By The Rev. Erin Kirby
“‘Anamnesis’ is the Greek word ‘to remember.’ It is the word Jesus used in the institution narrative in the Eucharist: ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Its spiritual meaning is that in the sacrament, what is being remembered becomes a present reality.” – the Rev. Ken Swanson from “The Way Forward,” in the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing class on Spirituality and Racism
“What is remembered becomes a present reality.” Those words resonate for me, as they name how shared life stories bring people together and build, if not friendship, at the very least understanding.
I am a white woman of mostly English heritage. In the years from 2015 to 2020 I was called to serve a church in Wisconsin that was established on the traditional lands of the Ojibwe in a town about 14 miles east of the Lac du Flambeau reservation. Preachers were raised out of the Lac du Flambeau community to give full voice to Indigenous faith and theology. The service was loved by most church members and brought visitors in from Lac du Flambeau, many of whom were unused to having their traditional music and worship practices honored in a Christian church.
Because of relationships built by our Indigenous parishioners, I was able to participate in a listening/healing circle via a grant that our young adults received from The Episcopal Church. The focus of the grant was primarily conceived by a young man from Lac du Flambeau who had been through the White Bison Mending Broken Hearts program. In that program he had found his own path to healing the wounds of his past and wanted to provide something similar to his relatives whose lives were also forever touched by the pain of Indigenous boarding schools.
We received the grant in 2017 and began a process of monthly healing/listening circles which lasted 18 months. Three of us first attended the same program that had spoken so deeply to our leader (as a white person, I was allowed to attend the program because of the grant). There, I learned to listen more deeply than I ever did in pastoral care classes. I learned the true value of just being a church presence that affirms the Native experience and owns, on behalf of the church, the damage Eurocentric Christianity inflicted by demanding that all other ways of being in relation with God were unacceptable.
Our small group began meeting with any who felt safe enough to come to a tribally reclaimed boarding- school-turned-Ojibwe-community-education center. Our grant writer and a traditional healer led the sessions. My role was to be a faithful witness and to own the damage done by the church. During each session I apologized on behalf of The Episcopal Church and reaffirmed our repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Through this and in other ways I am called to grow out of safe spaces into brave spaces with those who allow me to accompany them there. Most experiences in the Indigenous community were not focused on the pain of the past but involved being willing to serve as hands and feet in creating their future as part of a group called Nokomis (meaning “grandmother”) that was started by an Elder dedicated to educating as many people as possible about creation care in the Ojibwe tradition. Gradually, through the people I met through church and interfaith groups, I began to know the breadth of what was held by generations of shared experiences in that one Indigenous community.
Sometimes we aren’t called to change the world for others but instead to be faithful witnesses and accompany them in their journey to create that transformation themselves. As a people of faith, we cannot reclaim time, or lives lost. But we can practice anamnesis, a spiritual remembering that isn’t a clinical history of events but hearing the truth with our hearts as Jesus asked his followers to do in his own day.
We can hear and hold stories of pain, resilience, and faith when we are together. But first we will need to start by asking one another to leave defensiveness in the hall while we bring repentance into the room.
The Rev. Erin Kirby serves as a rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Marion, North Carolina.