Cedar Tree Institute

In the contentious battle unfolding around a proposed sulfide mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the particular focus of intense opinion depends, of course, on whom you’re listening to. Most of the pro and con arguments are based in science and economics. Lost in most public debate is any reference to the moral implications of this heated public controversy.

According to an 1842 treaty between the US government and local Native American tribes, native peoples’ ongoing access to hunt, fish and gather are protected forever on land Rio Tinto is trying to mine. As Native American leaders continue fighting to protect theses provisions recorded in hundreds of treaties established between the US government and sovereign indigenous nations, there’s emerging a growing consciousness of potential conflicts between human rights issues and unfettered economic expansion.

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from Marquette Monthly December, 2009

Peeking through a winter’s window

As darkness falls ever earlier these afternoons, those of us in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula huddle down to prepare for another winter. Along with splitting wood for our stoves and finishing up the last of canning from another fall harvest, the time of storytelling, dreams, feasts and lights has arrived. A world of elves, carols, community concerts, rituals and festivals teasingly invites us, especially during these first winter days, to take respite into a deeper, colorful landscape of imagination and soul.

Most all of us are aware that J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter children’s book series have dazzlingly captured the focus of meeting an increasing popular hunger for magical and spiritual matters. Her work has taken her on a soaring path from writing stories at a corner table at McDonalds in a dreary London neighborhood to the life of a global celebrity. Even more recently, the film version of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are has drawn rave reviews from prestigious publications like the New York Times for leading us into still another celebration of the intriguing landscapes of dreams and inner worlds.

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from The Christian Century July 29, 2008

A debate over mining in Upper Michigan

On the southern shore of Lake Superior, rugged edges of deep green forest merge with cliffs of sandstone and million-year-old granite to mark the northern boundary of Powell Township. For most Michigan citizens, this remains a remote, forgotten corner of the Upper Peninsula, an economically depressed region that economists often call America’s “second Appalachia.” For those who live here, it has become a battleground between an international mining company and a patchwork coalition of residents, fisherfolk, church leaders, environmentalists and an Indian tribe.

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from Marquette Monthly December, 2008

Working the end-of-life shift

It was a late December evening thirty years ago, dark, cold, the earth as hard as iron. I was serving as parish pastor of a small congregation in Mackinac County. Shortly before midnight, I received a telephone call from one of our parishioners. Having grown up in an isolated tourist town, trapped in the crunch of a bottomed-out economy, she’d managed that winter to find a part-time job as a nurse’s aide on the night shift at our local medical facility.

There was a woman in her mid-eighties, she said, an hour or two from the edge of life, suffering from the last stages of cancer. Respectfully, she asked whether I was available to stop by. She’d called to tell me the patient was weak, barely conscious, but something puzzling was happening. My friend paused, then continued, “She’s singing. I’ve never heard anything like this. Her sister from Petoskey is with me. They’re Native Americans, Ojibway. Her sister told me it’s a death song, to help her cross over to another world.”

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