Who Am I?

People have always asked questions about where things came from, including themselves. We like answers. In one of the most famous Bible scriptures (Exodus 3:14), Moses asked God who He was. Depending on which translation you read, the answer was: New International Version (©1984)rnGod said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. King James Bible (which is generally the least accurately translated version of the Bible)rnGod said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM Young's Literal TranslationrnAnd God saith unto Moses, 'I AM THAT WHICH I AM Bible in Basic EnglishrnGod said to him, I AM WHAT I AM The Septuagint: I am he who exists. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, stated that the more literal translation is "I-shall-be that I-shall-be." So, "who", "that", "which", "what"...and the "shall be that I shall be". Similar, but different. We do personalize God to fit our cultural traditions and beliefs. God becomes "whomever" or "whatever", depending on those traditions and beliefs. The name is a label of language for communication purposes. The true nature of God is beyond all labels, beyond "who", "that", "which", "what". God is known by many "labels": God, Yahweh, Allah, Great Spirit, and many, many more. When we read the word "God" in our English translations of the Bible, we miss all the variations behind the singular word. It actually doesn't always refer to God by just the one "name", and depending on the actual word used - "God" has many meanings. Historically, mankind has sought the meaning and nature of God in all cultures, in all traditions. The labels and the conclusions drawn may vary, but God does not actually "vary". God "is". I came to this message after a week of researching some of my own family heritage, trying to find out more about who I myself am. The "who", "what", and "which" of Debbie. Everyone wants and needs a sense of personal identity. Adopted children and others who grow up disconnected from their families often have a personal identity crisis and feel compelled to seek out where they came from, who they came from - to find the "lost" parts of themselves so they can feel more whole. I know that the "who" I am is Debbie Lapeyrouse, but "what" does that even really mean? Debbie Lapeyrouse is my label, the means by which I identify myself to others. It is not the essence of my real self. No one can just know my "label" and say they really know me. They know "of" me, that's all. In some sense, we often only know "of" ourselves. We aren't always really aware of "who" or "what" we really are. We wear many faces to the world and sometimes our true essence gets lost in the shuffle. A strong sense of self-identify can give a person confidence and sometimes it's the absence of that which drives some of us to want to find a deeper connection. I grew up the child of divorced parents, raised by neither, and never felt rooted in either side of my family. I tried to create roots of my own through marriage and having my own children. It didn't quite work out the way I envisioned. I was divorced. My youngest child died in an auto accident at age 18. I was then widowed. Life has a way of surprising us with developments in our personal "plan" that we don't prepare for. And that doesn't just apply to relationships. I lost the only real home I'd ever had as an adult, along with most of my personal possesions, in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and had to relocate and start an entirely new life. So I have felt just as rootless and disconnected as ever, after a lifetime of trying so hard to establish something lasting for myself. I was trying to create that ""shall be that I shall be" in my own life, and it just didn't work out that way. The Truth is, nothing is really lasting except the essence of "who" or "what" we are and even in "real world" terms, we have a desire for some sense of personal identity beyond labels like daughter or son, wife or husband, employee or employer, etc. I have not liked feeling so disconnected a good part of my life. Much of my identity was tied up in being someone's daughter, being someone's wife, being someone's mother, and being someone's employee - and trying to fit all those models of who they expected me to be to them and for them. We have to spend so much of our lives juggling all that, that we so often don't get to just "be" the "who" and "what" we truly are or would be, given that freedom. I had an amazing personal experience that provided me with missing pieces of the puzzle of "who" and "what" Debbie Lapeyrouse is. I was able to document genealogy in my mother's family tracing myself back to a Muscogee Creek war chief and learned about a rich family heritage that I had previously known nothing about. Now, for some people that might just have been interesting data but not so personally meaningful. For me, it was a "homecoming". It was my own personal "missing link". It helped me understand some things about myself that had always been a bit puzzling. Granted, by blood the percentage of Native American in me is relatively minimal, but "in spirit" I have always "felt" a real connection to Native American culture. I was raised completely in a white, Southern, Protestant culture devoid of any Native influence whatsoever. So it wasn't culture or tradition in my home or community that instilled this "feeling" in me. It was just there - always. And over the course of my life it became a stronger and stronger "feeling", for which I had no known basis. As a child, I often played in the woods on my grandparents' farm. I didn't often have any playmates unless I was at school, so I would explore the woods nearest the house on my own and my "game" was that I was an Indian. I made myself try to trend so quietly as not to be heard and so cleverly as not to leave any sign that I had passed through. No one "taught" me these ideas. They were just innate in me. I "felt" Indian and tried to behave as I thought one might when exploring the woods. I also had a favorite fantasy, that I was an Indian princess and that when I rode my horse (a stick one, albeit) down a path wooded on either side, all the animals of the woods would come out to greet me. I don't know where I got such ideas, but my young mind was rich with the imagination of being "Indian" in my secret self. Fast forward to being an adult and being drawn to books and movies about Native Americans. When I read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", I wept and was so ashamed of being "white" and part of the culture that did the things white "civilization" had done to all Native people. When I saw "Dances with Wolves" in the theatre, I was so choked on tears at the end of the movie and trying so hard not to sob in the theatre that my throat was killing me. I made it to my car, lay my head on the steering wheel and sobbed like my heart was breaking. I have never been able to "explain" why such stories relating to Native Americans have always touched me in such a profound way when others can just read the book or watch the movie and have a "normal" response. I was at Unity School of Christianity when I purchased my first cassette tape of Native American flute music. I had put it on to listen to between classses, back in my room. As the music began to play, I ended up sitting on the floor weeping. It touched me to the core of something in my spirit and moved me that profoundly. I actually skipped my next class because the experience left me that shaken that I needed time to compose myself. These are not "normal" responses, not even in my own mind. I could never "explain" to myself "why" these things touched me so much. Until now, I haven't really shared any of this in such detail with anyone other than my son Len, because I know it sounds "weird" and I haven't met a lot of people I felt would understand or appreciate the experiences I had to share. During my ministry as pastor of the Unity Church of Hattiesburg MS, prayer and meditation was a natural part of my daily life. Often in my sleep I would be "given" entire sermons for that Sunday. For many years I had experienced various types of inspiration and guidance in my inner spirit. But, I had not actively pursued any Native American teachings or even made acquaintance with anyone connected with anything Native American. So, imagine my surprise when in one of my meditations I actually had the type experience Native Americans typically seek in a vision quest. It was a very profound experience for me, in no small part because it was totally out of context from anything else in my "normal" life. Then in the early 1990s, on a whim I got in my car and drove from Mississippi to upper New York state to attend a Medicine Wheel Gathering. Why? I had no idea. I don't like driving. I try to avoid long road trips, especially if I'm the driver. I don't particularly like being out of my comfort zone. I'm very much a creature of habit. That makes me feel secure. So, deciding to make such a long journey to particpate in something totally "foreign" to me was very unlike me. I simply felt it was something I "had" to do. I felt called to it. Maybe the residual effect of having had the unsought vision quest experience insilled something I wasn't even consciously aware of. I don't know. I just knew it was something I needed to do. Now, if you search for them, you can find Native American gatherings much closer to home than my trek from south Mississippi to upper New York state. But I have no doubt Spirit was guiding me to this particular event for the purpose of meeting certain particular people who, at the time, I'd never even heard of. In fact, I had no personal knowledge of ANY Native Americans or anyone connected with them. As it turned out, the leader of the Medicine Wheel Gathering was named Sun Bear. Once there, I learned he was the Chief of the Bear Tribe Medicine Society, an author, lecturer, and teacher. I learned he was a bit controversial. And I met and talked with him personally and found him to be one of the most memorable people I'll ever meet. And the timing of our meeting was important, because he died shortly afterward. At the time, however, Sun Bear had an apprentice program in which those invited and accepted could live at his location in Washington state to study and learn with him. I had the honor of being extended such an invitation and maybe that was the reason I was there. Maybe that was why Spirit called me to that Gathering. But, like most everyone, I had responsibilities I couldn't just walk away from to pursue my spiritual quest. I had a husband and young son back home in Mississippi, so I didn't have the liberty to pursue the opportunity. A consolation to not being able to accept Sun Bear's invitation to apprentice under him was that I made friends with two of his apprentices - Morning Star and Wind Daughter. Morning Star was from the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota. I attended her workshops and got to know her well enough that we stayed in touch for a few years. I received her newsletter about her work on the reservation and was appalled by the poor standards of living there. I became fairly outraged. I found that, unlike most minorities, Native Americans will suffer in silence out of either pride and/or disillusionment rather than raise heck for better treatment in America. The poverty is out of sight and out of mind from most of America. I tried to help as much as I was able by collecting used blankets from church members to send to Morning Star for those on the reservation who were freezing from the snowy Dakota winters and little way to stay warm. I found this to be another heartbreaking Native American story but not one from the past, but rather here and now. Recently I was online trying to see if I could find Morning Star and try to reconnect with her. You can find just about anyone online these days, but I didn't find her. But I did learn that still to this day assistance is needed Native Americans with heating against the winter cold on the South Dakota reservation. Wind Daughter was from Alabama at the time I met her. She had apprenticed with Sun Bear and was very active in their organization. She and I stayed in touch for a good while. She, her daughter, and their wolf came to Mississippi for the purpose of initiating me for permission to do the sacred pipe ceremony. Such ceremonies are not to be done by the unitiated or those not given permission. Due to Life "getting in the way", we also lost touch. But I found online last night that after Sun Bear died in 1992, Wind Daughter subsequently became the leader of the Bear Tribe Medicine Society in 1996, as well as other developments in her own spiritual path. I sent her an email and we have reconnected and are renewing our friendship. The point of sharing all this is to get back to the heart of this story about my having this life-long "feeling" in me that was profound and carried over decades of my life, but Life kept having twists and turns and any actual pursuit of further Native American studies got set aside. Then here I am, as often happens as we get older, now without the restrictions of being mother to any young children, I live alone, and I now have the time to begin research, study, and write. I was actually searching online for information on a paternal relative when I "accidentally" landed on a site where I found maternal cousins with all kinds of documented data on my mother's side of the family that I knew nothing about! I knew I had a female Mississippi Choctaw on my mother's side of the family and a reported female Cherokee on my dad's side of the family, but these were things just mentioned briefly and not talked about in the families because they actually didn't want to acknowledge having had any Native Americans in the family - so they certainly weren't looking to prove it. Just learning what I was able to find out was like pulling teeth and almost comical in the denial and then ultimate admission to the fact, like I was trying to pull skeletons from the family closet! So, imagine my surprise and absolute delight to find a site where my Muscogee Creek heritage was already well-documented and established - and public! LOL I have had a great week this past week digging more into the rich history, because it turned out that the oldest-known ancestors in the family are actually historically well-documented. It was the single most exciting thing I've ever learned about my own heritage! Sun Bear was controversial because he was willing to share and teach Native ways to non-Natives. This is still very taboo among many Native Americans and was cause for negativity from some Native Americans toward Sun Bear. Sun Bear, however, felt that there are so few wanting to learn and carry on the Native ways that if non-Natives were sincerely interested, why not welcome them. On the other side of that, the true Native Americans don't like the idea of non-Natives "playing Indian", so to speak. I can understand both sides of the issue. Both have validity, depending on your viewpoint. And I can relate to that personally. When my youngest son was in junior high and high school, I had another one of my "callings" that pulled me toward Native Americans. I heard about a Poarch Creek Thanksgiving Pow Wow in Alabama that was just a daytrip from our Mississippi home. I felt compelled for us to go celebrate Thanksgiving with Native Americans instead of as Americans. I strongly felt that Thanksgiving probably had a whole different meaning to them than it does to white Americans and wanted to know how they felt about giving thanks that white settlers took over their country. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience, so much so that we attended several years. We loved to see the "fancy dance" exhibits, see the annual princess pageant, eat roasted corn and other traditional Native foods like fry bread, browse and shop from the Native vendors selling everything from inexpensive trinkets to expense pieces of artwork and crafts, and feel like we were spending our Thanksgiving with the "true Americans". They sometimes had special guests. One year singer Gordon Lightfoot was there. They typically made some remarks about Thanksgiving and white people. The best one I recall was, the speaker asked those gathered, "What was America called before the first white people arrived?" Answer, "Ours!". So very, very true! I had no idea at the time that I had any validated Native heritage and certainly no idea that I was a distant relative to the very tribe we were celebrating with! I did meet Chief Dan Martin of the Mississippi Choctaw tribe, which also participated in the Poarch Creek annual Thanksgiving event. And I subsequently attended a lecture he gave at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg MS. But still, I continued to be drawn to these people and this culture from something deep within my spirit that otherwise "made no sense" in the scheme of things in my normal white American life. And I think that part of the reason I set all that aside as Life moved on was that I felt like I was one of those undeserving white people who was "playing Indian" and had no right to intrude into their culture out of my own personal curiosity and interest, no matter how well-intended. When I found I was a bona-fide descendant from the Alabama Muscogee Creek tribe, I felt like I had "come home". I found like the pieces of the puzzle finally made sense. I had found the "missing link" of "who" and "what" Debbie Lapeyrouse truly is - inside, not outwardly as known by the various labels by which I'm identified. It is liberating to have a true sense of self-identity. Having felt so rootless my entire life, I can now reach all the way back to the 1700s and see where at least part of me came from. I now know why both my sons and myself have always had "something" in us drawing us so strongly toward something Native American. You may well say that my Native American heritage is from so far back that it can't possibly be the root of all these feelings and experiences. Well, if not from that part of me that comes from those roots, what else explains any of it? It's the only thing that DOES make sense of any of it. And I have found this to be such a blessing, to finally have an answer to knowing more of all that I am. I've shared this because each of us has more to us than we might know. Each of us is a "who" and "what" that we are which may be yet unknown to us. Part of knowing more of God is in knowing more of our own nature. We are told we are in the image and likeness of God, that we are have the same Spirit in us. But if we don't truly know ourselves, how can we know that part of us? Just as I felt drawn to Native Americans, we may feel strongly drawn to Spirit, to God and yet feel like the Native "pretender" or "wannabe" that I began to feel like many years ago when I couldn't truly identify myself with any actual Native people and felt like an imposter. We can feel like spiritual imposters. I think many places of worship are filled with many spiritual imposters, people going through the motions but not truly identifying with Spirit. It's important to know ourselves - to know who we are, where we came from, where we are in our lives now, and where we're going. This applies both in our outer life and our inner Life. I know more now about "who" and "what" Debbie Lapeyrouse is than I did only a few short months ago. I have enjoyed find this "missing" part of myself and embracing it. It only took 62 years! LOL Sometimes the journey is long, but each step IS the journey - to paraphrase Michael Tlanusta, Cherokee. Thankfully, as I get older, my life is more about "being" than so much "doing". That gives us more opportunity to be introspective, to get to know ourselves better. Your journey may not be that of digging up family ancestory. You may have always had those roots, but you may feel "unrooted" in other aspects of your life. Our challenge is to get to know yourself better. Look inward to see "who" and "what" you truly are. Only in so doing can we ever hope to know more of "who" and "what" the essence of God is - by any defining label. .