Bring Back the Buffalo (III): Sweating it Out in Prayer

One of the most moving and impactful experiences I had on my recent cultural encounter at the Pelican Lake First Nations Reserve in Northern Saskatchewan was when our hosts invited us to participate in a traditional sweat lodge.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our church has been exploring over the last few years what it really looks like to live in reconciliation with our Indigenous neighbors, and as part of this journey, we participated in a Loko Koa “Bring Back the Buffalo” development project, helping to sponsor a herd of buffalo which was gifted to the community of Pelican Lake. This June, I was part of a 6-person delegation that went to visit the project and meet some of the leaders at Pelican Lake.

We had many significant moments on this trip, but, again, the one I’m still reflecting on deeply, some three months later, was the traditional Indigenous sweat lodge we had the privilege of participating in.

If you’ve never seen one before, a sweat lodge is an Indigenous practice focused on healing and prayer. Essentially, it’s a hand-built hut made of tree boughs, tarps, and blankets, which is heated with rocks from a huge bonfire. When everyone’s inside, they close the entrance so it becomes pitch dark, and then fill the space with steam by pouring water over the rocks, and participants sing, chant, and pray to Creator while they’re sweating it out there in the dark.

I want to stress, very respectfully, how deeply moved and profoundly impacted I was by this experience. For my part, while I was praying in the darkness of the lodge, I found the Creator directing my thoughts to a cousin of mine who I grew up with, who was Cree and was adopted into our family, whom I lost touch with in my early adulthood, only to discover, much later, that he had died, tragically, in an accident related to addictions that he had been fighting for many years. I found myself praying over his story, and coming to understand my own part in it, in a way I had never been able to before, and as I did, I felt a huge lump of guilt and regret rise in me and flow from me, like a wound when it’s been lanced. From that point, I began to pray over my role in the painful story of Canada’s mistreatment of the First Nations of this land, with a yearning I’d never really felt before, and an almost crushing weight of humility pressing down on me.

So I am only thankful to have been invited into the sacred space of that sweat lodge.

But, as a Christian pastor in a church tradition that traces its roots through the evangelical sub-culture of Christendom to the Holiness movement and the Wesleyan theological tradition, I have to admit that my theological radar started pinging faintly when we learned that we were going to do a sweat lodge. I say this with a bit of chagrin, but also in the interest of full disclosure. I am too deeply shaped, I think, by my own theological tradition (which has been, for the most part, pretty conservative), not at least to wonder if a “good Christian” should do a sweat. Is the creator they’re praying to in that lodge, I wondered, the same as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? And if it’s not, is it right for me to join in? Will the distinctions between creator and creation be clear enough in the darkness that I can be sure I’m worshiping the former and not the later? Will it matter?

It’s possible you may interpret the fact that I wrestled with these doubts as evidence of the fact that I’m more bigoted and self-righteous than I care to admit, and probably didn’t really deserve to be in the sweat lodge in the first place; or it’s possible you yourself were wondering similar things when you learned at the top of this post, that I, as a Christian pastor, joined in a sweat lodge of all things.

In either case, let me share very briefly how I arrived at the conclusion that not only would it be okay for me to go, but it would, actually be wrong of me not to. Because there were actually three biblical themes that sort of wove together to form my theological rationale for joining the sweat.

First, I thought of the multiple references in the scripture to the fact that the whole creation is alive and awake to the goodness of its creator—descriptions of hills rejoicing and trees clapping their hands, for instance. These led me to believe that if I had an opportunity to embrace that truth more deeply, by participating in an activity that was so clearly open to the spiritual dimension of the Creator’s world, I would benefit greatly from making the most of it. I believed I was on to something when, in the midst of the chanting and drumming during one round of the sweat, we could hear, distinctly over it all, the grunting and snorting of the buffalo herd, just outside, which had become aware of our presence and come over to investigate. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more aware of my “nephesh kinship” with the rest of the creation than I did in that moment.

The next theological theme was the idea we see in the Book of Acts, in Paul’s writings, and occasionally in the Book of Revelation, that the Lord invites us to bring to him all kinds of cultural expressions of worship and spirituality to honor him and celebrate him, and that he is far more interested in redeeming human culture than he is in condemning it entirely out of hand. Could Christ be present in the darkness of a sweat lodge, I asked myself (very rhetorically—of course he could). And if he was, could he redeem the experience, If it was offered in faith for his glory?

The final theme had to do with my growing conviction that Paul meant far more than we understand when he said that we “look through a glass, darkly” when it comes to the things of God. What I mean is that modern, conservative, conceptually-oriented evangelical believers like I have always been tend to be pretty confident in their ability to “see all of God” in their particular approach to Faith, and to “describe all of God” in their neat-and-tidy theological systems. We don’t really believe we see things in a glass darkly, when it comes to our theology; we’re far more likely to think we’ve got everything tied up and mapped out.

Evangelicals like to relate the moment in Acts 17 when Paul came to Athens intent on proclaiming the “unknown God” to the ignorant and unenlightened Athenians. Certainly, that is, in part, what he was doing. But the more I reflect on that story, in light of my increasing understanding and vision of who God is, the more I believe that we all of us, in some way or another, worship an “unknown God.” At least, I am increasingly convinced that none of us will ever fully have “the corner” on “the whole picture” of who God is and what he’s up to in the world. However tidy our theological systems may be, there will always be an infinite remainder of truths about God’s glory we haven’t yet glimpsed or described.

When I entered the lodge, I was opening myself to encounter Creator in a way I had never encountered Creator before. As I Christian, of course, I believe very firmly that this Creator has revealed himself to us in the person (and especially through the cross) of Jesus Christ. But that knowledge doesn’t make him any less the Creator—the creator of stones and sweetgrass and fire and fir boughs, of buffalo herds and prairie skies—all the things that were so fully present to us in the heat of that sweat lodge, more fully present than I had ever imagined they might be. And in encountering Creator in this unique and particular way, I was glimpsing a side of the “unknown God” I’d never seen before, a glimpse that would forever change, by deepening it and broadening it, the truth of what I mean when I recite the Apostle’s Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth.

And I am convinced that I emerged from the darkness with a slightly fuller understanding of who God is than I’d had before; and more importantly, with a bit more awareness of how fully the Creator really knows me. He sees me, after all, just as clearly when I’m praying in the sweaty ordeal of an Indigenous sweat lodge up in Northern Saskatchewan, as he does when I’m kneeling on the comfy prayer rails in the air-conditioned sanctuary of my church here at home.

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