Small & Mighty - For Eloheh

Access Fam;

Please see below from Randy and Edith. Email the commissioners if you can, today. Tomorrow at 10 and before, please pray.

“Dear Access,

Tomorrow morning at 10:00, Edith and I will walk into the Yamhill County Courthouse to appeal permit conditions that effectively prevent us from practicing our faith on our own land. Overnight ceremonies limited to once a year. Our own food—grown through prayer and years of tending this soil—restricted by regulations written for commercial caterers. Composting systems that honor creation treated as sewage.

We’ve been at this for over a year now. We’ve spent money we don’t have. We’ve followed every path the county pointed us down, including the ones that turned out to be dead ends. We’ve compromised where we can. But there are things we cannot compromise on and still be who we are.

This isn’t just about Eloheh. It’s about whether Indigenous spirituality gets the same protection every other faith tradition takes for granted. A church can host an overnight lock-in and serve a potluck dinner without a commercial kitchen license. We’re asking for the same freedom—on our own land, with our own food, under our own stars.

We expect tomorrow to be difficult. We also expect we may lose at this level. But we are building a record, and the record is strong. Dozens of clergy will be in that room. Over seventy letters of support are already in the commissioners’ hands. Federal law is on our side. This fight doesn’t end tomorrow—it continues. Thank you for all your support.

Here’s what I’m asking: sometime Thursday morning, in whatever way is true for you—prayer, meditation, a moment of silence, a good thought sent our direction—hold us up.

Hold Edith up. Edith is a direct descendant of Shoshone and Paiute people who lived on this land for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before they were forcibly relocated from Oregon in 1870. She came home. And now a county government is telling her how she may pray on this land. She carries as much of this as I do, and more quietly.

Hold the clergy and friends who will fill that room. And hold the commissioners too, because they have a chance to do the right thing, and I’d like to believe they might.

We didn’t ask for this fight. But with friends like you standing with us, we’ll fight it well.

In the Harmony Way,

Randy and Edith”

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