That makes me happy.

I do tend to draw a line between certain flavors of Christian concepts of ‘worthiness’ and the indigenous belief that one should humble oneself, attract pity by making oneself vulnerable and small.

In the Christian sense, you have a pervasive sense of personal value tied up in the whole bundle - do you pass muster? Do you measure up? Naughty or nice?

You make a great distinction there, Willem. I think Xians use the guilt pressure of the laws (and the fact that they can never measure up to them) as the means to hit bottom — at least I did, and most of the grief-worship around me that I noticed (in the Southern Baptist and non-denominational traditions) worked this way as well: “I suck, therefore take pity” as opposed to “I need, therefore take pity.”

Billy, thanks for sharing your take on the Roman Catholic tradition. I like how you pointed out the “responsibility for the kind of relationship” aspect to confession and cleansing. I definitely experienced that as well. It reminds me of what Martin Prechtel said in Grief and Praise that instead of “original sin” the Mayans have “original debt”. You come into the world already in debt to the spirits that have fed you while you grew in your mother’s womb and that kept your people alive. You spend your existence working to repay the upset in that balance — taking responsibility for the relationship.

Sorry if some of the words I’ve used have a lot of baggage. It’s the way I know how to express this stuff.
Sincerely,
Billy

I do tend to draw a line between certain flavors of Christian concepts of ‘worthiness’ and the indigenous belief that one should humble oneself, attract pity by making oneself vulnerable and small.

In the Christian sense, you have a pervasive sense of personal value tied up in the whole bundle - do you pass muster? Do you measure up? Naughty or nice?

In the indigenous sense, absent the hierarchy of ‘lords’ and ‘kingdoms’, you simply want to attract pity. Your personal worth has nothing to do with any of it - you just want to, for a time, make yourself small and vulnerable, so the world will help you to stand, and in so doing give you gifts to expand your ability to have a life worth living.

I think Jesus did this often, but I don’t think the Christian faith on the whole sees it that way, don’t you think?

I felt a really strong sense of the importance of grief/praise even when I still worshiped within Christianity. The main initiation rite in Xianity involves debasing oneself in order to approach the deity. They call it confessing your sins and asking Jesus to forgive you so that he can come dwell within you, but it amounts to the same thing: debasing yourself before a spirit in order to initiate or maintain a relationship with it.

I also noticed that the congregations that worshiped with more emotional services tended to feel like they had a stronger connection to the divine than did the more cerebral congregations.

For my own part, I often felt a living presence during moments of strong debasement or heightened praise.

I say these things not to promote Christianity in any way, but to point out how I have noticed these principles of more-than-human relationships happening even within that realm. If, as Prechtel suggests (and I believe,) the spirits thrive on our emotions — eating them and finding nourishment in them the same way we do with food — then who can say that even evangelical Christian worship doesn’t invite attention from the local spirit world? Personally, I think YHWH may have started out as a pushy atmospheric spirit in the Middle East who really figured out how to foster strong emotional responses from his worshipers in order to bolster his own power.

Generally speaking, I know indigenous tradition talks a lot about plants not offering their healing power unless one asks in the right way when selecting and harvesting them, and same with hunting and so on.

Of course in a modern sense, we can use cleverness and technology somewhat to get around the need for this intimate conversation with the one dying/hurting for you, which turns us into ‘consumers’ rather than ‘courters’. Which does its own damage.

I think I can reveal that by simply and sincerely asking for help from the Land whenever I take folks out to learn tracking and wayfinding skills, that I’ve never had a student lost or injured, though I encourage them to take all kinds of risks to show how much the Land will support a sincere seeker.

This simple and sincere request doesn’t quit mean I’ve ‘hit bottom’, but if I had something bigger to ask for I think I’d have to sacrifice something bigger to earn the intimacy required for such a gift. Just like in any relationship. ‘What have you done for me lately?’

Did any of this answer your question? It sounds like you have powerful experiences of your own that might already answer it better than I have here.

I think the New Age shamanism thing amounts to the modern human love of power, control and performance, projected onto energy work. Of course pitiableness wouldn’t have a high value there.

Willem, yeah. From my experience, a Vision Quest can be like that.

Kate said, “…going intentionally to the bottom, is something that the powers of the world love, and I was wondering about the different ways in which people have been met or gifted to….I’m trying to think now of the ways that land or plants or animals or whoever might meet us there.”

I can tell you that yes it happens. Commitment on your part plays a big part in things if it is something that you are deliberately doing to seek that connection. If a person finds them self in that place of pitiableness ( if that’s a word) due to circumstances in their life then maybe the commitment part is already taken care of. If it is a voluntary “quest” kind of situation then maybe a certain level of commitment may be required.
When the connections happen, it is often a good thing to keep the details as a personal thing, which is why I might sound kind of vague here.
Billy