and create balance. Without peace there is no justice, and there is no justice without peace. The systems of oppression, injustice, corporate greed, and annihilation of the earth, committed by the sins of cultural genocide, slavery, and white supremacy must stop… When I get overwhelmed with despair from feeling the suffering of the world, I give these concerns and my prayers to God. The Lord sometimes weeps with me. Hope and gratitude balance me. I discern what is mine to do and pray that I stay teachable.
I want to share some ways that I experience and awaken to God’s Love:
When I place my hands on a tree I feel an exchange of energy, a back and forth greeting and response. There is a sense that we are comforting one another. Even as a child I had trouble keeping my hands off my favorite trees and why should I? Is it a surprise that we should have favorite trees, the same way we are drawn to a closeness and fondness for certain aunts, uncles, and grandparents?
I acknowledge and honor the relationship that I have with water during my walks by squatting on the bank of the Santuit River and submerging both hands in the water long enough to leave my scent in the river. I anoint my forehead with river water so to carry her scent. I am in the river and the river is in me. After all we are about 70 % water, of course we are related. Kinfolk. Some days I am given to singing or humming to the river. A Soft singsong that has words or not, maybe humming, is pleasing to do, and appreciated by the object of my affection. If the songs have words, they always express gratitude and may even be the words thank you repeated over and over. Wampanoags have appointed water keepers, always women, whose service it is to sing to the water.
My relationship with Nature is one of the things that sustains me. There’s a reawakening of my inner child, that wonder and delight of experiencing the natural world. I did not surrender the curiosity and joy of childhood. The delight of being alive in this way is still a part of me. There’s a sense that something is being made right in my world that has created a wider path to my heart.
I see the face of God everywhere on my woodland walks. Over time I’ve come to the path with a greater ability for deep listening, reverence, and joy. Nature has taught me these things. Peace is easier to come by. If we bear witness to both the beauty and the suffering of all our relations we might be led to action, to be a voice for those who have no voice. The survival of life on earth as we know it depends on the relationship that humans have with Mother Earth. We protect what we love. So I come to the path with this question: What will I fall in love with today?
Retired Episcopal bishop and Choctaw citizen Steven Charleston draws on his Native American experience to navigate collective crisis:
My ancestors did not survive the Trail of Tears-because they were set apart from the rest of humanity. Their exodus was not a sign of their exclusivity, but rather their inclusivity. In their suffering, they embodied the finite and vulnerable condition of all humanity. They experienced what the whole tribe of the human beings has experienced at one time or another throughout history: the struggle of life, the pain of oppression, and the fear of the unknown. Their long walk was the walk of every person who has known what it means to be alone and afraid. But they walked with courage and dignity because they had the hope of the Spirit within them.…
Hope makes room for love in the world. We can all share it, we can all believe in it, even if we are radically different in every other way. We no longer need to fear our differences because we have common ground. We can hope together—therefore, hope liberates us. It frees us from our fear of the other. It opens our eyes to see love all around us. It unites us and breaks our isolation. When we decide to embrace hope—when we choose to make that our goal and our message—we release a flow of energy that cannot be overcome. Hope is a light that darkness can never contain.
So much of our life involves relationship; the relationship we have with ourselves.. with God, with other human beings, and with Nature. Everything created is Sacred, including humans, and this is one Way that God shows his Love for us.
When I think of my two faith communities, Indigenous and Quaker, I see the deep similarities and shared core values that far outweigh our differences. Quaker testimonies and Indigenous values share common ground. From the soil of this common ground, I see a bountiful harvest for us, ripe with the promise of deep friendships, with the accompaniment of our Holy Ones, and the blessings of Creator.
There is joy in doing the work and despair that cries out for it.
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(NRSV) Mark 12:30-31, The Two Great Commandments, Jesus said, 30 ” you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
