Walking with Hope
Strength Through Relationship

by Rev. Leon Sampson

For generations, the Diné people have understood that beauty is more than something we see. Beauty is a way of living, walking, praying, and being in relationship with all that surrounds us. The Navajo Blessing Way covenant of embodying the theology of beauty all round oneself is a powerful, holistic practice for walking this Beauty pathway.

 The Treaty of Bosque Redondo, signed on June 1, 1868, allowed the Diné people to return to their ancestral lands after years of imprisonment and suffering. With that journey home, the prophetic prayer of the Beauty Way Covenant was renewed for the Diné people, and it still carries meaning for us today as we seek healing from historical trauma.

 Making the journey home, roughly three hundred miles, our ancestors carried songs and prayers of resilience and forgiveness, with a determination never to return to that moment of brokenness. Their prayer was to walk with hope and with the promise that the people would once again thrive. They depended entirely upon the Creator to guide them home, where they could rebuild their communities, restore their families and K’é, and begin again. That is a ministry of faith.

 Today, the ripples of historical trauma still reach the shorelines of our healing. The disruption of identity fueled by the colonial Christian model continues to perpetuate the  idea that our people must abandon their Navajo songs and prayers in order for Creator God to see them and hear them.

 As faith leaders in the Missionary Diocese in Navajoland, we grapple with that tension of being Diné and Christian. Yet we can also look to our ancestors, whose journey reminds us that the Beauty Way Covenant calls our church to bridge faith practices that have too often been divided. It calls us to empower our people to rekindle what has been inherited, to restore relationship, and to live out the holistic practice of loving and caring for one another as one family.

I see that hope continuing across Navajoland today whenever our people gather to pray, care for one another, strengthen K’é, and carry forward the songs and teachings that have sustained us. I see it in our congregations, in our families, and in those who continue serving even during uncertain seasons. These are signs that healing is still taking place and that Creator God continues to guide us forward.

This work is also a work of discernment. We walk in faith, trusting what Creator God is revealing to us as a people who carry both wounds and resilience. We do not leave behind who we are in order to walk with God. Instead, we bring our whole selves, our prayers, our songs, our relationships, our history, and our hope. We continue praying, singing the songs of the Beauty Way, strengthening K’é, and trusting the divine to guide our steps. The journey toward healing is not finished, but neither are we walking it alone. Like our ancestors on the journey home, we continue forward with faith, seeking once again to walk in beauty.