Clarity, consistency, communication and compassion. Learn how the 4 Cs that Rev. Calvin Yashie Hill used to train wild mustangs guides us in building authentic relationships across cultures.
Today’s “Get Your Spirit in Shape” episode is the second in a two-part conversation with Rev. Hill as we learn more about the culture and rituals of indigenous people and how we can better live together in the world and the church.
Guest: The Rev. Calvin Yashie Hill
- Hill is pastor of First United Methodist Church in Newcastle, Wy.
- Hill is an elder in the Mountain Sky Conference of The United Methodist Church.
- Learn more about the Committee on Native American Ministries (CONAM), for which Hill serves as chairman in his conference.
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This episode posted on Nov. 1, 2024.
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Transcript
Prologue
Clarity, consistency, communication, and compassion. Learn how the four Cs that Reverend Calvin Yashi Hill used to train wild Mustangs guides us in building authentic relationships across cultures. Today's get your spirit and shape. Episode is the second in a two-part conversation with Reverend Hill as we learn more about the culture and rituals of indigenous people and how we can better live together in the world. And the church.Crystal Caviness, host: Pastor Hill, you had written in something that I read that the Wesleyan Discipleship is much of it is compatible with indigenous cultures and can you talk more about that?
Rev. Calvin Yashie Hill, guest: Sure. So when you read scripture, if you recognize scripture itself and the Christian faith, the Jewish people, and you always look at scripture from their point of view, their tribal, now they're telling a creation story from the very beginning of Genesis chapter one. And then in Genesis chapter two onto three, you recognize that the creation story has an addition to it or a second creation to it. And you read the whole creation story and you recognize that within that traditions of the Jewish people, they choose specific tribes to take care of the community. And they also take a specific family, not all families, but just a specific family, and then they come to taking a specific son out of each family all the way down until you come to Christ. And as you recognize Christ as being the son of God. And then after you have this miraculous resurrection that occurs and it is almost in that whole process of recognizing the traditions of the tribes, of the people, of the Jewish people, that creation story keeps on evolving and as it evolves to this moment of Christ coming out of the grounds and out of the dead, there is that new worlds that John talks about, that Paul talks about.
But then they also add at the very end that there is another world coming, another heaven that's going to be created as though we're again continuing on that creation story and we are all waiting for that new world and that new heaven and that new altar of Zion to occur. All of that, when you look at it from a tribal perspective, is a specific creation story that continues to evolve in our Navajo traditions. It is the same. We have these four worlds that we journeyed through the first, the second world to the third world, to the fourth world. And all of a sudden before we come to this fourth world, the creator had a young lady by the name of White Shell woman who had the creator's son and had actually two sons and they were twins and they saved the people and they went through this ceremony for four days, and on the fourth day, they resurrected from the grounds.
They came out of the grounds of the ceremony where the ceremony was held in the grounds and they traveled down the rainbow and they speak to their father as they spoke to their father, and they were sent back to save the people. Now, one of 'em stays here in the spiritual world and one of 'em went back to the father. As you recognize that we're now waiting for the fifth world to come, and the fifth world is when the father will sends the son who is there with them back to meet the sun that's here. And as we recognize that moment happens, there will be peace on the whole earth. Everybody will have that moment of peace as they join together. And we will evolve then into the fifth world and be with the Creator and the Son and all of our relatives who have passed on, we'll join them in that fifth world.
And so we're waiting for that moment to happen. That creation story of the Navajo people is the same story of the New Testament, the Old Testament to the New Testament to aunt, to the moment that we're waiting for if you're believing in the rapture to happen, we're waiting for that to occur. If you're believing that John is writing about the heaven and the earth, the heavens will come and descend upon the earth and in that descendancy that this earth will be new again. The heavens will be new again, and we'll be gathered together with the sons and the Father in all of the heavenly realms. It's the same story. And the interesting part about my view is that I joined a part of that creation story, and so we join ends with the creator as being co-creators. And so what is our place to create and what is our job to be able to do such a thing? The creator gives us an understanding of, again, as I am called to be holy man, to create peace in whatever form, in whatever way that we can to create peace and remind the people that we should be living in that piece and waiting for the creator. When the creator sends his son and that piece occurs, we will automatically be attached to that piece and know that it happened.
So you see that whole process of the story within scripture. It matches a lot of indigenous mindset and frame. And so that's how I continue to stay within the faith. I recognize that the Christian faith itself has its own form of ceremony practices, and so I view the Christian faith as a nation that has their own ceremony. And I was taught as a young, young man to respect all religions because we don't know who's on the true path and recognize in joining their ceremony. So that's how I became. It's not just that I became part of the Christian faith, but it's also because I needed to survive. My theology needed to survive, and so the only safe place to be who I fully am is within the Methodist Church, and so I became a Methodist. So there's a lot there.
Crystal: There's a lot there. And as you were telling the creation story and all the parts of the worlds, I was definitely making those alignments with what we read in the New Testament especially, but how beautiful the stories are, and it does open up those possibilities that there are these truths as you, I think you said, these paths of truth, they can have maybe different details, but they all lead to this place of peace in this place with God, this connection with God. But that is really beautiful and I appreciate you going into detail with us because I think as I did, the listener will be able to also recognize the similarities as you were telling it.
Rev. Hill: I wish the church had come in the attitude of Paul and Paul's motive when he came to Athens and when he was in Athens, he stumbled upon a unknown God and he explained to the people of the unknown God. And if they would've done that, I think it would've been better instead of this conquering and destroy attitude.
Crystal: Yes. That's certainly not a way of peace, is it?
Rev. Hill: Right, right.
Crystal: I want to definitely talk about these four Cs of cross-cultural outreach and discipleship because I do believe, as I read it anyway, this was the information I was looking for. How can we as non-indigenous people respect and learn and be in community with our indigenous brothers and sisters and fully understand the rituals perhaps and incorporate that? How can we be just in one body that way? So let's go ahead and talk about that, these four Cs of clarity, consistency, communication, and compassion.
Rev. Hill: By the way, these four Cs are actually a philosophy that my mom had given me for training wild mustangs. So I just put what she told me into practice as one of my own philosophy to be able to get ahead or to survive in this world. These four Cs are really my mom's method or philosophy of training while mustangs as cults, and mom would always say that, you've got to be clear, very clear in your mythology and how you get started. You have to know before you engage in that wild mustangs, that freedom that it has now it's captured and you're going to be moving it in a direction that hopefully that you can, and the whole outcome of being clear is establishing an authentic relationship. That relationship, if it's not there, there's no way in the world that that horse will trust you or anybody else will trust you.
And so I make sure that my mythology was always correct in how I'm going to tackle anything in this world. And so I sort of apply that to a route to evangelism or outreach. And there are several methods out there that again, it comes from the academic perspective and as you study them and you lay 'em out, the reality, it sort of frames or traps individuals and the perspective of the one who is addressing them, and it favors a directions of the one who is addressing them. And so you can't get out of it. The people feel trapped. Well, that works, but it's also very limited. Like I said, the academic process has always been limited because it's not that you learn them into the routes of faith because once you learn them, once you use reason, you use reason quite a bit, the experience is not there.
The tradition is left out the part of their script and whatever script they come from, whether it's the Old Testament, new Testament, or if they only have their other scripts, maybe the script itself, the scripture itself is not written for them. Maybe it's oral. So you have to be very clear of that, including it in your approach or if you're not going to use such an academic process. If you're going to use a relationship process, that's probably the better way of going because once you establish an authentic relationship with the people, you can ask personal questions and just getting to know them and getting to friend them. It is not an authentic relationship. An authentic relationship is really getting involved in their lives, not in a way that hinders them, but to understand them completely, asking them to come to your home. That's always an interesting thing.
When I mean the white Christians when they ask us or they say that they're friends of ours, but they haven't asked us out for lunch, they haven't asked us out to come and sit with them at their home. They haven't asked us to have a beer with them or have a glass of wine with them. They haven't asked us to come and join them at one of their birthday parties. That's not developing an authentic relationship. But if you develop an authentic relationship and they really are your friends, those personal questions can come out. That's probably the clearest method of evangelism or outreach. And then you got to be consistent in that. You just can't do it a couple of times. It has to be an lifetime involvement or commitment. And once you do that, then that relationship really does establish and then the communication is different.
You just can't learn how to speak to them from your perspective, but you got to go learn their language. And their language isn't just verbal, it is their body, it is their community, it is their food, it is their customs. All of that has a communication value that if you're able to complicate that, that's what you want to establish. The last of being compassionate is really being compassionate to yourself because you will make mistakes. And if they recognize that, if the people recognize that you're compassionate to yourself and then you show compassion to them, they will know that you're authentic and that compassionate, empathetic process, they will recognize that, that you're true to it because they've seen your vulnerable self to yourself and they know that you're able to open up. That's something that the natives have not seen from the white missionaries. White missionaries have always been very stoic, more stoic than we are as native people, and they were never engaged in their feelings during the time of our residential error with them. And so once you're able to do that, I know that no matter what continent neurons, the indigenous people respond because they're seeing them. If you want any questions of how do I do all of this, ask a woman, a woman knows about this whole process. It's not just because my mom taught me this, but I've seen it in the woman more often than I do see it in the white males.
I want to take a minute out of our conversation to tell you about a new book from Cokesbury titled A Full-Hearted Life. We all Ask Life's Big Questions, questions about our identity, reason for being the meaning of life. The answers, our beliefs shape every part of our lives, a full-hearted life. The latest book from Jake Owensby is for people whose faith has slipped away and wonder if it's worth reclaiming people whose faith is on shaky ground and wonder if it's worth the effort to sustain, and people who want to share their faith with others but need help articulating why they believe. It's a book about Christian belief and practice and how it gives our lives, meaning this is an engaging, sometimes funny, often poignant. Read full of stories and thought-provoking questions for reflection and discussion. Order your copy of a full-hearted life from Cokesbury and start finding the answers to your big questions. Now, let's return to our conversation with Reverend Hill.
Crystal: I think as mothers we, in the same way, you're training wild mustangs, we're raising young children.
Rev. Hill: And they can get wild.
Crystal: That's right. Perhaps that's where that comment, that's why you see it in women. But as you were explaining that, I mean these four Cs, they're definitely, I mean they're four cross-cultural outreach, but I see that in just relationships, how useful this would be to keep clarity, consistency, communication, and compassion, all of that in mind. And as you're building any type of relationship and as you're trying to get to know people better and perhaps invite them to come to church with you or share your faith with them. I do believe we use the word friend perhaps too frequently and too casually, so I appreciate what you said about that. It's like I personally, I love to think I have a lot of friends. I even have said before, I collect friends. I do like to get to know people, but I need to, before I use that term, that's a good reminder to me. Is it someone I am an acquaintance with them or are we truly friends? Have I invited them into my home and sat with them and asked the questions to really get to know them?
Rev. Hill: And I think what we established at, like I said, for instance with a lady, if you have a true girlfriend, you will really open up and tell your girlfriend much more than your mom or sister, and that's the kind of relationship that needs to be established. That's an authentic one. And if you go down that route and you establish that kind of relationship, you can actually put together a mythology for outreach if that doesn't work, if you want to be more academic. What I also said in that article is that if you want to be creative, you could use what I just explained of the creation story and use that process. There's a lot there that we've not even touched. There's the creation story that you can tell and do comparisons between that and indigenous people. There are societies in the Native American community too, and you can use that societal approach because the Old Testaments in their lining of alliances as it stated in numbers chapter two, and I think chapter four and chapter eight, and then reestablish itself again, and Joshua, when they're aligning themselves, they are putting themselves in societies.
There are specific societies that come out of there. There's that come out of there in the New Testament. Now there's a newer society that came out. There are describes, they're the chief priests, they're the temple police, they're the Pharisees and there's the Sadducees. And so you see these societies as they're developing within the New Testament and also within the Old Testament. You see both of them, the native people, again, going back to the tribal piece, are developed in such a way of understanding. If you're able to engage that and teach from that perspective and bring out a theology that fits them, then you're moving in a different route than what the academic world has been offerings. And it becomes more of a relationship piece. I mean, there is so much that I can offer to the Christian community if they're willing to listen. If I had to scribe with me to write all this downs, that would be great too.
I am definitely an individual that has a gift of entrepreneurship and also I am a visionary. I could see stuff before it happens, and I also recognize what's going on within our own denominations, and I know what needs to work, but I have not written it all down yet. Again, it's probably because I am new to the faith. It took me a while to get where I'm at right now. It wasn't an easy journey, but if there are people out there who are willing to listen to people who are out to come and seek my understanding of who we are and where we're at, I think as a native of this continent, I can offer the church a bigger piece than what they're struggling over because I'm an individual who sees from outside, and I'm also an individual that's trying to fit within the box. It's strange because I'm not, maybe I'm too rough around the edges to be part of the box, but I am trying to learn. I'm trying of the Christian faith, and I'm also got a view from outside
Crystal: As you're talking about this Pastor Hill, I can't think of any single person who's more outside the box than Jesus and just definitely did not box people in or say that they had to remain who they thought they were. He gave people freedom to be who God made them to be. And so I do believe that sometimes denominations, well, we know they're manmade, and so it can be more as you told in your story, you traveled and journeyed through various denominations to find your space within the United Methodist Church. So I do appreciate that the United Methodist Church allows us to have that exploration, maybe more so than some other denominations. We have a little more freedom for that, or it's more encouraged, perhaps I should say, for that. I really loved what you said earlier, if you believe, if we, you were allowed to really preach, and I'm putting words in your mouth, preach this spirituality, that the people would just be clamoring to come because it is what they're seeking. And so I just encourage you to keep being who God made you to be and to keep sharing that message because it is so beautiful. As we finish up today, is there something I didn't ask you that you wished I had asked you or something you wanted to talk about that we didn't yet cover?
Rev. Hill: Yeah, when you're talking about the spiritual formations and spirituality that I know, I am very cautious in how I frame myself and how I speak, and because I know that there's tradition, and it's not just the tradition which we recognize in the quad lateral coming from the Jewish culture and also from scripture itself and how Christianity formulated, but I also know that the tradition of white America and I recognize the conservative group and I also recognize the more liberal and those who are centric. So I'm very cautious of how much spiritual information or how deep of that spirituality did I present or verbalize because I don't want to scare the congregation away. I am serving in the white congregation. I have been serving in the white congregations for probably the entire of my ministry. I have served in the Blackfeet reservations in the Blackfeet United Methodist Parish.
That was my first Native American full-time appointment. I have served in native community part-time or quarter time, but that was my first ever on the reservations. And so the majority of my appointments have been in white churches, inner city churches that were dwindling and were unable to connect with a community around them that evolved into either African-Americans or Hispanic or Asians. And so I would come and serve those churches, and the churches grew to a multi-ethnic level. So knowing who I serve, I am always very cautious of how much of my spiritual formations or my spiritual reality or my understanding of it, how much I really interpret that. If there was a little bit more freedom, then I would be able to express or maybe even give more insights of it. But I know that the culture still remains within the church. I know that a majority of the culture has left.
What I mean by culture is that the white conservative culture is still within the church. I also know that there is a new generation that's evolving. It's not fully evolved. And I know that there's this question, and I don't know if anybody's asking this question, is how do we become innovative and hold onto the pieces of tradition that formulates who we are as God's people name Christians, how is that going to look and how is that going to evolve without going too far over to a place that does not make us Christians? And so it's that question that I know that I can help answer that we have not talked about. And maybe one day that the Methodist community will give me the opportunity to explain some of the insights that I have that I think that we need to answer or have words. Because the majority of the words within the mission statements of all churches and even in our general Methodism, the words are very traditional words of our mission statement. And those words, those traditional words, they do not help us reach out to those who are now the new generation. In fact, the new generation sees those words as threatening. They see them as hypocritical because of the misuse of power and authority and privileges and practices. So my question as you're asking would be how do we become innovative and still remain traditional? That's a lot.
Crystal: That's a lot. That's another episode, isn't it?
Rev. Hill: Yeah. That's another
Crystal: Perhaps. Yeah, a lot of episodes.
Rev. Hill: But I'll tell you that if we don't start going in that direction and asking those questions and start to find out what can we and what are we going to be, we're going to continue to dole the new generation that's coming. They need something that's challenging, something that's active, and they're not getting it. And of course, I know that there are still that generation that sees church as being traditional. There's traditional practices that need to be, but the next generation is coming, I don't think wants to participate in that. Yeah. So that would be another, that would be a whole nother podcast.
Crystal: Probably a series of podcasts perhaps. Right,
Rev. Hill: Right.
Crystal: Yes. Well, as we do finish up, I want to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests on Get Your Spirit in shape, and that's how do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Rev. Hill: I do a lot of Native meditations than I have. I go back to my Native people and I join in some of their ceremonies. If I really need to center myself, I go and participate in some blessed way. It's called in a Navajo Blessed Way ceremony, and that's an old ceremony that has been around for quite a while, or I go back and join some of the, which is the Beauty way, ceremonies that happened. There's some really good ceremonies that indicate God's blessings among the people. And so I go back to listen to the songs, to listen to the stories, to remember who I really am, and then go back into the churches, the Navajo churches, and center myself with their prayer process. The Navajo people before church, they all come to the altar, even the minister, they all come to the altar and they all start praying.
They all begin with prayer, and as soon as the minister's done praying and everybody's done praying, they pray collectively out loud at the altar. It sounds like it's a Pentecostal revival that's happening, but it's still within a control environment. And the pastor then gets up and starts to gather everybody together to send everybody. Then we start singing and singing and singing. And then there's a moment of testimony and testimony and testimony, and the part of consumerism isn't really there, but they allow an offering plate to be put out. And sometimes it's mentioned that there's an offering plate right here if you wish to, you can, that's not really part of our service. And then we go into the sermon, which is usually like an hour to two hour talk, and then we do more singing, and then we do more praying by the time that the Sunday is done with, it's like about maybe three or four o'clock in the afternoon from the Sunday service in the morning.
So it's that kind of engagement that I do to keep my spirits uplifted as I go back. But here within the academic setting of First United Methodist, I join in the same practices of the local church members. I do get on my horse and I ride up in the Mesa, in the mountains here, the Black Hills, which is near here in Newcastle, ride around the Black Hills and speak to Gods and center myself. I also, I am an artist, but my canvas is not regular canvas. My canvas are automotives. I restore and do a lot of restoration on vehicles, and I paint, I paint on them, I paint patterns, I paint pictures, or I just do a regular paint job on them. So the vehicle is my canvas, and that seems to center me too. And so I got a lot of talent, a lot of skills.
Crystal: It sounds like it. And how interesting. Well, Pastor Hill, thank you so much for joining us on Get Your Spirit in Shape. It's just been what I think is a really rich conversation and I've learned a lot. I hope our audience will also, I think they will definitely learn a lot about your perspective, and I understand it's a single person's perspective and a single person's experience, but it is giving us a window into what your life has been like as an Indigenous person in a primarily white church as The United Methodist Church, and just opening us up to be more welcoming and perhaps to learn how to live better in community. So I thank you for your time and your conversation today.
Rev. Hill: You're welcome. Thank you. And blessings on your day and your family. Thank you.
