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\u201cAnd now may you accept life as a gift, and live life as a way of giving thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is hard to accept life as a gift when you live in fear.<\/p>\n
Fear comes from an imperfect understanding or experience of love, for perfect love casts out fear. God is all-encompassing Love, but exclusive claims on God\u2019s love have distorted God\u2019s image. Fear is the flip side of arrogance, which claims God\u2019s love at the expense of others.<\/p>\n
The narrowing of God\u2019s love, which happens when faith is misinterpreted and weaponized, has devastating personal, cultural, and global consequences.<\/p>\n
Internalizing a narrow cultural interpretation of Christianity once caused me to live in the isolation of anxiety.<\/p>\n
Perpetuating a weaponized Christianity has brought death and destruction to people and our planet.<\/p>\n
Yet the gentle instruction of this benediction, to accept life as a gift and live in thanksgiving, continually echoes in my heart. Over time, these words, and the model of my beloved college chaplain who spoke them, have transformed my vision and cultivated gratitude that has changed my life.<\/p>\n
And I believe that if our culture transformed our vision, a collective gratitude could change the world.<\/p>\n
To live in gratitude is to recognize the love poured into all of creation and reflect that love. It is to respect and nurture the delicate balance in which all<\/em> people, as well as all of nature, are made to bless one another. It is to cultivate a familial relationship with everything in creation.<\/p>\n Indigenous cultures throughout the world live out this gratitude as stewards of creation. Throughout the world, indigenous people are at the forefront of protecting biodiversity<\/a>, caring for the gifts of creation that they may last from generation to generation.<\/p>\n Hope for a dying world depends on broadening an exclusive understanding of Love to include all creation, and then living into that love. We cannot do this without listening to indigenous voices.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_section el_class=”post-quote”][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1566306295282{background-image: url(https:\/\/ravenfoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/0c0caab3a0b06f49d1f4e4069f7acecc-e1562958862845.jpg?id=19638) !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”none” el_class=”quote”]<\/p>\n Living out of gratitude transforms us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n Recognition of the power of gratitude in my own life gives me faith in its healing power for the world.<\/p>\n I went to college at a time in my faith journey when my heart was ripe for cultivating a deeper understanding of God\u2019s love than I had ever known. Anxious, confused, and longing for belonging, I had sought God across religious traditions and practices.<\/a> I had converted to Islam at 16 because it made more intellectual sense to me than the Christianity in which I was raised (and to which I would later return). Still, my understanding of God\u2019s love was narrow. I thought I had to get religion \u201cright\u201d in order to be \u201csaved,\u201d and continued to doubt and fear.<\/p>\n My college chaplain was uniquely equipped to broaden my understanding of God\u2019s love. A Christian raised among Muslims in the Middle East, she saw the beauty of both traditions, and her life reflected her conviction that God\u2019s love embraces all humanity.<\/p>\n Her model helped me to see life as a gift from the generous, all-<\/em>merciful Creator. Before I could articulate it, I started feeling loved and living out of the gratitude that came from that feeling.<\/p>\n Living out of gratitude is transformational. There is a sense of relief that comes from recognizing that what we most desire \u2013 love<\/em> \u2013 is already given<\/em>, without our need to strive or change or adhere to any difficult beliefs. There is a humility that reorients our self-understanding from autonomous to communal when we recognize that the foundation of all that we have \u2013 life itself \u2013 is a generous gift from the Creator shaped by all creation. And there is a deep joy in remembering the goodness we are given that stimulates our desire to harness that good for others.<\/p>\n When we live life as a way of giving thanks, we nurture and extend hope. We become kinder, more patient, and more determined to ensure that others can enjoy the blessings for which we are grateful.<\/p>\n I was blessed to have my view of God\u2019s love expanded to include all humanity. But God\u2019s love doesn\u2019t end with humanity. It encompasses all creation.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]And again, this is where indigenous wisdom can restore a broken world to the balance in which it was created, the balance we humans are meant to maintain as stewards.<\/p>\n It is a tragedy that the Christianity that found its way to the shores of what became known as North America was fueled by an exclusive understanding of God\u2019s favor that expressed itself in violent conquest and colonialism.<\/p>\n Those of us without tribal history can never fully comprehend the continuing devastation and loss from massacres, forced removal, stolen land, broken treaties, and forced shipping of children to boarding schools in order to \u201ckill the Indian but save the man.\u201d<\/a> All while being systematically dehumanized and told that salvation could only come through a God who required them to forsake their history and identity.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_single_image image=”20282″ img_size=”400×650″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]So indigenous people who affirm Jesus do so because they recognize in his message their own truth. That truth is God’s abundant love for<\/em> all creation reflected in<\/em> all creation. Not only is this truth not limited to Christianity, but it has been obscured by the weaponization of Christianity.<\/p>\n In Shalom and the Community of Creation<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Cherokee author Randy Woodley explains that for all the many tribes of North America that he surveyed, he found commonly held principles lived out in worship and gratitude to the one Creator who speaks to each and all of us. Collectively, he refers to these principles as \u201cThe Harmony Way,\u201d and acknowledges their parallel to the way of \u201cshalom\u201d depicted in the Hebrew Bible and incarnate in Jesus.<\/p>\n \u201cShalom\u201d is commonly understood as \u201cpeace,\u201d but its meaning greatly overflows the limits of that word. It is the balance in which each part of creation is intended to bless the whole, reflected in the blessing of Abraham to be<\/em> a blessing to all nations. To live into and maintain shalom is to care for the marginalized, treat the land with respect and tenderness, live in responsibility to all living things, and trust in the abundance of the Creator\u2019s manifold generosity.<\/p>\n A necessary component of \u201cshalom,\u201d therefore, is being open to its expression across language and culture. The many indigenous practices to which Woodley refers in the expression \u201cThe Harmony Way\u201d are simply shalom \u2013 the will of the Creator \u2013 lived out by other peoples in other lands.<\/p>\n The fact that indigenous people from around the world have cultivated values similar to those laid out in the Hebrew Bible \u2013 with practices for caring for the land as well as one-another \u2013 shows us that God doesn\u2019t dictate rules to one people to be spread across the world through imperialism. Rather, God creates all humanity with the desire and inclination toward harmony and gives us the tools to nurture it. This is part of our intrinsic interconnection, a connection that can lead to conflict<\/a> but also to communion with one-another and with all creation.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_section][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1566393555121{background-color: #f6ebdf !important;}” el_class=”optin”][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”none”][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n Wisdom lived out among indigenous peoples around the world illuminate truths Jesus, and the prophets before him, taught and lived that have been obscured by a violent understanding of Christianity. Here are three truths that can heal broken humanity and a broken planet.<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_single_image image=”20284″ img_size=”large”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]Hope overflows as I let indigenous wisdom open me to a new life in gratitude and responsibility for all creation. It is a lifelong journey of listening and learning.<\/p>\n The fear that once narrowed my understanding of God\u2019s love was born out of a cultural misinterpretation of Christianity. On a national and international scale, setting limits on God\u2019s love has torn the world apart through dehumanization, war, and exploitation.<\/p>\n Hope lies in reorienting ourselves away from exclusive salvation and rivalrous notions of God toward a sense of familial connection with creation. This is shalom, the Harmony Way, the intention of the One who fashioned us out of the same stuff as the stars and soil: Love. <\/em>To live out our vocation as embodiments of Love, we must listen to all voices, particularly those of indigenous people within our own lands[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]whose history encompasses not only marginalization, but a model of stewardship. In humble gratitude we may find our true place by listening to those who once were told that they did not belong.<\/p>\n My beloved chaplain’s words return to me again. Her signature benediction, which first oriented me toward acknowledging that I was loved and living in gratitude, continues with the reminder that shalom, the Harmony Way, is God\u2019s universal desire. Where I first saw her words reaching across all humanity, I now see them encompassing the whole of creation.<\/p>\n \u201cGo in peace, for God\u2019s holy name goes with us all.<\/em>\u201d[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”20261″ alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lindsey Paris-Lopez shares what she has learned from indigenous wisdom, and how living a life of gratitude fosters stewardship, hope, and positive change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":20286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4328,4294],"tags":[974,73,1064,3769,4356,4357,4358],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiscovering the Gift of Gratitude<\/strong><\/h3>\n
God Beyond Empire: Shalom, The Harmony Way, and God’s Many Covenants<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Three Healing Truths from an Indigenous Lens<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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From Exclusive Salvation to Universal Restoration<\/strong><\/h3>\n