The prairies of the American continent are a vast open expanse that sweeps up from Texas and covers a wide swath of earth that does not break until deep into Canada.
In this geography that is unfettered by the boundaries that confine the rest of the world, time and space take on a new meaning. As one stands among the sage, short grass and sand there is a sense that only the sky itself can keep such a place tethered to the rest of reality.
While the grasslands of Southeast Colorado may feel as if they were formed from this great eternal emptiness, this land holds a history that stretches deep and full across generations.
As the ground flatly flows unhindered to the horizon, it is saturated with secrets and stories. The prairie has born witness to the triumphs and tragedies of humanity; the sacred, the mundane and the profane workings of people have marked this land.
Since November 29th, 1864, the ground has held the story of the Sand Creek Massacre.
On that day, the unending openness of the prairie was filled to overflowing with the clamor of violence and the machinations of empire. On that day a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapahoe peoples were attacked and slaughtered by Colorado soldiers under the command of Colonel John Chivington.
When the carnage was finally finished, an estimated 200 people from the camp had been killed, most of them children, women and elderly.
The story that overwhelmed and scarred the land that day is more than a drama that happened in the past. Sand Creek is an event that forever changed who and what the prairie of southeast Colorado would hold.
The tragedy that ran over the vast expanses that day is an event that involves more than soldiers and Native Americans. The people and the history of the United Methodist Church are also wrapped up in the deluge of violence that fell upon Sand Creek that day.
Colonel John Chivington, the man that unleashed his troops upon the unsuspecting encampment, was a licensed pastor in the Methodist Church and had been responsible for supervising all of the churches in Colorado before he donned a uniform in 1861 to fight in the Civil War.
He was a massive persona that breathed hatred and loathing towards indigenous peoples while at the same time using that same passion to preach the cause of abolishing slavery.
John Evans, also a devout Methodist who helped organize the University of Denver, used his power as governor of the Colorado Territory to purposefully create the situation and the atmosphere where a massacre could happen.
After 150 years the United Methodist Church is now actively engaged in naming its history and building relationships with the descendants of Sand Creek survivors.
Bishop Elaine Stanovsky, who leads the United Methodist Churches in all of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana, purposefully took almost 700 church leaders to the Sand Creek National Historical Site on June 20th, 2014 in an intentional act of pilgrimage.
The work that led up to the day of pilgrimage has spanned decades. Almost 20 years ago, Rev. Chuck Cooper, who was the pastor of the Lamar United Methodist Church during the 1990's until 2002, began to tell the Methodists of southeast Colorado the story of Sand Creek.
Rev. Cooper also took it as his personal mission to build healing relationships with Native Americans. Since 2009 Bishop Stanovsky and other church leaders have been educating themselves and educating the church about the role the earliest Methodists of Colorado played in perpetrating the massacre.
This process of education has been done in consultation with the Cheyenne and Arapahoe nations that now reside on reservations in Montana, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.
Following five years of hard work, hard conversations and trust building, Methodists and massacre descendants travelled together to the site of Sand Creek.
On a hot dusty June Friday busses left Pueblo where the church was having its annual conference. On the bus ride across the vast open plains, scholars and descendants shared with church leaders the stories of the massacres and the stories of their families.
As pilgrims somberly stepped from their buses into the immensity of the Great Plains, ashes were applied to their foreheads as a sign of repentance and a need for healing.
In a silence that spoke volumes, they then slowly walked the ground with eyes to see and ears to hear.
The serenity of the dry grass and sandy creek bed portrayed the peace that was broken 150 years ago. The wind whispered the memories of what had happened in that place.
Even though the vast prairie sky was eternally open and clear unto the heavens, a great weight filled the space as people remembered how quickly we can brutally turn on one another.
After the hundreds of people had visited and felt the site of the massacre, the community of Eads provided a gracious hospitality that testifies that the heart of that town is much larger than population numbers.
In the enormity of the prairie the surrounds Sand Creek there is no one day and there is no one act that can undo the level of violence that was spilt upon that ground.
There is no pilgrimage that has the power to ease the pain that was inflicted there. But there are lessons to be learned from knowing and owning history. And there is some level of healing to be found in building relationships that cross over divisions that are soaked in ancient animosities.
For as long as time and space endure the vast unending plains of southeast Colorado will continue to bear eternal witness to the tragedy of Sand Creek; and they will continue to call us to remembrance and repentance.
Rev. Calob Rundell is the pastor of the United Methodist Churches in McClave and Wiley, and was a participant in the pilgrimage to Sand Creek that was organized by the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. You can learn more about Sand Creek at nps.gov/sand