ATHABASCA — Some people choose the easy road and some choose the hard road, just like in Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken.'
And some end up on a very hard road, full of the potholes and other obstacles of drugs, alcoholism, gambling and homelessness, but they find their way back to God through His grace. That is the story of 46-year-old Nathan Gullion.
Gullion grew up in Slave Lake with a Grade 8 education and ended up travelling the dark road of addiction and despair, before going to seminary school and finding his place at the Athabasca Reformed Congregation doing outreach in Calling Lake and area.
“I was actually homeless — my wife left me, my kid. I kind of hit rock bottom,” he said in a June 11 interview. “I come from a long line of addicts; I was no different. I’ve been in prison two years. I have a past.”
But he always felt a calling, even trying seminary once before, but failing out. He said he wasn’t ready and feels God closed that door for him, temporarily, to help get his life in order.
“I had to go through healing. I didn’t even know what healing meant.”
He had kicked the drugs, but he was still drinking when his wife kicked him out.
“My family turned their back on me because I was a raging alcoholic,” he openly said. “I was a very mean drunk.”
That is when he ended up with no roof over his head, but someone finally took him in, and his road started to smooth out a bit.
“One of my aunts took a chance and said, ‘Hey, you know what, this is kind of your last resort, but you can come with me to live in Red Deer,” said Gullion. “And that's when me and my wife started working on our relationship and we're still married today. This is 22 years later, and we're still here — she's still beside me.”
Sober for 10 years, Gullion went to seminary school in 2005, but soon left, becoming a pipe fitter instead and working in the oil patch for several years, but he always found people were drawn to him for some sort of unofficial counselling.
“I found myself counselling a lot of guys up north.” he said. “I found myself gravitating more to the humanity side of people and I would start counselling guys and they would open and share marriage problems, divorce, kid issues and it really was a calling for me at that point.”
Gullion himself still had work to do though. He had kicked the drugs, but he still wasn’t living the life he wanted to pursue, so he returned to seminary school.
“I gave up the drugs instantly, but I was still smoking, still gambling and I’m like, How am I going to go into ministry,'” he recalled. “I’m not going to go to Native people and tell them ‘You need to stop drinking and smoking’ and I’m smoking and having a beer with them. I’m spilling my beer on you, but I’m telling you about Jesus — something's amiss here.”
Gullion went back to seminary in 2019 and has now finished his second year, but after his first he was hired by the Athabasca Reformed Congregation to help bring the word of God to members of his own band, Bigstone Cree First Nation.
“It was a real learning experience for us and how to go about it,” said Lorraine Jewel, who was the one who found Gullion and brought him to meet the church elders. “We're taking our views and how we deal with things, but just necessarily doesn’t work (in Calling Lake). And we're lucky that Nathan’s saying, ‘Wait a minute, you can't do that, you'd have to do it this way.’”
Gullion’s focus is merging the traditional Indigenous ways with Christianity, encouraging smudging and drums.
“I'm native and being native means there might be drumming," he said. “We move, we dance, I can incorporate our language back into our services. I don't speak fluent Cree and I have to learn it again, but I'm getting back into my culture. I'm learning as I'm going and I think that's getting back to who we are.”
Part of going back is moving forward, he said, especially in light of the recent discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops earlier this month. He wants to work on forgiveness as healing.
“What does forgiveness really look like? We talk about truth and reconciliation,” he said. “Well, that means forgiveness has got to take place, even (toward) the church and state.”
As part of that healing the Athabasca Reformed Congregation will be hosting an open prayer group June 17 at 7 p.m. and a colleague of Gullion’s will be present to help finish making 215 ribbons that will be tied to the trees around the church.
Everyone is welcome to join, Gullion said.
