The AllCreation Podcast

We begin this 3-part conversation by asking Rev. Louis Tillman to share about his work providing baptisms, funerals, memorial services, counseling services and church services all over the Mid-Atlantic US, since Covid. When asked how he remains rooted under extreme pressure Louis tells about his background as a prodigious but reluctant preacher, the hardest eight years of his life, his parents, his early church life, his passions for: trusting God, helping people in transformative ways, overcoming incredible obstacles, and building relationships in and out of church. He also shares views on Black elitism, in and out of the church and what's ruining Black America, "day in, day out." Throughout this segment Louis interweaves thoughts on the varying generational perspectives of what Black advancement means with his own first priorities.

Questions discussed

• Tell us about your last two weeks
• How do you find rootedness to be a leader day after day?
• Which word is best now? African-American, Black American, Black public, African-descent, etc.
• The Black American apocalypse and Black advancement today

Key quotes

"If I leave my community, if I get educated, then I'll be able to get out of my community and do something better." This is what's ruining us, day in, day out, as a people of color.

We have to be able to create liberation out of lamentation.

In this country, "the land of the free"...

We as people of African descent, we're not fighting for equality, we're fighting for our existence.

The Black public is invisible to a White society that is indifferent to Black life.

This is all because the relationships don't exist. We fear people before we hear people.

I don't see us advancing... Society is constantly reminding me I'm a young Black male, a thug. 

It's open season in the streets and in the classroom. . . Individuals running the educational institutions are creating unequal classrooms. 

(Advancement is being) the best person today God has created me to be (and to) stop competing against my neighbor and only compete against myself. I want to be better today than that person in the mirror was yesterday and I want to be better tomorrow than this person is today.

"Make the Negro fight the Negro." That exists today. This is one of the main apocalyptic issues we face. 

How will the Black community advance over the next 100 years?

If advancement gets focused on self-improvement instead of barrel of crabs competition within the race, then YES, we are talking about actual progress and advancement. 

We listen to respond, we don't listen to receive. 

Jesus is in the midst of every single mess and everything we're gonna go thru. 

Do what you can to enlighten your community. 

Terms

• Kronos time
• Kairos time

References

• The Tuskogee experiment
• Ecclesiastes 3:2
• Louis' sermon on 2 Corinthians, "Cracked Pots"
• High on the Hog (Netflix) (Book)

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, exec. editor, AllCreation.org.
Listen to part 2: https://share.transistor.fm/s/3ee55c03

Listen to part 3: https://share.transistor.fm/s/d0eb3244

Vance Blackfox, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is director of Other+Wise, coordinator for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Theological Round Table, creator and producer of the Vine Deloria Jr. Theological Symposium at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Indigenous theologian for the Faith-based initiative for the City of San Antonio, and a freelance educator on Cherokee and Native American culture. In this episode, Vance explains: 

• How "Development" has impacted Native Americans, their lands, and their relationships with Creation
• What the conversation on "reparations" is like today
• What non-Native people should do or learn from Native Americans

To learn more about, or connect to, Vance visit VanceBlackfox.com or contact Vance via LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

A few key quotes: 

(Paraphrasing) Our lands were stolen, our diets taken away, we lost our medicines; the gifts of Creation were taken away from us.

One of the things that makes this conversation so challenging... Let the Indigenous population and our unhealthiness, because of our apocalypse, be an example to you for what you're about to experience that you created yourselves, as a people, as a culture...
 
I don't hate. What I hate is that no one is listening to the experience Indigenous Peoples have had, nor the wisdom that we can offer. Not just for our survival, but so that we can live in a new way.

(America's) need for comfort and self-gratification is so much more highly-valued than caring for your neighbor. 

For the most part it's built into the system and the culture in the United States, and now the rest of the world. . . Is there turning back? Absolutely. But will we? 

We don't want money, we want to return to our way of understanding how to be most healthy. 

Address the many things that can be repaired: relationships, resources held in the lands, get educated about Native Peoples... Who's land are you on? What was their culture? 

Become an ally; an advocate. 

Appreciate our experience and all the gifts we were blessed with and have been robbed of because of your ancestors. 

Our Creation stories are here. Ask, try to understand, what those gifts were like and what it might be like to be robbed. 

I want to challenge you to think about what it is that we might still be able to offer you: Take and Live. 

Our Creator created all of it that we might live, that we might love. 

Terms 

• Colonization
• The Colonial Project
• Reparations
• Landback

References 

• Maps of Native American territories: native-land.ca
• We have to consider the Seven Generations
• #landback

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, co-founder and exec. editor of AllCreation.org.

Listen to episode 1: https://share.transistor.fm/s/2abf61b6

Vance Blackfox, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is director of Other+Wise, coordinator for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Theological Round Table, creator and producer of the Vine Deloria Jr. Theological Symposium at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Indigenous theologian for the Faith-based initiative at the City of San Antonio, and a freelance educator on Cherokee and Native American culture. In this episode, Vance explains: 

• Indigenous land acknowledgement
• What name to call Native Americans today
• How Native Americans talk about Apocalypse

To learn more about, or connect to, Vance visit VanceBlackfox.com or contact Vance via LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. 

A few key quotes: 

If you know someone's tribal affiliation, citizen or member, name the tribe... 

I cannot think of a better description of who we are as a people than "En Dios." 

I just need people to talk about us. Learn something about us. Ask the question, learn how to be in relationship with people who are different. 

Christianity wants us to believe there's only one apocalypse. 

"Kill and take" was not prevalent (for our peoples). Instead it was, "How do we engage with them? How do we care for them?"

They took us away from our places. It was an apocalypse for Cherokee people and for our non-human relatives who's purpose it was to help us survive. 

Terms 

• Survivance
• En Dios

References

• Land acknowledgement resource: native-land.ca
• Vance's booklist: bookshop.org/shop/nativereads
• Vine Deloria, Jr. Vine Deloria, Jr. 
• 574 recognized tribes in the US today
• Apocalyptic prophecy of the Ojibwe people
• The true history of
  • Plymouth Rock
  • Jamestown
  • First thanksgiving
  • Pochahantas

This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, co-founder and exec. editor of AllCreation.org.

Listen to episode 2: https://share.transistor.fm/s/4ca9b6fd

What is "apocalypse" and is it happening now? Rev. Matthew Syrdal is senior pastor at Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church, co-founder of Seminary of the Wild, and founder of Church of Lost Walls. In this interview / conversation between friends, AllCreation editor Chris Searles asks Matt to share his thoughts and views on Apocalypse and Apokalypsis. Matt discusses ancient Hebrew, New Testament texts, mythology, modern pyschology, indigenous identity, and more; worth repeat listenings.

Visit SeminaryoftheWild.com and ChurchofLostWalls.org for more on the content discussed in this interview.

References 

• "Unveiling" - the traditional Hebrew meaning
• "Ontology" - our way of being
• The apostle Paul (paraphrased) -- (Apocalypse was) a reckoning of the practices and destructive habits of the dominant culture with the original intention of the Divine for humanity, in the context of how we relate to Earth.
• Thomas Berry, We have been ripped from the universe.
• Carl Jung, We are living in an age between myths.
• James Hillman, In order to love we must personify.
• Sean Kane, Wisdom of the Mythtellers
• Bill Plotkin, founder, Animas Valley Institute, and Geneen Haugen, Animas guide 
• Joel 2:28, "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions."
• T. Berry Brazleton, Touchpoints

Selected writings by Matt: 

• Liminal Grief (Oct. 2020)
• Let It Fall (March 2020)
• Christian Imagination and the Return to Myth (Jan. 2020)

Key quotes  

It wasn't necessarily doomsday, it was meant to be understood in a broader context (as) a reckoning (of) the practices and destructive habits of the dominant culture with the original intentions of the Divine, within the context of how we relate to Earth, how we relate to our planet.

Apocalypse is an evolutionary necessity - that we pass through this time of unraveling so that we can be rewired on a new level of functioning as a human society.

If love is the goal, it changes the whole equation... Loving our planet and the diverse beings that inhabit our planet, we're designed to be in relationship with, is an end goal in and of itself. If we can live from that place, real magic can happen.

We don't know where we're going and that creates unimagined possibilities... We have the capacity to imagine new futures.

Everything has a self. (Genesis)

(Apocalypse is) not just a revolution of ideas, it’s a revolution of ontology and how we understand ourselves to be human.

Rev. Jared Michaels is a Zen Buddhist priest, therapist, activist, and family man. In this conversation we discuss "Interconnectedness" and Buddhism, psychological health, sacredness, and child rearing. Jared finishes the episode by leading a meditation on Interconnectedness. Don't miss. Visit JaredMichaels.com for more on Jared's breakthrough work.

This episode begins with two quotes from Paul's book, The Ground Beneath Us, then jumps into the conversation. Paul Bogard is author of The Ground Beneath Us: From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are, a must-read book about humans and soils. Paul is also author of The End of Night, an internationally-acclaimed book on our vanishing relationship with the night sky. This interview explores Paul's thoughts on soils and the many, many ways we are connected to them. 

Here's a rough layout of interview: 

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:00 Solution
• 6:00 Physicality
• 9:30 Community
• 11:00 Majesty
• 14:00 Estrangement 
• 19:00 Transgressions
• 21:00 Sacredness
• 25:00 Reconnection

Thanks, Paul!

Visit Paul's website for more info.
Visit AllCreation.org for more content. 

Rev. Ragan Sutterfield is an accomplished author, journalist, iron man, family man, Wendell Berry scholar, and Episcopalian priest. In this episode we talk about Ragan's views on our "Interconnectedness" with nature. Visit ragansutterfield.com to learn more about Ragan's amazing works.

Discussed in this podcast

• What does the future look like if we get it right? 
• The importance of putting relationship first, in environmental solutions 
• “Humus beings”
• Interconnectedness

Books by Ragan

• Wendell Berry and the Given Life
• This is My Body
• Cultivating Reality
• Farming as a Spiritual Discipline

A few quotes

“If everything was going right, in 20 years my place will be biologically-diverse and rich with insect life and bird life and all of the other creatures, and everyone else on my block will have adopted the same and we’ll be creating a corridor that will provide even more significant habitat.”

“We can do things in small ways in our particular neighborhoods and yards and that’s where i think the relationships can happen, where we can become human in a proper way, and that’s the best thing we can do, recover the art of creatureliness…”

“One of our problems, and it’s an old problem, is that we have avoided the reality that we are created beings, that we are creatures… a being that lives from breath… The Hebrew scriptures make no distinction between the breath of a dog and the breath of a human.”

“Being human and being a creature means that we are absolutely and totally entangled in the life of this world.”

"Going out into the soil, there’s such an amazing network of life going on all around us, all the time, and what we eat and how we live — all of those things are so deeply connected."

"Our lives are very dependent upon the soil. If you were born of your parents, your body is made essentially of the soil and the sun."

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This episode is hosted by Chris Searles, co-founder and exec. editor of AllCreation.org.
Visit allcreation.org/ragan-sutterfield to see this post on our website. 

Visit ragansutterfield.com for more of Ragan's work.