November 23, 2008
Gone to Croatan
by Rev. Colin Bossen
Call to Worship
The leaves have turned.
All is white with snow.
The harvest is in.
The darkest days are coming.
Now is the time for thanksgiving,
for gratitude for the earth's gifts,
for the warmth of summer,
the wetness of spring,
the cool of autumn,
and even the winds of winter.
Now we kindle our lights,
we draw together for warmth,
for strength,
and hope in the lessening days.
Let us gather today,
in gratitude.
Let us strengthen our lights.
Come, friends, let us worship together.
Chalice Lighting
We light this chalice
for the love within,
among,
and around us.
Reading from "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare
It may seem odd to have a reading from William Shakespeare's play "The Tempest" as part of our annual Thanksgiving celebration. The play has little to do with gratitude or the autumnal harvest, two themes we commonly associate with the national holiday. However, like the common myths and stories associated with Thanksgiving it does offer hints of the visions that some early English settlers had for North America.
The play itself is the story of how the rightful Duke of Milan, the sorcerer Prospero, regains his throne after being exiled to a Mediterranean island. With the help of the wind spirit Ariel, the ousted Duke Prospero uses his wizardly powers to drive a ship carrying the usurping Duke and his retinue to the island of Prospero's exile. Prospero's magic then enables him to manipulate the shipwrecked lords into giving him back his dukedom and letting him return to the Italian mainland.
The play is Shakespeare's last. It was written around 1610, shortly after the Virginia colonies of Jamestown and Roanoke were founded by English settlers. Many scholars believe that the verses Shakespeare's characters use to describe their dreams of creating a new society on Prospero's island are reflective of hopes that some held for the continent being colonized. Through Shakespeare we hear one voice offering up dreams for a new world.
In this scene, three of the usurping Duke's followers' dream of what they might do if they were able to build a new society on the island.
Gonzalo: Had I plantation of this isle, my lord--
Antonio: He'd sow't with nettle seed.
Sebastian: Or docks, or mallows.
Gonzalo: And were the King on't, what would I do?
Sebastian: 'Scape being drunk for want of wine.
Gonzalo: I' the commonwealth I would be contraries
Execute all things, for no kind of traffic
Would I admit, no name of magistrate.
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound, of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation--all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty--
Sebastian: Yet he would be King on't.
Antonio: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.
Gonzalo: All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have. But Nature should bring forth,
Of it own find, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
Sebastian: No marrying 'mong his subjects?
Antonio: None, man--all idle, whores and knaves.
Gonzalo: I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the Golden Age.
Sebastian: 'Save His Majesty!
Antonio: Love live Gonzalo!
Sermon: Part I
Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday. The stories that surround it form a part of the national myth and shape the country's identity. The holiday is both a happy time when families gather together and a time to remember the complex history of our nation. As a harvest holiday that contains within it a celebration of European colonialism, Thanksgiving offers us a unique opportunity to reflect upon our relationship with nature and consider alternatives to our currently unecologically sustainable lifestyles.
When European explorers and settlers came to the New World, they brought many of their customs with them. In 1621 the Pilgrims became the first group of English colonists to hold a harvest celebration on American soil. The first New England Thanksgiving was a cross-cultural event. The newly arrived English Pilgrims celebrated the bounty of their new home with the indigenous Wampanoag tribe by holding a communal feast. Today we think of this celebration as the first Thanksgiving.
The winter before the Pilgrims had had very little food to eat. They had arrived to New England after the growing season. They did not understand how best to farm and hunt in their new home. They were always hungry and cold. Nearly all of them became sick, and half of them died.
When spring came, two men named Squanto and Samoset appeared and made friends with the surviving Pilgrims. Later Samoset brought Massasoit to visit. Massasoit was chief of the Wampanoags. The Pilgrims and Massasoit made a treaty of peace. There was no fighting between them for the next fifty-five years.
The Wampanoags gave the Pilgrims corn, beans, and squash to plant that first spring. They showed them how to catch herring, eels, and lobsters and where to dig for clams.
In the fall the Pilgrims' crops had grown well. The Pilgrims wanted to celebrate their harvest. They invited the Wampanoags to join them.
Like the Pilgrims, the Wampanoags had a tradition of celebrating at harvesttime. They joined with the Pilgrims and together the two communities held a feast that lasted for three days.
The story of Thanksgiving does not end there. In fact, the story really has two endings, one for the Pilgrims and their descendants and the other for the Wampanoags and the other Native Americans from the New England region.
The Wampanoags and the Pilgrims were able to live in peace for fifty-five years. When both the original Pilgrims and Massasoit's generation had died off a war broke out between their descendants. That war was called King Philip's war. Philip was one of Massasoit's sons and the war came about because the colonialists wanted more and more land. As their demand for land increased it became more and more difficult for the Wampanoags to find places to live. The once plentiful fish and game decreased and Philip came to believe that the English would eventually destroy his people. In a last attempt to save the Wampanoags traditional way of life and lands Philip tried to unite all of Native peoples in New England to fight against the English. He failed. As a result the Wampanoags were decimated and sold into slavery.
The histories of the two peoples contain within them two paradigms. The paradigm of the Pilgrims treats natural resources as if they were limitless commodities that exist only to be consumed. The paradigm of the Wampanoags was more focused on living off the land. They understood themselves to be part of, not apart from, the natural world. The indigenous were certainly not always the best stewards of the land but they sought to maintain it. King Philip and his followers understood that if the fecundity of nature was not nurtured the indigenous peoples would soon become extinct.
A harvest holiday like Thanksgiving provides us with the opportunity to celebrate the earth's bounty. The holiday also is an occasion to reflect upon the archetypal paradigms found in the Thanksgiving story. Do we continue to view the world's resources as limitless? Or do we, mindful of its fragility and finitude, seek to maintain and sustain that we have?
Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude. It is a time to both to express gratitude for friends and family and be grateful for the life sustaining forces of the sun, the earth, water and air. This kind of gratitude demands that we are mindful of our dependence on the natural world and cognizant of our responsibility towards it.
For many Native Americans Thanksgiving is not a time of celebration. It reminds them of genocide rather than gratitude. It is a symbol of this country's continuing colonial legacy.
Every year Native Americans representing many different tribes gather on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. They come together to remember the damage done to them, to celebrate their survival and to re-envision an America in which most indigenous peoples are not second class citizens. Alcatraz Island has been chosen for this celebration because it is where the contemporary indigenous rights movement started in 1969.
On November 11, 1969 a group of Native Americans landed on Alcatraz Island and declared the island indigenous territory. Within a few days indigenous people from across the country had flocked to the island to participate in the occupation. They occupied the island for 19 months. The eventual outcome of the occupation was a cessation of the U.S. government's three pronged strategy of genocide. That strategy took children from indigenous families and raised them in government sponsored, sometimes religiously run, boarding schools. It encouraged working age Native Americans to move from their reservations to cities through the promise of jobs, education and health care. It was hoped that these two strategies would lead to a decline in the membership of tribes. This would lead to the third part of the strategy, the systematic termination of the tribes as legal entities.
During the occupation of Alcatraz the island and the buildings of the former prison were used by Native Americans to experiment with popular education and pan-indigenous cultural work. Several Native American artists--including the poet and actor John Trudell--got their start as popular artists during the occupation of Alcatraz.
The occupation has taken on a legendary status within some indigenous and progressive circles. For those who visited or lived Alcatraz on between 1969 and 1971 the experience was life shaping. Jack Forbes, a participant whose ancestry includes the Powhatan and Delaware tribes, offers some recollections of the content of the occupation's popular education seminars in his essay "The Dream of Injun Joe." His experiences have impacted his consciousness deeply.
He recounts one seminar session in which
a Cherokee scholar named Marshall...asked and then answered a rhetorical question: "How can we describe the character of the whites...especially the negative traits that cause so much trouble?...
It isn't just materialism nor is it just greed--what makes many white people so strange and so dangerous is a restless dissatisfaction which is constant...they are crazy for wealth...they go to any lengths...to get what they want.
In less than a century they have consumed most of the United States' oil and gas reserves... They have wiped our forests, destroyed grasslands, turned deserts into dust-bowls, and seriously diminished almost every other natural resource. What are their characteristics?...Those who are greedy for land, the old Creek Indians called them. They are always gobbling up land, taking it from Indians, Mexicans, or less successful white people.
They are always looking for gold, for uranium, for oil, for more profits, for new real estate deals, for better-paying jobs, for a new place to live.
It truth, it is not wealth that they want. It is always more wealth, or new wealth.
It is not so much having something, but getting something, which drives them. If they already have, they want to get more--always more."
Forbes's recollection of Marshall's diatribe seems to adequately capture the consumerist philosophy. The gospel of consumerism is that one never has enough, the next gadget is always needed for self-esteem and sufficiency, and that the consumption of products is what makes one complete.
John Trudell suggests in his writings that the problem is not with whites but rather with the relationship with nature that many people have. Fundamentally, the question, from Trudell's perspective, is whether or not we understand ourselves to be part of or apart from the natural world. Do we look upon nature as a resource to exploited or something that we are part of and dependent on? Trudell argues that we all originated from tribal peoples who understood themselves to be part of the natural world. As Trudell puts it,
we all come from tribes. Every person in this room comes from a tribe or is a descendant of a tribe...This memory carries the experience of our evolution...
We have a genetic memory. In our genetic memory, we all come from tribes...In our genetic memory, there was a time...when we understood the Earth, and called earth "Mother Earth." We all said, "Mother Earth" because we knew we came from the Earth...And because we had this...perception of reality we understood that life was about responsibility...We were responsible to the descendants and the ancestors. Therefore, we had to be responsible to ourselves...
In this passage I think Trudell is lifting up humanity's dependence upon the natural world. As an indigenous person he thinks that in general the tribal peoples have done a better job of living in harmony with the planet than the post-tribal ones. Most importantly he thinks that humanity's dependence on the natural world calls us to be responsible for the planet's health. If the planet does not stay healthy than we will not survive.
Trudell's hyperbole might be a little excessive--plenty of indigenous and tribal cultures have collapsed for ill-stewardship of the land. However, I think his central point is well taken. If we are to survive as a species we need to alter our relationship with the Earth. If we do not we will face a warming planet, shrinking water resources, ever increasing hunger and political and economic instability.
There is a useful dichotomy within Trudell's work. That dichotomy is found within Thanksgiving itself. Do we give thanks for the material goods in our lives? Or for nature's plenitude? Are we more concerned with consumption of new goods or subsistence on the resources that we already have?
Reading "The Downfall of Disease-Giver" by Carlos Cortez
Long ago before the god of the Blue Eyes
Was known by the Tribe,
The Tribe knew many Gods and Spirit:
Earth Spirit, Water Spirit, Sky Spirit, Corn Spirit,
Buffalo Spirit, Fish Spirit, Moon Princess, and many others
Who were believed in and loved by the Tribe.
Only one Spirit was feared, and that was Disease-Giver,
Who terrorized everyone.
Everyone but one crazy young man named Tall Coyote.
Tall Coyote laughed at Disease-Giver.
And said he did not believe in him.
So why should he be afraid of him?
The rest of the Tribe shook their heads sadly, for they knew
For such defiance, Disease-Giver would punish
Poor crazy Tall Coyote.
Sure enough, one day Disease-Giver accosted Tall Coyote
In from of all the Tribe, and said to him:
"Tall Coyote I have come to kill you!"
That crazy Tall Coyote, he just laughed and said:
"Disease-Giver, I don't believe in you; you cannot hurt me!"
Disease-Giver, he got red in the face and told him to die.
But Tall Coyote kept on laughing.
Again Disease-Giver told him to die;
But Tall Coyote kept on laughing.
After long hours Tall Coyote still laughed;
And Disease-Giver said: "Tall Coyote, please die!"
But Tall Coyote kept on laughing.
Disease-Giver said: "Please, Tall Coyote,
At least have a headache! You are making me lose face!"
But Tall Coyote laughed harder than ever.
It was then Disease-Giver decided
To leave the village of the Tribe
With his tail between his legs,
And was never seen again.
The mind can be a jail, but it can also be a mountain.
Ey-Yaa!
Sermon: Part II
Thanksgiving provides one of the early myths of our nation but it does not provide the only one. Not every European who landed on the North American shores sought to be a conqueror or despoil the wilderness. Some arrived with the desire to escape European systems of serfdom and oppression. While the majority treated the native peoples poorly there was a minority whom did not.
The Pilgrims are the most famous of the English settlers of North America. But they were not the first or only English colonists. The Virginia colony of Roanoke was founded before Plymouth, and within its history it provides a counter to story of the Pilgrims.
The colony of Roanoke is usually characterized as a failure. It was organized in 1587 but only three years later it was abandoned.
The Roanoke colony began as an effort to establish an English settlement in North America. The colony was to help the English counter-balance the might of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. It would allow England to lay claim to the vast natural resources of the continent.
The colonists were led by Captain John White. After establishing the colony White returned to England to solicit support for Roanoke. A combination of bad weather, poor financing and the threat of the Spanish Armada made it impossible for White to return until 1590. When he finally did return he could find no sign of the colonists. The buildings from colony were still intact and there was no indication of violence. The only clue to the fate of the colonists was the single word "Croatan" carved into a building post.
Exactly what happened to the missing colonists has always been somewhat of a mystery. There are those who argued that they starved to death, that they were wiped out by the Spanish or that they were killed by Native Americans. Others believe that the word "Croatan" is meant to signify that the colonists abandoned their colony to join one of the local indigenous tribes. One of the tribes did call themselves the Croatan. For generations after the dissolution of colony there were reports of blue and grey eyed members of local tribes. Some early 17th century accounts of the area also suggest that the colonists simply merged with the local tribes. There are reports of groups of English speaking natives who were familiar with, but not necessarily followers of, Christianity.
While we will probably never know for certain much evidence does suggest that this is what happened to the colonists. Some who believe this argue that the colonists made a conscious choice to reject the form of human society that White and the colonial project represented. They dropped out of European culture and joined another one. The rejected a paradigm that was trying to tame the Earth for one that was more subsistence based.
It is possible that when William Shakespeare was writing "The Tempest" he was aware of these stories. The dialogue of some of his characters is utopian. It rejects the feudal and mercantile paradigms of Shakespeare's world in favor of a less hierarchical and technologically oriented one. The characters appear to want to live in a greater harmony with the Earth and with each other.
In both the historical and the literary case the people who drop out are able to do so because they find themselves beyond the boundaries of European civilization. The characters from "The Tempest" are shipwrecked on a mysterious island not found on any map. The colonialists were in uncharted territory.
Dropping out in the fashion of the Roanoke colonists is no longer an option for people who wish to reject the gospel of consumerism. There are no uncharted territories left. The technological culture descended from the European has complete enough hegemony over the planet that it cannot be escaped simply by dropping out.
However, we can try to shift our consciousness from the consumer mentality to one in which we are simply grateful for the bounty of the earth. If we make that shift then we will try to be better stewards of the planet. Instead of just celebrating the Pilgrims we can use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to reflect upon our relationship with nature.
How might we live more sustainable lifestyles and in greater harmony with the planet? This is a question that some members of this community have already started to try to answer. The Board is investigating the creation of a community garden on our property. There is a covenant group exploring the Green Sanctuary program, which challenges congregations to convert their buildings into ecologically sustainable ones. Some of us make lifestyle choices based upon the impact that we have upon the environment, using less fossil fuels by walking, biking or taking public transit rather than driving. Some choose to eat less or no meat because they are conscious that eating lower on the food chain has less impact on the environment.
Such choices are in themselves insufficient. They are only first steps towards more sustainable lifestyles. However they provide starting places. And starting places are important. This year as you gather around the Thanksgiving table you can use it as a starting place for reflect upon your debt to this planet. How might you help shift the paradigm from an ecologically unsustainable one to one that is more sustainable? Asking that question may be the best way to express gratitude this Thanksgiving. If such a question is included within it the holiday might begin to be more than just a complicated national holiday. It might become an important opportunity for reflection and ultimately ecological action.
Would that it be so. Amen.
Benediction
We conclude our service of Thanksgiving by taking time to bless the gifts of grain, fruit and flowers that members of this community have brought to share.
These gifts represent both the earth's bounty
and the bounty of our community.
May the energy of the sun,
the strength of the earth,
the sustaining power of water,
the breath of life that is air
and the love of the hands
that brought these gifts to us
nurture our bodies and spirits
as we express gratitude for all that is our lives.
I invite you to leave this place
and join me downstairs.
As we go,
let us be grateful for what we have,
mindful for what we can give,
and desiring, through service,
to unite our hearts
and our hands.
Amen.