Today I had the chance to give an interview with Kwantlen’s
student newspaper, “The Runner”. The inside front page offers a short
description on their name:
“The Runner recognizes that our work, both in and out of the office,
takes place on unceded Coast and Strait Salish territories, specifically the
shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Sto:lo and
Tsawwassen First Nations. Our name is inspired by the hun’qumi’num meaning of
Kwantlen, which is tireless hunters or tireless runners. Just as Kwantlen is adaptable
and changing so is The Runner.”
“Unceded” means that no formal treaty has been signed, no
agreement has been reached between the First and Second nations occupying the
same land. We ought to remain attentive to this; Christianity was deeply
implicated in colonial expansion which sometimes took an aggressive form. This
doesn’t mean we should feel unbearable shame and romanticize about North
America free from the infiltration of Christian or colonial influence. But we
do need to confess our implication in what was and still is a painful journey
for First Nation’s people across the continent.
I feel a bit like a “runner” right now myself (though I can’t
really claim to be “tireless”). This interview with the student newspaper is
another attempt at reaching out (“running” into) to this university community,
spreading awareness about the Multi-Faith Centre and my Christian chaplaincy
working out of it. These attempts have been rather scattered and seemingly
unrelated: coffees and lunches with staff and students, l meetings with
Multi-Faith centre staff, some regular conversations with particular students,
a bit of low-key programming (a weekly ‘tea-time’ at the Multi-Faith Centre
office). Right now I can’t really see a deep connection or continuity between
my efforts; they are rather scattered, which makes the ‘running around’
metaphor an appropriate one.
I acknowledge, though, that I am on unceded territory, both
in an official sense regarding our First Nation’s communities, but also in a
broader sense of trying to set up camp in a somewhat foreign territory. The
aggression of some colonialism is not to be recommended on this score. I am
tentatively trying to set up a temporary shelter, a spiritual oasis where I can
receive and welcome travelers with the hospitality of Jesus. “I am not of this
World,” Jesus said (John 8:23). In acknowledging our pilgrim journey through
our lives we realize that absolute comfort and homecoming is not for us to establish in the World, in separation from God. Instead, we
make our home in Christ himself. By doing so, we are invited to care for
people, the land, creation itself in a way that offers a place of rest and
sanctuary that is real, but not of the world; it is of God. It points to the
end of all creation making its home in God and God in it, resting in the divine
nature and freed from “the world”, freed from separation from God.
In that sense, as Christians we are runners, “running the
race, pressing on towards the goal” as Paul put it. I will keep ‘running’
around on this ‘unceded’ territory, as a stranger in the world, attempting to
offer hospitality and rest in Christ, who is not of the world either. I won’t
do it perfectly. Sometimes this ‘unceded territory’ will be a place where I
regretfully push my own agenda and try to set up a firm foundation on my own.
But by being attentive to the pilgrim life of Jesus we can be drawn back into a
journey that calls us to hospitality and peace against a world that all too
often interprets ‘unceded’ as ‘empty for domination’. In opposition to this, we
as Christ’s follows must reverse this interpretation, and instead offer ourselves
to God’s service.
yes to the journey, the setting up camp, the being an oasis, having a word to fitly speak
ReplyDelete