Between the Ridges: George Tinker Presentation
The Rev. George Tinker preaches during an “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” on April 27 at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.
May 10, 2012
Over the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time writing on the Doctrine of Discovery (DoD). The DoD, while it has yet to have little exposure in our schools or seminaries, drives much of how we think culturally and socially. In developing my thoughts concerning the DoD, one theologians writing, George Tinker, pushed me to question how Christianity endorsed the subjugation of American land and people and how that subjugation often lead to genocide.
Between the Ridges, a local Ecumenical Collaborative of the Yakama Christian Mission—Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), White Swan and Toppenish United Methodist Churches, and Christ Episcopal Church have had the good fortune to obtain grants and raise monies to have George Tinker bring his gifts and insight to the Yakama reservation. Below is a Flier/Write-up speaking to opportunities to hear Tinker.
Please join us!
© David B. Bell 2012
****
Conversations with George Tinker
Between the Ridges, an Ecumenical Collaborative on the Yakama Indian Reservation is sponsoring a day of conversations with George Tinker.
George E. “Tink” Tinker is a prominent American Indian theologian and scholar, author of many articles and books. Tinker is professor of American Indian cultures and religious traditions at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, where he has taught since 1985. He earned his doctorate in Biblical studies at the Graduate Theological Union in 1983. He is also an ordained Lutheran pastor of Living Waters Episcopal/Lutheran Indian Ministry in Denver. Tinker is a member of the Osage Nation, and is also on the leadership council of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and director of the Four Winds Survival Project.
Tinker’s works can be categorized into many areas. Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide critiques how the Christian church and its missionaries, regardless of best intentions, were complicit with the cultural, political, and social genocide of Native Americans. Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation is concerned with eliciting the difference between Native American and White cultures and providing a critique of White categories of thought. A Native American Theology explains how Native American cultural symbols can be used to re-interpret Christianity. Throughout all Tinker’s work he is concerned with the health of the environment, the recognition of communal, not individualistic, values, the importance of being tied to the land, and the interrelatedness with all of Creation that comes with living in a spatial, communal attitude.
Two opportunities are scheduled. A free will offering will be taken to support these events.
- Dr. Tinker will preach at Wilbur Memorial United Methodist Church, 90 1st St, White Swan WA. Sunday May 20 at 10 am. This event will be followed by a brunch at the church to continue the conversation.
- A community meal followed by program will also be held at Toppenish United Methodist Church, 210 N Beech St, Sunday Evening May 20 beginning at 5 pm. Dr Tinker will speak and engage a diversity of voices in the community in conversation.
- We are also arranging other small conversations and tours for Monday, May 21.
Dr Tinker will have just led the National United Methodist Church through a season of repentance at their national convention in Florida. The World Council of Church’s Executive Council has recently repudiated the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, a series of papal bulls and theological statements that justified the 15th Century Age of Discovery and unpins the current legal framework of international property law, tribal treaties and the dominant culture’s relationship with indigenous people. Also in May the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous People will have the Doctrine of Christian Discovery as the main theme for their international conference. This is a perfect time to learn more about the history of Christian mission and do the creative work necessary to explore a way forward beyond theologies that justify oppression toward a new vision of the church’s role in standing in solidarity with First Nations here in the US and with indigenous peoples around the world.
For more information and to RSVP Contact:
David Bell, Yakama Christian Mission dave@yakamamission.org
Derel Olson, White Swan and Toppenish United Methodist Churches derel.olson@gmail.com
David Hacker, Christ Episcopal Church davidhacker916@gmail.com 509-961-4692
Fluid Repentance Digs Up Wholeness
April 29, 2012
Below is a post made yesterday on the Pacific Northwest United Methodist Church site. You can find the original post at
http://www.pnwumc.org/gc2012/fluid-repentance-digs-up-wholeness/. The site moderator included the image.
A part of Rev. TInker’s presentation is found in a 4 minute Youtube found at
http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.5898953/k.A4B3/Youtube_pop_up.htm?videoId=v-DoOCp5XA0
The Rev. George Tinker helps lead an April 27 “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.
So, Rev. Tinker calls us to repent and restore balance to the world; does he? A frightening call, for such balance calls for awareness and change and change does not come easily. Tinker’s are hard words, for the Church struggles with interpreted theology that calls for change and bucks the traditional, the historical, and what is perceived as the normal – Think of today’s struggle with accepting marginalized LBGTQ folk into the fold, into leadership, and into having ordain authority to speak of their God created life and theology to us. Hard work, because, as Tinker notes, the Church—the people have to “dig it up, spade the ground” and find what Church and community structure historically and currently conceal from us.
Repentance can only arise and become meaningful through awareness. The importance of Tinker’s thoughts is the challenge that the act of repentance is not a moment in time, but rather an action of ongoing awareness that is fluid. Like a river, as we float around the next bend we experience a new willow or a new rock telling us a story we did not know before. Tinker’s words are a call into unending repentance that comes with each new, but often old, story. It is a call to struggle with our atrocities and the grief we’ve caused to the marginalized, to people of color, to American Tribal people.
We are called to claim history such as Methodist Col. John Chivington’s ordered killing of elderly men, women, and children at Sand Creek in 1864. We are called to become aware and question how Methodist President Grant’s 1870 “Indian Peace Policy” supported the subjugation of American Tribal land and people by way of government-supported Christian Boarding Schools.
If we accept Tinker’s understanding of repentance, then We, the Church, must become conscious that we have a past that has been carefully “concealed” from us, that we must dig through layers of privilege to find “a lot of history to be owned,” and that with each new revelation, we must repent again. For, as Tinker reminds us, it is only through this repetitive act of repentance that we will participate in the restoration of balance. A balance that allows Us—the Church to one day, again, become reconciled with our marginalized sisters and brothers.
From Plow to Repentance
April 28, 2012
Below is a post I made yesterday on the Pacific Northwest United Methodist Church site. You can find the original post at http://www.pnwumc.org/gc2012/from-plow-to-repentance/. The sites moderator added the two images.
The Rev. James H. Wilbur . The image on the right shows a reed-mat covered tepee in a grassy field near Yakima, Washington. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b45839.
Having served on the Yakama Reservation for thirteen years, my interest is peaked with this evenings worship service. The service will lead the church into a consideration of its relationship with indigenous peoples. The Rev. Dr. George E. Tinker will give a word titled “No Apologies. Just Repent. Seriously.” An important word for the church today because apologies have become trite and outmoded because they lend themselves to statements without action. Apologies allow the apologizer to feel good about him or herself without entering into a relationship calling for change.
Listening to Dr. Tinker matters because the church has lived, accepted, and apologized for its past with American Indians without engaging its past in a manner that calls for a new mindset and a new structure within the church itself. Why might this be important?
In 1860, Rev. James H. Wilbur came to the Yakama Reservation as pastor and Indian agent. During his tenure, he ruled the landscape with a heavy hand modeling and claiming the standard of “The Plow and the Bible.” Wilbur’s goal was to civilize and Christianize the Yakama by having them work as white men and become redeemed by accepting Methodist Christianity. During his years as Indian agent, Wilbur removed children from their families, placed them in the Fort Simcoe agency and began to generationally remove Yakama culture—food, religion, dance, art, clothing, hair length, traditional names, and family and community structure—from their identity. Wilbur’s actions changed people’s lives, historically and presently.
Wilbur’s is a story few within the church know and even fewer talk about. Yet this is the church’s story. Until the story is known, accepted, put “out in the open,” all that can be done is to make apologies. Perhaps, this evening, with Rev. Tinker’s guidance, we will begin to move beyond apologies and enter into the hard work of action and change by taking our first steps toward repentance.
Wild Horses of the Yakama Nation
By Tamalyn Kralman
April 27, 2012
Last Saturday the JustLiving Farm and Yakama Mission hosted Spring Horse. Spring Horse brings amateur and professional photographers together to experience the wild horses of the Yakama Reservation and to enhance their gift by developing ongoing relationships. These photographers give us their unique perspective of the landscape.
Spring Horse 2013: April 20
By Roger Lynn
By Roger Lynn
By Doris Steeg
By Roger Lynn
By Tamalyn Kralman
By Roger Lynn
By Roger Lynn
© David B. Bell 2012
Manes and Memories
By Dorris Steeg
April 26, 2012
It might be the era of my childhood, or it might be the rural area I grew up in, or it may be growing up in the west, or it just may be normal in every U.S. school in every era…
I remember my elementary school playground when I look at this Spring Horse photo by Doris Steeg. Girls ran the playground from one end to the other, tossing their hair side to side, sometimes with one arm behind them—as if a tail, and whinnying. These were the wild horses, manes flashing and tails running, of Sulphur Springs playground. Romping around and laughing, they paid little to no attention to us boys. Us boys didn’t pay much attention to them either, but just enough, I guess, to store a memory away to surface again another day. I don’t remember when the girls quit living as wild horses, maybe about the time we boys began paying more attention to their manes. Yet, when I think about all these years of marriage…maybe the wild horse never really went away.
© David B. Bell 2012
Dialect: Life, Community, Landscape
April 24, 2012
Belinda and I will spend much of the day placing irrigation mainline and backfilling trench. That is all of the day except for a few hours this morning.
Not that long ago I read an essay on funerals. The writer compared funeral services he experienced back east to those of the west. He spoke to a belief of eastern funerals having a higher degree of ritual and communal comfort than western funerals. In part, he supported this line of thought saying the ritual of spreading ashes (a western ritual in his estimation) did not provide the community groundedness as, say, occurs when the congregational family comes together and provides food and comfort in the fellowship hall after a burial service. When I finished the essay, I could not help but to think the transplanted eastern writer missed the values and richness of culture—east or west.
Landscapes speak to individuals and communities with their own unique voice. The landscape of forested Arkansas simply speaks a different language than an arid western landscape lying east of the Cascade mountain range. More so, the dialect of the arid eastern rain-shadowed Washington Cascades is different from the twang of the arid eastern rain-shadowed California Sierras.
This morning the twang is apparent. Belinda and I have the afternoon to place irrigation line because there is no My Future after-school today. There is no after-school today because a community member died and school canceled. Instead of school today, the whole community is invited to the school gym for funeral services. For this community, in this landscape, the end of life is so important it is okay, even supported, to close school and businesses so everyone might gather, remember, and grieve together.
So, this afternoon, when Belinda and I gather to place pipe into the earth, there is a fair chance our groundedness is more than standing waist deep in the ground, but also that we have become entrenched in the deep care of our whole community.
© David B. Bell 2012
Youngster
By Roger Lynn
April 23, 2012
My Future
It is hard to imagine the type of day we had for the first Spring Horse event! Sunny and the slightest of breezes allowed for a day that began with sunrise, ended with sunset, and permitted a wonderful opportunity to experience the valley landscape and a few of its hosts. From driving to hiking folks lived with the valleys hosts up close and at a distance. And where horses were not seen, that land smiled in their place. The day became wonderful way to support My Future: extended-learning art program.
The photo “Youngster” is the first of a few photos to be posted this week!
© David B. Bell 2012
Spring Concert
April 10, 1012
My Future
My Future voices led our community into spring break. The Mount Adams Choir and Mount Adams Band came together to bestow a Spring Concert upon the community. The Mount Adams Choir, wholly made up of My Future youth, who only have two afternoons a week to practice, delivered two pieces, Grant Us Peace and Fireflies, which quieted the audience and brought forth a little community reflection.
Just under a year ago My Future Choir presented at the Mt. Adams School District late spring talent show. Students were on edge, one during their first practice on—the first time ever—stage had to leave in mid-song because the idea of standing on stage, in front of the community, was more than she could take. She came back and sang that evening, but what a difference a year makes! During the spring concert, she stood up straight, looked us, the audience, in the eye and sang as if she was in charge! The same held true for the Choir, they presented with a poise and confidence at the spring concert that wasn’t even in the auditorium at last year’s talent show.
And the audience responded!
(My Future provides Choir and Art opportunities to the youth of the Mount Adams School District thanks to your tax-deductible gift and grants. Please be generous!)
© David B. Bell 2012
First Glazed Clay, Ever!
March 24, 2012
My Future
First glazed clay, ever! Well, the first ever for My Future students. From raw clay, to bisque fire, and now to glaze, each stage spoke a little about the personality and spirit of the artist. I’d hate to say what that is or means, but I am willing to say, the gloss of glaze allows for reflection and a little self reflection, well, every once in a while, is good.
© David B. Bell 2012
Spring Horse
Photographer David Biddle
March 17, 2012
My Future
Yakama Mission
JustLiving Farm
SPRING HORSE—Yakama Reservation April 21, 2012
Spring Horse is a day for anyone who wants to experience the wild as few have the opportunity. From sunrise to sunset, you have the chance to spend a partial or full day with photographers who will help you frame a photo of wild beauty. BUT, you do not have to be a photographer to enjoy the day! If you are simply interested in experiencing the wild horses of the Yakama Reservation, join us! Bring your binoculars, spotting scopes, compact cameras, DSLR cameras, whatever fits your needs.
There is no fee for the day, but donations are encouraged. All donations go to MY FUTURE, the art-based after-school program of the Yakama Mission.
We are lucky to have five great photographers whose photo’s call for pause: David Biddle, Roger Lynn, Jeff Kent, Rebecca and Andy Lee.
Save the date of April 21 for Spring Horse and send an email to dave@justlivingfarm.org to receive further info as it becomes available and reserve a spot for the day!
Spring Horse is a collaborative opportunity provided by the Yakama Mission and JustLiving Farm—Good Spirit, Good Land, Good Food.
© David B. Bell 2012
Playing With Our Future
March 9, 2012
My Future
There is a misnomer that an after-school program like My Future only occurs after school. Sure, the program hours are mostly after school, but time put in by staff happens at all hours and that time is not only about after school.
For instance, the Small Schools Band Festival occurred this last week. An event where bands from small schools all come together for a day, create one large band, practice together all day, and at the end of the day perform for the community. Events like these not only come together with the help of many people, but they serve the students of multiple programs. This is why My Future is in partnership with the school district and other after school programs—together, much more can occur and many more can be served, than any one program can do on its own.
So, for an entire day, Belinda hung with the middle and high school band at the Grandview High School. Youth met peers from schools across the countryside, played together—a bit rough at first, ate lunch, played together—became really good!, ate supper, and then performed for the community. Not only did youth have the opportunity to meet and develop new friendships, they played unbelievable music together!
Sometimes it seems as if My Future is really in harmony with Our Future.
© David B. Bell 2012
Getting More from Fluid Absolutes
March 2, 2012
My Future
We expect a lot out of art. Sometimes we get more.
We call the time we get together during after-school hours an extended learning opportunity. However, we seldom if ever ask youth to do their homework, get a math book out, or read a book. Rather, we insist on engaging art. Now, anyone working with youth knows insisting only goes so far, but we do it just the same and eventually most youth engage for a moment. By engaging, we hope minds and imagination begin to wander the edges of structure, framework, and boxes and begin to experience the fluidity of what they think solid. The hope is that art will allow them to find math more pliable than absolute, science more provisional than solid, and the stability of a sentence’s structure only as steadfast as its ability to transport the reader while maintaining place.
There is nothing like sitting in front of a potter’s wheel, with a clump of clay, that will move ones reality of rigidity and structure to uncertainty and fluidity. Centering clay on a spinning wheel is no easy task. You can intellectually know how to center clay on a wheel, but when it comes to placing hand against clay on a spinning wheel, it becomes more about feeling than knowledge. One has to let go and allow absolutes to flow before clay spins in harmony with the wheel.
This week Mr. Kent, the high school Art Instructor, helped youth try their hands at the wheel for the first time. Soon it became apparent that when a student sat at the wheel and placed their hands to clay they became focused and engaged. In one sense there were no successes, no one came away from their first sitting at the wheel with a cup or bowl, but then, when absolutes begin to flow failures sometimes turn to successes. One youth had centered her clay, began shaping it, and soon she had something that was looking very cupish. Then in a split second, something went wrong and the clay twisted. She stopped the wheel, looked at her hollowed twisted clay, and said “Now that’s cool.” Stability and absolutes are not always what they are cracked up to be.
An hour later, while others were working clay, some on the wheel others by hand, I glanced over and watched as the “Now that’s cool” student took a book out of her bag, leaned back, and began reading. Sometimes when edges flow and absolutes become imagined, the stability of a turning page and a written word become essential, and we get more.
© David B. Bell 2012
Welcoming All Voices to the Loom
February 27, 2012
Yakama Mission
Something really cool happened the other day. The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) approved a Statement on the doctrine of discovery and its enduring impact on Indigenous Peoples (WCC Statement). Such a prophetic statement will help bring awareness of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery to Christians and people who concern themselves with issues of justice alike.
The Christian Doctrine of Discovery (DoD) has historically benefited the Christian Church (in all of its manifestations) and governments who developed and had their development out of colonization efforts (e.g., United States of America). One example of a denomination reaping benefits from the DoD, on the American landscape, is that of my ordination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Disciples). A brief outline of how the DoD benefited Disciples (first written in multiple posts on the Ridged Valley Reflections) is found in the January 1, 2012 post at Doctrine of Discovery. The story of Disciples in relationship with the DoD is important inasmuch as it is an example of why the DoD alarms the Christian Church in America. For what makes the DoD historically impactful is the Christian theology used to support the subjugation of non-Christian land and peoples; and because much of this theology forms the foundational identity all American Christian denominations—including that of Disciples, the apprehension is frightening.
While many church leaders will want to end theology and theological practices endorsing the subjugation of land and peoples, they will find grabbling with the DoD problematic. For when denominational cloth has a theology of subjugation intricately woven within, the removal of those threads of subjugation will cause fear and schism. Obtaining a denominational cloth free of subjugation theology means the existing cloth must be unwoven, threads of theological subjugation thrown away (but not forgotten), and a laborious time of theological reweaving take place. Such work will call church leaders to find their prophetic voice in a time of fear.
Both the unweaving and reweaving are fearful because it calls for the normal of our children to be different from our own. This fear also arises when the historical voice of privilege recognize it is not their voice reweaving the cloth. Rather, the voices of the subjugated are the ones with their hands on the loom deciding which threads to use for a new theological fabric identifying church/denomination. This does not mean the traditional voice is lost, but rather one among many at the loom and one that has chosen to give preference to the voice of those historically silenced.
Not all Christian churches will be able to stand such a theological process of questioning and because of it are likely to become generationally irrelevant. However, those who embrace theological questioning of their fabric and engage in opening themselves to the Creative and Creating voice of their landscapes are likely to become relevant in tomorrow’s sunrise.
© David B. Bell 2012
Clay Vision
Brandon's Monster
February 12, 2012
My Future
There are some things better left said by clay. I learned this from Mr. Kent, our high school Art Instructor. Clay dries as clay wants to dry depending on the environment you are working in. In other words, it dries when it dries. Probably a lesson for all of us, we control a lot less of Creation than we would like to think. A great lesson for youth…work the clay, have a vision on where you’re going and what you want, but be free and flexible with the outcome. You only have as much say concerning your creation as the world allows. Listening to the voice of clay, or the voice of air, or the voice of humidity is a lesson for all of us?
© David B. Bell 2012
Delight of Conversation
January 28, 2012
My Future
Just a little over a week ago the Mount Adams School District honored My Future, Belinda, and David for community service and support. This was a wonderful moment in the midst of a busy school district board meeting.
Just over a year ago, My Future began offering art and choir during after-school hours. The numbers of students were small and have slowly grown since then. My Future is not popping at the seams today but the slow growth has allowed for one important thing: conversation. From the beginning, My Future has been about everyone doing art. Adopting an idea from at least one cultures way of understanding the supper table where everyone sits down and eats together, so is the goal of My Future; everyone, youth and staff alike, participate in art and choir together—at the same.
Richness percolates up because sitting around a table for an hour or so, pulling a clay pot or decorating a mask, eventually leads to conversation. Sometimes conversation is only between the youth, but then like a bump on a log, staff has a unique opportunity to hear what is happening in the community’s life. Sometimes youth forget who is at the table and the conversation becomes very interesting. However, most of the time, they are very aware who is at the table and conversation is all about what might get a rise out of staff. It is engagement such as this that makes My Future enjoyable. For being honored by the school board, by adult peers is very satisfying, but being in the conversation with our community’s youth is an opportunity of delight
© David B. Bell 2012
How To Censor Voice
January 18, 2012
Yakama Mission
However you might take it, a banning of books or “The books… have been moved to the district storage facility because the classes have been suspended,” what is true is students in Arizona have lost the opportunity to formally, intentionally, and critically engage in conversation concerning ethnic studies.
A year ago a law went into effect as a result of Arizona Superintendent (of) Public Instruction John Huppenthal ruling that would ban “classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, encourage resentment toward a race or a class of people, are designed solely for students of a certain ethnicity and advocate for ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of students as individuals.” Last summer Huppenthal announced the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) “Mexican American studies program was illegal,” and that he found a number of texts used in the program were troubling. A few of the troubling books that have been removed from TUSD classrooms are Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Columbus gives voice to such writers as Leslie Marmon—”Ceremony,” Suzan Shown Harjo—”We Have No Reason to Celebrate,” and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday and his “The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee.”
When speaking on the Doctrine of Discovery I often mention we need a new way of understanding our history and make a statement something along the lines that “after all, history is written by those who win the war.” The statement is not new and most people give an affirmative shake of the head. We get it; we understand that it is those with power who have the opportunity to write history. What we miss is history is also being written by the subjugated, the oppressed, and the colonized. However, their voice does not carry far beyond themselves and their supporters because those whom the dominate structure gives power does allow it. Give it some thought, how many of us who are adults had the opportunity in grade school, high school, or college to become familiar with writers such as Paulo Freire, Leslie Marmon, Suzan Shown Harjo, or N. Scott Momaday? What we are watching in Arizona could easily become a case study of how dominate culture halts and removes those voices who dare propose another way of understanding history, life, and landscape.
*Censored News: Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/01/banning-of-books-signals-revolution-in.html?spref=fb
*Tucson Citizen.com: http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2012/01/17/tucson-district-denies-ban-of-mexican-american-books/
© David B. Bell 2012
Playing With Crayons Conceptualizing Art
January 16, 2012
My Future
I find it really cool when youth come up with something new, something I’ve been struggling to figure out, but haven’t. Lately, during My Future afternoons we’ve been using crayons as an art medium. We started gluing crayons onto poster-board and then used a blow-dryer to melt them. Afterward melting, one would take a pen or sharpie and draw in image to fit the crayoned board. Youth did this for awhile and then moved on to drawing first, then placed tape over the drawing, then melt crayons over the board and tape, and then remove tape for the final effect.
While the youth were working on finding new ways to use crayon’s I started playing with the idea of finding a way to attain texture that was both more concentrated and detailed. After a few days of working with crayons and being very unsuccessful, I gave up. Then a day or so later, I walked by the crayon/blow-drying area and there was Ms. K using the dryer to essentially paint with crayons. There it was…just what I was looking for! Working on a volcano, she was creating texture by building up layers of crayon! Her lava became flowing and bold giving to it a feel that it was rolling down the board after it was dry. Ms. K had taken the basic suggestions on how to use crayon and heat and conceptualized a new way of integrating it with her imagination. Cool Stuff!
The first video speaks to how Ms. S took our suggestions and began using tape to integrate crayon and drawing. The second video shows Ms. K using her crayon painting technique.
© David B. Bell 2012
Epiphany
January 8, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Yakama Mission
Epiphany. There are no other days like the days of epiphany. The Christian church holds today a bit more special than others—Jesus’ Baptism. There are many others. Hopefully each of us experiences epiphany, sooner or later, time and again.
One who speaks to epiphany well is Wendell Berry. Below is a poem I had the good fortune to recently be turned on to is Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front found at In Context.
The photo is a mosaic of the “Baptism of Christ,” created in the mid-12th century. Found at the Cappella Palatina di PalermoI in Palermo, Italy.
Is possible exists between a modern writer and an artist of the 12th century?
Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Of Exploding Pies and “Confetty”
January 03, 2012
My Future
The first day of My Future after the holidays brings a fair amount of energy. After a two-week break youth return to the art room with a story about something that went well or something that went really bad during their time off. 
Laughing almost always joined the really bad stories—there’s something about story of an exploding pumpkin pie (I still am not sure how that one happened!) or opening an oven door for a last minute check on the pheasant only to find the oven was never turned on!, that when told well grabs laughter from below furrowed eyebrows and throws it into the room. 
Yet, along with the laughter, the youth came back with a creative bent. Perhaps it was the laughter or the new story Auntie told that stretched the boundaries of reality or maybe it was a hike in the hills and the amazing sight of creek water trickling beneath ice, but whatever the case, this was a day to break a few boundaries and try something new.
Creations arise from imagination, crayons, paper, and a blow-dryer.
© David B. Bell 2011
Six Days Sometimes Equal Twelve
Photo by Jeff Kent (White Swan Art Instructor)
December 30, 2011
My Future
The sixth day of Christmas has me thinking about the sixth day before Christmas. After months of practicing the My Future choir presented their first formal performance to the good people of White Swan.
The Winter concert has become quite a concert in White Swan. It has become that because of the community’s good luck to have Mr. Chang as the school districts band instructor. In a few short years the White Swan band has not only grown but is playing at a competitive level when school bands come together. Due to his and the student’s hard work, the Winter and Spring concerts are not to be missed.
To have My Future invited to join a successful school event is quite an honor. So, when youth walked up before a packed audience in the High School gym there was a fair amount of queasiness mixed with strained smiles. Then the music began. Voices lifted and floated, mingling with air and space, finally whispering into ear. Time slowed, the voices of neighbors and friends embraced community, faces calmed, and ears rejoiced. Then, as music and voice faded, the audience responded. When no one was looking queasiness left the room, strain joined with joy, and celebrating smiles decorated singers and listeners alike.
Today is the sixth day of Christmas, but in a way, we have already enjoyed twelve days!
© David B. Bell 2011
Balancing Art and Life
December 24, 2011
My Future
Art soon leads to a conversation about balance. In preparing an image to burn into wood, drawings were drawn on paper and considered before redrawing onto wood. During this moment, we talked about balance. Sometimes a drawing seemed lopsided with a lot of graphite on the left and little on the right. Other times it was the heaviness of how deep and dark the burn was to be in one area and how light it would be in another.
Art conversation also led to conversations of balancing life. Those of you who are students, reading this on this eve of Christmas, remember balance. Some of you are clear that Christmas isn’t you gig, and you know, from my perspective, the world can live with it. But all of us, whether or not Christmas is part of our faith or our life, can get caught up in a season that seems to expect so much of us and has us expect so much of others. Should the energy seem overwhelming, should it seems as if the dark is powering out the light, should anger push out your laugh; remember you need only to add a little more pencil to the right of the drawing, look to the ridge and be amazed how the snow brings out ridges you have forgotten about since last winter, or stand to the side and watch your friends or your family and be astonished you are a part of them! Center your mind, balance your thoughts, enjoy the flow of life, enjoy the wind on your cheek, and be comfortable with who you are.
For everyone else reading this today…same thing!
December 28, 2011
JustLiving Farm
Dawn of the fourth day of Christmas brought cloud cover and warm weather to the valley. The warmth got me thinking about the second day of Christmas.
I had been putting off a job I find somewhat unpleasant for the last two months. By 9am Monday the temperature outside was 38 degrees and very warm compared to any day for the last two weeks, which made it seem now was as good as any time for the job.
Having laying hens wandering freely about the barn and pasture and providing us (and others) with fresh eggs is wonderful. What isn’t so wonderful is when they move beyond their productive egg laying years. Many people sell their hens off at this time for they do not want to engage in what naturally comes next—chicken dinner. We do not sell our hens for a couple of reasons. First, it seems unfair to raise a hen, have her provide years of eggs for my wellbeing, and then when it comes time to die, be carted off to place that has never been home. Now folks can say what they want concerning chicken brains and their not having a clue to what is going on, but that has never seemed the case around the farm. Hens have outsmarted more than one person on the farm over the years! It is only right, therefore, if we are to benefit from a chickens life and its death, if we are going to have a feed and water in return for eggs relationship, we all should be present at death. Second, butchering chickens means we get to have chicken dinner with the ease of mind that comes from knowing where the chicken lived, how it was treated, what it ate, and maybe most importantly, how it died. I imagine I don’t have to say more than this, all anyone needs to do is go online (or watch Food Inc.) to learn about the life and death of most every bird one might buy in their local grocery store.
However, there is a problem. I really, really don’t like killing. I know the importance of it, in fact more than once I have said all folk who eat meat should go through the killing process at least once. Maybe not literally kill an animal himself or herself, but be in the same place at the same time when the animal they are going to eat dies. It is important to know life as sacrament. It is important to know that no one—vegetarians and vegans included—on this earth is going to eat without causing death. This is why I, who would do most anything to get out of killing an animal, have come to value one who butchers well. And we have been lucky when it comes to our large animals. The Dutch gentleman who arrives at the farm and butchers our large animals has a way about him that the animals act as if they know him and are comfortable in his presence. One can’t ask for more than that. However, when it comes to chickens we are on our own and that is why I put the job off for two months.
So, on the second day of Christmas, with warm weather and blue sky, friends and family came together and spent the better part of the day with chickens. The day is never as bad as I imagine it. However, it always leaves me with an ache. An ache for life that is no more, an ache arising from the reverence that comes from sacramental knowledge of one giving its life for another, and an ache that wishes all life given for supper tables might be so revered. I think it is an ache to embrace, for at the end of the day, with friends and family sitting around the supper table, we say grace and know more fully the sacrament before us, and that, yes that, makes for a supper that tastes wonderful.
© David B. Bell 2011
Remembering Our Creative Center
December 19, 2011
My Future
I don’t know where I picked it up, but I’ve never let it go. Every person is a created being and as a creature of Creation, we are naturally creative. Yet somewhere along the way to adulthood, many of us lose our belief that I am creative. Instead, we relegate our art off to the “artist.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard teachers say everyone in kindergarten sings as if they are a singer and then, by the time these same children graduate high school, most every one of them do not believe themselves singers. Parents know the same truth. What parent has not experienced their child radically focused and engaged with paper and crayons creating a drawing. It is as if they reside in sacred space and nothing in the world matters other than expressing a deep gift welling up from a profound Godding space within. When they are done with their creation they run and hold up a piece of paper, smile, and say something like “Look! Look at what I made!” Yet many parents, knowing the reality of their creative child was once their own do not believe themselves a creative adult.
We need to encourage, reclaim, support, and advance creativity. We and our community are the better for a bit more singing, painting, guitar picking, dancing across the kitchen floor, clever humor, glass-blowing, and sculpture! My Future, an after-school program of the Yakama Christian Mission, believes art matters. As school ends each day, My Future begins. As students enter the Art (and Band) room art begins to bubble up and alongside, life. Soon, distinguishing between art and life becomes difficult as emotions, events, and spirit meld with paint, wood, and fire. And always…always…as life leaves the confines of body and moves artfully into the world, mystery fills the room. The experience for the observer is like, well, you remember the very first time you saw a rabbit pulled from a top hat or when you first seriously engaged with the idea of a virgin birth?, it’s like that—a feeling lying somewhere between wonderment and bewilderment.
We are creative artful people and each of us need, not want, but need to experience our creative center! Ten percent of your Christmas Offering supports the creative wellbeing of youth each afternoon at the Yakama Christian Mission.
(First e-published by the Northwest Regional Christian Church (Disciples of Christ))
© David B. Bell 2011
Working Toward Vocation OR Is It Playing?
December 9, 2011
If cold fog encased mornings aren’t good for anything else, they lend themselves to getting a little I keep putting this off writing done. If you are receiving this, it means you are subscribed to either JustLiving In This Landscape, the blog of the JustLiving Farm or Ridged Valley Reflections, the Journal of the Yakama Christian Mission. As of today, the tales, stories, reflections, joys, or just the every day complaining of the Mission and the Farm will be posted at Ridged Valley Reflections (http://wp.me/POlE). If you are subscribed to JustLiving In This Landscape and would like to continue receiving posts please go to http://wp.me/POlE and re-subscribe. If you are receiving Ridged Valley Reflections you don’t need to do a thing.
I imagine you might ask why put the two together? Well, there isn’t a lot of difference between the two. Organizations, whether Farm or Mission, are nothing more than a few buildings, an IRS document, and a few incorporation papers. In other words, they really are nothing. What make them something are the people who use their structures to make a difference in the world. Hopefully a difference that does not hurt creation, enhances joy and love, and embodies peace. In other words, it is people living their lives as they were created which make organizations meaningful. It is in that light the two blogs become one.
People can do nothing more than live life. At best, it is the life they were created to live. Therefore, while much of society has done its best to compartmentalize people lives into the likes of work and play, the reality is one simply lives their life, sometimes working and other times playing.
Having two blogs, one for the Farm and one for the Mission, in essence buys into a construct that life can be and should be compartmentalized—there is the mission, the farm and they have nothing to do with one another. It’s kind of like a pastor having a child and never talking about them because they want to separate their home life from their professional life…it might sound good, it might sound feasible, but vocation is lost in favor of being a professional. Combining the blogs is to not only say this is not true, but also impossible, for family life will always inform work life and work life will always inform family life. In time, this blog should make a fair case for this idea. In time, I expect, you will find the soil of the Farm informs the art of the Mission’s after-school program My Future. In similar fashion, you will find the Mission’s commitment to justice clearly informs the artful practices of the Farm.
Much more could be said, but instead, stay connected and see what comes.
© David B. Bell 2011
