I’m Not Native, Buddhist, or a Guru—But Here’s Why You Should Listen Anyway.

I’m a straight, white dude. Early 40s. I’ve got this patchy, scruffy beard that could be a patchwork quilt of bad decisions, and like the Lucero song says, I’m all sewn up with bad tattoos. I’m not Native, and I've been to exactly one Buddhist temple, once. Raised hard and fast in the throes of Fundamentalist Baptist and Southern Baptist teachings, and now I’m working my way through a Methodist context.

So, the question looms: What gives me the right to say anything about what I’m saying? Who the hell am I to speak on any of this stuff? And here’s the truth, as ugly and raw as it is: No one. I’ve got no fancy title. No badge of honor. I’m not a spiritual guru or expert. I’ve got nothing to stand on but my own messy, half-baked journey. But, there’s something I’ve found, something I can’t ignore.

The Lakota say, “Mitakuye oyasin"—we are all related. And that phrase strikes me like a slap across the face every time I think about it. There’s something about that call to the interconnectedness of all things that digs deep. It’s not just a feel-good platitude. It’s a radical truth that shakes the core of how we see each other. The Lakota understood this long before I ever set foot on this land. They saw the land, the people, and the spirits as one. There’s no separation. You can’t burn the earth and not scorch your own soul. You can’t hurt your neighbor and not poison your own body. The land is sacred, and we are the land—the earth beneath us, the air we breathe, the water that runs through us. I’m not Native, but I hear that voice loud and clear. It’s the voice of the oppressed, the silenced, the forgotten, and it’s shouting at me to wake the hell up.

I’m no expert in Indigenous teachings, but I stand as an ally, hoping to amplify the wisdom that’s been buried under centuries of violence and theft. Their prophets—whether it’s Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, or the countless other voices we’ve erased—still speak to us from the dust. They said, “The earth is a mother, not a commodity," and we’ve spent hundreds of years proving them right by destroying her for profit. So, in my own way, I’ll keep pointing toward their truths. I’ll scream it from the rooftops: there’s something sacred here, something holy, and we need to start listening again.

Now, let’s talk Buddhism. The Buddha spoke of the Three Marks of Existence: impermanence, suffering, and the illusion of self. But here’s the thing—when I first heard this, it wasn’t from some pristine, ivory tower monk or Buddhist guru. It was from a friend of mine, walking along the White River in Muncie, IN, and talking about suffering and pizza like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Everything changes," he said, “And that’s the bad news and the good news. Suffering comes, but so does freedom."

In that moment, I understood the Buddha’s prophetic call in a way I never could’ve learned from books or lectures. He wasn’t just a guy sitting in a lotus position, detached from the pain of the world—he was a man who looked at the world and saw the truth of it all. That suffering? It’s real. We’re not here to escape it or deny it. We’re here to embrace it, to sit with it, to understand that it’s part of the human condition. And when you stop running from it, when you stop trying to fix it, you find freedom in the midst of it. This wasn’t some fancy doctrine; this was a down-and-dirty, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of wisdom. And it hit me like a punch to the gut.

But I’ll tell you something—Buddhism in the West is often sold as a quick fix, like a magic bullet to end all our problems. But real Buddhism, the kind that lives in the dirt and the grime of life, isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about facing what’s broken and accepting it. It’s about understanding that the illusion of the self—of who we think we are—is just that: an illusion. The Buddha was a prophet of liberation, but his liberation was about giving up everything we think we know about ourselves and the world. It’s a hard truth, and it’s a holy one.

And then, there’s Christianity—the faith I’ve been fighting with for years. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you." That’s a radical statement. It’s a prophetic declaration. The Kingdom of God isn’t some far-off place in the sky, some post-death reward. It’s right here, right now, in the rubble, in the mess of our lives. It’s in the poor, the outcast, the broken, the beaten down. It’s in the punk rockers and the misfits who’ve been cast aside by the religious elite. It’s in the margins, and it’s screaming for justice.

I’m no expert in theology. I’ve been dragged through the mud by this faith, beaten and bruised by most of the churches that were supposed to heal me. But I’ve learned something in the process. The heart of the Christian message is one of radical love and sacrifice. Not the kind of love that pats you on the back and says, “Good job.” No, this is the kind of love that gets dirty, that picks up the cross and carries it through the streets. The kind of love that stands up to empire and says, “Not on my watch.” The kind of love that’s willing to die to the old ways so that new life can emerge.

So, do I have the right to speak on any of this? No. Hell no. But I do it anyway. Because there’s truth in it, buried beneath the mess and the rubble. There’s something profound in the Indigenous teachings, in the Buddha’s wisdom, and in the faith I’ve wrestled with—banged my head against, really. It’s all connected. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough to give me the courage to keep talking. To keep fighting for a better way to see the world. To keep being that wanna-be punk rock preacher in the back of the room, shouting out the words someone needs to hear.