During worship a couple of Sundays ago we were invited into what was termed Imaginative Prayer, an opportunity to picture a place of peace where we are walking and having Jesus approach us.
I could see in my mind's eye several places of solitude we visited this Summer at either end of the country. In June we are on Haida Gwaii, the archipelago in the Pacific in the north of British Columbia. In August we were on Change Islands, adjacent to Fogo Island off the northeast of Newfoundland.
We were able to experience rambles on beaches and in the rainforest of Haida Gwaii with hardly another soul around but twice we encountered Haida men and we stopped for conversation. A young guy with his dog was friendly and open, seemingly content in his own skin. Another, probably in his fifties, was with his granddaughter on a beach known for agates. They lived on the mainland but Masset was his childhood home and he wanted her to know the pleasure of getting lost in the moment on a beach. He gave us a quick lesson in finding agates amidst the pebbles and then we moved on. We heard him call and there he was, with an agate for us.
I thought of both of them in our prayer exercise, not because I thought either of them was Jesus but because of the warmth and strength of the encounters.
This past week CBC Radio's The Current shared episodes from Haida Gwaii and I encourage you to listen to them. They were invitations into the culture of the Haida people who have a centuries old tradition of art and creativity that was almost wiped out by colonialism. In the past 60 years there has been a resurgence of that culture in what is described as the post-missionary era.
I felt heartsick when I heard this term while in the Haida Heritage Centre. The church representing Jesus Christ worked diligently to wipe out Haida language, gatherings such as the potlatch, and artistic expression. Totem poles were burned as satanic.
The irony is that there are tens of thousands of Haida artifacts in museums around the world and there is more historic Haida art in New York City than on Haida Gwaii. Efforts are being made to repatriate objects including the bones of ancestors.
So, I'm grateful for the "imaginative prayer" moment that brought these two men to mind again. I'm hoping that Jesus would be approvingly amused that I would see these two dark-haired, brown-skinned guys.
https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/haida-gwaii-protecting-land-and-culture
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