Your Mental Wealth

It’s sort of cold and dark and rainy here today. I am reminded of what that means to me.

A long time ago, seems like a lifetime ago really, I spent part of a summer on the Navajo (that’s our name for them, they call themselves the “Dine’ ”) reservation in the middle of the Northern Arizona desert. I went there, I thought, to help.   As those things often do, it ended up helping change my life in ways I could never imagine.

I had been teaching a series of high school classes about the Native American people. Teaching about their philosophy, culture and history before the Europeans came; their subsequent American experience, as well as what life was like for them in the modern world. One day, as I was talking about the abysmal conditions they live with, Jill, one of my students, said “You seem to care so much about all of this, why don’t you actually do something about it, rather than just talking about it?”

Kids do that, you know. They tend to call it as they see it. My first thought was “What a creep, who does she think she is challenging me”? “I am doing something about it, I am teaching you about it”. Then I realized she was right. Talking about it wasn’t really doing anything about it. So I began looking in to how I might take some of my time, talent, and energy and use it to directly help.

I discovered that the church I had been attending was part of a denomination that had, as a part of their outreach strategy, established “Missions” on some of the reservations. I talked my young wife into going with me, and bringing along our toddler son. The concept and project grew. Some of my students (Including Jill) volunteered to go. A church youth group in Colorado agreed to join us. Since my wife and I were both teachers, the idea was to do sort of a “Head Start” type program for a couple of weeks for the children of the village. In those days, many of the Native student’s first exposure to English was at age 5 or 6, on their first day of school. We were told that the people in the little village of Chilchinbeto would be very welcoming and appreciative of our efforts. So we set up a “summer School” staffed by all of us.

My wife, son and I arrived before any of the other “helpers”. As we drove in pulling our recently purchased camper into the little village, there was not a person in sight. As we began to set up camp a gentle rain that lasted several hours began to fall. Although it seemed like people were around, and I had the feeling that we were being observed, there was not a soul to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It seemed as if even the dogs wanted to pretend that we were not there.

The next morning Charlie Billy, a native man who was the head of the local mission came to greet us and show us where we could set up our ‘school’. People of the village were moving around, going from place to place doing their business as if we weren’t around. The Colorado youth group showed up by bus later than morning having met up with the students from our home town. We began making plans to start doing our thing the next morning.

The experience was a fantastic one for the children of the village and those of us who were there to provide the experience. We learned much more than we were able to teach. Though, materialistically, these people had very little, there was a spirit and a joy of life they possessed that was beyond anything I had ever experienced. It was simply contagious. Their sense of humor, their appreciation for the most simple of gifts, (our time and attention), their curiosity, their willingness to share and their unconditional acceptance of us made the experience beyond anything I could have imagined.

There are many precious scenes of the “classes” we taught, a couple of which I will mention. I’ll always remember Terri, one of my favorite students from back home, teaching a group of kids French (not English) as they were teaching her their language, and the laughter as they played with the languages.

Another was looking for our son one day and finding him standing in a circle behind a shed with half a dozen other kids his age (3) “sharing” their lollipops with each other, far away from the prying eyes of the moms who might have been appalled at the lack of sanitation in the sharing (there were dogs and desert sand involved in the ‘sharing’ too).

While we were there to give, we all talked each night about how much we were being given by the experience. We loved them and they loved us. I had never experienced such unconditional love. One night as I was walking alone in the desert, I heard myself say “I didn’t know it until now, but this is what I have been looking for, I want to stay and live here”. Then a voice, as clear and loud as if there was someone standing right beside me said “You don’t belong here”. “You now know what it is you are looking for, go find it in your own culture, with your own people”. Sufficiently chastened (and challenged) I realized that quest was to be my spiritual journey (that’s another story) for the rest of my life.

When it came time for us to leave, no one wanted us to go. Some of the village children hid our shoes so we couldn’t leave. The village put on a celebration/thanksgiving feast for us. There was much joy shared and many tears in our parting.

I remarked to one of the elders that I had become close to, how amazed I was that, given their experience of what had historically happened when the dominate culture (people like us) interacted with their people in our ill-advised attempts to “help”, they had been so open and welcoming. He simply said, “Oh, we knew the first day you were coming to bless us and it would be good”. I asked him how he knew that. He said,

“Remember the afternoon you arrived? We were watching you. That’s just what we do. We didn’t know what kind of experience this would be, until it started raining shortly after you arrived You see, rain, for us, is always a blessing. You brought it with you. We knew by its presence, that your coming was a gift from our creator.”

I always remember that on these rainy days.