Sermon: Sakihiwawin
(The love upon which everything hinges)
Luke 1:39-55
In today’s reading, two women, Elizabeth and Mary, meet each other and share greetings. The way-making and the way-wandering Creator follows their footsteps with a smile.
“After Gabriel receives Mary’s stunning consent to walk a path no one has ever walked before, the messenger/angel gives Mary one point of orientation, one navigational clue that will assist her to make the rest of her journey possible: Gabriel tells her of her kinswoman Elizabeth who is pregnant in strange circumstances herself.” (Jan Richardson)
At this point I will share with you one very useful concept. Wild Space. I learned it from Sallie McFague, who was a professor at VST while I studied there in 2007. Sallie continued to inspire countless people through her books and lectures until she died just a month ago. Many of us were very saddened by the news of her passing, partly because of how her ideas touched us. Wild space is the part of each of us that doesn’t quite fit into our conventional worlds. What would you say is the wild space within you that does not fit into the worlds in your life? What are the characteristics of your “conventional worlds”, and how do you fit or not fit into them?
For some, it is the “consumer and market-oriented, individualistic, greedy world”. See, Black Friday and the temptations of Amazon Prime. What else… I would say conventional worlds are the oppressions that make us suffer. Colonialism. Hierarchy (which places humans at the top of everything, while, actually, we are the most dependent beings in creation.). Individualism. We might consider them to be “normal”; we live with them just like we breathe air. And yet, at the same time, at the crossroads of conventional worlds and who we are, we learn that there is a spiritual and emotional realm inside of us that makes us resist these normal, isolating worlds. There’s a yearning within us to seek out ways to shape our world differently. That yearning is wild space; the heart story and personal truth that matters. It is the desire to participate, to change the world. We desire to be heard and to hear, to be connected and to connect. Friendship would not shine like the sun, if we do not feel safe and confident enough to let each other know about the wild space within ourselves. My favourite definition of friendship is that it is a shared space in which each person finds true security and safety in intimate equality. No one is higher or lesser, none of the cultures, the cultural wild spaces, dominates another. Could we see Elizabeth and Mary, their kinship and friendship, in the light of wild space, too? I think so! Mary’s Magnificat is truly a hymn that praises the wild dreams of God and our wild spaces. “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. She has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; She has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
The question for us in this Advent season may be… What is the wild space I own and share? What are the wild space of ours, friends, strangers, the Creator’s people that overflow the strict lines of prescribed, imposed, conventional worlds? And, why do our wild spaces overflow?
Imagine, "wild space" like a wild space you’ve gone out to on the land, in the actual real world. You find a place on the land that is away from things… It might be a hilltop. It could be the shore of a lake or a river. It might be a glade in a forest or a rock ledge or a fallen log in a clearing. A wild space is like these… Hear the wind or the breeze in the trees or grasses. Hear the sound of birds and the small creatures. Smell the land, and differentiate the aromas of the soil, grass, blooms. Pick up stones, twigs, leaves, moss, tree bark, and feel each of them. Let our fingers trace each of them and see them with our touch, and know how the touch, the smell, and other senses make you feel. Enjoy the feeling of connection. That may be like the wild space in our hearts too. It’s the energy. Know how the land makes you feel in the day and the night...
I learned the following from a lecture by Dr. Alex Wilson, a Cree scholar who teaches at The University of Saskatchewan: Sakihiwawin. We are a part of Creation. That means we are created, we are born, with the same creative energy as all of Creation. And that is Sakihiwawin. Before explaining about Sakihiwawin which means Creative energy of love, we need to talk about reconciliation. Reconciliation originally stems from Catholicism. (framed from within a Catholic world view. That’s where the idea came from) For any of you that know people or you may have been yourself in abusive relationship, the solution is not everybody getting along and back together. 'Reconciliation' is not the perfect descriptive word to express the ultimate reality we should strive for… Alex Wilson says that some of us understand reconciliation in a limited way to just mean “getting along” among Indigenous and Settler peoples and communities. Limiting reconciliation loses the full implication that this critical process must include for us to be connected to underlying Indigenous philosophy and world views and honouring them in a way that they influence our behaviours and work. Reconciliation, in its true sense, validates and actualizes the “wild space” against the aggressive, capitalistic world. A very wise Elder teaches us that Reconciliation means declaring the ecological interdependence among Indigenous and Settler communities as equal partners, being able to contribute, inspire and transform, and emphasizes our human interdependence on bio-diversity.
Why do our wild spaces overflow and make us desire change? Because we are the creation of Sakihiwawin, the creative love energy. The energy of the Creator. “Sakihi” is the root for the term love. The creative energy is the love, love in action, love in constant motion, (which is Cree natural law). All things on the earth, in the sky, in the air and under the water are created with vital love energy, and therefore, love is the thing upon which everything hinges. Elizabeth and Mary, as kin, as friends, greet each other and find each other in joy during their very strange, difficult situations because they have faith in the Sakihi energy - - the love, as a way of being, upon which everything hinges. They have been able to keep their wild spaces intact and connect them together to make a greater whole. Alex Wilson says Love is why the water protectors are doing what they are doing. Love is why there is Standing Rock. Elizabeth. Mary, Joseph, Wise Ones. Shepherds. Angels. All of the characters in the nativity story appear and write the extraordinary drama of the birth of hope because the creative love energy, Sakihiwawin, positions these actors and us in the story that comes every year in new, unexpected ways. Sometimes we have to make a difficult decision and stand up for friendship, for justice; we choose to follow Sakihiwawin, the wild space in us that moves us to act, both inwardly and outwardly.
May your Advent journey be guided by the creative love energy of the Creator to reach and hear your wild spaces. When friends meet, may the way-making and the way-wandering God follow our footsteps with a smile and bless us.
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