13 The Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers

13 The Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers

The Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers

DECEMBER 4–31

Create in me a clean heart, O God, And put a new and right spirit within me.

Just as one goes down into the bowels of the earth to find gold, so the one who humbles himself with the gold of humility extracts all virtues.

KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION

Finally, the twelfth and final of the Lakota virtues is Woksape, “wisdom.” This virtue is described like this:

Only after one has learned about life and is able to act on all the other virtues, can one be considered wise. First we attain knowledge then we learn to apply that knowledge. Wisdom is acting on what you know. Our gift to life is wisdom as well as life’s gift to us. It is knowing the difference between truth and illusion. One can have knowledge without wisdom but one cannot have wisdom without knowledge. Wisdom is a reward from life for persevering through all the virtues.

So, we now have all twelve of the Lakota virtues: humility, perseverance, respect, honor, love, sacrifice, truth, compassion, bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom.

Over these past dozen “moons” I have come to appreciate these virtues a great deal and hope that more and more they will become a part of my daily living. I’m struck by how wonderful it is that wisdom concludes this list. Perhaps it is the culminating virtue, birthed in us as we give attention to all the others—a reward we receive, deepening our experience of continuing in the virtues. What a wonderful cycle of growth.

PREACHING IN ADVENT WAS THE HARDEST

The Advent season is here. The two watchwords for this season are “expectant waiting” and “preparation” . . . first to celebrate the coming of the Christ child and second to anticipate Christ’s glorious return. I’m not so sure about the “expectant waiting” part, but I think it will help me in “preparation” if I read and soak in a couple Advent sermons.

The first is by my closest friend in life William Luther Vaswig . . . Bill to me. For many years Bill pastored Lutheran churches and was an extraordinary preacher. Bill is gone now, but here are some words he penned in November/December of 2000:

We are now approaching Christmas through the Advent season. Of all the preaching I’ve done, preaching in Advent was the hardest. It is a jarring experience for me still, to go to church during Advent. While Advent hasn’t received a lot of attention . . . it should because during Advent there is the clearest clash between ‘secular Christmas warmth and cheer’ and the more sober and even austere Advent texts of the Sunday gospel readings of the church. The preacher is even tempted to lose the good news of Christ’s coming again in depression, frustration and even anger because Advent church music is not Christmas carols. People hear the Christmas carols being played at the mall. “On Jordan’s Banks the Baptist’s Cry” is not very Christmasy, but we sing it during Advent.

Bill’s words speak to my condition right now. For the past weeks I have been immersing myself in the horrendous events of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890. Earlier I offered the gist of that dark chapter in our history. So, my heart is not yet ready for the warmth of Christmas cheer. Leave it to a Lutheran pastor to remind me of the more somber preparation of which Advent speaks. Here are the lyrics of the hymn “On Jordan’s Banks the Baptist’s Cry” Bill mentioned.

On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry

announces that the Lord is nigh.

Awake and harken, for he brings

glad tidings of the King of Kings!

Then cleansed be every life from sin:

make straight the way for God within,

and let us all our hearts prepare

for Christ to come and enter there.

We hail you as our Savior, Lord,

our refuge and our great reward.

Without your grace we waste away

like flowers that wither and decay.

Stretch forth your hand, our health restore,

and make us rise to fall no more.

O let your face upon us shine

and fill the world with love divine.

All praise to you, eternal Son,

whose advent has our freedom won,

whom with the Father we adore,

and Holy Spirit, evermore.

LET ME WALK IN BEAUTY

Today I came upon a Lakota prayer from the Aktá Lakota Museum and Cultural Center. Chief Yellow Lark has translated the prayer into English.

The Great Spirit Prayer

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, whose breath gives life to all the world.

Hear me; I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.

Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes towards me.

Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.

Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others.

Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy, Myself.

Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.

So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.

STILL WAITING

In the spring of 2018 there was a great gathering of Lakota people, numbering in the thousands, at Fort Laramie National Historical Site in Wyoming. Other Native nations attended as representatives. They came to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which was violated when the Black Hills Gold Rush made this five-thousand-mile, oval-shaped mountain range suddenly valuable and Congress unilaterally annexed it in 1877. Earlier this year I focused on this horrific act of greed in my Lenten prayers during the Moon of the Sore Eyes. Now, in Advent, with the terrible Wounded Knee anniversary approaching, I reflect on how the Lakota Nation, having refused the financial compensation owed to them under a 1980 Supreme Court case ruling, is still waiting for the return of their tribal lands. The gathering in 2018 to honor the spirit of the 1868 treaty signers has become a way for the Lakota Nation to assert their self-determination.

Will they succeed? Is it possible for the Black Hills to be returned to the Lakota Nation? A 2012 United Nations investigation advocated exactly this. And in 2014 President Barack Obama visited the Standing Rock Reservation and before eighteen hundred Native Americans announced that nation-to-nation relationship should be considered the rule. He then proposed that Congress could return part of the Black Hills to the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or the Seven Fires Council, the technical name for the Lakota Nation.

How feasible is this? I do not know. These questions are far beyond my expertise to answer. However . . .

A HOPE AND A DREAM

The sun has begun to warm the day and so I decide on a long hike in the canyon. The winter sun feels good on my back. The hiking, however, is particularly slow because of the ice on the trail, especially in areas the sun’s rays cannot reach. I have my trekking spikes on so it is safe . . . but I am slower than normal. As I plod along my brain is fixated on Wounded Knee and the Lakotas longing for their beloved He Sapa. What, if anything, can be done? A simple phrase begins bubbling up into my mind: “A hope and a dream.” I hope for a day when Mato Tipila and Black Elk Peak and Mato Paha are once again reserved as sacred places for vision quests by the Lakota people. I dream of a day when reparations can occur that are just and right and good. I hope for a groundswell of sweeping calls for justice for the Lakota Nation. I dream of a day when Black Elk’s vision of “the whole hoop of the world living together like one being” becomes a reality.

I know, I know. It is only a hope. It is only a dream. Still . . . may justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

THE LAKOTAS WILL PREVAIL

What about the future of the Lakota people? Can they survive the violence against them, the attacks on their sovereignty, the efforts to dismantle their rituals, the abuse and misuse of their history, the Dakota Access Pipeline oil leaks, and so much more. I wish I knew. I do not.

Rather, I will defer to and take heart in the concluding analysis of Pekka Hämäläinen in his monumental work, Lakota America: “Lakotas will endure because they are Iktómi’s people, supple, accommodating, and absolutely certain of their essence even when becoming something new. There will be other governments, other regimes, and other epochs, but the Lakotas will prevail. They will always find a place in the world because they know how to be fully in it, adapting to its shape while remaking it, again and again, after their own image.”

THE MAGNIFICAT

Another Advent sermon I have been eager to read is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Titled “My Spirit Rejoices,” it centers on the Canticle of Mary found in Luke 1:46-55. We might think of Mary’s song as the very first Advent hymn, and, as Bonhoeffer notes, “it is also the most passionate, the wildest, and one might almost say the most revolutionary Advent hymn that has ever been sung.” It is, he adds, “a hard, strong, relentless hymn about the toppling of the thrones and the humiliation of the lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”

A heartwarming theme that arises from Bonhoeffer’s sermon is how deeply God loves all those on the margins of society. “God draws near to the lowly, loving the lost, the unnoticed, the unremarkable, the excluded, the powerless and the broken. What people say is lost, God says is found; what people say is ‘condemned,’ God says is ‘saved.’” Where people say No! God says Yes!”

Another theme is God’s utter freedom to do as God pleases. Note how Bonhoeffer brings in those possessing humility of spirit: “only the humble believe and rejoice that God is so gloriously free, performing miracles where humanity despairs and glorifying that which is lowly and of no account.”

A third theme (every sermon needs three points!) is the waiting, waiting, waiting of Mary. I consider how hard it is for me to experience “waiting expectantly” for the few weeks of Advent. For Mary it was nine months between the announcement by the angel that she was to be Mother of Messiah and the birth of the Christ child. Talk about “waiting expectantly”! I need to take my cue from Mary.

THAT SILENT NIGHT, THAT HOLY NIGHT

It’s Christmas Eve. I have always found this night special, sacred even. I especially remember one Christmas Eve service when I was seven or eight. What I remember so vividly was the pastoral care of Eugene and Jean Coffin . . . “a pair of Jeans,” as they liked to refer to themselves. They were my pastors.

Gathered worship was a studied experience in pastoral care and Eugene was especially gifted here. Of course, the focus of worship is always the triune Reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eugene had an unusual ability in drawing us in close as the family of God. Once, years later, he explained to me that what he was seeking to do as the leader of worship was to be “baptized into a sense of the meeting.” The phrase made immediate sense to me for I had experienced what he meant. The worship of God was a community experience, a family experience. Adoring. Worshiping. Praying. Listening. We were always urged to be aware of “the Presence in the midst.” Even us kids learned to center down, be still, and listen to Christ our present Teacher.

That Christmas Eve service so many years ago was simple enough with Jean playing the organ and leading us in well-known Christmas carols. Then Eugene sat in a large rocking chair and gathered us kids at his feet. He scooped up a little child and sat her on his lap. In such settings children are often nervous and fidgety. But not this night. A holy hush seemed to cover us all, children and adults alike. Eugene looked at us, each one individually, lovingly, quietly. Then he took out his Bible and read Luke’s rendition of the Christmas story.

Like I say, the elements of the service were quite ordinary. No dimming lights. No flickering candles. None of the things that are supposed to create just the right mood. It wasn’t the outward, physical things at all. It was the holy hush that fell upon us. It was “the Presence in the midst.” It was the breaking in of the Shekinah of God. Even today, some seventy-two years later, I vividly remember that silent night, that holy night.

UTTER, STARK HUMILITY

It’s Christmas Day . . . it is not hard to contemplate the subject of humility on this day. God, in Jesus bent down and became human like us . . . indeed, like one of the least of us. His mother was not yet married and her future husband had even contemplated refusing to marry her because of what seemed like an illegitimate pregnancy. Rejected at the inn they finally found a place for the birth of their baby, a “stable,” a place for animals not people. Here in this place the birth of the Christ child occurred with no midwife to help. Following his birth Mary and Joseph placed the newborn Jesus in the only spot available, an animal feeding trough.

Utter, stark humility is the only way to describe the birth of the Savior of the world. And yet, heaven responded with an exuberant choir of angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Lk 2:14 KJV). I bow under the humility and the majesty of it all.

PRAYERFULLY REFLECTING ON THE YEAR JUST PASSING

Now is a good time to begin prayerfully reflecting on the year just passing. So . . .

What have I learned this past year about humility?

In this past year have I grown personally in the grace of humility?

This, I think, is a question others will need to answer, not me.

Okay, but does this mean that I cannot know anything about my own progress in humility?

Oh, no, not at all. I can, for example, reflect on some simple questions.

Honestly considering these kinds of questions will help me know if the grace of humility is growing in me. And, if so, my response can be one of joyful thanksgiving to the God who is growing a grace in me that I could not do on my own.

What lessons can I take with me in the days ahead?

NEW YEAR’S EVE—I LEAVE BEHIND MY LITTLE PRAYER

As this year draws to a close, I leave behind my little prayer that the Lord would . . .

I feel that praying in this simple way for the entire year has produced good fruit in my soul.

Still, I think the Lord wants to teach me more about praying. In one sense, I feel less sure of myself here than ever before. I want to learn “the prayer of the heart.” But I sense I am not ready for such spiritual heights. No, I am sensing the Lord turning me back to the beginning, “Learn anew to love me . . . simply love me. Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

So I shall . . . as best I can.

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