Tears poured down my cheeks in the early sleepless hours of this morning, on January 31, 2025, as the questions which have been at the core of my heart finally became fully clear in connection to the living divine guidance of our Creator and Sustainer as expressed in Psalm 9:7-10

The Lord reigns for ever;
he has established his throne for judgment.
8 He rules the world in righteousness
and judges the peoples with equity.
9 The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
10 Those who know your name trust in you,
for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.

The tears came from both relief at finally knowing my questions and fear attached to my abandonment disappointment wound which usually seems to create disconnection when I express myself.

Speaking from my current point of view as a queer, single, Afro-descendant Canadian woman, of Caribbean parentage, who is a parent, and who is experienced as an immigrant:

As I always do, I feel some trepidation around sharing my thoughts for fear of being ignored, ridiculed, or labelled as a disappointment. I am not this world’s norm, and I still speak up in the world in general from my heart with this fear, because I believe that the thoughts and questions of my heart are valid, and belong as a part of the human community quest to experience the kingdom of God, which is God’s will done, now on Earth as it is in heaven. God’s will is that above all else we would prosper in this human experience as our souls prosper.

I have experienced active engagement in this community quest more in the last three or four years than I have ever experienced it at any other point in my lifetime. I am deeply grateful for this because the gifts of this engagement have kept me living when life otherwise would have pushed me to death.

My deepest and primary engagement is with God, My Love Most High, and They have given me the reassurance that I can literally walk through the valley of the shadow of death in response to life’s relational, psychological, and economic needs, and keep living as They comfort me until we find the way through. That knowing has come through slowing down to respect and listen to lessons about different aspects of healthy community from every person, animal, place, thing, and idea. This has been my lived experience.

Next deepest has been the experience of asking questions, sharing thoughts, highs, and lows, and having conversations that explore the norms of our human culture to understand whether what we do flows from connection and community with the innovative creative loving heart of God, or if our norms flow from the dogma of rightness. The most beautiful part of this journey with the Highland community is the active (stated and lived) commitment to understanding that the process will involve misunderstanding, disagreement and hurt feelings which we deliberately slow down to address with love, openness, compassion, and patience. Rightness is not centred. God’s love is. Everything else flows from a united desire to live in connection to God’s heart with trust in Their character.

Every one of my liftetime community experiences: family of origin, family of choice, religious, social, political, academic et al. has been a profound learning opportunity. And the Highland community religious experience has likely been the most healing, since my profoundest wounding has been attached to interaction with the god created by orthodoxy.

Our world has been endemically infected with the virus of supremacy by the being who has made an enemy of God (that enemy is a colonizer). That enemy is patient zero on Earth in the spread of the supremacy virus (be the strain of that virus parental supremacy, gender supremacy, racial supremacy, religious supremacy, academic supremacy, cultural supremacy etc. etc. etc.) Do we approach searching the scripture with the realization that Christian orthodoxy is a supremacist perspective which is bound up in the root word orthodoxia which means correct/right opinion?

When considering moving towards the experience of growing, serving, living, and working in a seamless community are Christians engaging in the process with conversations which are centred on the premise that orthodoxy is the baseline?

If orthodoxy is right opinion, does centring the opinion create a center of supremacy? If supremacy of any kind is centred in our conversations can we hear, see, feel, taste, touch, experience anything else on a level which may inspire needed change and/or innovation?

What changes if the heart of God as reflected in Jesus is centred in our conversations and decision making processes instead of orthodoxy?

Jesus did not come to destroy the law and the prophets/messengers but to fulfill the will of God around which the law and the prophets was centred.

What is that will of God? Have we lost sight of it again by allowing supremacy/rightness to be the centre of the community conversation?

If we consider the Parable of the Samaritan Neighbour which we have renamed The Good Samaritan, we might see the impact of centring orthodoxy instead of centring God, with centring God seeming to be centring the desire that we would all prosper and be in health as our souls prosper in connection with the source of love.

By renaming the parable, The Good Samaritan instead of keeping the focus which Jesus created, we may have begun to build on a foundation of supremacy which is consistent with the enemy’s enduring slight of hand that has taken the focus off of the only One who is good, God, My Love Most High. Jesus referred to the importance of this in Luke 18:18-19 and Mark 10:18.

What changes for the community’s ability to move more in the Spirit of Pentecost if we recentre the goodness of God in our conversations instead of centring orthodoxy.

These are my questions.

With love and solidarity,
Saran Lewis

“Be an improvenist, not a perfectionist.” Mr. Chazz

“Perfection impresses it does not inspire” (Stephanie Morales-Beaulieu, Anything but Ordinary).