Un-offical ecumenical movement

Today the 56 year old Lakota woman whose funeral service I had on Tuesday was buried out in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She was going to have a traditional Lakota ceremony for the burial. I also noticed that the burial place was in a Catholic cemetery. When we were planning her service the family said that she and the family had not been particularly religious but when they had had gone to church it was with the Methodists. For her service here in Brainerd the family wanted a religious service with time to share stories. So that is what we arranged. At first we started in a smaller room with the chairs in a circle near the open casket but the numbers soon crowded the seating arrangement so we ended up with a few rows. Several shared stores. Indeed the person had not lived a traditional religious life and was described as a rascal and a rebel. Yet I also heard of her humor, her love for the outdoors, for family, and of her hospitality as a place where many of them had been able to "just go and crash there." She had worked with social service and tribal agencies, worked for welfare reform, loved Indian art. When we got to the sharing of those memories and stories I felt like we had entered the deeper part of the service. Talking about someone's life is sacred work. Clearly (to me) she had some attributes in her life that would be called "spiritual." I am glad that some Methodists got to be part of that along the way in some small influence at least, and I assume that she had been baptised in a Catholic church, yet had been coming home to her Lakota spirituality as well. She probably never made much of an impact on any official church membership rolls, but it sounds like she had a calling and a ministry with some folks that we just don't see in the churches. Maybe it took an "ecumenical , inter-faith movement" to pull it off: Catholic baptism, Methodist Sunday Schools, Lakota spirituality, and some mysterious mix of God's rebellious, "rascally" Holy Spirit. Maybe there is more of that going on than we know?
Rambling on