3rd String Kicker said:
Below is a post from a Baylor employee who is also the wife of a longtime local southern Baptist pastor. I trust what she says about her friend. Some of you need to stop the rush to judgement that is all-too-regular in our society.
A friend of mine, Kaitlin Curtice, spoke this week at Baylor's chapel service. I have been so excited about her coming to this campus, I looked forward to seeing her face so I could just talk to another Native Christian who understands what I go through we aren't rare, I just don't have any here in Waco. My time with her was treasured and I look forward to seeing her again.
I watched her live and she did such a great job speaking. I am grateful to the chapel staff at Baylor for giving a platform to a female Native Christian. I don't think you know how uncommon that is. She shared excerpts from her book that is coming out in May (her story) and she prayed poetic prayers from her first book, Glory Happening. She spoke on some of the same Native concerns you will find on my feed or I vocalize if asked. As I have experienced in my DM's and conversations, Nativeness being talked about is not always appreciated. In fact many times my words are dismissed or defenses are raised so quickly it reveals they weren't listening to me, just hearing me. The terms and words Native Americans use are not always preferred by the majority. I/we know this, yet I/we still keep sharing.
Kaitlin's personal story and prayers were promoted to social media and the local media as "weird, to me" "non-Christian" and "pagan."
The space many Native Christians navigate is often misunderstood and too often brings out the worst of fragility or racism, by other Christians. I have experienced it and I am watching it happen this week to Kaitlin, on a large scale. I saw the ignorance of a student go so far as to lie about a prayer from a Christian and called a sister in Christ a pagan. I watched a news outlet take this student and his political group's word as fact and air a story about how a prayer to "Mother Mystery" was prayed at Baylor. I watched a local pastor, previous regent, back that story up with he "knows Baylor will do the right thing" (????). Clearly these people didn't bother to watch/rewatch the service, nor did the media.
I am emotionally watching online as a sister in Christ and Native American is called the worst of things, and the atrocities our people have experienced have become memes and hate filled messages toward her. So hateful her husband is having to filter her social media platforms. TOWARD A SISTER IN CHRIST. Christians.we are called to be better than this.
The student that has made this outcry misheard the very first line and while he focused on 'this must be pagan,' he missed a beautiful prayer to God. The opening line in the "controversial" prayer that Kaitlin read is "Oh God of Mystery".in chapel she said "Oh Mystery" -- not Mother Mystery. << she may have assumed in a Christian chapel service she could say Oh Mystery (God would be assumed). She may have assumed since she it had been already stated she was a Christian that it would be assumed she's speaking to God, not to a god. The words below that have been described as pagan by so many online, have become a re-focus for me to this week.
Oh God of mystery,
If we have tried to place you in a box,
break it.
No mold can hold you.
We search the surface of the earth
to understand you,
because we are your imprint.
But we cannot understand.
Only the kind glimpses
you give us can suffice.
And indeed they are everything we need.
Teach us to look out to your bigness.
to fall freely into your Holy Abyss,
into your depths,
where we see more glimpses of Kingdom things.
It's safe and good there,
and it is where we long to be.
Bring us to you,
the One who is
not here or there,
not this or that.
We do not even understand
how we long for you,
how we burn in our bones
for your presence.
It is simply our need.
Pull us closer still.
Amen.
As almost always, I usually wait back to say anything because the full truth isn't usually out right away. If this is indeed her prayer, I don't see anything wrong with it, I've been in several different denominations, and this isn't much different from some of the more creative prayers I've heard.
I hope she believes in the Christ, someone on here, a more reasonable poster, said they thought she may not believe in His deity. Hopefully that isn't the case, but this prayer is fine.