The trail of tears
This is the translation of the New Testament that I use for these readings.
It’s a retelling of the New Testament in a way that connects with the oral storytelling traditions of the First Nations peoples of North America.
For me, it gives life to texts that can feel over-familiar and even dead.
Suddenly, everything is given new meaning.
Today’s Blessing habitually reads something like:
“Blessed are those who mourn,for they shall be comforted”.
Which I actually love…and which has given me comfort.
The First Nations version is:
”Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who walk a trail of tears, for he will wipe the tears from their eyes and comfort them”.
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of at least 60,000 First Nations peoples by the US government between 1830 and 1850, forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and dying in their thousands in an atrocious act of ethnic cleansing.
The trail passed close to Carbondale, Illinois, where I was performing Queen Jesus this time last year.. and the Acknowledgement of Country which I do before each performance took on an incredibly powerful significance for me.
The USA calls itself a Christian country but doesn’t seem to see any contradiction between that and its history of hideous violence.
A history which it cannot, and maybe does not wish to, escape from.
As we are seeing just now…
What I really love about the First Nations version is that it proposes a radically different Christianity - one that totally aligns itself with the oppressed.
And all of us, also, have walked a trail of tears.. and it offers comfort for that too.