In this episode, Brandi talks with Dr. Randy Woodley. Randy and Edith are the founders of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and together, they have shaped much fo the decolonizing and indigenizing of both Brandi and previous guests. This conversation highlights some of the many issues with the western worldview and its role in confusing our understanding of how we interact with God, the earth and each other.
The Woodley's work is core to much of the journey of this podcast, so if you are able to join the sustaining work of Eloheh, please do at:
patreon.com/https://www.patreon.com/RandyWoodley/
or a one-time gift at https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/2191196
As always if you like what you see on Reclaiming My Theology, join us on patreon at patreon.com/brandinico. It just takes $5 to get started and goes a long way to make this all possible. We are getting ready to send out the first round fo perks, so get excited!
Taking our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress.
@reclaimingmytheology
In this episode, Brandi talks with Dr. Randy Woodley. Randy and Edith are the founders of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and together, they have shaped much fo the decolonizing and indigenizing of both Brandi and previous guests. This conversation highlights some of the many issues with the western worldview and its role in confusing our understanding of how we interact with God, the earth and each other.
The Woodley's work is core to much of the journey of this podcast, so if you are able to join the sustaining work of Eloheh, please do at:
patreon.com/https://www.patreon.com/RandyWoodley/
or a one-time gift at https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/charity/2191196
As always if you like what you see on Reclaiming My Theology, join us on patreon at patreon.com/brandinico. It just takes $5 to get started and goes a long way to make this all possible. We are getting ready to send out the first round fo perks, so get excited!
Taking our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress.
@reclaimingmytheology
Reclaiming My Theology, Episode 9: Dualism
Brandi: Hello, and welcome to Reclaiming My Theology, a podcast seeking to take our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. My name is Brandi Miller, and today I’m joined by Dr. Randy Woodley. And y’all, this conversation was a gift to me. I feel like I’ve been constantly schooled by Randy, as have many of the folks who have been on the podcast before. So if his name sounds familiar, that is not a mistake.
So please, as we engage, I want to call us back to what Sean said last week. Basically, that when Indigenous people speak, we shut up. This isn’t to say that you won’t have dissonance—I am certain that you will, just as I did during this conversation. But it’s rather to say that I think part of the antidote to decolonizing, deconstructing, and reclaiming our faith is an intentional indigenizing of it. I encourage you as I have in other episodes to manage your defensiveness and to intentionally practice hearing story as a form of learning instead of just the type of colonized knowledge that comes through with the topic that we’re talking about, dualistic thinking.
And so, with that, enjoy my conversation with Dr. Randy Woodley.
**
Brandi: Well, Randy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really, really appreciate it.
Randy: Yup. You are most welcome, and I’m happy to do anything to advance whatever you’re doing, because you’re such a great friend of Eloheh and us.
Brandi: It’s a – it’s a great honor because, ah, I don’t know, I think I’ve told you this before, but, like, half of the people who have been on the podcast before have referenced you and Edith and being at Eloheh as a huge part of their own decolonizing, indigenizing, and, really, their freedom. And so having you on feels like particular beauty because you’ve influenced so much of what we do. So I’m just really, really grateful to have you on for that reason, too.
Randy: I’m – I’m happy to know that we are having an effect. You – you know, there’s really two paths you can go on when you’re trying to, you know, sort of get – change the world. Let’s just say that, because I’m trying to change the world. And I think both are valid. One is basically you become as famous as you can so that your words have influence. That one – I started on that path, and I didn’t like it, years ago. And so we decided that – that we wouldn’t do that, but a model where we actually just create a place where, sort of, one picture’s worth a thousand words and that we can have people come in our element and that – and so my prayer’s always been, you know, “Creator, give me as much influence as I can without being famous.” So, we’re trying to influence. So I’m glad to hear that we are influencing people. I’m – this is why we do it.
Brandi: Yeah, you definitely are. So it’s really, really beautiful. And, with that, there are some folks, obviously, who – there are some people who won’t know who you are, and so I’d love for you to spend a little bit of time describing, Randy, what does it mean to be you?
Randy: I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of people who don’t know who we are. [Randy laughs] And that’s okay.
Well, first of all, I’m pretty incomplete without my spouse, Edith. As, uh, they said in Jerry Maguire, she completes me. So, I’m pretty sure that at least half of everything that I’ve done that’s any good is because we’ve been doing it together.
So, um, even though, you know, I get a lot more notoriety because of my degree and writings and things like that, but really that – in the real world, that’s not what’s really important. What’s really important is how you live, and your values, and who you are, you know.
And so she and I have been doing hospitality, I guess you would say. We – we sort of – you know, it’s not like we said, “Let’s be hospitable people.” But we both grew up in homes where that was always the case. We always had relatives living with us or other people. You know, I think every one of my mom’s eleven brothers and sisters at some point lived with us and all my cousins, and we all grew up together. And I remember they would take and make what we call pallets, and we’d take up the whole living room and there’d be these blankets on the floor and there’d be, you know, fourteen kids laying across the living room under these blankets and – and that’s how we slept a lot of times.
But that sense of hospitality, and then my wife, Edith, she – she grew up in the same way, and I think, you know, for our Indigenous people, that’s always been a value, that hospitality and generosity. And so we picked that up. And so our home has always been a place where, you know, people can come, and we talk.
And after a while somebody said, “Well, what’s your model?” and we were like, “Model? What’s a model?” And it’s like, “You know, it’s what you’ve been doing.” And we were like, “Oh, I guess we can sort of think about and write up what we’ve been doing, because it’s in the past.” But it’s not like we set out and said, “Oh, here’s a model for what we want to do.” We just sort of live in and then I guess it becomes a model? [Brandi and Randy laugh] Um, so, that’s the first thing about me.
You know, I come from family of – one of our icons, John Lewis, just passed on, I could use this phrase, maybe to honor him, too, and that is a family of making good trouble. I have ancestors who fought against the United States, what ended up being a 19-year war, a Chickamauga Cherokee war against the United States, which, by the way is the longest-lasting war in American history, not Afghanistan.
I have – those ancestors also later became union organizers for the United Mine Workers, and – yeah. I think it’s sad that they had to exploit the earth in the way that they did, but I’m sure it was the only jobs available for really poor people. But, at the same time, they made sure that they weren’t just considered a tool but human beings and so stood up for human rights, for their rights as workers.
And my mother grew up in a mining camp in rural Alabama, and when I say rural, I mean really, really rural. And my dad grew up in Mississippi as a son of a farmer, and he had eight brothers and sisters. So they both come from large families. And education is not a – necessarily a priority. I’m – I think I was the first one to get a – well I know I’m the only one to get a PhD, the – I was one of the first of maybe three or four to get master’s degrees of all those cousins. It’s not really considered a high priority.
And so somehow, I found myself this, kind of, country boy, but who also grew up part of my life – my younger life in the – New Detroit, in the city, in a very mixed racial, ethnic, cultural surroundings, which really sparked my curiosity for other people all my life. But, yeah, this – so I find myself in this erudite world of academia, which to me, I – I both appreciate at some levels and I detest at other levels. And it’s probably the most – when we talk about – I know we’re probably going to get into talking about dualism at some point, but it’s – American academia and British academia, European academia, is probably the most dualistically – the most foundationally dualistic system on earth. So it really grates with everything that I have in me. [Randy laughs]
So you can’t probably – if this is audio, they can’t see the background, but we finally have settled in a place that’s, you know, almost ten acres. We call it Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm, and, you know, it’s in rural Oregon, not too far from the city of Portland, but, uh, you know, just – we’re watching deer and, you know, groundhogs and coyotes and quail and, you know, eagles and hawks and all these kinds of things. And it’s finally at a place where, you know, I’m close enough to the city, but I’m also out in the country, and I can sort of feed my soul that way. And I guess that’s kind of who I am.
Brandi: You mentioned a little bit about the academy, and so could you just express what your sense of vocation is?
Randy: Well, I didn’t want to – first of all, I didn’t want to do a bachelor’s degree. I was working at – with inner city kids in Denver, Colorado, juvenile delinquents, and, what they call EBD, emotionally behaviorally disturbed teenagers, and I could only go so far. They made me a co-therapist in that program, because they liked how I worked with the youth but they – they really encouraged me, and it’s funny because I was really on my sort of evangelical bandwagon at that time. But they encouraged me, even though they were atheists, they encouraged me to go get my bachelor’s degree, sort of. I’d done some community college, and also some – I guess you would call it Bible college, before that. They just kept saying, “Randy, you – you got a lot to offer.”
And so I decided at that point I would attend this place called Rockmont College, a Christian liberal arts college. And that sort of started me on really kind of opening up the world to me. It – it was – it was actually kind of a great institution, I had a really – a – a cool mentor, Dr. Gene Marlatt, who was sort of a, I guess you would call him a renaissance man, at that time they called them. He kind of opened me up to new worlds of thought and thinking.
And then they hired me as a chaplain after that, the next year, after I graduated. And – and then the school closed. And I’m – I’m the chaplain that brought back dances—they had outlawed dances from the school for many years. And, uh, so some people say that the school closed because I brought back – brought back dances. [Brandi and Randy laugh] But, I mean, if you can’t dance, oh my gosh, what’s life?
So then, went to Alaska for a couple of years and that’s when – that’s what I call my missionary oppressor years. I was working at a behavioral modification program with Alaska natives and same type, teenagers in trouble and either about to go in lock up or just coming out of lockup and trying to re – reinstitute or get themselves reoriented. And so I would have between ten and fourteen teenagers living at the home at the time.
And I – I was having to live a double life then; this behavior modification program was really demeaning culturally to these kids, and I knew that. And so what I tried to do was kind of answer to my bosses for two years, and then – but at the same time, be a human outside of that. And it was really – it was living a double life, and I – at that point, I was – and I knew that my own people, my own Cherokee people had been oppressed in similar ways by religion.
And so, uh, pastor told me, “Hey, you should go to seminary.” And I didn’t even know what that was, you know? I was like, “Uh, what is that?” You know? “It’s where you study, you know, God and you become a minister and you know all this and get your Master of Divinity.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
I really didn’t want to do that whole education thing, but I – then I drove 5,000 miles to Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and studied under people like Ron Sider, and Tony Campolo, and Samuel Escobar, and Mumford, and just some really great people to – and I got everything I needed there, in terms of a wider understanding.
And I – and I – my goal there was to never oppress my own people again. To – how do I share the good news, the gospel, with our own Native people and – and not oppress them? So that was my whole goal, and I sort of figured that out along the way, and then became a commission missionary in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which is called the “Indin Capitol of the Nation.” We have, like, uh, 17 tribes within a 40-mile radius. So that was a great time for me. I met Edith there, we got married.
Things were going along, and then I had a vision in a dream when we were pastoring what we call a contextual Native church in Carson City, Nevada, and in that dream, I saw this sort of cultural renewal center, a place where things could be done in a good way, an organizing place where people could get organized, just a place where people could live and learn together.
After another year at the church, we basically, with the church’s blessing, went out and began to – to teach and learn. Our church had already become sort of a school; people were coming from all over. It’s like, how – nobody understood how we could invite traditional Native American people to know Jesus and it work, right. They couldn’t figure it out. We would say, “Well, we don’t – you know, we don’t have a scheme or anything like that. We – we only have what we do. And so you can come and watch.”
And so we would – you know, we created living space, and people would come stay with us for a week, and two weeks, and three weeks one time, and try to learn what we’re doing. And we would just introduce them to the people and – but a lot of people were giving and calling us and, “Can you come speak at our place and tell us what you’re doing?” Just some kind of phenomenon, right? Well, all it was was just us being who we are.
And so eventually this vision took hold, and we tried then for a number of years to establish it. But during those four years, we were on the road with our kids; we homeschooled our kids on the road; we found a Native curriculum, a creative work teaching project. And we traveled around, and we went from reservations and reserves, and we mentored about a dozen people on reservations during that time and spoke a lot and – and, uh, wonderful years. But eventually it landed us in Kentucky, and I have so many stories. At some point I need to tell the stories of how many people betrayed us during those years when we were trying to find property and led us to believe something that wasn’t true, but – in the church.
But, anyway, we ended up with 50 acres in Kentucky, building a center, and part of that was due to the fact that I was invited to do a PhD program. So that was – I’m still talking about my education, I just – I go the long way around these things, I’m sorry.
What we really wanted was to start the place, but Asbury Seminary had a PhD in Intercultural Studies. They’d offered it the year before, and we said, “No, we’re too busy, we want to build a center.” And then the next year they offered to bring us there and help support the center if we would start it there. And so that’s how we ended up finding that property and starting in our old Cherokee hunting grounds there in Kentucky.
And yeah, so got that PhD and, you know, I didn’t want to do it. I’m the most reluctantly educated person you’ll probably ever find. And, uh, but Edith was very insistent that we do it, because she said, “You will never be able to get to the places that you’ll be asked to go to when you have these letters behind your name. You’ll be able to say things that – that – and in places that other Native people won’t be invited.”
And, so at the same time, Richard Twiss, my good friend Richard Twiss was considering it. My good friend Terry LeBlanc had already accepted their offer. And Ray Aldred wanted to be part of that, so we – the four of us became a sort of impromptu cohort together, and I don’t think I ever would have gotten through without the cohort and support and be able to laugh and joke about how messed up everything is in higher education during that time.
And so our goal was to create a system that our Native people didn’t have to jump through the same hoops we did. And so we sort of took that on our shoulders and then we came out and a number of other disappointments but – trying to work with seminaries who said they would work with us and then couldn’t – wouldn’t.
But we finally were able to create NAITES, North American Institute for Theological Studies, which is a – basically it started as an intercultural studies program at George Fox. We started as actually a symposium, and – and then we – we branched out and then I was the program director at what was then George Fox Seminary, now called Portland Seminary. And then we had that program for a number of years. So, I was the program director, and we graduated I think about thirty people through that, some great folks, including one of your good friends, Erna Kim Hackett. And, ah – so yeah. That was – that was a really good thing.
But, you know, I just had this uneasy – relationship with higher education, when you get people inside a square room and they’re sitting behind a table or a desk and – and, you know, they’re all looking at you like you are the wisdom – the only wisdom keeper in the room when it really – I – we call – I don’t call our patrons “students.” I call them “co-learners”—so that we all are learning together, right? I mean, that’s – that’s how true wisdom comes about, is to hear form everyone. And so it’s just very awkward. It’s set up to be awkward. It’s set up to pass knowledge, not lived experience. The – the – the American myth of education is that your knowledge will one day equal lived experience, but I have found that absolutely to not be true often.
And so yeah. That’s kind of my – my experience with higher ed. And I’m, you know, I’ve been a professor now – well I’ve been at George Fox since 2008, and now I’m sort of winding my way down. And I’m looking forward to the times when we can just be teaching full-time out here at Eloheh, where people just come and have the lived experience. And they get the same stuff, the same knowledge, but hopefully it’ll mean more.
Brandi: Even as we get ready to talk about dualism, I hear even the tension with dualistic living, dualistic learning, and the ways that dualism and the western worldview kind of fracture the way that you would want to see things happen in the world. But I also realize for a lot of folks who are listening, they have maybe heard the word dualism before but don’t actually know what that is. So could you give us a sense, what is dualism? How would you describe that?
Randy: Yes. So it – it comes to us through a long history, probably Macedonia and then Greece, but Greece is where we really can sort of pinpoint things. You know, Platonic dualism, it’s often called. And platonic dualism is just the – a – the world – it creates a worldview that invests itself more in the abstract or the ethereal, the mind, or, if in Christianity, it’s like the soul or the spirit, more than the physical realm, you know, the body, the earth, all the things that are tangible.
And – and so when you have that kind of division of reality, all kinds of horrible things can come from it. And – and some – those things have been adopted by people with a western worldview, and they’ve been really damaging. So – and it’s not just, like, how you think, but it’s the products of the mind. They become most important. So, you know, like, church bylaws, you know: “Do you believe blah blah blah blah.” You know, not, “What’s your life like?” [Randy laughs] Or, you know, it’s sort of like the assumption that if you believe these, it’s going to lead to what – what the beliefs are. Not been the case throughout history.
Um, so, the – the products of the mind – the Bible. You know. “The Bible says…” Well, you know, it’s – it’s a product of the mind. The Constitution: it’s a product of the mind. Anytime that those things take precedence over people, that’s dualistic thinking. And Jesus addressed it directly. He said, you know, “Is the Sabbath made for humans or humans made for the Sabbath?” Um, you know, he picked corn on the Sabbath; if an ox goes in the ditch on the Sabbath, you know. It’s sort of like – this is that – that bifurcation of reality. If you – if you have rules set up, and they are the best rules because you have the best minds, but people’s lived experience somehow don’t match up to that, then the rules become more important. And that’s wrong.
And – and Jesus also said stuff like, you know, “Hey, don’t swear by heaven because that’s God’s throne, and don’t swear by Earth because that’s God’s footstool.” It’s all sacred. Right? Everything is from Creator; it’s sacred. And so we can’t invest ourself or emphasize, even, the mind or the spirit, the soul, etcetera, etcetera, more than the body or – or the physical world, the earth.
And it leads to all kinds of problems, the main of which is disembodied theology. So that’s sort of the roots of the dualism and how it manifests itself in the church.
You know, there’s an old country church saying, right: “He’s so heavenly minded, he’s no earthly good.” Right? Well, that’s – that’s spotting dualism. That’s just saying, hey – and it’s also utopianism, which is another product of dualism, this utopian idea that, “Oh everything’s going to be better over there”—as opposed to what we’re doing right here being the most important thing. So.
And – and the opposite of that—
Brandi: Yeah, when I first became a Christian—
Randy: Yeah. “This world is not my home.” “We’re just strangers passing through.” That’s the – that’s dualism. Right. Okay. Sorry.
Brandi: No, yeah. When I was growing up – I didn’t grow up Christian but one of my first images that I have of being, like, Jesus-following in some way—but it was distinctly Christian, it was the enterprise of Christianity—was those not of this world stickers, where it was, like, you could just divorce your mind and your body far enough that you could live somewhere else but still somehow exist in your body. Your body becomes just this container that you’re living in, but your soul is, like, out there, rising above every kind of sinful or fleshly desire or something, so I—[Brandi laughs]—I know I’ve experienced that too.
Randy: Yeah. And what’s really funny is that we don’t really have a picture of disembodied spirits in scripture. It’s like, you get a new body, right? But you’re not – you’re not without one, you know, this floating, amorphous, you know, Casper the Ghost floating around, you know, ethereal. It’s – it’s embodied. And so our theology should be embodied as well.
Brandi: Yes. And one of the things that I am aware of is that there is some – it seems like in white evangelical spaces in particular there is some danger to embodiment. And a lot of this podcast is about reclaiming our theology from white supremacy. And so can you help us understand a little bit together, where do you see dualistic thinking, or this disembodiment that you’re talking about, playing out in whiteness or in how white Christianity, white faith systems, white worldviews express themselves?
Randy: Yeah. So, white supremacy is a direct result of dualism. So a lot of people, you know, there’s a lot of ideas about racism, right. And – and color – colorism is part of that whole system. But it really, in my mind, in my thinking, comes out of a dualistic worldview. And a dualistic worldview sets itself up so that one thing is better than the other, right. The – the ethereal is better than the material, so it becomes priority.
As a result of that, everything in life then becomes ordered hierarchically. So, there’s a hierarchy to everything. There’s a hierarchy in, you know, of men over women, a hierarchy of straight over gay, a hierarchy of, you know, human beings over the rest of the animal and vegetable, the community of creation. It’s – and so your thinking becomes hierarchical.
And, of course, one of those hierarchies is the idea that western European light-skinned people deserve all the power, all the knowledge, all the, you know, the influence, everything in – in any given system because they are superior. That comes out of dualism, that comes out of that hierarchical thinking. If you don’t think in hierarchy, you don’t have to go there.
But – and, as a result, white supremacy, a system that is founded on this idea that white light-skinned male straight people deserve all the, you know, the – the knowledge, the power, the authority, etcetera, in any given system, then plays itself out in our everyday life, it plays itself out through our structures, it plays itself out in our conversations, and especially in our theologies.
And so we only need to understand, like, you know, for – for years and years and years, and this is still true in many, many, especially evangelical, seminaries, you know, you have systematic theology, and other theologies that are – that are done by white – either European, you know, old men, mostly old men, and then you have other theologies like womanism or eco-feminism and Indigenous and, you know, other kinds of theologies. Queer theologies, other things.
So – but those are all considered sub-categories of white theology. So what we really need is a category called white theology and – and then other theologies. Or maybe we just need to include all of those as theologies. But it’s certainly showed itself in the theological spectrum.
And so, yeah, it has everything to do with that.
And then also, if I can put in a sort of plug for, like, our greatest passion, it has to do with anthropocentrism, which has to do with the climate change problem we’re in. We are in, as one professor said, not the Anthropocene; we are in the Eurocene. And that is that it’s this European, mechanistic, capitalistic thinking that has got us in this mess over the last 500 years. And, you know, it’s – we have to battle the tendency to allow a western worldview to have priority and preeminence if we are going to save our place on the planet. I’m pretty sure the earth’s going to be okay, but we may not be. So.
Anyway. There’s a lot of things that come out of this. White supremacy is one of them. The – and – and – and because of that, otherism. So, right, the Greeks had the barbarians, and the Romans had their savages, and the English had their heathens, you know, and in the United States, in America, we have the, you know, we have Black Lives Matter right now, they’re the cultural other. We have Native Americans, have been terrorists, we have, you know, African Americans, we have you know LGBTQ, we have, you know, etcetera, etcetera, women, you know, especially independent thinking women. All of those are what I call the cultural, the racial, the ethnic other.
And – and racism, or colorism, which is an aspect of racism, I think is not as much is, “I just hate people the darker they are.” But it’s, “The darker they are, they remind me that I am living in a false reality. The darker they are, the less they look – the less they look like, um, European, white, you know, straight, kind of male—the farther they are from that, the more it reminds me that my normal is abnormal.”
So, if you’ve ever been caught in a lie – you know – the first thing if you’re caught in a lie is like, “Oof, what do I do? Do I keep lying or do I tell the truth?” I’m faced with reality all of a sudden, right? And – and my heart hurts, and I’m trying to figure out like where to do with this thing. And this is exactly what racism is. It’s – it’s when people are – are – when racist actions and racist attitudes are pointed out, you’re caught in a lie. And this lie is – is your reality that you were living is wrong. It’s a lie. It’s not the way Creator intended and ordered things. And – and so to battle racism, we have to – and to battle white supremacy, we have to tell the truth.
And pretty much I think that’s been our service to humanity for some time and – and I don’t think it’s noble at all of me, I just think it’s the way I was built, my – it kind of comes through my mom’s side of the family and I – I don’t know what to do except speak the truth.
Brandi: Sorry. I hear in there some hints of these quotes that I’ve been hearing around Black Lives Matter, even as you talk about it, where because of dualism, because of white supremacy, we can say something’s a sin issue, not a skin issue, that we can somehow ignore racism and white supremacy as a concept or as an active thing that’s killing people’s bodies and rather reduce it down to being about sin in abstraction. And so I’m hearing some echoes of that sort of separation in what you’re saying right now.
Randy: So, sin, you know, call it what you want—I like to call it mistakes, hopefully we learn from our mistakes. I don’t think we’re born sinful. I mean that’s – that was a product of Augustine and the Catholic church in order to, you know, make sure the people don’t escape hell without their power, being – exercising their own power and made them rich and everything else.
And so we – it’s still used today throughout evangelicalism as a trap for people, you know, but sin, if you will, is a choice. It’s – it’s how you decide to live your life and how you decide to think. And repentance from sin, if you will, is to disentangle yourself from that – those worldly philosophies. And one of those worldly philosophies is being born sinful, by the way. And to disentangle yourself from those things and turn the opposite direction and re-engage yourself in everything that’s moving that direction. So, Black Lives Matter is a good opportunity for people to repent of their white supremacy and go the opposite direction. They’re not the only place, but they are one – one way for it to happen.
Brandi: Yeah, absolutely. It is pretty easy to spot dualism if we know what we’re looking for in this particular cultural moment, and I think you’re addressing some of those – the ways that those are playing out. I think it’s also, for me, evidenced in who people who identify as Christian are willing to follow. Because, for me, a lot of the reason Christians won’t follow Black Lives Matter or queer folx or whatever is because they consider them to be far away from what they see as orthodox or traditional or, you know, whatever kinds of theologies.
And so I can tell that there are ways that this dualism, disembodiment, all of that makes it so that we would rather abstractly care about someone’s, like you said before, belief system rather than their lived action in the world. And, in so, I think that a lot of people who identify as Christian who may actually want to do good miss opportunities to do good, to enter into repentance like you’re talking about, because we can’t even see the opportunities, because our brains have been so formed through dualism. I feel aware of that, even in myself in having to unlearn and to reconnect with my body and to reconnect with the land.
Because I know for a lot of folks, we might have bodily, visceral reactions to joining justice movements, to stepping away from communities that are harmful to us. But it’s because a lot of us grew up in cultures like I did, where if you had secular CDs, you, like, took them to CD destroying parties, or, like, threw them out the window of your car so you couldn’t be infected by sin. And, you know, we had purity culture, and you just had to rein in your body. It seems like people who are really in their bodies, Black folks – it seems a lot of what I’ve learned from being at Eloheh is as we’re in our bodies, that is the place where we find ourselves being free, not in escaping our bodies to wherever the hell we think our bodies would – wherever we think our souls would go.
Randy: Yeah. Exactly. And – and you know, I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve bought into this. You mentioned CDs, but we used to have these things—they were big, big black CDs, they were called albums? [Brandi laughs] And I – I bought into that. I destroyed three probably two-foot stacks of my albums. And – and – and because I’d gone to a Jesus festival and they said, “This is what you do if you love Jesus.” Well, I wanted to love Jesus, so I started with, you know, like, Woodstock and Steppenwolf and everything that kind of swore and, you know, and then it was the worldly philosophy and ideas, and then next thing you know I’m destroying, like, Cat Stephens and James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and it was like—[Randy laughs]—it was quite ridiculous. [Brandi laughs] And now my kids, who – some of my kids who collect albums, vinyl, are really upset, because they’re like, “You got rid of all those? Oh my god!”
So I just wanted to love Jesus with everything I had, right? And – and – and I did not understand – they – they were trying to tell me, you know, “This is what you do.” It was just like they said, you know, “Don’t worry about all that Indin stuff, right? Get rid of those pictures of you and your braids and your long hair, because that is just the flesh, right, and the flesh is bad, right.” All this of the flesh, of the world, quote unquote.
Well, guess what? The world is in the church and running the church. And so if we’re going to get out of the world, we have to get out the box of the current church system and create something different.
So there’s this old saying – as – as I get older, some of these old sayings from the south are coming back to me. And you know, there’s – a lot of people are, you know, prejudiced against people in the South, but, you know, a lot of – most of my relatives live in the South. I wasn’t raised there; I’ve lived there, but I wasn’t raised there. But we would go back for, like, almost a month every year and spend with my grandparents, in both Alabama and Mississippi, and, you know, I’m remembering things that they said.
Like, one of the things that I remember is – is somebody said, “You know, people in the South”—we’re talking about how people feel about Black folks, right—“people in the South, they love the man but hate the race.” That’s what they would say. So, in other words, I can get along with, you know, Joe Smith, because, you know, he eats greens like I do and butter beans and goes fishin’ for catfish and he works at the same job I do and, you know, he’s – he’s not like the rest of them, right. “But in the North, they hate the man but love the race.”
So, what is that saying? I mean, that’s – that’s really, even more dualistic if you ask me. It’s the idea that, you know, “Oh, I love – I love Black people! You know? I think Black people are great, and we need to give them their rights and we need to do all this kind of, you know – But is my daughter going to your daughter’s birthday party and spending the night? With all of the Black kids? I don’t think so.”
You see? There’s all kinds of racism. And – and that – that aspect of it concerns me about a lot of the white folks who are protesting right now. Now, I’m really glad that they are. I think it’s wonderful; I think that this is an awakening; I think that this is one of these pivotal movements in history that will change the needle of where humanity is going. But I also have concerns. Because there’s still a sense of, “Yes, I abstractly believe Black people are human beings, right. But where am I at at a personal level? Where am I at with my life? Do I – do I really share my life with Black folks? Do I have Black friends? Do my kids have Black friends? How do I feel about them?”
And so, um, you know, I’m concerned about that. And that – that comes out of a form of dualism. And this – and it’s still white supremacy.
Brandi: Yes. I feel really concerned about the same things. Right now, especially because I’m seeing a lot of – so I went to a small private liberal arts college, and I’m seeing a lot of people who I know or from these pseudo-academic spheres posting a million things on social media and going and protesting and I’m like, “Wait, but what happens when you get called to account on something? What happens when your social networks are questioned? What happens when we ask about your money and not just, like, the three times you gave?”
Well, even, like, people have been critiquing Robin DiAngelo lately on her book White Fragility because she’s making millions and millions of dollars off of speaking gigs and books and when called to account, can’t manage her own fragility enough, because her ideologies are so abstract and so academic that they end up losing the feet on the ground.
I’m seeing it when white folks make mistakes in the movement, where people will say all of the right things, and they make one mistake, and a Black person’s like, “Hey, you’re not actually being that helpful.” And then they capsize it on themselves, like a dying star, and start to externalize everything. Like, blame the movement, blame Black people, blame everything except for their own actions. And I think we’ve actually seen that with – in Portland, they have the wall of moms that was run by white folks, and they said they were going to turn over leadership to Black women. And then the leader, once it was hurting her capacity to start a 501c3, imploded. She just like—[Brandi laughs]—she just like, all of the values that she said she was espousing revealed that she was actually more self-interested than she was in the movement. And so I hear that racism in the North sentiment in this kind of academic, pseudo-liberal, neo-liberal space that actually probably a lot of people who listen to this occupy.
Randy: And so one of the things kind of related to this, and I’m glad you brought up Robin DiAngelo, I wondered what was happening with all that money. I thought she might be sending it to Eloheh or somewhere, but—[Brandi laughs]—I guess not. So, uh, there’s a related theme and – uh – to this fragility. I just lost track of what it was because I got started on Robin DiAngelo, sorry. [Randy laughs] I’ll – it’ll come back to me. Plus, I am getting kind of old, I just had my 64th birthday, so – but I’m hoping I’ll at least make it to where my dad and mom are at, my mom’s 92 and my dad’s 94, so.
Brandi: That’s a pretty good genetic track record. [Brandi laughs]
Randy: Yeah, not bad.
Brandi: Well, one thing that I would love for you to touch on, um – because I hear, in the disembodiment, and even as you talk about your own communities and your own work, is the idea of syncretism. Because I think that syncretism can pretty much only exist in the way that we’re talking about in dualistic thinking. And, so, can you talk a little bit about syncretism and what that is and how you see that being connected? Because I think there’s a subconversation in here that’s probably helpful for a lot of folks.
Randy: Right. So syncretism is the great bugaboo, by evangelicals in particular. You know, it’s like, “Don’t mix the – the sacred with the secular.” [Randy laughs] When modern evangelicalism, especially American modern evangelicalism, is just a mixture of all kinds of syncretism, right. So it – it has to do with taking what is supposed to be sacred and mixing it with something that is profane.
I guess it – it’s on your view of the world, what makes something profane? And so it’s just – you’re already set up to sort of say, “This is better than this” as opposed to, “God works through everything.” Right? God can work – God can speak through a jackass. There’s a story, you know, Balaam, I mean, that’s why I’m here today; God’s speaking through a jackass. So. [Randy laughs]
So if we set things up automatically like, “Well, this is secular and this is sacred,” we’re going to have this problem of syncretism. I think there’s a bigger problem than – than syncretism in the church, and it sounds like syncretism. It’s synchronism: everybody does everything the same way. And – and we’re supposed to be following the Creator in, you know, in the spirit, and who creates everything, and we’re the most uncreative space, the church is, oftentimes, imaginable, because everybody’s trying to do everything the same. Have the same doctrinal statements, have the same look, have the same music. And so, um, I’m more concerned about synchronism than syncretism.
Brandi: Yup. I love that you call it an evangelical bugaboo, because that does seem right, where it’s like, “Everything else except for this line of thinking is a threat and somehow going to, like, pull you away from God forever”—as though your white pastor is more powerful than Creator in having the world function, having reality function. [Brandi laughs]
Randy: And I just ran into this the other day, this – we’re getting a new well. And so I was getting estimates and start talking to the guy. Well, the guy’s an evangelical Christian. And basically, he starts talking about our Native American stuff, right. The automatic assumption is Native, evil, bad spirits, you know. And so how can I mix my good Christianity with bad Native American practices, you know. And it’s already set up in a win/lose situation. He also brought up dowsing, which is where you take two rods and you – you find water. Well, I do that. Well, he called that “witching,” you know, and he said that – that’s an abomination to the Lord, you know, and all this kind of stuff. And I’m like, “Eeeh.” So, I hope, you know, he’s not the lowest estimate. [Randy laughs]
So anyway, yeah, it’s just the assumption that, you know, God can only work in – you know, where it’s the worst is the idea that God can only work through the church. Like God is not at work in the world. Where I find that God is much more at work in the world than in the church. Because God loves the whole world, right.
And so the church – I kind of joke around sometimes, because we don’t attend a regular church service, I think that’s probably the majority of people now, because everyone I run into says the same thing. But I say, “Well, the last time I went to go to church at our church”—and that was 2011, and now we have a community that meets and all that kind of stuff, or we did, we currently don’t because we’re transitioning, and covid, and everything else. But I say, “Well, I started to walk in the church building, and I felt somebody tap me on the shoulder. And I turned around and, you know, it was Jesus! And I said, ‘Hey, Jesus, hey. So glad to be here and meet you this morning. Let’s go on inside.’ And Jesus says back, ‘No, you go ahead. I’ll wait for you out here.’”
Brandi: Yes. I have felt that tension with church, and a lot of people who listen I think feel a really strong tension with their church communities right now, for that reason. That it feels like it’s easier to find God in the streets protesting or at home, having a meal with friends or family—well, when we’re not in a pandemic—or making art or reading poetry or, for me right now, it’s gardening. And – and all of that. So it just feels like a lot of people, I think, resonate with what you’re saying. I think it would be helpful just if you could give what you see being the primary consequences of dualism.
Randy: The most severe consequences right now for us is that we’re gonna lose our privilege of maintaining harmony and balance on the earth by no longer being a species. Humanity’s future is in peril, as one of the creatures on this earth, because of dualistic, western, white supremacist thinking.
So I’m starting to talk a lot nowadays about the relationship between white supremacy and climate change. Even in a dualistic worldview, where everything’s bifurcated, it’s like, wait a minute, white supremacy’s one problem, and climate change is another problem. No. They’re directly related; they interconnect.
So – so that is the greatest concern that I have, and that’s why we’ll spend the rest of our life at Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice trying to teach and live and show that it’s really important that we change our relationship with the earth. And the only way to change that is to begin to decolonize and rid ourselves of the worst vestiges of the western worldview. And so – so to me, that’s the most severe.
But the other thing – there’s – there’s lots of things. There’s, like, the utopianism that it brings: the idea that this world to come is better than the world we live in. Well, history has shown that people will do anything to make that happen and to prove they’re right, even though they don’t even know, because it’s in the future, right? But, um, they will kill, they will do whatever’s necessary to prove that their idea of a future world is better, and then they disembody themselves from this world.
And that’s where we often see Christian theology, right. It’s like, um – and I think Jesus said something about that. He said, like, “Don’t worry about tomorrow.” You know, everybody has all these, you know, elaborate schemes of eschatology, none of which are generally ever built correctly upon scripture, but – but, you know ,my eschatology is simply this: Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow; tomorrow’s got enough trouble for itself, you know. Take care of today.” And so today is – is my lived, my realized eschatology. It is how I live the future is what today takes over to tomorrow. And that’s about as much an eschatology as I had.
But that’s – that’s one of the other severe consequences is that we won’t invest ourselves in what it means to love our neighbor today. And there’s no gap, there’s no space between loving God and loving our neighbor. It – it – I mean, Jesus even said so, right: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” And in Matthew, it says, “And the second commandment is just like it: love your neighbor as yourself.” And over and over and over again, it’s – it’s taught, the good Samaritan, it’s taught, you know, throughout the epistles, you know. John: How can you love your – you know, say you love God but you don’t love your neighbor; how can the love of God be in you? You know, James: you know, this is what it means to love is to take care of the, you know, the marginalized, etcetera.
On and on and on, because Jesus was talking about this shalom kingdom. And I use that word kingdom, you know, reservedly. He didn’t actually use that term, but the King James translators thought it was a great word, so that’s the one everybody seems to go by. But it was one built on shalom, an ancient system of shalom, that was structurally built in to take care of the most marginalized, to – to make sure nobody – as safety nets, and to make sure no one falls between the cracks, and that there’s equity among people, that everyone has something to do something with.
And so, you know, all of that is lost when we only view Jesus—[clunk] something weird just rolled off my roof, sorry—when we only view Jesus as the salvation for the soul, or, you know, my spirit or – rather than – and a better word for salvation I like is healing. I think it’s more appropriate. Healing for the whole world, healing for my community. Healing for, you know, my family, rather than just my soul and their soul. And – and that’s part of, of course, the individualism that comes out of the western worldview.
Sorry, we didn’t even touch on half the terrible things that come out of a western worldview. But, you know, all of these are – they interconnect. And they just end up saying that we’re not much good here if we’re going to operate from a western worldview. And if we’re not much good here, what are we doing?
Brandi: Hmm. Well it doesn’t sound like you’re painting a very delightful picture of the consequences of dualism. Yeah, if that’s the case, then what’s another way to be? What are the things you find yourself leaning into? And are there scriptures or stories of Jesus that feel like they ground some of how you are continuing to distance yourself from dualistic thinking?
Randy: Yeah. So Jesus’s parables – there’s all kinds of parables and teachings that go on, you know, where – where he takes his on. But one of my former students, Bo Sanders, and I just wrote a book called Decolonizing Evangelicalism. And decolonizing evangelicalism, because evangelicals are one of the groups that are probably having the most damage right now on Earth. They’re doing the most damage through their dualistic thinking. So I would direct people to that. I hate to plug my book, but if you want to get into detail, that’s a good place to start.
It’s a scary time that we’re living in, but it’s also a very hopeful time that we’re living in. And – and while I appreciate the, you know, the Martin King suggestion that the arc of the universe bends towards justice, you know, I think we’ve gotta – gotta bend it ourself, also, right. And I know he did, too. But in a world of dualistic thinking, we just wait for it, right. But in a world of – of the gospel, we actually grab ahold of it and start bending the arc.
Brandi: I love that invitation to bend the arc. So I think that – I think that Martin Luther King Jr. would probably say that he did that. Like, that was part of the work, to partner with God, to cocreate a more just world with God, which feels so different than how I see that used by a lot of white evangelicals, which is, like, “God’s gonna make it just someday!” And I’m like, “Have you ever read the scriptures and the stories that say, like, this is actually this divine partnership and kind of dance of us and God figuring out what the world can look like and imagining that and reimagining that together.”
And so much, for me, of dualistic thinking makes it so that we cannot imagine or dream, because we’re so busy trying to get into the right boxes or the right categories so as to make God love our minds enough that God would accept us forever. And that just feels – it doesn’t feel – it is so harmful. And so I love that invitation to lean into parables, to read your book, as – as folks should.
Randy: And – and, you know, again, I’m mindful that, you know, John Lewis just passed over, and – and I wanna say the Civil Rights – Martin King gets all the publicity, and, yeah, he – he was a great orator and a great speaker and led a great movement. But you know who my real heroes were, were SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Which John Lewis, at one time—
Brandi: Yes.
Randy: —led, right? Because they would train people how to put their bodies on the line for justice. Now that is embodied theology, right. And so we – we need a great revival of SNCC-ism, if you will, so that people can – we’re not very organized right now. I mean, folks like, you know, ANTIFA, are – you know – I mean, how could a group be anti-fascist and be considered by, like, World War II vets to be evil, you know? I mean, World War II vets, like my dad, fought against fascism, right.
And so we just gotta do a better job of organizing and – and understanding what it takes for the long term, monetarily, there’s a lot of people showing up for protests, but I don’t know if pocketbooks are being – besides the covid, I don’t know if people’s pocketbooks are really – when I say people, I mean corporate leaders and corporations and our corporatocracy. I don’t know how much they’re really suffering, besides from covid.
But – but there is room for a great organization and a great sustained movement, and so I’m calling on you leaders out there. You know, I’m – I’m an old guy now. I’m just kind of a coach. But to – to begin to organize. You know, this is the only way you’re going to be able to defeat these organized systems, is through organizing.
Brandi: Yes. And that a lot of us need to unlearn the notion that it is by prayer alone or by some abstraction of our faith that things will change. Because I was taught, like, if you just pray – you know, I came up in IHOP adjacent, and so it was like, “If you just pray enough, if you just fast enough, if you just consecrate enough, then you’re going to see a revival, you’re going to see the thing happen.” And I’m like, “Actually, I think the revival’s happened”—whatever you want to call revivals. Because people did what you said. They put their bodies on the line.
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is how do I train myself to be in a space where I can let my body be a protest. I recently did a militant nonviolent civil disobedience training, just to go, what does it mean to use my body as a – not necessarily a tool, but as a means of fighting for justice, as a means for joining a collective, as a means for figuring out how do we protect each other? How do we love each other? And even if that’s not just in a protest—I think doing those kinds of trainings or those kinds of things, like SNCC did, allow us to normalize that our bodies matter, that how we show up matters, that showing up matters, that the ways that we engage in our bodies, with our bodies, bend the arc, like you’re saying. And so I really appreciate that exhortation.
Randy: I would also say, on the other side, conversely, so I’ve led social movements, I’ve led protests, I’ve led organizations to change systems. Systems are very complicated and rigid and – and they don’t change easily. And I’ve led them without prayer, and I’ve led them with prayer. And I can say that there is a place for prayer in the movements, of course. We have to realize that we – we can do what we do. And what we can’t do, we ask God to do. And – but God asks us to do what we can. And so – so we need all this together, right. Yeah.
Brandi: Yeah, I love that. I – I think the language I’ve adopted over the last few years for that is partnership. That it is we do what we can and we expect that in the mystery of it all, the Divine will show up to do the things that we can’t. Man, if we just do one or the other, if we do activism without some kind of inner life work, I’m just seeing a ton of burnout. And if we do just inner life stuff but with no embodiment, then we just become so unhelpful, disengaged, distant.
Randy: Irrelevant.
Brandi: Irrelevant is a helpful word. [Brandi laughs] Yes. Randy, I – is there anything else that you want to add to this conversation? I think that people should know in – in this conversation about dualism, I know it’s, like, a huge topic, and I’m asking you in, like, an hour to break it down, but is there anything you want to leave people with?
Randy: Yeah, I guess I would just want to say this before we go. The western Christianity that not only Native American people were given misrepresented who God is, totally and terribly misrepresented who God is. And – and that’s one of the worst things you can do, is just misrepresent this loving, vulnerable Creator who hears our prayers, who is active. And so trying to conform us as Native people into the image of the white god, what the white god wants, right. Their reality was wrong; they were living a lie.
And now, finally – because we’re the canary in the coal mine, Native people are, pretty much. Now other people are beginning to realize, “The reality of what I was taught about God is a lie.” And most – many people are then just trying to abandon God. Many are trying to hold on and say, “How do I abandon the church and hang on to God?” Or, “How do I still love Jesus when – when everything that’s been taught to me about Jesus is a lie?”
This is a good thing. It doesn’t feel good when you’re going through it, right, but it’s a good thing. Because what it does is it puts us on a journey, and a journey’s a good thing. A journey where we begin to discover the truth within the place of lies that have been built, within this reality of lies, and we begin to shuck them, one after the other, and one affects the other, and it changes it.
And this is a process we call deconstructing or, in our particular case in America, decolonizing. So the church has to decolonize, it has to shuck away this – this old snakeskin, if you will, that was taught about who God is and who Jesus is. Now, doesn’t mean that God wasn’t real; doesn’t mean Jesus wasn’t real, or isn’t real. But what it does hopefully is set people on a quest to find out what is real. And – and honestly, at this point, white folks are probably the least qualified to take us on that journey. It’s people who’ve been marginalized and had to look at scriptures from a different place who are probably the best equipped to take us all on that journey.
Brandi: And that is such a vulnerable invitation to know that, especially for many of us who grew up in contexts where pursuing the truth or apologetics or right answers was the right thing, to have a baseline that maybe what we’ve learned about Jesus and about God and about theology and reality is a lie opens us up to the possibility that maybe there’s something different and better. Because I think a lot of us who are on this decolonizing journey are finding that the promises of our church experiences or our Christian experiences have not come to pass. That we were told if we did these things, if we did right in these ways, that these things would happen, and they’re not. And so the lies are being exposed time and time again.
But I think that a lot of us are only being given the tool, “Oh, just be more faithful.” Or, “Deal with your sin.” Or, “Is there something that’s, like, unrepentant in you?” Or, “Are you being blocked from interacting with Jesus in some way?” Rather than going, “Maybe this is a lie that I can discard”—as you said, shuck away—“and have it replaced in community and in conversation with creation and Creator and all of that to create something more robust.”
And so I just recognize that the invitation that you’re giving is one of vulnerability and one that kind of leaves us bare in some ways, to be able to rebuild something more beautiful.
Randy: So, and there’s one more thing. And I’m happy that I’m not as old as I think I am, because I just remembered what that other thing was that I forgot. [Randy laughs]
So when you mentioned vulnerability – one of the – and – and – and this whole movement, and we were talking about, you know, like the – the wall of moms and all that kind of stuff.
So, the – like, the worst thing in a white person’s mind seems to be to be caught making a mistake of racism, right. It’s like, you know, and it gets to the point where, like, we were doing a – on our podcast the other day, we were doing a show on Critical Race Theory. And my co-host was saying, you know, “Don’t expect people of color to educate you. They’re – this is, um – they’re tired of doing that.” And all this sort of thing. And people are beginning to think –
And I – I challenged him on that. I said, “You know what, there’s a difference in the power dynamic when a person of color is talking to you about your racism and when a white person is talking to you about your racism.” And I – we probably need both. But white people are so afraid to make a mistake, right, or to say something racist. And what they need to do is get used to being corrected, because there’s a power dynamic that takes place. All of a sudden, your white supremacy that always taught you, without even being taught because you caught it, that people of color are inferior to you. Now you have submitted yourself in a place where they are correcting you, and you’re accepting it. So what can be a better lesson than allowing that white fragility to break through and having people of color correct your mistakes? If you wanna get in the school of decolonization, that’s one of the fastest things – one of the fastest ways to do it, you know.
So I just – I just wanted to – that was the thing that I forgot, and I wanted to make sure that – that people understood that this vulnerability also is – this is, to – to me, Creator is the most vulnerable being that exists. That’s how I understand Creator. That’s what love is, true love is to be vulnerable. Jesus’s whole life and the whole story and the cross and everything else is all about vulnerability and love. And this is the character of God that, to me, is the most overriding character over everything else.
And if we’re going to act like we are followers of Jesus, then we need to be vulnerable. That vulnerability is – that allows our humanness, which is what we were created to be, to bring forth, and that humanness is our greatest spiritual gift. We are most spiritual when we are most human. We are most human when we are most vulnerable, and we are most reflecting who God is through our vulnerability.
So – so – and, unfortunately, that means, people of color are – it is upon us to educate folks. It is upon – it falls upon us to have to do the work. We’re tired, yeah. Some of us have been doing this for decades and decades and decades. But if it’s going to get done, it’s going to have to get done by us and through us. You can’t expect the – the same DNA of white folks to produce a different child. It has to be another parent introduced. And I’m saying those parents are people of color.
Brandi: Well, thank you so much, Randy. I really appreciate your time and am just wondering, as we close up, is there anything you want to plug right now, or do you want me to plug things for you later?
Randy: [Brandi and Randy laugh] Well, I’m plugging stuff not because I’m getting wealthy from anything that we’re doing—we’re not—and don’t – don’t ever be an author if you want to make money, unless you can, you know, sell, like, you know, a hundred thousand books or something like that, but that’s nothing to do with that. But I write stuff and I say stuff because I want people to hear it, right.
So we have a podcast, Peacing It All Together, and that’s peacingitalltogether.com. The new book by Bo Sanders and myself, who’s my cohost, is Decolonizing Evangelicalism. I – you know, I wrote Shalom and the Community of Creation because I believe in what it says. I got another book, Living in Color: Embracing God’s Passion for Diversity. My favorite book is my children’s book, The Harmony Tree: A Story of Healing and Community. And I – I – I want to publish – I’ve got two more written in that series, but I haven’t been able to find a publisher yet.
But – yeah, and then, uh, they can go to an article that’s free online. The one that I want people to read the most was through May 2019 of Sojourners last year. It was called The Fullness Thereof: The Something-Something Indigenous People Blah-Blah. Just put “The Fullness Thereof Woodley”—that’s free, read that.
Yeah, and then, you know, we’re – we always – we need monthly supporters for Eloheh Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm, and what we’re doing here, and we need people who will believe in it and support it. And we – we appreciate that, but we can only get done as much as we can, especially right now, with support. So it’s just Edith and I right now. So thanks for giving me an opportunity to do all that. That’s – I don’t necessarily like doing that, but you know it’s necessary.
Brandi: Yeah, I know you don’t. it’s why I gave you the option, just to make sure, because I want – I want people to know what you do. I’ve read and love your books and so want to make sure people know that there’s ways to unlearn dualism, I think as we – as we call it, as we indigenize our lives, as we connect back to and learn from Native peoples and from the land, and from all that. It just feels like you provide invaluable resources in that way, and so I want people to have the opportunity to learn from you in an ongoing way that doesn’t require your active work in the present.
Randy: [Randy laughs] So if – if people want to know more about who we are and what we do, they can find out just about anything about us at our website, which is Eloheh.org, or e-l-o-h-e-h, Eloheh, .org. That pretty much will tell everybody what they need to know about us, and then you can decide if that’s something you want to support or not.
Brandi: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Randy. I appreciate it.
Randy: It’s always good to see you.
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Brandi: Thanks for joining for another episode of Reclaiming My Theology. As usual, you can send your questions, and I think that we might have more after this one, and Randy is actually very willing to answer questions, so maybe get on that. But send your questions to reclaimingmytheology@gmail.com. We’re going to be doing some episodes in the future to answer those questions and to try to make sense of the things that come up as you listen to the podcast.
As usual, if you want to support, please subscribe, rate, and review. It goes a long way to helping folks find the podcast, and that has been evidenced by the places that it’s ending up, which I’m so grateful for. You can also join Patreon if you want to help financially support what’s happening here. Just $5 a month gets you extra content, and in the next three weeks or so, I’ll be sending out the first round of perks to people who are already subscribers. So thank you so much for your support; it truly makes the podcast happen.
And until next time, friends, let’s continue to do better together.