Nikayla

I have spent 19 years learning and unlearning the settler colonial interpretation of the Bible in Calgary, Alberta. My research and embodied experience of the Treaty 7 land where I live has been teaching me to see the bible as a living witness to the divine dream of being at ease together, in our bodies and without shame, rather than as a natural resource to be exploited for its nuggets of timeless moral truths.

Becoming aware of my bodily sensations and trusting them as innately good is a Christian spiritual discipline. My bodily sensations are morally neutral but I was raised in an evangelical high-control religion that taught all of us from a very young age to be suspicious and afraid of our bodies. After 18 years studying the Bible (an MA in OT and a PhD in NT), I see now that the bible is a world woven together with the dreams of real people who had a living connection to the land. The voices calling from the past are telling us about the uninterrupted flow of life that goes all the way back to the beginning and reaches far beyond the here and now. My body is a sensual conduit of that life and my bodily experience of the text in this particular place gives me hope that the tears we are shedding now are seeds harvested from the ancient garden and within each one, a thousand yet to be planted.

The work of biblical interpretation today is to recover the body as the place of encounter. I trust my pain to lead me away from unnatural and artificial interpretations and I trust joy to lead me towards a collaborative and creaturely hope. 

I have 19 years experience pastoring in three different evangelical denominations in Alberta. My PhD research is on Sabbath and Jubilee as an ever present socio-economic concern in the early church. I love collaborating with churches, schools, and community groups to discover embodied and land-oriented approaches to biblical interpretation and spiritual formation.

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