In this Episode
This episode we are joined by indigenous theologians and practioners, Randy and Edith Woodley, authors of the new book Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Lead Us to Harmony and Wellbeing. Randy and Edith are the founders of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice, based in Oregon, which focused on developing, implementing and teaching sustainable and regenerative earth practices. They are also senior consultants with our Freedom Road Consulting group. We invited Randy and Edith to join us on Freedom Road today because our world is writhing right now. We need medicine.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thread or Insta Lisa @lisasharper or to Freedom Road @freedomroad.us. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to freedomroad.substack.com. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
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Transcript
Lisa Sharon Harper: [00:00:00] Coming to you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. I’m Lisa Sharon Harper, president of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap. Welcome to the Freedom Road podcast. Each episode, we speak with national and global faith leaders, advocates, artists, and activists to have the kinds of conversations we normally have on the front lines.
It’s just that this time we have microphones in our faces and you are listening in. In this episode, we are joined by Indigenous theologians and practitioners, Randy and Edith Woodley, authors of the new book Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Lead Us to Harmony and Well Being. Randy and Edith are the founders of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice, based in Oregon, which [00:01:00] focuses on developing, implementing, and teaching sustainable and regenerative earth practices.
I’ve invited Randy and Edith to join us on Freedom Road today because our world is writhing right now and we need medicine and I happen to also partner with them as senior consultants with Freedom Road Consulting Group and I know that they’ve got the medicine to give. So we would love to hear your thoughts today: tweet to me at Lisa S Harper or freedom road at freedom road us, or of course, you know, Instagram, all the places, Facebook, and keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks, because people really are watching and sharing and the audience is growing. And we really appreciate that. So let’s dive in.
Okay, so Randy and Edith, we always start here on Freedom Road, as if, well, no, let me go back. We always start here on Freedom Road with our faith stories. And we want to know kind [00:02:00] of who is it we’re talking to and the best way we think is like to understand how do people come to faith. So I would love to hear from both of you.
Like, what is your faith story?
Edith Woodley: Go ahead. You can go first.
Randy Woodley: Oh, thank you. Hello, Lisa.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hello, Randy.
Randy Woodley: Nice to see you again.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Nice to see you too, buddy.
Randy Woodley: Yeah, um, well, I grew up in a, uh, pretty Christian home, I guess, are Baptist Christians still? Is that still out there?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, that’s to be expected. Some Baptists are, other Baptists are a little suspected, and I’m saying that with a tongue in cheek laughter.
Yes. That’s right.
Randy Woodley: I grew up in a my folks were Baptists, um, up in Michigan. Um, but I lived in a pocket of the south and up in the southeastern Michigan because my parents went up with the great migration and the automobile factories and. And so everybody around us were Southerners, all the [00:03:00] poor white folks, the poor Indians, poor black folks, everybody went up north to work and get paid by Ford, GM, or Chrysler, right?
So that brought us up there and, uh, I always say I grew up in a pocket of the deep South in Southeastern Michigan.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s deep. That’s actually pretty deep. I mean, I never think when I think of South, I do not think of Michigan. You mentioned something that I wonder if you could just break down a little bit for us: the great migration? We normally think of that in terms of the African American community and you are not. So what do you, what do you mean by that? How did they get up there in the great migration?
Randy Woodley: Well, the great migration happens after World War Two. And my dad gets out of the Navy, right. And you know, people just begin to, because the South is not a place where you can really get ahead.
And so everybody with some kind of ambition here’s about, you know, their relative and, you know who’s up there making, you know, however much [00:04:00] an hour it was for Ford motor company and GM. And what happens is that… and the place I grew up in is called Willow Run, Michigan, which is, sort of the underarm, if you will, of Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is the Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti is kind of the underarm of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
So so I grew up, you know,
Lisa Sharon Harper: the underarm of the underarm of the underarm. You were stinky.
Randy Woodley: Yeah, it was a rough place to grow up. And so what happens is that, uh, in Willow Run, all the bomber plants that they were making in World War II, they turned into automobile factories. And so all of a sudden they needed people to work and people from the South said, Hey, you know, good pay, unions, et cetera.
Let’s go up and start working for, you know, the big three automakers.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So this was like a white Great Migration that happened from the South to the North. And I guess
Randy Woodley: It all happened together.
Lisa Sharon Harper: People too. Well, yeah. Well, that’s true because [00:05:00] black folk, our Great Migration lasted from some would say like 1880s all the way to 1970.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. Okay. So this is the last part of that or the latter parts of that. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so everybody around us were Southerners, you know, and I went to a church camp, uh, first time ever. And it was just a week long. We just found out incidentally that, uh, something really crazy.
We found out that a lot of white people send their kids to camp for a whole summer. That’s a thing, right? I didn’t know it was a thing. And I was like, man, I wish I knew that when my kids were growing up.
Lisa Sharon Harper: See y’all.
Randy Woodley: But I was just we didn’t have that. We just had this like church camp and I was 10 years old.
And I went and, uh, Um, my, both my parents are mixed blood Cherokees and I had that identity as a kid [00:06:00] and my camp counselor was a full blood Ojibwe guy named Cream Puff.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God. Cream Puff? Cream Puff, yeah. Was that, was that a nickname or his mama named him?
Randy Woodley: I’m sure it was his nickname.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Randy Woodley: But, you know, he took a little interest in me cause I, you know, I’ve like, you know, all the people, my parents are around, they’re all like a mixed blood Cherokees and mixed blood Choctaws and Creeks and Shawnees.
And, and they’re all talking about, you know, like their grandparents all, you know, spoke the language and all this kind of stuff and, you know, I kind of decided early on at like a very young age, like, that’s not the kind of Indian I want to be. I want to actually be a real Indian, whatever that meant.
I didn’t know, you know, but, but, uh, and so this guy, I think I was enamored with his being a full blood. And so whatever happened, that’s, uh, you know, he took me and he showed me how to dig sassafras [00:07:00] root and how to canoe a paddle and all that there. And then at the end, you know, gave an invitation to find Jesus.
And so I did.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Randy Woodley: And, uh, so that was 10 years old.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s deep. Wait, wait, wait, let me just. for a second, because your life, or at least, you know, a good portion of a good 20 years of your life was really spent trying to figure out how do I be Indian and indigenous? Sorry, how do I be indigenous and Christian?
And here you have This camp counselor who is full blood, who teaches you the Indian ways and leads you to Jesus. So, I mean, that’s just like, that’s so sovereign. It’s like a sovereign foundation that was laid in your foundations from the very beginning.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. And what are the chances that, you know, the one Indian in camp would be my camp counselor.
Right. So, that, it’s kind of, and then by, you know, I think 12, 13 years old, I was kind of [00:08:00] off again and, you know, live the crazy life that, um, a lot of young people did my age in that, that era. And, uh,
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s like the 70s or the 60s. Yeah, that
Randy Woodley: was the late 60s, 70s. And then, my real commitment came in, October 23rd, 1975.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Randy Woodley: That’s when I turned to Jesus and said, you know, if you can deliver me off these drugs and straighten my life out, then I’ll follow you the rest of my life and I won’t ever look back. And, that’s exactly what happened. And it, and it really happened almost instantaneously for me, very miraculously.
And so. Yeah. So that’s how, what began my trek and then, yeah, then, then it was an identity thing. Like, you know, everybody was telling me like, don’t worry about that, you know, cut your hair and, uh, you know, don’t worry, you know, take down those, you know, posters of the American Indian movement folks and stuff in your room and, you know, just, [00:09:00] you know, kind of be like us. Right?
And, they said all that was of the flesh, right? So I had, you know, a number of years trying to figure that out. And I, I think I sort of figured that out by about, uh, let’s see when I come back from Alaska and I was in 1987 is when I finally kind of got it all straight and figured it out. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Well, we’ll definitely have to get back to Alaska, but I want to hear also from Edith. Edith, what is your faith story? I’m not sure. I’m not sure I’ve heard it. And if I have, maybe it was a little too long ago and you need to refresh my memory.
Edith Woodley: Yeah. So, I grew up on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
I was born and raised on the reservation in Wyoming. And, so there’s a lot in my story where I really get to my faith story, but it really started [00:10:00] when I was a preteen. And, um, I was the youngest of nine kids, but the oldest of a bunch of nieces and nephews.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh interesting.
Edith Woodley: So there was a Southern Baptist church.
My mom was Southern Baptist. My grandfather, her father, who’s a full blood Choctaw man. He was a pastor in Southeast Oklahoma. With, uh, them out there in Southeast Oklahoma, he started a bunch of Southern Baptist churches down there and so on and so forth. And so
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Edith Woodley: Yeah. Southern Baptist. Yeah.
Randy Woodley: We baptist. We’re down in there.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You really are like, wow, this isn’t y’all. Let me just say to listeners, this is a miracle that they’re sitting here where they are sitting and also doing the work they’re doing with these foundations. That’s really deep. So keep going.
Edith Woodley: So I, um, So, my grandfather [00:11:00] was able to put, have, um, the Southern Baptist Association put a church on the reservation, a Southern Baptist Church, because there’s all different churches on there, but not a Southern Baptist Church.
I don’t know why, but one was put there. Um, so, That happened, and so my mom started sending me, because I was the oldest of all my nieces and nephews, church. And, um, so one Sunday, um, you know, there was always a bunch of kids and a couple of older people in the church, and that was about it. And there was these two Southern Baptist missionaries that were pastoring there and they were not very nice missionaries. They were not very nice.
Edith Woodley: Well, they maybe they were I don’t know. The only thing I remember about them is that he was always when he’d get up there and preach he’d [00:12:00] always be hitting the pulpit, you know just and yeah, and at the top of his You know voice and everything and just like, you, if you don’t do this, you’re going to go to hell.
And, you know, it was like hellfire and brimstone type preaching
Lisa Sharon Harper: Literally. Yeah.
Edith Woodley: And so it was just like, whatever, you know, but one Sunday, for some reason, this one Sunday really hit me and it scared me. He was talking about tithing and he said, you need to give your pennies, your nickels, pennies, and dimes to God.
If you don’t give that to God and he went on and on, then he, you know, you’re going to go to hell and all this kind of stuff. You got to tithe. And I’m like, I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t have any money though. And so I, at that point, Oh, I’m going to go to hell if I don’t give [00:13:00] money to God. Oh, no, you know, and so that started me on this way of how God looked at me.
I had to…he was this ferocious, vicious God, you know, he preached out of the New Testament. I mean, the Old Testament all the time.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right.
Edith Woodley: And, you know, all these things. And so it was like, Oh my God. And so that made me start my. view of who I was in God, that I wasn’t worthy enough.
And so between all the other things that I went through as a kid growing up on the reservation and different things like that.
I ended up going to… I went to college, graduated from college, went to college, and then Randy and I, years later, Randy and I met. And [00:14:00] I had different experiences with different churches and different things. I just didn’t feel comfortable. And I always felt like I was not worthy of myself of God, and everything.
And I was very… I didn’t like who I was as a native person. And so, time went on, Randy and I got married, and, then several months after we got married, I got pregnant with our daughter Skye, and then, that whole time was going on and on, and I went to give birth to her, I thought to myself, I love this baby so much, I haven’t even met her, but I know this child, I love her.
How does Randy love her?
You know, he feels her moving around and stuff. But how does you know, my mind is thinking about stuff like that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, you are a deep thinker.
Edith Woodley: I was like, okay. Um, and then after she was born, the doctor says, here, dad plops her in his arms. And says, you’re going to cut the cord and gives him the scissors and, you know, he’s like, you know, cut the cord and wraps them all up and plops, plops her back in his arms again.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Edith Woodley: And, but then when I saw the look, there’s this instant look, this instant love that happened between the two of them. And it was just like, she knew him and he knew her. And that was just a bond, a love.
Lisa Sharon Harper: My God.
It hit me. Oh, that’s how God loves me. And so that started my faith journey of really seeking [00:16:00] who I am in God.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I wonder. Oh, I’m sorry. Go on.
Edith Woodley: No, that was December 28th, 1990 when that happened. Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: December 28th, 1990. I love how you can name the date. Both of you, both of you had like the date in hand. I can too. For me, it was August 21st, 1983. And it was about 930 at night. You know what I mean? I’m like at a Sunday evening camp church meeting and all the things.
So, I mean, I wonder, I mean, with these faith stories and you’re, you really do have sovereign foundations, both of you, sovereign meaning, you know, God planted these faith foundations in your life and they reverberate throughout your life. I really do believe that. Like they, they are the. The genesis, the beginning of a theme that kind of rolls its way through your life every which way.
And for both of you, it has to do with identity. It has to [00:17:00] do with being free from shame, and it has to do with what does it look like to follow Jesus, be loved fully by God in who you really are, as opposed to having to put on a mask or having to hide who you are. That’s what I hear in your stories.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. We’re not very good at that. So we’re
Lisa Sharon Harper: Not good at what?
Randy Woodley: Putting on mask and trying to be something else.
Lisa Sharon Harper: No, you are not. You are not. You were literally, I’m serious. Like you were literally two of the most genuine people that I know in the entire world. Like, and it’s like, you, you let everybody into this.
This is how I’m thinking about this right now. And so deal with it.
Edith Woodley: I kind of learned that from him.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yep. Yep. No, but you know, and you do it in a different way. You’re much softer way. But it’s still there. I’ll never forget. Um, for listeners, [00:18:00] we met, um, Randy and Edith and I met back in 20, 2003.
So it’s been 21 years now. And, we… and Randy and Edith were the guides. on the very first pilgrimage that I ever took, ever. And they were guiding us through the Cherokee Trail of Tears. And we started the time like around the table, everybody going around and seeing what they hoped to get out of this experience.
And when it came to Edith, she said, and I’ll never forget this because it was so honest, and it was probably one of the most honest things that I had heard in that organization space because they were not, it didn’t tend to be very forthcoming with like what they thought and felt. But what she said was, you know, white people tend to go through experiences and think that they understand them, but they actually only understand them here, and you pointed to your head.
And like, they might know the dates [00:19:00] of when things happened. They might know that certain things happened, but they don’t necessarily get it here. You know, I’m patting my heart. They don’t get it here. And what you said was my hope is that going on this journey together would actually move your understanding from knowing here in your head to heart understanding.
And you went from the head to the heart with your hand. I will never forget that. And it was, it was point blank. It was honest. It was raw. And it was exactly what happened on that journey.
Randy Woodley: Oh yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. It strikes me today. That happened for me too.
Edith Woodley: That happened for me too. It did.
Randy Woodley:And me. Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: All of us were changed by that thing.
Yeah. Like, yeah.
Randy Woodley: See what happens when we open our hearts.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I know. So now you’ve written this book, Journey to El Ahé. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny that it’s, you know, I love even, even the fact that we did that pilgrimage way back and we were [00:20:00] all adults at the time, that has actually become a sovereign foundation in all of our lives.
Now all of us are, we are doing journeys and pilgrimages and, and, and you’ve written a book that is, it takes us the reader on a journey, um, to Elohe. So can you explain that to us? First of all, why journey and what do you mean by Eloheh? What is Eloheh?
Randy Woodley: So, yeah, Elohe is a Cherokee word, and it’s comparable to the big picture idea of Shalom and scriptures and Mbutu and Zulu and, you know, Hojon in Navajo and it’s, you know, basically found over, all over the world.
It’s original instructions, how to live in harmony with the whole community of creation, including people.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Randy Woodley: So, and, and we all, you know, have this, uh, thing that, uh, that we want deep inside, which is for everything to be at peace and for, you know, the, there to be no hunger and we want, you know, not a utopia, but the actual [00:21:00] way we’re supposed to live.
And that’s basically what Eloheh means. And the reason it’s called journey, because well for years, People have been telling us for probably, I don’t know, 20 years, hey, you guys should write your story. It’s really interesting, you know, and we were like, I don’t know, nobody wants to hear our story, you know, it’s what’s, and finally, um, uh, the publishers at, uh, Broadleaf, our publisher, our editor kept saying, you know, you guys should do this.
And, and then all of a sudden we got the idea, well, what if we took those values that we try to live by, talk about those values on our journey and how we’ve tried to experientially incorporate those. It’s a very, uh, experiential book. It talks about our lives and what we’ve gone through and, and, and how those values are played out.
And we give examples of different things throughout and yeah, so it’s a lot of narrative, right? It’s a lot of story. The introduction in the first two chapters are just a bit [00:22:00] different. But the introduction basically says: Happiness is not the same thing as well being. This is not a book about happiness.
It’s not a book, you know, ten ways to make yourself happy. Well being is a different thing. Well being is like, are we all happy together? Right? Are we all helping each other? There’s this relationship. Within the whole community of creation and for everyone to be for us to be really happy or to have our well being, we have to consider everything our whole community the the earth, you know, etc.
And so the first thing we do in the introduction is kind of lay out the difference between happiness and well being. And then the next two chapters really, we kind of lay out like why people think that the way we do, and sort of how the West has failed, in trying to bring about this happiness and things.
And then we get into telling our stories. And then, in the middle of our stories, we start [00:23:00] talking about those, when we, Edith tells her story. I tell my story and then we kind of meet up and, and then we start talking about those values and how we’ve incorporated them into our lives. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are our stories. You’re listening to the Freedom Road Podcast where we bring you stories from the front lines of the struggle for justice
Okay, let’s come back in and I actually want to pick up this really it was such a perfect segue, Because I want to pick up at What are the values, the values of Eloheh that you, like in the very beginning, I mean, just even the subtitle of the book, right? Like the book’s name, is Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Lead Us to Harmony and Wellbeing.
And so, um, can you tell us about some of these values?
Randy Woodley: Yeah, [00:24:00] well, maybe you want to talk about one or two and then I’ll talk about one or two. How’s that?
Edith Woodley: Yeah. Well the values that we I guess one of my favorite values is is about hospitality.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You are so good at that. Oh my gosh. You guys. Wait. First of all, I’ve been to their house and I have, I have partaken from the bounty of the hospitality. And like they get a real spread and it’s all hand, like homemade handmade, nothing in a jar.
And if it’s in a jar, they put it in the jar because they do their own preserves and everything. And they grow their own seeds and everything. I mean, it’s like, wow. So now go keep going.
Randy Woodley: So this hospitality is under the big heading of generosity.
Edith Woodley: And so, um, I guess why it’s one of my favorites, because it’s something [00:25:00] that both of us Randy growing up in a southern family and me just growing up in a native family. It’s just, that’s what we do. You know, it’s you don’t think about it. It’s just a part of your life. And I grew up with people in and out of our house constantly. And if it wasn’t any of my siblings brothers and sisters, friends or whatever, then it was different people coming through needing a place to stay or come during lunchtime or dinnertime.
And my dad would tell my mom, Hey, put some more, add more water to the soup, you know? And so it was just something that my parents did, you know, as a kid, it was, it was always fun to have people in the house because we could do whatever we wanted to do, because. [00:26:00] My parents were busy being hospitable, right?
They’re being generous. And they shared whatever they had. They shared their home. They shared their food. And, their… whatever conversations they had with each other, they shared all that together.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I just say it’s really striking to consider that when you also consider that they were not rich?
Randy Woodley: No, they weren’t
Lisa Sharon Harper: They were not rich. Not they were Would you, I not rich. Would you even say, say they were even middle class? I mean, you know what I mean? Like,
Edith Woodley: No, no. I grew up a very poor family. Very poor family. Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So they were giving out of impoverishment and yet really, so what was, what’s the belief system behind that?
Because a lot of people give, you know, a little bit, you know, maybe. And they hold on because they don’t think they’re going to get more. So what’s the belief system behind the ability to give freely, even in the midst of being impoverished? [00:27:00]
Edith Woodley: I think as a native people, a long time ago, they, you know, they had visitors come through the camps and stuff they would, you know, they would offer what they had.
They’d offer, you know, they’d come through if they’re hungry, they fed them. Even if they just had a little bit of meat or whatever, or stew or whatever they had, they fed them because, I don’t know. That’s, you know, I, me, I feel like that’s what the creator showed them. That they… that the creator instilled in our native peoples that this is a part of who you are.
This is how I made you. And this is what you do. Cause this is what I do. And I, you know, and it’s just like they may not even heard of God or Jesus or anything like that, but they knew that there was a greater being above them, around [00:28:00] them, and so they were just generous people. I mean, they may be in warring tribes and different things like that, but they were still in, within their own tribes, they, within their own bands and stuff, they were generous people.
It was just in their nature to be generous.
Randy Woodley: And practicing generosity, right? So there, I talk about it in the book, a number of ways that, that native people actually practice generosity, you know, and, you know, I was taught that when a visitor comes or an elder comes and you feed them, you extend their life one more day.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Wow.
So my God, I mean, it’s like so deep. Yeah. I mean, when you feed somebody, you’re not just saying here has him, here’s a meal. You’re saying I’m helping you to live another day.
Edith Woodley: Right.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s so many examples of that, of how that works. And you know, there’s the… in Cherokee, the green corn [00:29:00] ceremony where you go through and you if you have two of anything, you go find someone who doesn’t have one of what you have and you give it away, right?
That’s you clean your house out that way every year. Down in the Pueblos, they have, there used to, there used to be about a hundred, over a hundred Pueblos. Now there’s only like, I think there’s, 30 or something. I’m sorry. There, there were 150 something at one time, and they all have feast days. And in those feast days, and they still have them, they open up their homes, everybody in the whole village opens their homes.
They serve the best food to strangers. People come from all over cause they know it’s feast day and they’re going to get fed the greatest food that the Pueblos can make, which is incredible food, by the way. And then those feast days, they just, you come in and they sit down and hi, how are you? You know, who are you?
And yeah, come wait for a seat at the table and then come on and eat and we’ll serve you. And it goes on all day long. So there’s lots of… and different other tribes too, we [00:30:00] talk about, but there’s, there’s lots of ways that, uh, we were supposed to practice generosity to make it part of our lifestyle. Right. And hospitality is part of that.
Edith Woodley: It’s just, it’s like I said, it was just. It’s just who we are, that’s who the Creator made us to be.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, that’s, I mean, of course, that, there’s another side to that, right, is that, that openness and generosity is, is what met, originally, the European settlers. And that was not who they were.
And it was not what their values practiced. And so, it ended up…
Randy Woodley: Yeah, they thought it was childlike and immature of us to do things like that. That the kindness that our people showed them was, um, naivety and childlike, and that we just didn’t know any better.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay, so we’ll come back to that. I do want to come back because I think I want to come back a little bit later and talk about what’s the values conflict with [00:31:00] Western worldview, but we’re not quite there.
I want to hear you know, one or two more of these values that are critical for you.
Randy Woodley: How about, um, uh, how about authenticity?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Randy Woodley: It’s the whole idea that you know, we in part of that also, there’s two, I’m going to talk about two values at the same time. That’s okay with you. Humor and authenticity.
Let’s talk about humor for a second. Okay.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And let me just say, that is a real value in native country. And it’s one that I get tripped up on all the time because folks are joking left, right, and center. And I’m just like, I’m not sure I’m getting the joke, but I’m going to laugh. Cause everybody else,
Randy Woodley: Yeah, I mean, if anybody hangs around native people, they know one thing we’d like to laugh, right?
And, and we like to do self deprecating humor and we’d like to tease each other. You know, I mean, there’s the Crow tribe has a clan that’s just called the [00:32:00] teasing clan. Yeah, that’s their job is to go around and tease people. And because the reason why, because it reminds us that we’re just human beings.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, yeah,
Randy Woodley: And being a human being is the most spiritual thing we can actually be. It’s just who we were made to be in our our authentic vulnerable selves, you know, and I know you’ve heard me say that you know to me Creator God is the most vulnerable being who exists and when we act out of our authenticity and vulnerability We’re you know, that’s when we’re most spiritual.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You said so many things just in the last one minute that are like quotable.
So I wonder literally if you could just go back and kind of break down a few, three of them for me. One is that God is the most vulnerable being there is. And then the second one is, well, I should know, let’s [00:33:00] just start with that one. Let’s just start with that one.
Randy Woodley: Okay.
Lisa Sharon Harper: God is the most vulnerable being.
Randy Woodley: So, like, first of all, what do you want God to be? All right. What’s your best hope? And, and, and then you see Jesus. And his life from the very beginning, even before the beginning, if you go to Philippians 2 all the way to the very end was all spent in vulnerability. And that’s a major, you know, piece of the pie when we talk about what love is.
It’s being vulnerable. And Jesus showed that in everything from his coming to earth, from his birth, where the circumstances of his birth, who was invited in, you know, the, the women, the magi, the foreigners, you know, et cetera, et cetera, the lowest of society, who did he hang out with and expose himself.
Yeah, and the animals. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, [00:34:00] all the way his whole life is spent being vulnerable and then, you know, what does he do? He dies a very vulnerable death. And so if Jesus is supposed to show us who God is, then God has to be the most vulnerable being who exists.
Lisa Sharon Harper: And you said, love is vulnerable.
And John said, God is love.
Randy Woodley: Exactly.
Lisa Sharon Harper: God is. Wow. That’s so deep. That’s so deep. Okay. So you said another thing that was also kind of striking there, and I’m losing it.
Randy Woodley: I said that, you know, being vulnerable is being human. That’s the most.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s it. That’s it. No, no, no. You said being human is the most spiritual thing that you can do.
That is. Okay. Yeah. So break that down. What do you mean by that?
Randy Woodley: Yeah, so, if you know, we try to be spiritual people by maybe doing discipline and you know, did I pray enough, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. All those ceremonies, by the way, are great, but they’re supposed to remind us that we’re spiritual beings, they don’t make us spiritual.
What makes us spiritual [00:35:00] We get up and we start walking or marching, and then we put ourselves on the line for other people, for the earth, for whatever, you know,
Lisa Sharon Harper: You making me dance over here. I’m like, my feet are literally pounding the floor. Like what? You just broke that down. I mean, no, just really for real.
Okay. I’m sorry, everybody. I’m like, I’m like, you’re ministering to me right now. Okay. So to do the practices, the spiritual practices does not make you a spiritual being. It reminds you. That you are a spiritual being
Randy Woodley: And that you’re part of a spiritual community, you know.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh wow Yes, and can I just say that’s one of the reasons why I cry every time I take communion, every time.
And look, I go to a church where we take communion every Sunday. Literally every Sunday. Excuse me. Of course, got that.
Randy Woodley: So what is spirituality except for being human? [00:36:00] Exactly what we were made to be. Right? We weren’t made to be God. We weren’t made to be, try to achieve, you know, more than human, you know, feats, or God-like things we were made to just be the simple, humble human beings on earth.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Mm-Hmm.
And our role as human beings is, and as you well know, and I’ve heard you discourse on the early genesis chapters, is to be keepers of the earth, is to keep the balance on earth to, to keep the harmony on earth. And the way we do that, you know, is through, ’cause we’re the only ones equipped to do that. Right?
Of all the creatures on earth, we’re the ones who are actually able to keep the balance. And that’s why those early chapters of Genesis are so beautiful, where it talks about, you know, tend the garden, you know, um, you know, it’s, that’s our role. And so, uh, and whether that means you are, you know, actually like tilling a garden, you know, and helping the earth and, and treating the earth right, or you digging wells for people who have none.
Or you’re [00:37:00] helping missing and murdered indigenous women or human trafficking or whatever it is you are tending the garden. That’s your role. We are here to serve the rest of the community of creation. That’s our job as human people. And if we can do that in authenticity and vulnerability, then we will do that in our most spiritual selves.
Edith Woodley: And then what I like to add to that is that when we’re hurting as humans, God hurts alongside us. And he holds us as we cry. He cries with us when we lose a loved one and we’re just gut wrenching, crying. He’s right there holding us because he feels that pain too. And it makes us more human to know that the creators, they’re holding us and feeling what we feel.
And that Brings our [00:38:00] humanity into, at least in my thoughts, it just brings my humanity in completion with the creator.
Randy Woodley: And it’s that WWJD, right? Remember that thing? Yes, I do. You want to know how God feels about something? Well, how would Jesus feel? What would Jesus do, you know, I mean too many people they’re there They’ve got this weird faith where it’s like, you know I got this one guy and and he’s kind of still around but in the Old Testament and then he gets Converted and then he becomes like Jesus and then Jesus.
Oh after he dies He becomes like that bad God, you know that yeah, and in while he had mercy on earth may does it later? You know, we’ve got this crazy theology in the West You that has really distorted who God is. And that’s really the, one of the gravest mistakes, the gravest, um, things that we can do that is to misrepresent God.
If you think about the end of Job, right? Job and God is the conversation is [00:39:00] a great book, right? The oldest, oldest story that we have in the Bible.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It’s actually, it’s actually a play actually written in the form of a play.
Randy Woodley: And God is speaking to Job’s friend and he says, you know, if, you know, I have this against you basically says, I’m going to make cream cheese out of you unless you, and you know, I don’t think that’s who God is, but you know, that’s the story. Unless you go to Job and Job forgives you, right? And the reason why is because you misrepresented who I am to Joe and see all that
Lisa Sharon Harper: It mattered to God.
Randy Woodley: Yeah, all that Western theology, all that white supremacy and the missionaries and everything with our native people and everyone else that was all misrepresenting who God is. And it’s a serious offense and we need to rectify it. And I think we rectify it by understanding God as who God is, which is the most vulnerable being who exists, who cries with us, who weeps with [00:40:00] us, who shares with us.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I just say, I mean, you know, even as I sit and hear you and listen to you, and I can imagine that there are other people listening out there today who are listening to Indigenous leaders whose families and histories are full of pain, full of disappointment, full of loss, full of oppression and disillusionment.
I mean, both of you, right, came up in the church in very conservative arms of the church no less. And yet, unlike so many in the current generations. You didn’t just leave it. You didn’t just say, you know, Eff it, you know, for lack of better terminology and to actually be as authentic as I can [00:41:00] without going into cussing.
You know, you didn’t just, you didn’t just say that you actually, I’m just, I mean, honestly, I’m kind of amazed.
Randy Woodley: We have said that a few times, by the way,
Edith Woodley: Because I know I have.
Randy Woodley: But, you know, you don’t stay there.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, I want, here’s what I want to know. I want to know how did you find your way back, not only to the values that your, your people, right?
The indigenous people have and claim, but how did you find your way back to faith in Jesus and understanding that those values are connected? to God. Like, you know, how did that happen? Because some people would just go, you know, you know, this has nothing to do with Jesus. This has nothing to do with the church.
I don’t want to have anything to do with Jesus or the church because they oppressed me. They killed my people. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, right. How did you, how [00:42:00] did you, how did you become generous as a Jesus follower? Like my God.
Edith Woodley: I did this thing where I was really angry with the church.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Edith Woodley: And just because my own upbringing and everything that I had walked into different churches and things that happened, I was like, this can’t be, I don’t like this because I have to perform. And then after we got married, it was like, we started doing we’ve been through crazy stuff with different churches that we’ve been in and all this kind of stuff And it’s just like I try to believe the good. And then for some reason I just couldn’t do it It just I becoming I became more and more disillusioned with the church I was like, I don’t like this, but it really wasn’t the [00:43:00] church that I was becoming disillusioned with it was the people that call themselves the church.
They’re the ones that I became disillusioned with because of their actions. And the more I read, and the more I listened to people talking, and the more I listened to, uh, to what Jesus was saying in the New Testament of how we should be, I started to think to myself, wait a minute, You know, this, these people are, that’s when my disillusionment started coming into these people.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. So I started really pushing back and pushing back like, I don’t want to go to church, honey. We’re not going to church, not doing this. We’re not surrounding ourselves in these kinds of communities anymore because they don’t get it. They don’t get who really, who the creator really is.[00:44:00]
And they don’t get us as native people. And, but we always ended up in a church because somehow Randy with his personality and everything, and just being who Randy is, he just… we end up in a church, but we haven’t in a long time and, it’s been a while. And,we just, I just feel like that as long as I keep looking at what my ancestors did in all of these things, all of these values that we’ve listed the way I want to believe that my ancestors believed in these kind of values themselves. And these are kind of the values that Jesus believed in.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And see, I think that’s the thing that strikes me is that you don’t just [00:45:00] divorce the ancestors values from Jesus.
You’re actually, you might have left that building that they call the church, but you haven’t, you haven’t really left the church as in the body of Christ, the body of Jesus. And you’re still following him.
Randy Woodley: Well, yeah. Western Christianity basically is antithetical to the works of Jesus in the life of Jesus.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay, let’s go there. Let’s do it.
Randy Woodley: I always say I always say you can be a christian and follow Jesus, but it’s extremely difficult
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow Okay, you just like my brain just went through three loops there. You can be a Christian and follow Jesus, but it’s extremely difficult to be.
Randy Woodley: Because Western Christianity trips you up on every move.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Randy Woodley: It’s not generous. It’s not, you know, loving by large. There’s always exceptions. You know, it’s, it’s. [00:46:00] Program related, not relational, you know, um, it’s, uh, uh, competitive. It’s all competitive, you know, not cooperative. So it’s the native values that, that we have and we keep. And then our ancestors had that are most like Jesus.
So that’s why we follow Jesus in our native way, right? Because, um, cause then we don’t have to worry about, you know, we know what those, those values are and we know in the native way, there’s no beliefs. There’s only do. Right? And so we don’t have a bunch of beliefs that we have to subscribe to. We just do what’s right.
Do the right thing.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Walking Freedom Road from coast to coast and around the globe. This is the Freedom Road podcast.
How do the indigenous [00:47:00] values conflict with Western worldview? You started to get into that, but I wonder if you could get a little bit more into that. And Randy, I love hearing you talk about dualism. And can you kind of explain how does that make a difference? What is, what is dualism and how does it impact the way that we see the world as Westerners?
And how does that come against these values that actually lead to harmony?
Randy Woodley: Yeah, so, um, it’s gonna be a quick 3,000 year journey that I’m about to do in about two minutes, okay?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.
Randy Woodley: So as you know the father really who started this mess was Plato So, Plato created something we call platonic dualism, and when he said, reality is more about the ethereal plane than the material plane.
So in other words, the mind, the soul, the spirit, if you will, whatever, if you’re religious, and not material. And so, that kind of catches on, right? And [00:48:00] it catches on and Alexander the Great becomes, you know, a great proponent of that. And he spreads that, you know, idea throughout all of the known world at that time.
And then, the Romans take it on and they become the, you know, it goes very well, by the way, with, um, um, empire and colonization. And so, and then the Romans and then the great Britons, and then. In Britain, you have this revival of, you know, the Renaissance, where it’s all about Greek thinking, and Greek philosophy, and Greek poetry, and Greek songs, and Greek art, and Greek architecture, and et cetera, et cetera.
And that’s what it means to be really civilized, right? Even still, in your most scholarly people, what do they read? They read the classics. They call a person that does that a classicist who, you know, what are they majoring in? Greek thought, Roman thought. So, and that’s the sort of the top of the food chain in education right now.
So, and then out of that, out of Europe, [00:49:00] then it becomes the two movements spring out. And one movement is the enlightenment where they double down, maybe like triple on it, you know, and, and it goes into every area. Society… Adam Smith brings it into the finance world. You have Rousseau and, um, Descartes and bringing it to philosophy and other areas, even dissection of the human body and different things like that.
You have Francis Bacon who talks about it with nature and that, you know, uh, all of these things. And then Thomas Jefferson, by the way, also, and all of these are, which he can, that’s how he can have slaves, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: He can have slaves because?
Randy Woodley: because he’s dualistic. Cause thinking is. In dualism, you’ve lifted one plane of reality above the other.
Now you have two different realities, right? So now everything has to be measured in hierarchy. So like, white people can be over black people, men can be over women. Human beings can be over the [00:50:00] earth, and everything has to be on this higher and lower plane. And that’s, I’m sure that’s, in Jefferson’s mind, this is how he’s able so easily to justify the phrase that all people are created equal, and yet own, how many, a hundred, two hundred slaves?
Enslaved people?
Randy Woodley: So, and it’s, it’s how, men get over on women is we’re, this is so baked in the bread with American society. It’s in everything. It’s in education. What do we do in education? Well, we learn about stuff theoretically, and it’s not until we actually do an apprenticeship, if we even get to do that.
That we actually get to do what it is. That’s dualism. It’s the idea that you can think something and not actually have to do it. And that’s very much why we have such a disembodied theology in the church. So it’s, our theology is totally disembodied because we can say, well, I believe the right things. [00:51:00] In the native way, like I said, we don’t have beliefs.
We only have do. You know, I, I remember I asked her one time, I said, you know, Hey, what are your beliefs? Cause I want to test this out. Right.
Randy Woodley: He said, I believe in being a good husband to my wife, um, helping out, you know, strangers when they need help being generous, you know, um, uh, my beliefs is going to ceremony, you know, and all of this is stuff you do.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. They’re all verbs. They’re all actions.
Randy Woodley: None of this is like, I believe in the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, and the virgin birth, and the, you know, none of that. That’s all a product of Western dualism. Jesus, can I say damn on this show, is that right? Yeah, sure. Jesus didn’t give a damn about doctrine, okay?
And yet that’s all we seem to care about in Western Christianity.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It’s really true.
Randy Woodley: Instead of Jesus is all about if you believe you do.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s true. He never even said, he never [00:52:00] even said, believe this about me. He always said, follow me.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. Follow me. Yeah. Or go. So 30 something times in the new Testament, follow me, you know, just follow his life.
He’s doing. So, um, so yeah, this dualism has crept into every area of our society. Well, Native Americans are the least affected on this continent by the dualism, right? So, because they’re not products of the post Enlightenment era. Now, we’re starting to be, right? We’re all being exposed to it, et cetera, et cetera, but, um, we still have lots of traditional pockets and people who receive good teaching who know that’s not how you live.
You know, you live about how you, you live life, how you live life and that tells you what your beliefs are. You want to know what a person’s beliefs are? Watch what they do.
Randy Woodley: The fallacy has always, the fallacy has been, um, you know, the correct beliefs will lead you to correct actions, and that is absolutely wrong if you look at Christian [00:53:00] history.
You know, we’ve got the Crusades, we’ve got the genocide of Native Americans, we’ve got the enslavement of Black people, we’ve got, you know, on and on and on.
Lisa Sharon Harper: By the same people who were fighting for orthodoxy, right, at the same time, they were actually fighting about what’s right and what’s wrong in scripture.
And at the same time, they were funding and also doing the slave trade. Yeah. Right.
Randy Woodley: And they’re also, in Europe, they’re killing each other over the beliefs, like, how are you baptized? Like, when are you baptized? Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I’m gonna kill you because you don’t baptize the same as I do. That’s right.
Randy Woodley: You know, and you can do that if you’ve been exposed and have bought into this dualistic worldview.
And that’s what the Western worldview is based on dualism.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay. So when you, when you look at the difference between the Western worldview and indigenous worldview, the indigenous worldview does not have the hierarchy, the hierarchy or the bifurcation of life. There is no either or, you know, it’s a [00:54:00] both and there’s a, there’s a sense of.
Well harmony, right? There’s, there’s a spectrum, uh, as opposed to a black and white view of life, and a hierarchical view of life. Can you explain it a little more?
Randy Woodley: Yeah. So, that would be utopianism. Like we either have utopia or we don’t, and we’re, this is what we’re going to do to make everybody have utopia, you know, there’s been lots of communities like that that have sprung up all over.
In fact, I would say that Western Christianity is a utopian religion. It’s all about how you’re gonna, you know, how to either, how to get back to utopianism is about like how to live right from the past or how to live right in the future. You know, like remember the fourth verse of all them hymns, you know, it’s all about heaven all the time. You know, like we’re trying to do that, but, um, but we forget we’re supposed to be doing it on earth. Right. And so we’re living for something…
Lisa Sharon Harper: No, I’m sorry. When you say harmony, you’re not talking about utopia.
Randy Woodley: No, I’m talking about like [00:55:00] the way we’re supposed to live, but we’ve moved in and out of it because we’re just human beings.
We’re not perfect. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be human.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I was just saying this actually at a conference two days ago, cause we got into this conversation and this actually was a very, very, like liberal crowd and we got into this conversation about perfectionism and, and, you know, needing to be perfect.
And, it struck me going back to Genesis, right? That was not God’s concern that God looked around and said, this is very good. It wasn’t that things were perfect. It was that the relationships were overwhelmingly good and well connected. Right? Like that, that was God’s concern. And so when we think in our Western mindset of what utopia looks like, it looks like perfection.
But what you’re saying is no, no, no, no, no. The concern is harmony. The concern is our values. The concern is that we [00:56:00] remain and cultivate connectedness to earth and to each other. Into self.
Randy Woodley: Yeah. And how you get there is having a community that’s willing to tease you. So you realize you’re just a human being like the rest of us.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right, right, right. I love that. Okay. So can we jump to something else? I want to ask you with regard to like in these indigenous values that you have shared and, and others that are all throughout your book, you know, as we look at, Okay. We are now in the most deeply divided era that we have seen since the Civil War on, you know, on American soil, on U.S. soil. and in that context, you have written this book, Journey to Eloheh. So I guess my question is, what Indigenous values would you say are most important as we consider How we enter, I mean, how we walk into these last, what is it now? 30, 25 days at the point [00:57:00] when this is being published before the election.
Randy Woodley: Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: What are the values we need?
Randy Woodley: Yeah, so, um, remember these values aren’t isolated. They all interact with each other, right? So, you know, like I was talking about authenticity and humor, for example, um, and, and keeping us humble and realizing we’re just human beings and et cetera. But really the, I think one of the, the, the values that people still misunderstand is diversity and you know we think that there are, like, there, there’s like, well, you know what whiteness is, right? Whiteness is where we judge everything else. Is it white, normal, you know? Right. That’s, that’s not normal. That’s not counting diversity. That’s saying that there’s one that’s over the other that’s hierarchical.
But if we look at the diversity that we all have and we all have it, and we understand that diversity is. [00:58:00] I wrote a book, right? My first book was called, you know, living in color, embracing God’s passion for ethnic diversity. Right? So God has a passion for difference, not sameness. Sameness is okay.
Sameness makes us feel safe once in a while, you know, and we got to be around our people once in a while, but we’re not meant to stay there. Right? So I used to have students all the time. I was a seminary professor. And they would say, you know, well, I don’t have, you know, any black people in my congregation or how do I, how do I get people of color to come to our church?
And I’m like, well, let me ask you…
Lisa Sharon Harper: If I had a penny…
Randy Woodley: Here’s my answer, right? So I would say, okay, is your church all men? Is your church all women? No. Is your church all old people? No. Is it church, all young people? No. Is the church all Republicans? No. Is the church, you know all from the same social class? No. [00:59:00] I would say you guys have a lot of diversity in your congregation, but the American myth that there’s a one thing that everybody has to be measured by, you know, you bought into that. And when you all could start dealing with all your diversity and begin to accept one another for all the differences, then you might be ready for a person of color to come to your congregation.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. That’s good. That is good. Oh,
Randy Woodley: It’s about accepting the diversity that we all have. Now, you know, uh, anybody who’s married understands this concept. Right. You think, Oh man, we’re just meant for each other, but we’re different people.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. That’s funny. Yeah. I mean, you know, like the most basic thing is when you wake up in the morning, you wake up in the morning and you don’t want to talk and they do.
Randy Woodley: Well, you learn to appreciate the differences and not just appreciate them, but celebrate the differences. Right.
And so that’s the, that’s the one thing that we need to do. [01:00:00] We have to learn to celebrate the differences, whatever they are. And, say, there’s someone who is different than me.
I have something I can learn from them and they have something they can learn from me. It’s reciprocity. Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what could, Oh, I’m sorry. Go on.
Randy Woodley: Well, you know, that’s not tokenism. That’s not quota-ism. That is like actually learning to say, I want to find difference so that I can be a better person because it’s going to, you being different from me, it’s going to make me a better person.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what could harmony look like on the other side of election day? Because right now we have more doomsday predictions, right? Like no matter who wins, whether Kamala wins or the orange man wins, and I will not say his name, but you know, there’s going to be major strife, like huge, huge division. And so what, how [01:01:00] could we actually work toward harmony in that space?
Randy Woodley: I don’t actually think it’s achievable in this political system, because part of the dualism is to have a binary. It’s either this or that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Randy Woodley: Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.
Randy Woodley: So when we have, you know, it’s either red or blue, and, uh, and, you know, 49%, well, it’s not by popular vote as we wish it was, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Randy Woodley: But, just say that the, the right count, if you’re just missing one and the other person has one more, half… the, it’s like, you know, this whole Robert’s Rules of Order, right? 49 percent of the people are for one thing and 51 for, and everybody walks around mad at each other, right? Because that’s not how you get things done.
You get things done through a consensus government. And I hate to say it, but I don’t see any hope for the American political system until we begin to develop a more consensus-type government. We have to be able to, and this, [01:02:00] you know, I mean, look at Canada, for example, you know, you get the minority parties serving in other positions in that government.
You know, there’s influence and there’s a, and so, yeah, we all have to learn to sit around the table together. Lisa, I honestly, you know, I worry about this, but we’re, we’re just, we are set up to be divided.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Well, I mean, George Washington said it. I mean, he was the very first president. He actually said the way that our parties are set up, if we become too partisan, we will not be able to govern and that’s what we’ve become.
We’ve literally become too partisan. And you know, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know. I know that I recently saw something that actually talked about the reason why things are, they are the reason why we have the structure we have is it goes right back to slavery. It goes back to whiteness. It goes back to privileging Southern slaveholders and making sure that, that they’re, they had [01:03:00] quote, equitable weight in Congress, in relationship to their lesser status in terms of numbers in the South, white men in the South and all that stuff.
So it all really goes, I mean, really, literally the way that we are structured, it goes right back to slavery. We need a new way of being together in the world. We were structured for a white, literally to accommodate an explicitly white supremacist slaveocracy. And we have not changed that structure.
And so we still get, this is what we get on a perpetual basis because the structure that we have gives keeps us in this loop. So like literally like my dream is that after this election on the other side of election day, we would really, truly start to work toward a parliamentary system in America, as opposed to a two-party system so that we would have multiple parties.
Randy Woodley: I saw a good meme this morning.
[01:04:00] And it said equality is when we all are set around the same table. Decolonization is when we break the table up, burn it and have a sweat lodge together.
So, we have to actually, you know, the table that we have right now, okay, we can all sit around it, that’s fine. But that table is not going to serve us ultimately we’re going to have to create a new table.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So. That’s really good. That’s really good. It’s true. We have to create a new structure.
So can I ask you, what is your hope for the church, both of you, what is your hope for the church?
Edith Woodley: My hope for the church is to get over themselves.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Get over yourself.
Edith Woodley: I really, it’s, it’s like, um, I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that much, but, um, I guess it would just be just to kind of like [01:05:00] realize that they got to stop doing this churchy thing where everything has to be this way and that way in this way for them to be called themselves Christians.
And if they could just step aside and put all that stuff just off to the side and start looking at the way Jesus really lived his life, then maybe there might be hope for the church.
Randy Woodley: Yeah, I say it a little bit different. I do. Same thing, basically. I like that they’ll get over themselves. I think that’s good.
So as long as we are not the church of Jesus Christ, we are the church of Western culture. And all of these things that we teach in, you know, we have four day schools here and people get changed because they get exposed to that and get in touch with the [01:06:00] earth and everything else. We have to come back into an understanding of life that is holistic.
And our native people are one of the, you know, groups that can point that way. We’re not the only group, but, um, and until we do, the church will always see itself as segmented, sort of like hierarchical, you know, um, all of these kinds of things. And none of that reflects who Jesus is. None of it is. And so the church has to start following Jesus and get out of Western Christianity.
And that’s going to be extremely difficult, but we’re beginning to have see some hopeful things. And I think it can be done, and that’s why we do what we do, right? We think the church is set up to be, you know, we’re already these affinity groups, right? So we’re set up the church is set up to actually get the right attitude and do the revolution, you know, and do the, the things that need to be done, but we just got to get, like Edith said, get over [01:07:00] ourselves first, you know, and then just say, okay, this is how Jesus acts.
This is how Jesus does it. The buildings don’t matter. You know, so much, it’s what we do that actually matters. And then we just got to be doing stuff because that’s who we are as human beings. We’re supposed to serve creation.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I love like, I love what you said, and especially going back to the first part of what you were talking about when you said we need to follow Jesus, and leave that Western Christianity behind.
That’s such a deep statement. And what I hear when I, if I were to break that down and like add all the words that helps me to really grasp what you’re saying for me, what I hear is we need to follow brown, indigenous, colonized Jesus who comes from a serially enslaved people, and we need to leave this Western, imperial, purple -robed, [01:08:00] trumpet-sounding, going-to-battle Christianity behind.
Randy Woodley: Yeah, I’ll go with that.
Edith Woodley: Same here.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Last question. What is your hope for our nation?
Randy Woodley: That one’s even tougher. So we are experiencing the greatest propaganda probably that we’ve ever had in our country’s history. I mean, and there’s been a lot of it, right. But. But right now we have to point out the lies.
That is our obligation as truth tellers is to be able to point out the lies, even though people go, Oh, that’s just this. That’s just that’s just, you know, no, no, that becomes normalized then, right? So we have to stop. Taking for granted the fact that everybody’s going. Oh, most people won’t believe him, you know, they do.[01:09:00]
I can’t believe it, but they do, and so we have to point out the lies of the stations they’re lying. We have to point out the lies of the lies that are being told by the politicians on both sides, you know and and and you know, that’s That’s, I think, the prophetic role of, uh, people of faith and other prophets.
Not just people of faith, but any prophets. The artists, you know, the playwrights, the poets, the singers. You know, and just the truth tellers, that’s our job is to say, this is a lie. And so, it’s not very popular and people don’t like us when we do that, but right now we need that more than ever.
Lisa Sharon Harper: The conversations leaders have on the road to justice. This is the Freedom Road Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. The Freedom Road Podcast is recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and wherever our guests lay their head that night. [01:10:00] This episode is engineered and produced by Corey Nathan of Scan Media.
Freedom Road Podcast is executive produced by Freedom Road LLC. We consult, coach, train, and design experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and lead to common action. You can find out more about our work at our website freedom road dot us Stay in the know by signing up for updates on Substack.
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So in the meantime, everyone join the conversation on [01:11:00] Freedom Road.
