Sunday, June 8, 2014

We made it but had internet troubles last night so no post.  It was a long ride, we could have flown to Australia, but all were awesome travelers. We cheered to see our bus driver, Sam, again in Omaha.  Chipotle took our lunch orders.  La Quinta greeted us at the end of a weary drive.  
Will work on the pics on the 8 hour bus drive today!  
In the meantime, check out the article in the Hinsdale Magazine!

Grace Episcopal students bow low in Navajo Nation
By Theresa Steinmeyer
Twenty-five students from the Grace Episcopal Church Youth Missions Organization will travel to Bluff, Utah, on a journey of good works and spiritual transformation this month.
They’ve come together from Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, Western Springs, La Grange and Burr Ridge, and led by Grace Episcopal’s Rev. Chris Pierce, they’re excited to build a “hogan” (a sacred Navajo dwelling) for Catherine Plummer, wife of the first Navajo bishop at St. Christopher’s Mission at Navajo Nation’s Episcopal Church. Plummer currently lives in a condemned trailer, and the hogan will serve as her new home.
Traditionally, a hogan is an eight-sided structure built around a central fireplace with dirt floors and mud walls. To create more livable space for Plummer, Hinsdale-area architect Bruce George has drawn up a modernized design, which includes two additional rooms built onto one side of the building, raised floors and a steel roof.
But to Rev. Pierce, the trip is not so much about philanthropy as it is about fostering cultural acceptance and respect for the Navajo faith among students.
He brought the students on a similar trip last year to build a hogan in Crown Point, N.M. But on that trip, Rev. Pierce outsourced much of the planning. He worked with an organization through which he encountered what he referred to as a “radical, fundamentalist theology”—a theology that tried to impose a Eurocentric understanding of faith on the Navajo people in the process of helping them.
“Although we did great work last year, and I began to get an exposure to the Navajo people, I was very uncomfortable, because I was able to recognize that the relationship was predicated on saying ‘yes’ to what the white man had to say,” Rev. Pierce said. “This isn’t just a church taking a mission trip to go help poverty because Jesus said so.
“To take care of those that are in need is a mandate; it’s not a mission.
“Our very human existence calls us to take care of those who suffer.”
Building the hogan is only the beginning of the students’ purpose: they are traveling to Utah as empty-handed guests who want to understand and respect the Navajo spirituality without trying to impose their own religious biases upon it.
Rev. Pierce said that it’s not necessary for the Navajo people to speak about Jesus—the Navajo faith, grounded in the sacredness of the earth, is every bit as beautiful and true.
“Our respect for the earth has not anywhere reached the level and depth that they have,” he said. “They understand the winds and the spirit in the winds.
“They understand the gifts of the earth; they honor it.”
To ensure that this year’s trip would be rooted in open-mindedness, Rev. Pierce traveled to Navajo Nation himself last fall to build stronger relationships with the Navajo people and their faith. He explored the nation’s Episcopal diocese to learn about the people’s needs, but when he arrived at St. Christopher’s, he felt that the universe was speaking to him.
“The wind said, ‘This is where we’re to be,’” he said.
This year, instead of outsourcing the trip’s intensive logistical preparations, Rev. Pierce has taken them upon himself. He has organized meal plans, construction materials and the necessary trip leadership, which includes adults from Grace Episcopal Church, contractors, an electrician, plumber, medical assistance, two chefs and a cultural liaison.
The students have also been preparing. At the Grace Episcopal “Rock-a-thon” in April, they rocked in their chairs for 24 hours to fundraise for the trip. Since all but three went on the New Mexico trip last summer, most of the group has been meeting weekly for nearly two years to share meals and meditate.
Their journey will begin before dawn on June 7, when they’ll load their bus for the 21-hour trip. Contractors will set the foundation in advance to give it time to cure, and when the students arrive, they will assign and teach the students the necessary building skills. The students will work in four teams, and may be assigned daily tasks like framing, roofing, or kitchen and cleaning duties.
“Most of the time, a team gets into their project, they won’t give it up,” Rev. Pierce said.
Assuming poor weather conditions or inspections don’t slow them down, they’ll have put a roof on the hogan by the end of their five-day construction period.
Still, Rev. Pierce estimated that two to three days of work will remain when it is time for the students to return home—work that includes dry-walling, mudding, painting and possibly adding windows and doors. The Grace Episcopal group will be leaving the hogan unfinished, and although Rev. Pierce said that the help of an outside group will be necessary to complete it, he has no idea who will come. Nevertheless, he has “complete faith” that someone will hear the call to finish the job.
“The winds don’t just speak to me,” he said.
Rev. Pierce said he looks forward to taking the students for silent meditation in the mountains, to the place where the winds first “spoke” to him.
He’ll bring along a flautist, an Apache shaman and a medicine man, and the students will take part in a “smudging,” an American Indian blessing with smoke. Together, they’ll try to center themselves, and to be open to what Rev. Pierce believes will be a greater understanding of the universe than the students have ever known.
“The universe has spoken that this is where we’re to be,” Rev. Pierce said, “and to be not because they need us, but because we need them; because they’re going to show us how to bow, and we’re going to bow low.”

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