This reflection was shared at the Marin County Deanery meeting in the Diocese of California on Wednesday February 22, 2017 at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in San Rafael CA.
On my first morning at the Oceti Sakowin camp, I participated in the Lakota Sioux Water Ceremony, which was led primarily by the Lakota women. The ceremony began with a Lakota woman pouring river water out of a copper pitcher into the cupped hands of participants, who formed a circle around the sacred fire and drank the water from their left hand because of the left hand’s proximity to the heart. We then processed together down to Cannonball river, sharing the river water with campers whom we passed along the way and singing a simple chant about the life-giving elixir. When we arrived at the river, we prayerfully poured the river water back into its source along with a pinch of holy tobacco. I learned from the Sioux elders at Standing Rock that smoking tobacco is actually an abusive use of the sacred herb, which is to be used primarily as a tool for prayer by offering it into water or fire.
As we poured our prayers of water and tobacco into the river, the leader of the ceremony announced, “I have been doing this each morning for several months now, but this is the first time I have seen little creatures appear in the water to receive our offering.” That morning was the day before 523 clergy gathered from across the country to stand in solidarity with the water protectors. The Rev. John Floberg underscored the significance of the number 523 as it had been 523 years since the Roman Catholic Church issued the Doctrine of Discovery, a papal bull that gave Europeans permission to exploit the people and lands of the Americas. Each clergy person present seemed to represent a year of violence against indigenous peoples in the name of religion as well as a living symbol of penance for that violence, especially as we invited tribal elders to burn a copy of the Doctrine of Discovery near their sacred fire.
On the morning of the water ceremony, which happened to be All Souls day, the river seemed to respond to our prayerful ceremony by sending tiny minnows to swim around our tobacco offering, a natural phenomenon that the leader interpreted as the river’s affirmation of the people’s resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and their protection of the sacred land and water. As I witnessed this, I felt like we were all standing on sacred land, surrounded by holy water, which seemed to be affirming its own solidarity with us.
I have been reflecting on this experience in light of an online course that I’ve been teaching on pre-Reformation English Spirituality and Mysticism and particularly in light of a story told by the Father of English History and English Spirituality: the Venerable Bede. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede tells the story of the first British martyr: St. Alban, a Briton who was moved by the devotion of a priest to become a Christian during a period of Christian persecution and who felt called to die on the priest’s behalf so that the priest could continue his ministry. After confessing his belief in the “true and living God who created all things” and refusing to make a sacrifice to the pagan gods, Alban was sentenced to a severe beating and eventually a beheading. As he approached the site of his execution, Alban prayed to the Creator and, as a result of his prayers, a nearby river miraculously dried up. Upon witnessing this water miracle, Alban’s executioner was so moved and astonished that he refused to carry out the execution and he himself converted “from a persecutor to a companion.” Alban then crossed over the dry riverbed onto a flower-covered field which Bede describes as so naturally beautiful that it seemed “long fitted as a place to be hallowed.” Alban then prayed to the Creator once again and a fresh spring bubbled up at his feet. As the fresh spring water effervesced around Alban, another executioner took up the sword and beheaded both the initial executioner and Alban. However, the second executioner then suffered from a case of extreme retinal detachment. According to Bede, the second executioner’s eyes popped out of his head and fell to the ground alongside the head of the blessed martyr. The river then returned to its natural course, leaving behind what Bede calls “a witness of its ministry.”[1]
I have been drawn to this idea of “the river’s ministry” especially since water holds such immense spiritual significance in pre-Christian Celtic religion, in Celtic Christianity as well as in Bede’s corpus. In studying Bede’s account of St. Alban’s martyrdom in light of Bede’s other writings on spirituality and water, I have come to see that a major part of the river’s ministry is to convey the message that creation and the Creator are on the side of the victim and on the side of the vulnerable.
My experience at Standing Rock of the water creatures at the Cannonball River responding to our prayerful ceremony reminded me of this idea of “the river’s ministry” in one of the foundational stories of our Anglican tradition, of the ecclesia gentis Anglorum: the river conveying the message that the creation and the Creator are on the side of the victim and the vulnerable. In Bede’s story, the vulnerable victim is the first British martyr: St. Alban. In the story of Standing Rock, which is still unfolding before us today, the vulnerable victims are the Sioux people and the water protectors. As the Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said, Standing Rock is indeed the “Selma of our time.” I would agree and also argue that, in light of its connection to the story of St. Alban, the Standing Rock cause is deeply intertwined with our foundational identity as Anglicans, as spiritual descendants of St. Alban himself.
Just like in the story of St. Alban, the first persecutor decided to acknowledge the spiritual power of the victims and the water and thus changed from a persecutor to a companion by denying easement for the Pipeline. In early December, the Obama Administration announced that the US Army Corps would not grant easement for the pipeline to go under the Missouri river, until a more thorough environmental and cultural impact analysis was complete. Tragically, also like the story of St. Alban, another persecutor has taken up the sword.
We are called to pray for the safety of the water protectors and also for the protection of the water, which I experienced as holy as I witnessed the river affirm its own solidarity with the vulnerable people of Standing Rock. We are called to pray especially now that the Trump Administration has made the same mistake as Alban’s second executioner, whose eyes eventually popped out of his head. As spiritual descendants of the first British martyr, we are invited to heed the message conveyed by the river’s ministry and to stand in solidarity with the modern-day St. Albans of Standing Rock.
[1] Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 1.7, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 33. The Latin here is officii testimonium.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 