5
Jul
2016
I Lost A Friend Today – Abruptly and Again
I lost a friend today – abruptly and again. This friend and I were a team for a few years when we worked together in ministry. Then in a moment of great need on my part, she abruptly stopped supporting me. It has been three years, and yet, my heart lurched when I heard of her passing.
I’ve found my mind drifting back to that painful ending since I heard the news. It is only with the distance of time that I’ve come to the realization that we both acted out of our convictions and faith. We arrived in two very different places yet we were, and are, both faithful to the Holy One.
This was the first time my faith perspective had cost me a friend – a friend for whom I cared deeply. I’ve come to understand this loss as another example of colonization – a colonization of the mind. This friend worked for healing in her community, was an advocate for proper diabetic care, shared her gift of music weekly in her congregation, worked for right relations and healing on a national level, and was a mother, grandmother, and beloved auntie. For me, she was a wise elder, a mentor, as well as a friend.
Yet. When it came to the issue of decolonizing the church she just couldn’t see how her aboriginal heritage had a place within the worship of the church. She was so progressive in many other ways yet was convinced that the faith heritage she had received dictated that aboriginal medicines and ways of praying had no place in Christian liturgy. At the time I thought that this perspective was bizarre and flawed. In the years that followed I’ve come to understand what I was asking her to put down. Hers was the faith that had been taught to her by her parents and her grandparents. I wasn’t just asking her to accept the medicines and prayers in our worship – in her view I was asking her to dishonour what she had been taught by her elders.
I know this contradiction between culture and church was painful for her. And in the end, I pray, that her faith was a comfort to her as she began her journey home to be with her ancestors. Welcome home dear friend – and thank you for the wisdom and beauty you shared with me.
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