a very sanitised, righteous text that they did not feel connected to. They even had to swear on a Bible to testify their truth, so it was connected to judgment as well. As a consequence, I started to share the criminal records of most of our “heroes” in scripture. Moses the murderer, David, accessory to the fact of murder, and so on. Paul was often in prison and still wrote most of the teachings we have for the early church. Jesus was also a prisoner. That lens was such a great success in my ministry because the inmates saw themselves as having worth, despite their incarceration. I decided to use the Indigenous lens in the Scriptures. I aligned myself to the Canaanite people and the Samaritans in the New Testament. What a different picture I could see! Melchizedek became a hero whose priesthood went further back than any Levitical priesthood. He welcomed Abram and Abram paid his tithe to him, broke bread and ate with him. In the New Testament I found that Jesus belonged to the priesthood in the order of Melchizedek. Our spirituality is over 65,000 years old. I wondered how old Melchizedek’s was. I started to include some of our traditions, such as Acknowledgement of Country, smoking ceremonies instead of the incense and having didgeridoo music. I do get “pushback”. The didgeridoo is, I am told, a “heathen instrument”, but when I look at a pipe organ it is a combination of many didgeridoos. 52
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