Re: "Call to the Nations" Speech (part two rebuttal) -- The Blind Leading the Blind Discussion Board

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>I am sorry, and I believe I speak for many of our
>people who are also deeply sorry for the pain
>experienced by those Native peoples who populated this
>continent long before it was "discovered" by those
>from another land. We acknowledge the hurt inflicted
>by the forces of political, military, and cultural
>exploitation. If words can give life to the
>possibilities of the future, then let us say the
>words. We are sorry. We ask for your forgiveness and
>pray that God's reconciling spirit will permit the
>healing to begin.
>

I see that he throws in that very popular word of reconcile here. What does he mean when he says reconcile? I imagine he means it very casually, as he does when he uses it to the restorationists.

>Sorrow and acknowledgement are not enough. I pledge
>the energy and resources of this church in an effort
>to replace words with actions and to embody the
>yearnings of our hearts with the labor of our hands.

One or two specific actions he has in mind would have been good here, unless her ally has no actions in mind.

>Even as I speak these words I know we will, at least
>in part, fail. How can we fully respond to the
>enormity of the task, not only with Native Americans,
>but with the other people of the world who are
>repressed and marginalized? But if you will grace us
>with patience and challenge us with love, we will try.

He needs to look in his own house here. What people had he been responsible for repressing and margianilizing? I personally am repressed at the official church message baord. My thoughts are not welcome there, and here he is speaking of helping those repressed and margianilized people of the world.

>And now is the time for us to look for points of
>convergence, to discover patterns of meaning that
>acknowledge the journey of all people called into this
>community which dares to take on the name of Jesus
>Christ. I earlier referred to the statement in our
>Doctrine and Covenants which says that Native peoples
>"shall blossom as the rose" and shall be a part of a
>time when "Zion shall flourish upon the hills, and
>rejoice upon the mountains." (Doctrine and Covenants
>49:5a-b) Perhaps it is well for us to ask in a new
>time what that imagery may mean and how we can embrace
>it as a framework for creating a future that fills in
>the empty spaces and replaces a legacy of violence
>with a vision of love.
>

Doesn't he realize the importance of these people? They are the ones that will build Zion, we will only help them.

>W. Paul Jones, a Catholic/Methodist theologian who has
>become a friendly critic of the RLDS tradition, has
>referred to our "Native American magnetism" in this
>way:
>There is a special relation between the RLDS movement
>and native Americans. While this has sometimes led to
>confusion of mission and ambiguity of attitude, there
>is something in this intriguing passion and compassion
>that is worth exploring. Christendom is in need of
>learning from native Americans a holism of lifestyle,
>a sacramental spirituality, an ecology for the earth,
>a sensitivity to the rhythm of living and dying, a
>respect for the wisdom of the elderly, and the
>profound oneness of spirit and body. That is, it
>needs help in exploring Zion.
>

He seems to respect this man's opinion in this instance, but has totally rejected his opinion regardin the uniqueness of the church. This is the same man that told them to stop trying to be like another Protestant denomination, yet that is exactly what Grant et al have been doing for years. Why is his opinion so important here and rejected when he gets to the meat of what this church is supposed to be?

>One of the advantages of a friendly voice from outside
>our own tradition is that it can sometimes permit us
>to see ourselves in ways we would otherwise miss. Not
>loaded down with the baggage that often accompanies
>our self-perception, they can call us to
>accountability for our own proclamation and heritage.

So then listen to this outside voice. He told you before not to become a Protestant church, yet you still try to make it that.

>I have always believed that the church is judged the
>most by our own words, not by those who would
>criticize from beyond our fellowship. Inherent in the
>things we proclaim is the recognition that we are
>rarely close to what we would call others to be. And
>so we continue to live in the judgment of our own
>humanness and shortcomings, called again and again to
>consciousness and integrity.
>

His words are definately being judged, not only by people, but they also will bring judgement from above, on him for speaking them.

>The wonderful people from the communications firm
>which has been trying to understand our tradition in
>order to help us in our transition to our new name,
>have read extensively in our literature and talked
>with hundreds and hundreds of our people. They have
>perceptively noticed that we have very little symbolic
>language in our church and very few physical symbols
>that are meaningful to us. That is perhaps why we
>cling so tenaciously to our church seal as a visual
>expression of who we are.
>

There used to be a lot of symbolic language, such as Zion and covenant. What has happened to that special language?

>But they made an observation which caught my attention
>and has played on my mind ever since. We have, they
>say, "inherent metaphors of movement, journey, and
>path." I was struck by how true that is. As one
>looks at our church's history, one quickly sees that
>we were a people driven from location to location,
>displaced by violence, misunderstanding, and fear. To
>be a people in search of a home, a place to settle and
>declare to be the land of promise, seems to be an
>inescapable image for us. We dreamed of a homeland, a
>place we called Zion. We even marked a spot where it
>would be built. But it eluded us, kept slipping from
>our grasp, as we tried to seize it and hold it tight.
>

Now it has not slipped away, it has been sold off. The birthright has been sold.

>Over the years the sense of displacement and journey
>has become less geographic than spiritual and
>intellectual. Now we seek identity and meaning, and
>we wind our way through conflict and malaise in search
>of a compelling mission. Still we move, a bit afraid
>to settle perhaps, worried that we will only be driven
>out again, not by a mob this time but by indifference
>and lack of vision.
>

Perhaps the people he is representing are afraid to settle, but if he would ask those he has thrown out, he would find few that are afraid to settle. We yearn for it, in the centerplace.

>I have thought about all of that during this
>conference as you have sought to tell your stories. I
>thought about how even though we have been
>participants, conscious or unconscious, in the loss of
>your cultural and spiritual homeland, so have we as a
>church experienced what it means to be uprooted and
>had the integrity of witness challenged and dispersed.
>
>

He himself is responsible for the latest uprooting, yet he is blind to that.

>Perhaps here, in the convergence of our journeys,
>there is a reason to talk about whether the dreams and
>visions of our ancestors can find a new resting place
>in a new era of human history. I have quoted from
>scriptural phrasings that, read in context with their
>times, may have troubling images for us, even as I
>have shared earlier. But my desire is to avoid
>entanglement with the life-denying literalism of
>ancient language and instead to discover the spirit
>that breathes hope into the words and recasts the
>vision for a new century and on a new frontier.
>

Please, Mr. McMurray, look at how your words are bringing judgement on your head. Embrace that ancient language and the history it is telling you. Read it for what it says it is, the actual history of these people, then perhaps you can avoid the catastophre sure to come as written in the same book of those that do not heed the words.

>And so on the spot marked for the city of Zion we have
>erected a Temple spiraling to the heavens, a gigantic
>teepee or wigwam some of you have called it. We no
>longer think of the "city" in the same way, but does
>the dream of a spiritual homeland still carry meaning
>for us? I daresay it does and if this nautilus shell
>in which we worship can be a symbol for that vision
>perhaps it can be a shared sacred space that brings us
>together in a song of peace, affirming the sadness of
>our remembering and the hopefulness of our dreaming.
>

In this section, he insults the very people he is trying to convince that he is sincere in reconciling with. He compares the temple to the teepee or wigwam. He has no idea what he is saying. There are very important elements of a teepee. The structure must have certain elements. It must have a smokehole and poles. These are not simply physical needs, but spiritual needs as well. I seriously doubt that any of them have ever called the temple a teepee or wigwam. It would be blasphemous to them.

>And so what, as a church, do we have to learn from
>Native Americans? There is so much to say, but as I
>have reflected I have been amazed at the confluence of
>ideas and symbols between the Restoration tradition
>and Native American spirituality. It is, of course,
>expressed in different terms, but the meanings bristle
>with possibility.
>

Why is he amazed? We have the same root, the Book of Mormon. If he truly believed that book, it would not be amazement at the similarities at all, but amazement at the hand of God in keeping those things alive within the spirituality of the Native American people. We have the advantage of the Book of Mormon. They are relying on oral traditions.

>Jimmy Durham, a Cherokee, writes these words:
>In Ani Yonwiyah, the language of my people, there is a
>word for land: Eloheh. The same word also means
>history, culture and religion. This is because we
>Cherokees cannot separate our place on earth from our
>lives on it, nor from our vision and our meaning as a
>people. From childhood we are taught that the animals
>and even the trees and plants that we share a place
>with are our brothers and sisters.
>

Does Grant miss how close this word is to the Hebrew word, Yahweh? Does he not see the connection, that is another evidence of the validity of the Book of Mormon?

>So when we speak of land, we are not speaking of
>property, territory or even a piece of ground upon
>which our houses sit and our crops are grown. We are
>speaking of something truly sacred.
>

Too bad Grant does not hold that there are sacred lands. One of those is the Temple Lot. I am so grateful that the Lord placed that piece of property in the hands of the temple Lot church. They have kept it from being desecrated by the building of a false temple.

TO BE CONTINUED

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