Sacred Drumbeats: Exploring Worship at Dayspring Native American UMC

What happens when Native American traditions and Christian faith come together in worship? How does a sacred drum become the heartbeat of a congregation? And what can we learn from a church built with deep reverence for the land it stands on?

In this episode of Branches of Faith, we take you inside Dayspring Native American United Methodist Church in East Peoria, Illinois—a hidden gem of faith, culture, and community. From a potluck welcome to a powerful water blessing and a mesmerizing drum circle, we share our firsthand experience of a worship service unlike any other.

Join us as we uncover the rich history of this church, its deep roots in both Native American and Methodist traditions, and the ways it brings people together—Native and non-Native alike. You’ll hear about the breathtaking forest setting, the significance of their Four Directions prayers, and even the story of how century-old oak trees became part of the church itself.

What does it mean to “walk the good road” in faith? Can we rediscover awe in our spiritual lives? And how can embracing different traditions deepen our understanding of God?

Tune in for a heartfelt, thought-provoking episode that just might change the way you see faith, community, and the sacred spaces around us.

🎧 Listen now and walk this journey with us!

Transcript

  

Thank you for joining us for the Branches of Faith Podcast, where we explore faiths across all religions by visiting a different house of worship. Every week here, we share our reflections and observations. Thanks for listening. 

Hello again. Welcome back to the Branches of Faith podcast. I'm Kate, and I'm joined here again by my husband, Ben. This past Sunday, we visited the day springing Native American United Methodist Church in East Peoria, Illinois. And it was a really neat experience about how we found this church, and we're super excited to share our story with all of you today.

So wanted to give you a little bit of an update about some things that have been happening since we were last on here. It's been. Gosh, it's been almost two months, I think, since we last recorded. Mm-hmm. So we've had a lot going on. Our kids are really busy right now with activities and just so many things right now.

But 

plus, you know, February, that's a thing. Yeah.  

And January. January was, yeah. January, February. Not, yeah. 

Super stoked about going out. 

Yeah, exactly. So, but no, we had some really cool things. We WCBU, which is our local NPR station, did an interview with us and they did an article about what we do. So we will link that up in the show notes.

And through that, we got a lot of really good feedback from people. We got some emails and messages, some new connections. I got two. Really nice emails from people inviting us to their place of worship and explain to them like, thank you so much. We don't ever tell people up front that we're coming and a little bit more on that today or talking about what we've been doing here.

But the reason for that is that we want the most organic experience possible, and it's not to.  Like try to trick people or anything like that. Mm-hmm. It's just so that we experience it like anybody would if they were just showing up somewhere for the first time. So yeah. 

We also don't want like preferential treatment.

Right. If we can avoid it. 

Right. We don't want people to feel nervous that we're there. Mm-hmm. What we might say or anything like that. 

I don't want my star studded. I. Prowess to like influence people's opinions of us. Be like, oh, the VandenBerg's right here.  Hmm. 

Yeah.  Yes, exactly. Give them a seat right in the front.

Right. So 

here's a cup of tea. 

Yeah. But they were all very gracious and they said, we hope you see you sometime if we see you. We do. And we would love to have you. I did get one kind of funny email by somebody who was really upset with us because we have not visited the Muslim. Temple. Which I thought was interesting because we've only been doing this for about a year and we've only been, at the 

pace of one one about one a month, place of worship a month.

Right, right. Exactly. And they were very accusing accusatory of that we were avoiding it, that we were intentionally avoiding the Muslim religion and. I don't think this person even is a practicing Muslim, so I'm not really sure. And we don't know 

that 

we, I don't, yeah. But I also, you know, through a little bit of research I still don't think they are. 

So, so I feel pretty confident they not Katie's good with her research. And it just, I just wanna take a moment to talk about how we pick places and again, this is a passion project. It's just for fun. It's just to teach us some things. It's just to share what we find and what we learn. And the purpose really is to connect people and.

There are thousands of churches in the Peoria area, like thousands. This could, we could be doing this every week for the rest of our life and probably not get to all of them. So if anyone ever wonders that we are intentionally avoiding a place, we are not, we just haven't had time to get there yet. 

So, I mean, there might be one place, well, 

maybe one. 

Yeah.  Who knows. You'll never know. Yeah. 'cause I'm not gonna tell. Yeah.  So  

this isn't the time or place for that. 

Right. But, but truly we are not ever. We're not. But it's not that place. Yeah. Or that religion for that moment. Right, right. Exactly. And so I explained we've got some very dear friends that are Muslim.

The other thing that I didn't go into in the email with the person is as far as my understanding is, we can only go visit the Muslim temple on Fridays at noon, which I happen to have Rotary on those days. And. It just hasn't worked out yet, but we plan to get there. Just don't know when yet. Mm-hmm.

Um, 

let's see here. Oh, and the other email I got was from somebody with the Peoria Interfaith Alliance Group, which is starting back up. Very much aligns with what our mission is to just help draw comparisons and bring people together. And so I had a great cup of coffee at Intuition Coffee and Peoria with her, and we met and.

Talked about both of our goals and experiences and how we can work together. So, so cool. Might be a chance that we get her on the podcast at some point here soon. 

Oh, 

so yeah.  So 

I have some yeah. Podcast statistics. Okay. That I'd like to share. Go 

for 

it. So we use a hosting program called Buzz Sprout.

Some people may be familiar with it, but what it does is it kinda hosts all of our podcast episodes and pushes them out to all the various. Other hosts like Spotify and Apple Tunes or iTunes or whatever. Um, and so these are the statistics that it feeds back to us to let us know how it's going.

And so  at this point in time since we've started, we have 1300 downloads. 

Yay. It's a 

pretty good number. Eclipsing 1000 was kind of a milestone. Mm-hmm. So that's pretty cool. Most popular podcasts are, oops, I just pushed a button. There we go. First United Methodist Church of Peoria in February of last year.

That's first with 209 downloads. I'm not gonna read all of these, but Universalist Unitarian Church, which was in January. All Saints, Greek Orthodox, which was also in January. And what is the Baha Faith, which was in August. And that gives us our little bit of a doorway segue into something you wanna talk about last weekend.

But also, this is kind of neat. I also have another podcast, the Morton Music News podcast. And mine doesn't have this, like yours does, like this one, does this, branches of Faith podcast has been downloaded in 37 different countries. What around the world? 37. Yeah. 225 different cities. Oh my gosh, gosh.

And it list a couple of them, like, from California to local places like Indiana. But it also goes all the way out to like Russia, oh my gosh. Israel, Spain, Norway, Australia. Uh, the uk a couple in Canada. So Cool. Yeah, so that's cool. That's awesome. I love it. Glad to let you know that.

Yay. Very cool. 

Yeah. Back to the Bahai Faith though. Yeah. That was an episode in August of last year. Yeah. And that takes us to, last weekend, 

we had a really neat experience this past weekend that I just wanna share before we launch into our church visit from this past Sunday because it really highlights.

I think maybe what we were striving for, and we didn't really know we were striving for this, but Friday started out I met with a man at the Peoria Work Release Center who we got connected with through Pastor Greg Washington from United Fellowship Ministries, which was one of our church visits last year.

I think maybe last April. We have been working with Pastor Greg to help house some of his guys that are part of his step up. Program, and this was, I think maybe the fourth person that we've been able to house and work with through this whole process. So before my rotary meeting, I went to the Peoria work release center, met with this man and got the lease signed went to my rotary club.

So that was one experience. But then I went out to the Mediterranean mart out in North Peoria, and we had met their really awesome owners when we visited the Greek Orthodox Church. They had happened to cater that Sunday and their members there and got to know them. Picked up some baklava, a nice, lovely tray of baklava to take then to an event.

The celebration, it's I Yamaha, if I'm saying that right, hopefully. Mm-hmm. It's a Bahai celebration one of their big celebrations that they have every year. And the local Bahai community invited us to join in on that. And it was at somebody's house in Eureka. Really great experience. So in one day, three different churches.

All that kind of came together places,  churches, but yeah. 

Yeah. If you haven't listened to all of those other episodes, the bigger picture shows like Pastor Washington of One Church. Members of the Bajai community. Mm-hmm. Inviting us to a ceremony there and then going to a store owned by a member of the Orthodox of the Greek Orthodox Church.

It was really nice. All of this is all kind of like, coming together as a Venn diagram. Yeah. 

So cool. And then while we were at the Bajai celebration, a man there. Named Doug. Doug, um, who was also when we went to the Bahai community last year, he was there and we got to know him. He told us about this church that we ended up going to on Sunday.

So it's the day spring Native American, United Methodist Church. And he said, you guys gotta go visit this. I think he had just gone maybe the week before, something like that. Yeah. I sat down with Doug 

and Doug said, there's a place that I think you should go check out.  And I was like, okay. And then. Not really knowing where he was gonna go with it.

He said, day spring, what's it called? Day Spring, native American, United Methodist Church. And yeah, all those words came together in my head and I was like, that is a place I would like to go. So I texted Katie. We were at the party Yeah. At the Bahai celebration. And I texted you right then and there.

Mm-hmm. And so this is for Doug. Yeah. Hi Doug. 

So we did.  So we went I had never heard of this church, which is amazing that I've never heard of this place. Driven by their main road a number of times. Mm-hmm. In East Peoria up near e the old East Side Center, if you're from central Illinois, which is an old sports complex.

So you go up this long winding, super steep road through trees and it's, it's real pretty. And you get up there and there's a sign pointed towards the church. And we go down this long lane and it's. Beautiful. Yeah. I mean, do you wanna talk a little bit about the setting before we dive into what Yeah. I cover, we got there to cover 

architecture and landscaping and stuff like that.

Uh, location is 2 0 1 North Norwood Place in East Peoria. Let's see. 

So I've got a little bit of a script here that I'll just kind of read from. It says the.  The land rich with diverse wildlife plant life and featuring a freshwater spring and creek was originally gifted to the Peoria First United Methodist Church, which we visited. Mm-hmm. Which 

ties in another church that we've been to.

Mm-hmm. So it's really neat how circular all of this is 

donated by a woman named Mary Mohan, approximately 30 years ago in 2000,  recognizing the Native American fellowship's need for a permanent place of worship. And the first United Methodist Church transferred the property to them. And then in 2007, construction began on this, this building that kinda looks like a log cabin in the woods has a lot of things that are synonymous with other kind of houses of worship for Christian faith. There's a large room, a gathering room, and there's a small social room to the side and things like that. The large room is beautiful.

It's got all these windows facing, I believe that's west, but it's elevated and it's built on a hillside so that you feel like you're up in the trees. Mm-hmm. And so I really, really liked that. No pews, but instead they were just like a circle of chairs. So everything is kind of centered around a drum, a ceremonial drum.

Mm-hmm. Which I think leaders of their community perform through their ceremony. 

Yeah. It was a really neat location. Mm-hmm. So we got in and we 

even walked the grounds a little bit. We 

did, we had some time in between. So they have a potluck at noon and anybody can come to it. And you also.

Just a side note, you don't have to be Native American to go here and I'll talk a little bit here about why they're Native American and Methodist. Yeah. What's that all about? In a few minutes. But we were invited to the potluck. Anybody is, it's on their website at noon. So we showed up with some treats from Eli's coffee shop and shared those and there was some soups and breads and things like that.

So like stroganoff. Yep. So we sat there and had lunch with them. The service doesn't actually start till one 30. I feel like we could have come a little bit later rather than right at noon. Just because we had the kids and they were, there's definitely some downtime and we didn't know.

There's only so much small talk you could make, in that amount of time. So with, 

with food. Yeah. Yeah. So you're trying to have small talk and introduce yourself and say, right. Ask questions and be nice and, mm-hmm. 

Yeah. Eat oatmeal cookies. But it was nice. There was a lady there named Beck that greeted us because I did email the pastor the night before.

Because I was not totally sure about the potluck. I didn't again, say why we were coming or anything. I said, we're gonna be visiting. And she, the pastor was running a little bit late because she had another event that morning, um, in Champagne. Yep. And in Champaign, Illinois. But she did notify Beck that we were coming and Beck was ready.

She was very gracious and energetic and showed us around and explained a lot of things to us and shared about some of their rituals and what they're doing there. And even. Had Ben and I do a water blessing with their water picture that they have there, that they do. So in 

this, uh, the entryway of the large room there's a small little table there with a picture of water, a small basin to receive it and catch it, some napkins and stuff like that to wipe your hands with.

And she says that it is a cleansing and somebody has to pour the water in your hands. You take the blessing and just with an inner voice, touch it against your, maybe your forehead or your temples. Mm-hmm. And you're going through this gesture of my mind, 

cleansing your mind, 

and then your heart.

Mm-hmm. And then like your legs as a larger metaphor for your body. 

Like to walk. Yeah. 

Yeah. And so each one of these is a sense of gratitude or whatever really you might want it to be aimed at. I'm giving my heart to the creator. Mm-hmm. You know, I'm giving my heart to the creator and I'm giving my legs for walking with you.

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. So she walked us through that, showed us around. And then we sat down and ate. And then, because like I said, there was some time downtime, we took the kids and we walked around outside. They had this really neat cross with different fabric on it, which I think were what they call it, prayer. 

I'd have to look that up and see what that was called.  Hold on one second. I have to edit this a little bit here. 

It looked like if Steven Tyler had a crucifix at home, it would be all  gone  address with his bandanas and 

prioritize. They were tags. They were ties. Yeah. They were prioritized is what they were called.

Yeah. So they make prioritize and then they put them up there. But they were also, yeah, I'm not totally sure that's what they were because they did show us some prioritize in a basket later on, so. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, so we did that. So I'm gonna back up a little bit and talk about how this church came to be.

The fellowship was formed. I think around 1993 because there is a community of Native Americans, probably everywhere, but in Peoria, definitely. And they just really didn't have a place to practice. And so they were coming together, meeting at random places like Wildlife Prairie Park, or maybe a library or a park somewhere.

They were meeting monthly. They were holding Christian worship services because there's this blending of faith. And after they became, came together, I guess they decided, let's actually make a church. So they decided to approach the United Methodist Church. So that was the Peoria United Methodist Church downtown, I believe that we also went to last year about becoming part of that denomination.

And at first I wasn't sure why they would've picked that, but apparently the United Methodist Church nationwide has over 200 Native American churches. And there are over 18,000 known Native Americans among. The 8 million plus membership of United Methodist Church members. 

Interesting. 

Yeah. So apparently there's always been that connection.

And maybe that was through the Methodist Church missions, over the past few centuries. I don't know all the history with that. Methodist church thought that seemed like a great idea. And so they became chartered as a member or as a church for that. And that's how they got connected in order to get the land because they needed a worship space.

And that's how they got connected. And then were given that land for a dollar. Wow. 43 acres. 43 acres for a dollar. We know it doesn't go for that anymore.  

No. 

So yeah. So they have this beautiful piece of property with these beautiful trees we noticed. So Ben and I are huge nature lovers and love trees and.

As we walked around, we commented about how big and old these trees are and what I learned I was watching a video on the website on the day springing website. One of their charter members talked about how there were four trees, four big old oak trees that had to be taken down in order to build their building.

Mm. And he said people were actually crying about it, and I would. I would cry about trees being cut down, especially big old oak trees. Yeah. But what they decided to do was they did a blessing and a prayer service over those trees, but then they took them and they drove them to Galesburg, had them milled and used as much of those trees as they could in building their building.

So that whole front porch is all those trees, 

man. That's stuff you just hear about in like stories. 

Mm-hmm. All the trim, like the window and door trim is all from those trees. Isn't that neat? Yeah. Apparently sounds, 

uh, like what I. Associate to be a Native American kind of choice. Absolutely. You know, and 

through their values Yeah.

From what I've learned Yeah. A hundred percent. Utilizing 

as much of the resource as you can. 

Yeah. Yep. So that was, those are the logistics of all of it. Should we talk a little bit now about the service and I have a feeling you're gonna have better things to talk about the surface than me. I had, I was tired and I had a little bit trouble focusing while I was there.

There was the big drum and what I did learn was there are certain members of their church that can use the drum, only men can use the drum, but then women are supposed to sit around the outside of that as protectors. And I found out the reason for that is that. Women have the natural heartbeat because we carry the heartbeat when we carry children in us when we are pregnant, whereas men don't get that.

And so to balance things out, men are the ones that get to drum to help balance that out. And women are supposed to sit around as protectors of the drum and of this, of the ceremony. I'm probably not going fully into good detail with this, but things I read on their website, so there was about five people sitting around the drum.

There were two women, but they weren't drumming. It was just four men were drumming. 



Um, it was tobacco that was on the drum, so they placed little piles of tobacco on the drum and that faced each cardinal direction. So north, south, east, west, and then they drum that. And it started out with that.

And with a friendship dance. So we got up and joined it on that, where we held hands and we walked around a circle and did their two step dance. That was obviously very easy and we could handle, I 

saw that recorded and saved on their Facebook page. Yeah, there's, if you could see it, you could see us. 

See us on there.

Yay. We're 

dancing around all awkwardly.  I like, I had nobody with my left hand, so I was just holding air, I think Genevieve's hand with my right. Oh, sure. I was holding air. Yeah. And then I was kinda like leading. Like of all people that should be leading this, not me. And so you could see me kinda like looking nervously over my left shoulder, like this way, you know, just, yeah, do keep going.

Just keep going the same. It's just a circle, Ben.  Yeah. 

Oh man. Mm-hmm. Funny. Okay. All right. So, but all that 

to say that they have all this stuff broadcasted on another Facebook page too. Yeah, you 

can. And they actually ference that a lot. They talk Oh yeah. A few times about being live. Mm-hmm. And I know at one point during prayers.

They gathered up some of the prayers from Facebook and read them aloud and, yeah. So go ahead. What do you wanna share about the service?  

Well, let's see. I have some of my notes here.  Say after the Friendship dance, we did centering prayer and welcome, which was the stock, the talking stick in your left hand. 

And a beck was handing out a microphone mm-hmm. Around the room to everybody and anybody mm-hmm. Who wanted to take a moment. 

They've been offered it to our kids. 

Yeah. And instead of saying like in other churches, like an Amen, there's a Aho. So you go through this either verbally or silently.

And so she hands you back, hands you this talking stick in your left hand  offers the microphone to you in case you wanted to make your. Your prayer public. Mm-hmm. To everybody there. And when you're done with your contribution, you say, a ho and another gentleman says, oh, how did it go? It said Lord, hear our prayer.

Mm-hmm. And so then she'd move on to the next person. We also didn't 

have to say anything loud. So like you said, you just did a silent 

Yeah. So when it came my turn, I just held it in my hand and.  Kind of just rattle off some things that I'm grateful for in my mind and said, ah, ho. Mm-hmm. They repeated like a call and repeat of ah, ho and then the gentleman says, Lord, may our prayers be heard.

Mm-hmm. And we moved on to the next person and that took a little bit to get around the entire room. Mm-hmm. 'cause there were lots of people with lots of prayer. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was the only thing I was a little caught off guard for and wasn't prepared for. Not that it matters. Yeah. You 

didn't do that one.

Yeah. As she was coming around, I'm like, does she go up and ask everybody? Yeah. Because I don, I did see, she passed over a few people, so I knew it wasn't like I had to do it, but, 

um, oh, she went out into the lobby too, 

I know. Yeah. Yeah. Left the main room and, but, um, a couple people in the center, she, they didn't do it.

It was just one or two in the center. 

Oh. And all the while the drum was a very uh, what's the word I'm looking for?  Heartbeat, like mm-hmm. Cadence. Mm-hmm. Boom, boom. Mm-hmm. And then a long pause, and then boom, boom. For five 

minutes. Full time. 

Yeah.  

Yeah. Okay. What else? I.  

Then it was the the Lord's Prayer, which was a, like a modified version of what I'm used to hearing in other churches. I like that one. Yeah. It said somewhere, I can't remember what book it comes from. What is the name of their book? It is called Oh, first Nations. Mm-hmm. So the First Nation's version of the Lord's Prayer which has some small. Changes to it. I'm not gonna go through all of it right now.

We'll post a picture maybe on Facebook or, yeah, on our new website, which I don't know if I mentioned at the beginning about our website okay. Yeah. 

Which was after the WCBU interview, right? 

Yeah. Yeah.  

And then after that was a song, it was David's song. I should say with the very beginning, we started with the ancient one song.

Mm-hmm. And then we went through the Friendship dance, the centering prayer with the talking stick and the microphone. Mm-hmm. The Lord's Prayer. And then after that was David's song, which was a member of their community. Mm-hmm. In the past it was written by this member and it would, I mean, in my naive attempt to try and like convey the essence of these songs, it's multiple people playing very slowly and methodically on a single drum.

Mm-hmm. A very large drum. So it's bassy and with that there's a lot of.  Ah,  ah, and hey, hey, hey. Those kinds of repeated sounds that maybe you've come to associate with like Native American ritual. Mm-hmm. So, as that's there,  there's also courses and ver verses and things like that that translate the message of David's song.

And then there was a message after the song of Seeing the Glory, which was out of the.  Book of Luke. 

So it was interesting because their, what was it, the First Nation, what was the name of their book? The first, 

it is called The First Nation's Version. 

Okay. It was neat because they would have names of people that we know.

Mm-hmm. Like Moses. 

So Moses is, oh, I have this here in my notes. Moses is from the 

He from the water. 

Drawn from the water. So as we've come to associate, like these Native American names, we met a man named Sitting Bear. Mm-hmm. Right? So they're these names. That we've always, oftentimes associated with Native American culture.

Mm-hmm. And they have been IM, I don't wanna say imposed, but, re, re-prescribed mm-hmm. To some of these biblical characters. Mm-hmm. So, like James was the name of, he Takes Over Peter was stands on Rock. Mm-hmm. John was, he shows Goodwill.  And then of course Elijah was the great spirit, his creator  and Jesus's. 

Creator sets free. 

Okay. Yeah, it was neat seeing those Yeah. That, that interpretation of all of that, if that's the right way to say that. Yeah. So  

and so that was given to us on a piece of paper. So we were able to follow along. Mm-hmm. Which I really liked. That's not always the case when we go to some places.

We don't know. Mm-hmm. When the 

kids are looking at us being like, how much longer? Yeah. There's a little folder that was 

given to us that had Yeah. All the songs. All of the songs in 'em, and they're numbered. They'll just go to song 30. Yeah. That's where we're 

gonna 

start. Yeah. 

So, yeah. Exactly.

So yeah, so we did that and then the pastor got up and spoke at that point, or did we do this? Was 

that, this was that part. Okay. That, that this was the Lord's Prayer and then the message. Okay. Which was seeing the glory. Mm-hmm. Which is how Jesus was announced to Elijah and Moses. Okay.

So it was like the, the first announcement. Mm. The voice of God from heaven saying, this is my son. Okay. Follow him.  And so that was a large part of the evening or the morning, the after lunch. And then the holy communion, which you can talk about 'cause mm-hmm. I didn't participate in that.

You did? 

Yeah. So they do communion once a month on the first Sunday of the month. And it's open communion. Anyone can participate. So kids and I walked up and did that. And they first do the water blessing. So we all three went through that process. I had already done it earlier, but then the kids did it too.

And then we did the communion, which is very typical communion. The bread and the wine. You say Aho afterwards rather than Amen. And then you sit down. So do you wanna talk a little bit more about the message though? About how  she shared about how sometimes it's hard to see the glory or get excited about it all because we're so used to it and I think I commented that I dunno how to say this.

I guess maybe  sitting there  sometimes, eh, I dunno. We'll just skip that part. I dunno where I'm going with that.  And we don't have to if you don't want to.  

No, I, I did remember at, at near the end, as is often the case when you're  trying to read a complex writing with lots of metaphor and to a large group of people, it's almost a requisite that you have to somehow translate it, right?

Because it can be any number of things to any number of people. And she took a moment to revisit this idea of, so often might be the case that people have  forgotten why churches exist.  And, in, in that is some sort of a parallel with the announcement of Jesus being the savior to Elijah and Moses and.

She made the comment, and I thought, I was kind of fascinated, like, maybe people forget that churches exist or that we exist because, one of maybe two reasons. One,  we've become so  normalized to it mm-hmm. That we don't see its inspiration anymore. Mm-hmm. And that maybe we've kind of like, de what's the word I'm looking for?

Desensitized. Desensitized to it. And then the other reason might be that maybe we were not desensitized to it at all, but in fact. It's quite possible that we just don't know how to respond to that glory. Mm-hmm. And she took a moment to comment on that. Mm-hmm. And to, to effectively say, this is your opportunity to kind of revisit why we exist as a church.

Yeah. 

And it's in this this, I think she called it like the first announcement,  a transfiguration story. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it's the moment in which like a.  A caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Mm-hmm. This very critical moment, which things are now changed. Prior to this moment they were one way and now they're different.

Mm-hmm. And so this was the moment in which Jesus was in a way, transfigured in the minds and in the hearts of all of the followers. Mm-hmm. Right. Because he was officially announced. Mm-hmm. On that mountain. Yeah. And so here's a moment to revisit the inspiration of that story because it is the critical transfiguration moment of why people gather as a church.

Mm-hmm. Okay.  Awesome. Good job summarizing that. Thank you. Yeah.  Okay. Anything else that you wanna talk about the day or moments or interactions with anyone there?  I think you got invited to a powwow, right?  

I did.  I can't remember seven circles. Mm-hmm. Maybe something in champaign. I said it was a veterans.

It was typically a veterans ceremony veterans of war ceremony. He said, he goes, they used to do this multiple times a year. This is sitting bare. And he said that we're more invited, more than welcome to come. We're invited. And that  they only host it like once a year now. Okay. And that it's coming up.

Oh, I don't know anymore in about it though. Not here. I believe that it's in champagne. I'd have to look that up though. 

All right, cool. Yeah. Neat.  Yeah, we had a few connections with people there like loose connections. A friend of mine, her cousin goes there. Connie, yeah. Her cousin goes there and it was like that, like we didn't really know anybody.

I. That goes there. I had originally gotten on Facebook and looked to see who follows their Facebook page and reached out to a few people, but none of them actually go there. Like occasionally maybe go there, but not like regular members. So had a few connections beautiful setting. I would love to maybe go sometime in the summer when they're doing maybe more things outside or, I know they do like a sage.

Smudging during the warmer weather rather than the water blessing is there for year round blessing, but in, when it's nice out, they will do the smudging blessing outside first. Partly for people with lung issues because that can be hard on people. But it just wasn't quite warm enough I don't think, to do something like that.

So close. It's 40 degrees. We were so close, I thought maybe they would, but yeah, it's not quite there yet, so that would be kinda neat to go during a warmer month and experience that. Everyone was very kind. If you wanted to visit, I think you could or could not do the potluck and still get a really good experience.

Oh, absolutely. In 

fact, I think there were some people that didn't come for lunch. Mm-hmm. 

There were plenty of people that showed up. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Closer to one 30. But like we've always said, we wanna get as much of an experience out of it as possible and really get to understand the group. They did have a little shop there, I think.

Did you pop in there too? I did, yeah. Little room with different things for sale. Some of them Native America. Yeah. Some like leather 

pouches and some geodes and mm-hmm. Calendars and posters. Cute little shop. Yeah. It's not open all the 

time. It's only there on Sundays. Or if they have special events, it sounds like.

I'm glad our kids didn't go through it.  

Genevieve did. She's like, I want this. Oh, she did? Yeah. 'cause that's 

what that would, yeah. Can I have like all of this wall over here? Yeah. Everything. Yeah.  

Yeah. So I think that's it. I can't think of anything else too much that I wanna add. Is there anything else you can remember?

 I guess I would just be curious to know, like your emotional feedback response. Mm-hmm. You know, and now that we've gone and come back. Mm-hmm.  What'd you think? 

I really liked their version of the Lord's Prayer. 

Mm-hmm. 

Can I see that piece of paper actually?

Yeah. I can, let me just pull this out here and I'll just read part of it. Yeah. Mean, is that what you want? Yeah. Want me to read part of it? 'cause you're so far away. I don't know if I want to like, get off 

your chair and walk over you. Put this, put a 

stamp on it and get it over there to you. Um,  here we go.

The Lord's Prayer. According to First Nation's version.  Oh, great spirit, our father from above, we honor your name as sacred and holy. Bring your good road to us. We're the beauty of your ways in the spirit world above is reflected in the earth below. Provide us day by day, the elk, the buffalo and the salmon, the corn, the squash, and the wild rice.

All of the things that we need for each day. Release us from all things that we have done wrong in the same way we release others. For the things done wrong to us. Guide us away from the things that temp us to stray from your good road and set us free from the evil one in his worthless ways. A ho may it be so 

there you go.

Yeah, I like that. And I like 

just a little bit of a different mm-hmm. 

Yeah. I liked hearing the story about when they built it, like I mentioned. Mm-hmm. Um, when they cut down the trees, they. Really took a lot of great care in that and they didn't take that lightly, which I think is so important. 

Yeah, I did not hear that story.

That's a good one. It was on 

their website. It's a video from one of their founding members saying, there were tears shed by people about having to cut these trees down. And I would be one of those people definitely. I hate seeing trees cut down. Um,  and knowing that they really valued them so much that they went to the effort to make sure that those trees were used and not just discarded through the process.

Yeah. Not like that one guy in our neighborhood. 

we'll scratch that. Okay.  I also wanted to read maybe a passage here 'cause some people may be interested in how this is different than what they've read in the book of Luke. This is a passage from the Transfiguration passage. What is this, Luke? 9 28 to 36. So this is in the middle of that two men appeared and began to talk with him.

One was the prophet of old great spirit is creator, which is Elijah and the other ancient law giver drawn from the water, which is Moses. We're shining like the sun and we're talking to him about his crossing over from his life to the next, which would take place in Village of Peace, which is Jerusalem.

Hmm.  So there, 

I like that. Also, I was just looking through, their website is really well done. I. Talks a lot about what to expect. Talks about all the different facets like the drum and the friendship dance, which is what we took part of at the beginning. Communion, how that's done, the water blessing.

That one part was called the talking stick. I don't know if you mentioned that when you were walking around. Mm-hmm. Um, everyone was sharing their. Prayers and hopes and joys and sorrows. And just talks about the group participation and what to expect through the whole process, which I think is super helpful for people.

I wish their website maybe had more of their history on here. I did have to find that on the old Peoria Magazine's website because somebody had done an article on that, I think, and they've got some videos, but I think that would be really valuable to people to really see. And read that story and have it be so easy for somebody to find about how they ended up where they are and why they're connected to the United Methodist Church.

And they do have a lot of frequently asked questions about can you be Native American and a Christian? And how do those align? And they dive into that quite a bit, which is nice. But the quick answer is yes. Yeah. Yeah. But really their origin story I think would be really nice to be able to see on here on their website.

But everything else was very clear and very welcoming and made it very easy to know what to expect in going to something that we didn't even know existed. And we've driven by, 

yeah, 

in theory, a million times. 

I, I know the answer to this question, but maybe you found something more explicit in this.

You said, can you be native American, also be a Christian? Mm-hmm. Let's flip the question around. Can you be, can you not be Native American, be a Christian, and still attend this church? 

Yes. I did find that. Hold on here. Let me find, you have to gimme, 

there has to be something written in there expressly giving permission people to come as they are.

There 

is, yeah. Gimme a second. You're just gonna have to edit out the time here.  Where is that? What to expect? 

FAQ. Okay, hold on here.  Here's some questions on their website that might help clarify a few things. Do you have to be Native American to attend day springing Native American UMC? No. We welcome people of all races and ethnicities. I.  What Native American tribes are you from? They're a blend of many different races and ethnicities.

Some of the Native American traditions we practice are those that were handed down by founders of the church while others were received and accepted by our elders and council members. We're open to making changes within our church as long as they follow our mission statement, which is sharing the love of Jesus Christ through Native American traditions, spirituality, and culture.

And then I think maybe to really answer the question how can you be both Native American and Christian?  Their answer is people of other A, are not asked to give up their heritages in order to be Christian. And it actually even sounds odd to suggest that a person cannot be a German Christian or a Mexican Christian.

Or an Italian Christian to name just a few. Good 

point. 

The truth is that once and ancestry has little to do with whether that person can or cannot also be a Christian. Yeah. So yes, not only is it possible to be both Native American and Christian at the same time, we also take great joy in employing Native American traditions in our worship of Christ.

Yeah, that's to say like people in Greece and  mm-hmm. The, you know, if you think about like. Greek mythology, like at some point in time all the ancestors prior to Christianity were of some other Sure. Religion. Mm-hmm. So, 

yeah, absolutely. So there you go.  Alright. Like I mentioned briefly through the podcast, we do have a new website, just branches of faith.com.

So you can find all of our old episodes on there, pictures everything's all in one place. You can send us a message, so if you have some feedback about this and you wanna say something or have a question or a follow up question or. If you're listening and you want to clue us into another unique place that you would like us to visit, feel free to send us a message.

Just don't judge us on not getting to every single place in central Illinois in a year. Yeah. But we do welcome positive feedback. Since this is a passion project, we don't really welcome negative feedback.  Yeah. You could keep that to yourself.  We're not, this is just a fun little bit. All positive, all good things.

Good. Hold on here. Good stuff. 

There's a line that, what's that snowman in frozen? Olaf? Yeah. There's a line in frozen that he, I use this line all the time. He just.  I think that's the voice of John Leguizamo. But he says all good things, or oh, we were just talking about you.  And then they come, you, whoever it was, Christophe or whatever, comes walking.

He's like all good things. All good things. And it kinda reminds me like, Hey, we're making an effort here to try and, bring all good things. Sure. Like reciprocate,  

don't be a jerk. 

Don't be, yeah.  Always be an Olaf. Yeah,  that kind of, I have audio here, talked a little bit with that. I don't know if I'm gonna get in trouble for playing some audio, 'cause I don't know that I ever got any kind of written and expressed permission.

But all that to say,  the one, something about the experience that is most unlike any other kind of ceremony that we've been to is the drum. Mm-hmm. And the chanting, well, I, I guess some of the other experiences like, but the singing is specifically in the way of.  Of this, this style. Mm-hmm. And so I wanted to bring it to the listeners because it is most unique.

Mm-hmm. And I feel like the way that sometimes you smell a smell and it brings you back to a memory. Mm-hmm. I could hear this and it would bring me back to that experience. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna sign off by playing a little bit of this. Perfect. And, um, and then we'll sign off with that. 



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