{"id":742,"date":"2012-04-28T10:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T17:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/gc2012\/?p=742"},"modified":"2012-04-28T10:30:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T17:30:33","slug":"fluid-repentance-digs-up-wholeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/fluid-repentance-digs-up-wholeness\/","title":{"rendered":"Fluid Repentance Digs Up Wholeness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rev. George Tinker helps lead an April 27 “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, Rev. Tinker calls us to repent and restore balance to the world; does he?\u00a0 A frightening call, for such balance calls for awareness and change and change does not come easily.\u00a0 Tinker\u2019s are hard words, for the Church struggles with interpreted theology that calls for change and bucks the traditional, the historical, and what is perceived as the normal<\/em>\u00a0— Think of today\u2019s struggle with accepting marginalized LBGTQ folk into the fold, into leadership, and into having ordain authority to speak of their God created \u00a0life and theology to us.\u00a0 Hard work, because, as Tinker notes, the Church\u2014the people have to \u201cdig it up, spade the ground\u201d and find what Church and community structure historically and currently<\/em> conceal from us.<\/p>\n

Repentance can only arise and become meaningful through awareness.\u00a0 The importance of Tinker’s thoughts is the challenge that the act of repentance is not a moment in time, but rather an action of ongoing awareness that is fluid.\u00a0 Like a river, as we float around the next bend we experience a new willow or a new rock telling us a story we did not know before.\u00a0 Tinker\u2019s words are a call into unending repentance that comes with each new, but often old, story.\u00a0 It is a call to struggle with our atrocities and the grief we’ve caused to the marginalized, to people of color, to American Tribal people.<\/p>\n

We are called to claim history such as Methodist Col. John Chivington\u2019s ordered killing of elderly men, women, and children at Sand Creek in 1864.\u00a0 We are called to become aware and question how Methodist President Grant\u2019s 1870 \u201cIndian Peace Policy\u201d supported the subjugation of American Tribal land and people by way of government-supported Christian Boarding Schools.<\/p>\n

If we accept Tinker’s understanding of repentance, then We, the Church, must become conscious that we<\/em> have a past that has been carefully \u201cconcealed\u201d from us, that we <\/em>must dig through layers of privilege to find \u201ca lot of history to be owned,\u201d and that with each new revelation, we must repent again.\u00a0 For, as Tinker reminds us, it is only through this repetitive act of repentance that we will participate in the restoration of balance.\u00a0 A balance that allows Us\u2014the Church to one day, again, become reconciled with our marginalized sisters and brothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rev. George Tinker helps lead an April 27 “Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples” at the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey. So, Rev. Tinker calls us to repent and restore balance to the world; does he?\u00a0 A frightening call, for such balance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[54,18,64,61,69,14,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-holy-conversation","10":"tag-inclusion","11":"tag-inclusivity","12":"tag-repentance","13":"tag-sexuality","14":"tag-umc"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/tinker-challenging.jpeg?fit=640%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-bY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}