What We're About
Mission and Ministry
Prayer and Worship
St. Christopher’s Mission is a community of prayer. Our days, here, begin before the sun rises over the Scotch Bluff with our own personal prayers and devotions. Then, we gather at the sound of the bell for Morning Prayer in the chapel or in the sacred circle. Beginning our days with prayer attunes our hearts and minds to all the ways our daily work is another form of prayer. We end the day in prayer as well, often gathering for Compline as twilight settles over the San Juan river canyons.
But our prayers at St. Christopher’s Mission are not limited to traditional Anglican prayer found in the Book of Common Prayer. We recognize the power of the Spirit moving in and through traditional Navajo prayers and chant ways. Our services ends with a traditional Blessing Way prayer, offered in both Diné and English. Like Fr. Liebler, we believe that the Jesus Way and the Beauty Way are one and the same.
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me, may I walk
With beauty behind me, may I walk
With beauty above me, may I walk
With beauty below me, may I walk
With beauty all around me, may I walk
Hózhó náhásdlíí’ – It is Beauty again!
COVID Relief
During the COVID pandemic, the Episcopal Church on Navajoland partnered with churches and charitable organizations from across the U.S. to provide fresh produce, milk, and eggs to our sheltering families. St. Christopher’s Mission served as the staging ground for the COVID relief efforts of the Episcopal Church on Navajoland in Utah. When many congregations in the Episcopal church are worrying over how to celebrate the Eucharist during carefully choreographed virtual worship services, our sisters and brothers in Navajoland were becoming Eucharist to their neighbors.
As our ministry teams continue to deliver fresh produce, eggs, and milk to sheltering families, they are literally handing over the Bread of Heaven. As they haul barrels of water to children with no access to running water, they are literally offering up the cup of salvation. As they chop and deliver loads of firewood to sheltering elders, they are literally sharing the light of Christ that keeps the frigid night winds at bay and preserves life. As our communities continue to struggle with this COVID pandemic, St. Christopher’s Mission is maintaining its partnerships to deliver food and supplies to sheltering families.
Seeds of Hózhóji
Out of our COVID relief efforts grew a community garden initiative to help families join in sustainable gardening to combat food scarcity. Seeds of Hózhóji, our community garden initiative, is unifying community organizations in the preservation and practice of traditional Navajo cultivation techniques and heritage cultivars. Seeds of Hózhóji is a joint partnership between St. Christopher’s Mission, the Town of Bluff, and the Utah State University Agriculture Extension Office. An initial garden grant from USU of $25,000 for 2021, was renewed for 2022, and in the Winter of 2021, an AmeriCorps Team joined us to expand our community gardens to include traditional dry farming plots.
By joining together in the work of sustainable agriculture, members of our communities are learning from one another how to live more sustainably with the earth, producing their own fruits and vegetables, and combating food scarcity. Additionally, the preservation and practice of traditional Navajo gardening techniques on the Mission serve as a starting point for conversations around truth and reconciliation arising out of historical trauma inflicted upon the Diné by the U.S. government and the church.
Truth-telling and Reconciliation
With a grant from the World Mission Board of the Diocese of Texas, St. Christopher’s Mission is becoming a center for truth-telling and reconciliation through shared practices of healing and wholeness. At the heart of this vision is a commitment to live more fully into Fr. Liebler’s dream of becoming a reconciled and reconciling community. Between the Retreat Center at the Old Mission House and the Baxter Liebler Building for Mission and Ministry, St. Christopher’s Mission is welcoming individuals and groups to come and see how reconciliation begins with listening to the stories of this land and its people and sharing in ceremonies of healing and protection.
At our Center for Truth and Reconciliation, we are weaving our stories together in a shared narrative that is part of God’s dream for healing and wholeness.
