Imagine: The Savage Was the Seer Enoch’s Echo, My Father’s Voice, and the Stories We Were Never Meant to Forget

Lauren Nixon-Matney • April 12, 2026
Imagine: The Savage Was the Seer Enoch’s Echo, My Father’s Voice, and the Stories We Were Never Meant to Forget
Retro 32-bit pixel art of a girl moving beneath constellations and sacred symbols including a cross, feather, fire, and open book, with a glowing record player nearby, representing musical echolalia, ancestral memory, and spiritual exploration within the Searching for Stars multimedia memoir series and immersive universe by Lauren Nixon-Matney.

Imagine: The Savage Was the Seer

Enoch’s Echo, My Father’s Voice, and the Stories We Were Never Meant to Forget

(a Searching for Stars piece)



Part One:



They called them savages.

But maybe they were the ones who remembered.

Not the ones who forgot.

Maybe the feathers weren’t for costume,

but for prayer.

Maybe the dances weren’t wild… but holy.

Maybe the stories, passed in hushed tones through generations, were scripture too.

Not written in scrolls or temples, but carved in canyon walls and carried in the blood.


The more I learn, the more I feel it… that God, the one I’ve always believed in, the one who is Light and mercy and truth was there, too. Not just in church pews or under stained glass, but in sacred circles, in wind songs, in the quiet medicine of balance and beauty.


In the hush of canyon walls.

In the sacred mathematics of a sand painting.

In the story of the First Man and First Woman rising up from worlds below, not falling down from some tower above.

In hózhó this sacred word I’ve come to love, where balance, beauty, and walking rightly are not a suggestion…

but a way of surviving the darkness.


And I can’t help but wonder

what if it wasn’t the Indian that was savage…

but the one who cut down the tree and called it civilization?




Part Two: Enoch’s Echo


I started reading into the Book of Enoch, and something strange happened.

Something ancient stirred inside me I guess you could say… like a story I didn’t know I knew, but recognized anyway.


The fallen ones.

The Watchers.

The Nephilim.


The angels who came down, broke the law of heaven, and gave humans weapons, war, vanity, and blood.

The ones who taught how to cut, how to conquer, how to dominate.

The ones who whispered, Take. Rule. Consume.


And in that moment I thought:


What if the tribes of this land… the ones they tried to erase were not ignorant or misguided,

but guardians?


What if they weren’t just resisting invaders with muskets and arrows,

but actually fighting an ancient evil with memory?


What if those who lived in balance with land and spirit who prayed in smoke, who honored the stars, who knew that certain knowledge wasn’t meant to be held were standing in the same pattern Enoch described?



Part Three: The Hidden Pages


My dad used to talk like this.


Late-night porch talks, middle-of-nowhere theories that somehow made more sense than anything I’d ever heard in church. He believed there was more to the story,

always more.

That the real truth wasn’t just in the Bible, but in the stars, the dreams, the dirt, the ash and the way the earth seemed to remember what society has made it so easy to erase.


He’d say things like:


“They left parts out.”

“The truth got buried under power.”

“Some of the people who heard God best didn’t speak English.”


Back then, I just listened.

Now… I feel it in my bones.


Because what if he was right?


What if the Bible we hold is only one volume of a scattered library? 

What if the Book of Enoch wasn’t lost it was hidden on purpose?

What if some of the missing chapters are still being sung in Diné prayers, painted in sacred sand, held in ceremonies that outsiders called “pagan” because they couldn’t translate the holiness?


What if scripture didn’t only come from scribes, but from grandmothers and medicine men?

What if the Spirit moved not just through parchment and temple, but through fire circles and canyon echoes?


What if the “Old Testament” was never finished because its missing pieces were carried in the mouths of the people they tried to silence?



My dad taught me early on that we’re all made equal.

That the janitor and the president both deserve the same respect and royal blood is a complete facade, because God or The Great Spirit as some might call him doesn’t rank souls.

He also taught me that while church is a beautiful place to gather, I didn’t need a steeple or a microphone to talk to God.

That God hears the honest heart, that He’s never been far, and He’s never been hard to reach.


My mom taught me that too.

She was raised Catholic, but she never forced faith on me. She taught me that faith wasn’t something you force It’s something you grow.

She took me to different churches, taught me to listen, to ask, to pray.

She helped put God in my life not through pressure, but through presence.

They both did.


Because of them, I never had to wonder where to find Him.

He was already there… in my questions, in my breath, in the stars overhead.




Part Four: The Call to Remember


I’m not trying to rewrite anyone’s truth.


I’m not saying the Bible is wrong.

I’m not saying the church is broken.

I’m not saying Navajo or Native belief is superior.

I’m saying maybe… just maybe… it was never meant to be separated.


Maybe the Creator has always spoken in more than one tongue.

Maybe truth was never meant to be contained in a single book, or temple, or tradition.

Maybe the stars tell the same story as the scrolls.

Maybe God whispers through cedar and firelight, just like He does through psalms and parables.


This isn’t a call to abandon belief.

It’s a call to widen it.

To remember that God’s fingerprints are everywhere… even in the places we were taught not to look.

Especially there.


Because what if the Holy Spirit didn’t just fall on Pentecost…

but also on canyons, mesas, and the backs of wild horses running across sacred land?


What if harmony (hózhó) isn’t just a Navajo idea…

but a reflection of the same Kingdom Jesus spoke about when He said:


“on earth as it is in heaven”?


What if remembering is the holiest work we can do?


So I’ll keep digging.

I’ll keep dreaming.

I’ll keep asking with reverence and fire:


What did we forget?

And who still remembers?


Because maybe the savage was the seer.

Maybe the scribe was a sand painter.

Maybe Enoch’s echo still lives in the dust.


And perhaps, God has been waiting for us

to ask.





Part Five: The Edits They Don’t Tell You About


Here’s the thing.


I still respect the Bible.

I read it. I weep with it. I’ve found healing in its pages.

But I also know this: it didn’t just fall out of the sky in leather-bound perfection.


The version we have today came together over time.

Over centuries, actually.


It was shaped.

It was filtered.

It was decided by councils, kings, and empires.


Different communities used different texts.

Church leaders debated what aligned, what didn’t, what could be trusted, what couldn’t.


And while the Council of Nicaea is often brought up in these conversations,

it wasn’t a meeting where a group of men sat down and decided the entire Bible.


It was more complicated than that.


The canon formed gradually 

through usage, tradition, theology, and yes… human decision-making.


 That sounds a lot like powerful men choosing which books to include, and which to leave behind.


And when you step back and look at it…

it’s hard not to see the human fingerprints in those decisions.


The Book of Enoch didn’t make the cut.

Neither did others like Jubilees, or the Gospel of Mary.

Were they too wild? Too mystical? Too feminine? Too empowering?


I don’t know. But I do know this:


When you’ve lived through media storms, misinformation, and polished lies… 

When you’ve watched history edited in real time… 

When you’ve seen textbooks change and truths get twisted depending on who’s in charge…


You start to wonder:


What else got left out?

What stories were buried because they were inconvenient to power?

What truth still lives outside the frame?


And if God is real and I believe God is, 

then I trust God’s voice is bigger than any council, king, or canon.


I trust that truth survives,

in memory, in story, in bloodline, in the canyons and the stars and the words our ancestors whispered when no one else was listening.


 I don’t say this to tear anything down.


I say it because it reminds me of something important:


That what we hold today as sacred…

also passed through human hands.


And if that’s true,

then asking questions isn’t rebellion.


It’s part of the process.




Part Six: What I’m Still Wrestling With


Let me be honest:

I have respect for the Bible.

I was raised to.

My dad used to tell me it was the greatest book on earth…

not because it was safe, but because it was everything.

It had blood and miracles, betrayal and redemption, kingdoms and poetry and storms and light.


I still carry that respect.

But I also carry questions.


Because some parts don’t sit right with my spirit.

Not the love. Not the teachings of Christ.

But the parts about blood sacrifices. The violence God supposedly asked for.

The idea that the Creator of all things would require death to be satisfied.


It just doesn’t line up with the God of light I feel in my bones.


And if the Book of Enoch is right, if there were fallen ones, corrupted angels, feeding off chaos… 

well, then who’s to say some of their influence didn’t sneak into the edits?

Who’s to say that saying “God wants blood” wasn’t a loophole for the dark?


I’m not here to burn the Bible. I still open it with awe.

I just think maybe we were never meant to read it blindly.

Maybe we were meant to read it with the Spirit not just the ink.

And maybe, just maybe, the parts that don’t feel like love…

aren’t from Love.


You may say I’m a dreamer.

But the truth is, dreaming is how I survived.

And remembering is how I returned.




Part Seven: For the One Who Taught Me to Look Deeper


This is for my dad.


For the man who handed me the Bible with wonder in his voice, not fear.

Who didn’t preach at me but invited me to think.

Who said the pages held it all, truth and mystery, light and war, heaven and blood.

Who cracked open the door when I was too young to know it, and said:


“Look deeper. The story’s not finished.”


I used to just listen.

Now I know he was handing me a map.


A map that doesn’t end at the church doors.

A map that winds through canyons, crosses star paths, echoes in sand and story and smoke.

A map that dares to ask:


What if God never needed blood?

What if the real sacrifice was forgetting who we are?

And what if remembering… is the way home?


This isn’t the end of faith.

It’s the return to it.


Wilder.

Wiser.

Truer.

Still burning.





Part Eight: The Bloodline I Didn’t Know I Was Listening To


Lately, this has gotten a little closer than theory for me.


I’ve been digging into my family history for a different project building something that stretches across generations, trying to understand where the roots actually go, what was carried forward, what got lost along the way.


But truthfully… this isn’t new for me.


I’ve been drawn to this kind of searching for as long as I can remember.


I grew up hearing the same thing over and over:


There’s Native blood in your line.


Tonkawa. Cherokee.

Stories passed down like fragments, real enough to repeat, but just out of reach when it came time to prove them.


And that’s kind of the heavy part, isn’t it?


Because with the Tonkawa… so much was erased.

Records destroyed. Stories broken. Names that didn’t survive the telling.


There are entire lines of people I come from that I will never fully know.


And there’s something about that…. 

something about not being able to trace your own story back cleanly 

that feels like a loss you can’t quite measure.


Like trying to remember a dream that mattered,

but won’t stay long enough to be written down.


The Cherokee thread was different. They always said if you went back far enough it was traceable.


I’d heard it my whole life, but it always felt just as distant.

Something people said. Something you acknowledged, but couldn’t quite hold.


Until recently.


Because now… it looks like we’ve traced it.


To Absalom Hawk Nixon


A man we now believe sits deep in our line (likely my five-times great-grandfather) … further back than memory, but not beyond reach.


And I don’t have some dramatic conclusion or claim about that.


I’m not suddenly claiming something I didn’t live.

I wasn’t raised in that culture.

I don’t carry those experiences in the way others do.

Although I was raised to respect them greatly. 


But I will say this


I felt genuine excitement when his name stopped being a rumor

and became a real person.


Because now it’s not just a story I heard growing up.


It’s a thread I can follow.


And the more I learn… the more I realize how much I don’t know.

Not just about him but about the belief systems, the rhythms, the way of seeing the world that existed long before anything I was taught to call “standard.”


And it brings me to another conclusion… 


The realization that not everyone who came before me believed the same things I was taught to believe.

That faith, for them, may have looked different.

Sounded different.

Moved differently through the world.


And I don’t see that as a threat.


If anything… it feels like an invitation.


To look closer.

To ask better questions.

To recognize that maybe truth has never been confined to a single expression.


I’m not trying to rewrite anything here.


I’m just acknowledging something that feels real to me:


That part of my story was carried through people who saw the world in ways I’m only just beginning to understand.





In Closing: To the Critics, the Faithful, and the Ones Still Listening


I know a piece like this might raise eyebrows.

Some will say: “This is dangerous.”

“This is spiritual drift.”

“This is where people lose the plot.”


And I get it.


There’s a fine line between seeking truth and getting swept up in mysticism for mysticism’s sake.

There’s a fine line between honoring forgotten stories and falling into relativism.

I believe in truth.

I believe in roots.

I believe in light that doesn’t bend just to fit our modern sensibilities.


But I also believe this:


God is not threatened by good questions.

Truth doesn’t crumble under examination it gets clearer.

And if something must be protected by censorship, fear, or blind obedience…

maybe it wasn’t built on truth to begin with.


I’m not writing this to offend the faithful.

I’m writing it because I am faithful.

Faithful to the Spirit.

Faithful to memory.

Faithful to a God I believe is still speaking… even in the places we forgot to listen.



Soundtrack pairing:


“Imagine” – John Lennon

For my dad, who always believed the truth was bigger than the box they put it in.


“‘Imagine’ written by John Lennon. With deep respect to Yoko Ono and the Lennon family for the legacy of this song and the hope it still carries.”



Vintage pixel-style “Searching for Stars” newspaper design featuring an archival portrait of Absalom Nixon (grave marker reads “Chief Hawk,” of Cherokee heritage, associated with early settlers of Roanoke, Alabama), blending a frontier newsprint aesthetic with the Searching for Stars multimedia memoir experience by Lauren Nixon-Matney, symbolizing ancestry, genealogy, rediscovered lineage, and generational memory within the Searching for Stars universe, told through a musical echolalia perspective.


With All Due Respect


This piece was not written to offend anyone or to act like I have it all figured out.

It was written from a place of real respect, real memory, and real questions that won’t leave me alone.


I was raised like most I know to honor the Bible.

But I was also raised to pay attention when something doesn’t sit right,

and to believe that God isn’t afraid of our questions... especially the honest ones.


I’m not trying to rewrite anyone’s truth.

I’m just sharing the one I’ve been living, the one I’ve been piecing together from porch talks, midnight prayers, and stories that feel older than words.


If you disagree, I get it.

If you feel something, I’m glad.

If you’re still unsure, welcome to the club.


This is just me... still learning, still listening, still searching for stars.


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