It's time for a spiritual migration, says Choctaw elder Steven Charleston. Two million years ago, our earliest ancestors undertook the first migration. Now, in a time of upheaval and chaos and dread, we must move again. Around us, things are shutting down. Disappearing. We are moving backward in our evolution. Brutality and passivity, greed and xenophobia reign. Tools and technology will not save us. While our ancestors knew their survival depended on our relationship to Mother Earth, we act as if the Earth were a resource to be exploited rather than a relative to love. But across Turtle Island, Indigenous people are inviting others to join them on a sacred migration. It's a journey rooted in perception, imagination, humility, and kindness. In these pages, the beloved author of Ladder to the Light and other books, Steven Charleston, draws on Native spirituality to show us the way. Charleston is not content to let the Trail of Tears define the history of his community. With his trademark mix of gentle warmth and piercing vision, he offers the story of another kind of migration, one that arises from the deepest parts of ancient human culture. In Sacred Migration, Charleston shows us how his ancestors understood migration as a spiritual journey. He reveals holy places, like kivas and mounds and the medicine wheel, and points us toward the hope that will orient us. And he shows us how to create an altar to sustain us. This journey is life-giving and restorative, and it's one we take together. Migration is a process by which people not only travel but transform, Charleston says. We do not need to sit still in our despair, and in the pages of this much-anticipated book, he invites us to travel, together, toward a new home.
Steven Charleston is a leading voice of justice for Indigenous peoples, the environment, and spiritual renewal. A member of the Choctaw Nation, Charleston has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, BBC World News, and other outlets. The author of more than a dozen books on theology and spirituality, including Ladder to the Light, Charleston has served as the Episcopal bishop of Alaska, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, and professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary. He has been theologian in residence at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Charleston lives with his wife, Susan, in Oklahoma.
Introduction Part I 1 Migration 2 Wormhole 3 Memory 4 Emergence Part II 5 Sipapu 6 Hidden Land 7 Kinship 8 Trust 9 Going Inward Part III 10 Perception 11 Imagination 12 Humility 13 Kindness Part IV 14 Ancestors 15 The Future 16 Medicine Wheel 17 Altar 18 Prayer Shawl 19 Intention 20 Love
"At a time when migration is so often shaped by trauma and loss, this book restores a sacred lens. With Indigenous wisdom and spiritual depth, Steven Charleston shows how migration--outer and inner--can become a path of healing, humility, and collective renewal." --TARA BRACH, author of Radical Acceptance and Radical Compassion "Steven Charleston's gorgeous, necessary invitation into the next chapter of our consciousness is gentle, wise, and firm: It's time to leave behind our toxic ways of doing and being, but we have guides and tools for the journey into whatever comes next. Sacred Migration is a gift that shows us just how timeless the map really is." --RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG, author of On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World "Once again, Bishop Steven Charleston shows us the elder and teacher that he has always been by inviting us into a deep and sacred journey within ourselves. Every page of this book contains rich truths about who we are as humans, guiding us into histories of migration and the lessons we learn along the way on our own journeys. His words are a gift, and I hope you will receive them and be inspired to walk the world around you with deep hope and a commitment to care, kinship, and imagination." -- KAITLIN B. CURTICE, award-winning Potawatomi author of Native and Everything Is a Story
