Crafting Baskets and Hope - January 8
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 117, 118; PM Psalm 96:1-7; Exodus 2:1-10; Rev. 2:8-17; Matthew 5:1-12
Today’s Reflection
Today is the feast day of Harriet Bedell, someone whom I had never heard of before earlier this week. So, feeling curious about this unknown saint, who is described as “missionary and friend to the Seminoles” in Florida, where I grew up, I decided to learn more.
Harriet Bedell was an Episcopal deaconess and missionary who worked alongside Native Americans in Oklahoma, Alaska, and Florida. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1875, she decided at age 31 (in 1906) to apply to the New York School of Deaconesses, where she was accepted into a year of formation to prepare to follow her call to be a deaconess. At that time, deaconesses were women who felt a call to a life of service, but were not ordained as members of the clergy as deacons are today.
Bedell was sent to a Cheyenne mission in Oklahoma where she served—though not yet officially recognized as a deaconess—for nine years. Then, in 1916, she was sent to serve in a new context, in Stevens Village, Alaska, and then was sent on from there to establish a boarding school in Tanana, Alaska, for rural students who did not live near a school. Finally, in 1922, Bedell was made a deaconess of the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, the Great Depression made raising the necessary funds to keep the school open impossible, so she returned to the continental United States where she traveled around to speak of her missionary work. In 1932, Bedell traveled to Florida to speak at a Seminole reservation where she ended up feeling a call to live and work alongside the Miccosukee tribe, whose poor living conditions pointed toward a need to discover new ways of making a living.
While earlier in her ministry Bedell had focused on missionary work with an eye toward converting people to Christianity, over the years Bedell’s heart and mind changed. By the time Bedell worked with Miccosukee in South Florida, her focus shifted toward empowering people to improve their quality of life (especially their health and education) as she lived and worked alongside them in a spirit of respect and admiration for their culture.
What Bedell discovered about the Miccosukee culture is that they had rich traditions of crafting baskets, patchwork, and dolls, but that their artisan-elders were dying off and soon their valuable cultural knowledge and artistic skills would be lost. Bedell encouraged them to save these almost-lost traditions, which helped them to retain their cultural identity while they generated income to improve their daily lives.
The Exodus reading appointed for Bedell’s feast day is the story of baby Moses being floated down the Nile in a handmade basket: “When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it” (Exodus 2: 3-5). Just as the basket Moses’ mother crafted kept him alive and carried him to a new life, so too did the baskets and other crafts made by these Miccosukee artisans provide a new-yet-old way for them to live and thrive in the Everglades. Bedell made the Everglades her home and her mission from 1933 through 1960, when Hurricane Donna destroyed her home and the mission buildings, forcing her to retire at age 85.
As a young woman growing up in the Victorian Era in Buffalo, New York, Harriet Bedell likely would not have predicted the many and varied roads she would travel—all the interesting people she would know and love and all the beautiful places she would live—as she followed God’s call. And she probably wouldn’t have predicted the way that her heart would be changed along the way, either.
—Becky+
Collect for Harriet Bedell
Holy God, fill us with compassion and respect for all people, and empower us for the work of ministry whether near or far away; that like your servant Harriet Bedell, we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, and by giving up ourselves to your service. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Questions for Self-Reflection
Recall a point in your life when you thought you had a good plan for how your life would unfold—what you would achieve, where you would live, and who you would know. Did life unfold according to your plans? Or did some parts of your plan end up changing? Looking back on it now, reflect on the actual course of your life and how those unexpected changes in plans have made you who you are today.
Daily Challenge
Learn more of Harriet Bedell’s life and work in the Everglades of Florida (as well as in Oklahoma and Alaska) by viewing some of her photographs now archived at the Smithsonian Institution. You can read more about her life of service through the Women in Florida History blog and see photos of her at work through the Florida Memory Project.