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Last Night at the Mission

We ended the work week unloading the last of Kathy’s belongings, finishing up chores around the mission, and cooking up a big meal with all the food left in the kitchen. We invited the Vicar and his family to join us, and Walter, who was still with us as we set the table. It was a wonderful opportunity to offer hospitality to all of those who had been so hospitable to us that week. And it was also a commentary on the character of St. Christopher's Mission which felt like a reflection of the Diné culture: fishes and loaves as we know it. The more the merrier.

It was in fact a raucous dinner as we got into our highs and lows of the week and heard some of the kids' more unfiltered anecdotes. By this point everyone was very comfortable with one another and some of the story telling got a little out of hand. But it was clear that Walter and the Vicar’s kids loved the RYG energy and were not at all perturbed by the familiarity. They giggled uncontrollably as we heard about the van rides and offered their own highs and lows which felt like a huge verbal hug offered to all of us. Walter in particular was very entertained by our crew and told us how sad it would be to see us go. He lingered as we cleaned up dinner and prepared to play our evening game of “stickball”: our RYG baseball game made up of random pieces of trash we found around the mission including an old baseball and two-by-four.  

Walter asked if he could speak to us before he left and we gathered in the outdoor Chapel consisting of stumps and benches in a circle. Walter told us about his life. He told us about being sent to the residential school, twice, and running away both times. A huge distance. He told us it was not a religious school but a government run school that treated 6 year olds like soldiers, or inmates. Walter told us about leaving the reservation, joining the army, living where there was grass and everyone owned their little plot of land. Many cities he got to know and none of them felt like home. He was always pulled back to his people and to his desert. It was a hard life on the reservation, and he understood why people left. But he also understood why people came back. There was something “unwell” about the way people lived out there, in the world of green grass, congestion and convenience. Something without peace.

As Walter revealed some of the harder moments of his story he held onto the positive themes. The residential school was brutal, but he learned English. Leaving and traveling the country was lonely and unfamiliar but it gave him perspective and gratitude for his people. The Diné do not linger in the pain, he explained, but find humor and hope even in the darkest experiences. There is a lesson in everything if you look for it. This is in stark contrast to our culture today which sees much in binary terms: good versus bad, not good and bad. Maybe it is impossible to truly separate them. Good and bad often go hand in hand, in fact it can be tricky to decipher when one leaves off and the other begins.

At the end of Walter’s talk he asked if it would be ok if he sang a traditional song to us. It was haunting and melancholy, something out of a movie, and yet also more surreal than that. Some of us had tears streaming down our faces and more than a couple of kids said that they were holding their breath while he sang. We did not know what it was he was saying, and yet the power of his voice was beyond anything I can describe. Many of us commented afterwards that we wished we had recorded it, and yet from the moment he began to sing we were mesmerized beyond movement. When we asked Walter how he would translate it, he said that basically it is a reminder that throughout life, throughout all of our trials and tribulations, God goes before us, God comes after us, and God is with us, whether we know (or accept) it, or not. 

A couple of days later at the Grand Canyon at dusk, we watched a group of tourists come out on the Thunderbird lodge terrace, overlooking the Canyon, with a native person dressed in full garb including a large feather headdress. He began some sort of chanting as we walked by and some of us felt awkward about the performative, potentially exploitative nature of the show. It's fascinating how quickly humans develop something akin to loyalty or possessiveness. In our dusty desert location, sitting on stumps, with an Elder sharing his story because he wanted to, a commitment was founded. Hopefully the kids understand how lucky they are to have had that experience, and to feel a bond with the Diné people. A bond that overcomes judgment of others, those at the grand canyon for example, but reflects instead the positive of their own experiences. A rule of life, borrowed from the Diné I hope. We can’t always separate the good from the bad, but have to find the good to survive, and to remember that God is always with us.