Compassion: A Web of Connection for Native Americans (Angela Maves) (09-23-12)

The Indians’ understanding of creation as sacred concerns itself with the way we all live together. Thus it has to do with justice and fairness and, ultimately, peace.
George Tinker (a Native American Lutheran pastor)
 
Every part of this earth is sacred…Teach your child that the earth is our Mother.…God is the same God whose compassion is equal for all…Whatever we do to the world we do to ourselves.”
Chief Seattle
 
The power of the world always works in circles…The wind in its great power whirls… birds build their nests in circles…even the seasons form a great circle in their changing.
Black Elk
 
Ever since she saw the movie “Soldier Blue” 40 years ago, the Rev. Angela Maves has been passionately drawn to Native American history, culture, and spirituality. Maves—a United Methodist deacon and chaplain—has fished with the Inuit in the Arctic, attended a Native American seminary, and most recently, filmed a Dakota traditional Elder at a Midwestern petroglyph site. Rapt Dumbartonians were treated to petroglyphs of bison, hawks, and other animal and human symbols.
 
 What most attracts Maves to Native American spirituality is the focus on Mother Earth: the grounding in the feminine and the maternal. “It provides a necessary balance to Methodism,” she said. “I need them both.” Maves shared an insight from Amma, a spiritual leader from India who said that the mother archetype is not restricted to women. It’s a principle inherent in both men and women. It is Love and compassion, or what Native Americans call “all my relatives” and it’s the web of connection.

--By Ginny Finch