The Christian family value I'm most intimately acquainted with is homophobia. For others, it's racism; others still, antisemitism. That mix as well as a skeptical nature results in odd and unorthodox relationships with my native white-folk cultural religious traditions.
Open to various insights, like any seeker product of the 1960s, I'm familiar with John G. Neihardt's 1932 Black Elk Speaks --- I mean, who hasn't read it? It's far more "American" than the Bible and perhaps as relevant. Allowing that Neihardt's own romantic vision no doubt colored his interpretation of the Oglala Lakota medicine man's (1863-1950) vision.
I like this Black Elk quote, which seems especially relevant during these contentious times: “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
What Neihardt doesn't mention in Black Elk Speaks --- the elephant in the room if you like --- is the fact that from the date of his baptism on St. Nicholas Day, 1904, until death, Black Elk was a practicing and apparently devout Roman Catholic. There's even a move among American bishops and others now to propel him toward sainthood.
We'll never know exactly how Black Elk fused his native vision with his adopted one --- no one bothered to ask. But it's interesting to note that one of America's spiritual icons managed it, feet planted in two worlds, united perhaps by that "oneness with the universe."
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