“Emotions don’t carry you very far.”
— Mark Carney

He is right. What propels us is not emotion, but our choice to be actively growing together – moving us with love for each one forward with hope and resilience, all grounded in our intrinsic, inestimable worth and worthiness, which remain constant even when storms assail us.

Emotions are messengers, signaling where reflection, reconciliation, and alignment are needed; they are not engines of action. Choice is.

We are meant to choose our direction with confidence, hope, and trust in our ability to restore balance in connection with one another and with the Divine. True trust arises when choice is exercised in alignment with the intrinsic dignity bestowed upon every being.

Do we know our worth? Our perception may fluctuate, but our actual worth does not. The Son of God revealed that even if human voices fall silent, creation itself — the rocks and stones — will bear witness to our dignity. This is not only about Him, but about us: our identity, our life, our participation in creation’s ongoing testimony. Worth is inherent; experience of worth is relational and chosen.

When we disconnect from divinity, our perception becomes thorned, life appears as pain, dominance, and subordination. Through free will, we can realign with our intrinsic worth, transforming thorn into blossom, oppression into flourishing, and isolation into communion. Our choices determine whether we reinforce tombs or roll stones away to facilitate resurrection, renewal, and collective life.

Every thought, word, and action leaves an energetic imprint. Even stones, rivers, and trees participate in moral and spiritual reality, reflecting and responding to the orientation of human hearts. When our choices honor life, love, and relational reciprocity, the universe itself echoes that alignment back to us. When they serve supremacy, separation, or self-exaltation, the field of experience hardens, and the living truth of worth is obscured.

Our environment is responding to our energy. When we collectively say peace be still in alignment with our divine Creator, the elements themselves respond with balance. They become calm.

This is why it is so important that we examine the Bible through the life of Yeshua M’shīkhā.
Yeshua reveals how human interpretation, affected by the tares of supremacy, created the experience of empire and colonization — conquest, punishment, pain, and separation, the assertion of one over another instead of with in all the systems of our lives – in politics, religion, parenting, marriage, education, business, healthcare, friendship.

Instead of rising together in life, we have been conditioned to believe that to be profitable as our full selves someone else must sacrifice their life, their freedom, their choice, their equality.

Yeshua came to show us that God-with-us is all and only love — love that honors choice and creates space through respect of free will. This divine orientation allows reconnection with the assurance of continued life through resurrection, even when harm that seems to end life is inflicted, because the choice to remain inseparably with God transforms experience and restores alignment with intrinsic worth.

We are called to rise together, not in isolated ascent but in mutual flourishing. Every civilization, ancestral lineage, and spiritual tradition teaches this: human dignity, relational ethics, and community are inseparable from the experience of life itself. To rise alone is to risk collapse; to rise together is to co-create resurrection.

Practical applications:
1. Daily reflection: Pause to ask, “How am I perceiving my worth today? Am I responding to emotions as messengers or as engines?”
2. Choice awareness: Notice moments where fear, shame, or anger distort perception. Pause, breathe, and intentionally choose action aligned with intrinsic worth.
3. Relational calibration: Seek opportunities to support, elevate, and witness the worth of others, reinforcing the communal experience of dignity.
4. Energetic engagement: Acknowledge the living presence of creation in daily life. Actions that honor life, mutuality, and care contribute to a field of flourishing; actions rooted in dominance or separation reinforce barriers.
5. Christ-centered practice: Reflect on Yeshua’s example — practicing love that honors choice, creating space rather than control, and trusting in resurrection and restoration even when circumstances appear destructive.
6. Communal practice: Participate in rituals, dialogue, or creative acts that embody rising together, rolling stones away, and co-creating spaces for life, justice, and restoration.

May we rise as one-diversely-full, not to dominate, but to co-create life, to bear witness to worth, and to honour the sacred trust inherent in every being.

Shall we rise? I believe that we can – together – one-diversely-full. Tare free; with true liberty and justice for ALL.

Our hearts yearn for the freedom to be fully ourselves, to be loved, seen, and accepted as perfectly so. Yet we have been taught to fear our own reflection, to call our anxiety discernment and our defensiveness wisdom. Freedom began to appear for me when I finally felt safe enough to pause and examine those distortions with honesty and compassion. In that quiet, grace began to teach me a different way to see. Love became flexible, and freedom unfurled where fear once ruled.

So often we run from relationships that could be mutually nurturing and empowering. We project our anxiety onto others and call it intuition. In truth, what we need most is to pause and release the weight of enmeshed vicarious pain and personal trauma.

And this is where the f*cks live.

The f*cks are the moments when anxious anger rises up and blame turns on full blast, when the old fear of being unworthy grabs the wheel and drives us straight into rejection, contempt, and withdrawal.

It is the reflex that shouts, “YOU GET OUT OF HERE,” when what we really mean is, “I am terrified. I need to find safety.”

It is the reaction of moral certainty, masquerading as divine discernment while it is really just fear trying to sound holy.

That eruption, that flash of defensiveness and fury, is not proof of failure. It is a signal. It is the threshold where honesty and healing meet. The f*cks are invitations to pause, to breathe, to remember that we are not being asked to be perfect. We are being asked to stay. Stay open. Stay in peace. Stay in hope. Stay in trust. Stay to wrestle through conflict together.

And when the shouting stopped and I stayed long enough to listen, I began to see the root of it all.

The feeling of being unworthy does not sit quietly inside us; it seeks an external cause so it can make sense of its own pain. Looking inward feels dangerous because we have been socialized to believe that people who make mistakes, people who fail to be “good,” deserve judgment and punishment. Many of us were taught that to fall short is to risk eternal separation from all that is good. That belief is the root of shame and the barrier to grace.

We cannot heal what we still believe makes us unlovable. We cannot heal while we are thrashing around in blame.

The moment we pause to see this, the courage to examine our distortions honestly becomes the beginning of freedom. Self-examination is not punishment; it is liberation. Turning inward not to condemn but to understand opens the door to self-compassion. Honest reflection becomes a sacred act of reclamation, transforming inherited fear into holy curiosity. When we choose to face the distorted beliefs that shaped us, light begins to pour through the cracks, and the path to peace unfolds.

When the heart has learned to pair safety with danger, even genuine care can feel threatening. It becomes easy to misinterpret healthy closeness as control, because our bodies have not yet learned to recognize safety without fear.

As we grow in self-awareness, we begin to see how our personal distortions shape the collective we build. The healing of one heart ripples outward into the systems we inhabit.

I eventually realized that I needed to sort through my personal rules of engagement to see which ones were boundaries and which ones were expectations. Someone once said that expectations are premeditated resentments. That truth stayed with me, because resentment is the seed of contempt, and contempt destroys relationships.

Someone else said that boundaries are the things that each person decides they will and will not do. That truth stayed with me too. Sorting my boundaries from my expectations has helped me to be less annoyed and much clearer about who I am, what I will do, what I will accept, what counts as a human right, and what simply reflects personal preference.

Now I know where I can be flexible, even when the experience does not meet my preferences, as long as I am not being harmed.

In this realm, this human world where we have not yet learned to face our shadows without defending with disconnection and blame, it is so important to recognize that we have not yet collectively learned how to be gracious.

We have not yet learned how to extend grace, which is the flexibility that feels no offense at unmet preferences and expectations, while keeping our boundaries protected by love and the power of choice.

When we can finally protect ourselves with love and the power of choice, we will begin to be open to the experience of peace, the experience of accepting and even enjoying different preferences that cause no harm.

I can barely wait for us to get there together.

God is patiently teaching us, even willing to endure human cruelty so that we could learn what love truly is.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him would be saved.

— John 3:17

When we are finally free fucks can just be fucks, emotion full of fire and heart as we live in the grace-filled freedom of flexibility.

 

I must preface what I am about to say with this clear declaration: I do not accept the colour-coded identity of ANY people. Colour coding is part and parcel of the system of White Supremacy under which human beings were separated into “races,” creating racism as a tool of control and profit.

Therefore, when I speak of Black and White, I am not bowing to the system. I am inviting us to awareness of the cages in which we have been bound—so that we can SET OURSELVES FREE.

Acknowledging racism (or any other form of supremacy) does not weaken a community. Denying it does.

Real progress comes when leaders, neighbours, and institutions have the courage to face what is real: that we are equal in human worth and capacity, but not equally or ethically resourced or supported.

To move forward as a healthy community, we must not only refuse the myths of White Saviourism and Coloured Helplessness—we must also confront the shadows of superiority and inferiority, dominance and subordination, dismantling the structures that keep resources, relationships, and opportunities unequally balanced.

When we can finally do this we will be free. And only then can we begin to live the divine dream of building communities founded on wholeness, worthiness, authenticity, love, and belonging.

The recent attacks on the character of Black people—and especially of Black women, so-labelled within the system of White Supremacy—are not random.

This is strategy. A diabolical strategy of elite White patriarchs—those who profit most—to rebuild the foundations of White Supremacy. Foundations that were shaken when a six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked bravely through mobs of rioting White mothers. Mothers who, unrestrained, would have strung her up as “strange fruit,” just as their forebears had done for generations.

That foundation has kept on shaking. It splinters every time Afro-descendant women refuse to let “Black” be the final word of erasure and containment.

Our children, unseen as valuable, were expected to be left starved of love, affection, and connection—while our bodies, our minds, our labour were used to nurture theirs. Then our children were gaslit into believing that White mistresses—those who have not examined their supremacy, superiority, and privilege—were heroes for tossing a few crumbs of charity while preaching respectability.

No! Absolutely no thank you.

As our foremothers resisted, so too have we resisted—standing tall and fighting like lionesses to love and nurture our children too. We taught our children that they were already respectable, already worthy, already whole as themselves. And our children rise. Yes, “like dust they rise.”

So now, suddenly, Dr. King is recast. They say he cared more about race than about character. As if race is not the millstone tied around the neck of our children—intended to strangle their dignity, forcing them into the role of beasts of burden—worthy only of crumbs.

And here is the truth that makes them afraid: the women who used their intellect and wisdom to raise White children produced intellect, resilience, and the courage of agency and self-advocacy in their own children and households too.

Against all odds, we raised their children and our children too. And the children whom we touch bear resilient fruit. A hundredfold.

That fruit scares them. That fruit is still here.

And so when we stand up and insist that our children must also receive their birthright of education, opportunity, dignity, and love—we are not asking for favours. We are claiming what has always been ours. We are naming the lie, breaking the pattern, refusing the crumbs.

We are declaring that the time of scarcity, shame, and silence is over. That the fruit of resilience and self-respect which our foremothers planted—and which we have also planted—will no longer be harvested for others’ gain but will nourish EVERY CHILD in our communities.

And to be clear, as an Afro-descended single mother, I also wrap single mothers in this blanket of truth, and invite us to lift our arms in resistance and praise in bold divine defiance against the patriarchal supremacist rhetoric that seeks to diminish the power of our influence in our children’s lives by quoting statistics of failure in single mother households- as if the lionesses were failing!

We work twice as hard to lead and support our children because communities that have been designed to idolize marriage and worship the traditionally defined nuclear family ABANDON the children of single mother lead families.

In the testimony of our lived experience this is more than unconscious abandonment and exclusion. We have experienced the reality of teachers and religious leaders explicitly advising the children of nuclear families to steer clear of relationships with the children of single mother households.

We have experienced the reality of married mothers excluding our children from their children’s social lives expressing fear that our children will contaminate their children’s delicate sensibilities – while those children bully and torment our children into despair.

Then when our children naturally refuse to be a part of communities that have degraded them, the religious establishment uses their absence to generate statistics which assert that the presence of fathers in religious gatherings with their families is a high predictor of “successful” attendance at religious gatherings.

If only the establishment recognized that attendance at the building designated as holy is not indicative of connection to the character and heart of Christ!

In three days of the attempted destruction of THE temple, Yeshua/Jesus raised the temple up again. The apostle Paul even very clearly informed us that he had come to recognize that human bodies – not buildings – were the temple in which the Spirit of divinity dwelled.

SO single mothers we rally together, and elevate our children’s understanding of their worth in the divine order of things and THEY thrive. If we create community together and honour the value of that community as Christ honoured the children who recognized how much He did with what THEY offered him, we would be well.

Our intimate romantic relationships would not be seen as legitimizing our honour. We would simply enjoy such relationships because we wanted to do so!

We have long recognized that we are better together – in community – and so the Single and Strong Momunity which we built from the ground up has just grown bigger with the inclusion of romantic partners. Not better. What is better is our ability to value ourselves because our sisters valued us when we struggled to value ourselves, and so we have developed the confidence to wrestle in relationships with our partners AS EQUALS!

Singleness was no longer a deficit. Marriage eventually became a choice, and not a marker of false superiority! I prayed over us for that realization and I have had the honour of seeing it come to pass.

And so while some fight to keep their plundered supremacy, we who continue to bear fruit and build good soil together will gather and intentionally create community based on equality and equity for all.

We will persist in being open, honest, and inclusive; free of gossip, resentment, bitterness, and false hierarchies.

Neither gender, relationship status, religious affiliation, income, education, skin colour, fame, or any other social construct determines our level of honour. We are for each other, with growing love, kindness, patience, respect, accountability, acceptance, hope, and integrity.

We know how to “live love well” and we are unafraid to seek healing for our inner child wounds so that we can be healthy happy big people guiding our beautiful children home together as a community experiencing the kingdom of God, NOW, on Earth as it is in heaven.

We are building community together as curious, open, kind women who recognize that love is the great equalizer, and that diversity of abilities and talents is our strength, as each perfect piece of the puzzle is supported to find its place in the whole as we rise from the fires of historical and daily adversity, bonded into a new creation with the purified gold of informed compassion and mutuality.

And so from wherever in the world we may be I invite us to gather as people open to being intentionally equal and anti-supremacist:

Kindred Gatherings

We are moving from vision to practice: gathering as peers in community coming together in love, respect, patience, curiosity, openness, and kindness

Thursday, at 8 PM PST — Women,

Sunday, at 4:30 PM PST — All genders and ages welcome.

Tuesday, at 6:30 PM PST — Single moms

Saturday, at 11:30 AM PST — Afro-descended women

If a man is open to facilitating, we will create a gathering space for men too.

The noise of children living is welcome in all spaces.

Zoom links will be provided for each meeting.

Interested? DM me here on Facebook Messenger, email at nurturingkindred@gmail.com, or WhatsApp at 778-809-9986.

We seek partners passionate about creating a community of peers where every voice is valued, dignity is honoured, and and our beautiful differences, skills, knowledge, and abilities are embraced as strength.

The noise of children living is welcome in every space.

We seek partners who are passionate about creating a community of peers where every voice is valued, dignity is honoured, and our beautiful differences, skills, knowledge, and abilities are embraced as strength.

Did you know that Adolf Hitler called himself a Christian?

He admired aspects of Martin Luther’s ideas but rejected core teachings like humility, compassion, and the sanctity of life.

His worldview was rooted in racist nationalism and pseudo-science, not in the gospel of love. The Nazi regime even tried to rewrite Christianity into a “purified” version stripped of Jewish roots and reshaped to serve their ideology.

Hitler twisted scripture to suit his agenda. He once said: “My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. … In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.”

But look closely: Hitler’s version of Jesus was a fighter in the Nazi image, not the Christ who came in love.

Yes, Yeshua did clear the temple. But in doing so, he harmed no one. His act was not about exclusion—it was about inclusion. He cleared space for ALL people to gather freely in God’s house, without exploitation or barriers.

Even his firmness carried gentleness. Scripture reminds us: “The Lord was not in the fire. The Lord was not in the wind. The Lord was not in the earthquake; but the Lord was in the still small voice. ”

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” It really is that simple.

Yeshua, whom we call Jesus, did not ask us to build religions. He invited us to build relationships, as family, with love at the center. And yet, here we are, tangled in layers of belief, tradition, and law.

Yeshua’s own parable of the wheat and the chaff tells us plainly that much of what we cling to is false: empty ideas that do not grow healthy relationships rooted in love.

This is the Spirit of Christ: decisive yet tender, strong yet merciful. And so we are left with a searching question: Are we willing to examine ourselves, to ask whether we too are using laws and doctrines to purge and purify instead of to love?

The question is not whether truth exists; the question is whether we are humble enough to admit that we are often wrong, and willing to be corrected.

Are we clinging to chaff—ideas that wound and exclude—or are we building as the wheat, healthy nourishing relationships with all people, in partnership with God? #NurturingKindred #DecolonizingDivinity

Preface

This reflection grew out of conversation with my Brother Sxexet, whose heart for healing reminded me that we live in a world thick with Lucifer’s smokescreen. The smoke is not only around us—it clings to us, shaping our memories and triggering our fears.

This is an urgent call to mind the almost invisible dangers of that smoke, and also an invitation to love: to breathe deeply of Creator’s Spirit, to let go of panic, and to be restored in gentleness, patience, and hope.

 The Question: Smoke or Fresh Air?

Are we in the smoke of exploitation in religion, or are we in the fresh air of mutuality—where we invest in community and reap growth from our investment in building relationships?

Yesterday I knew that my thought was twofold, but it did not fully unveil itself until this morning, when I read my Brother Sxexet’s statement of concern in our ongoing discussion about how to live authentically and effectively as family on this Earth home. Sxexet reminded me that this world is contaminated with Lucifer’s smokescreen, designed to keep us from wholeness, contentment, and creativity with God. The imagery from his heart for healing was so strong that the two parts of my thought became clear. What I saw was this:

God did not call us to build religions. God asked us to build relationships. If exploitation, hierarchy, and anxiety are a major part of your religious experience, it is time to require washing, to choose change, to step out of Lucifer’s smokescreen, my friend.

2. The Reality: What the Smoke Does

Smoke clouds our vision and makes us panic. In survival mode, we grasp at anything that seems to promise relief.

Lucifer keeps the smoke alive with his toxic conflagration of shame, blame, punishment, and reward.

Shame and blame are the green wood—always wet, always smouldering, never burning pure. Punishment and reward are the flame—igniting the green wood again and again, keeping the haze thick.

Together they create endless smoke. The shame and blame never consume fully; the punishment and reward never satisfy. Instead, the cycle keeps triggering panic, filling the air with confusion and fear.

And this is where learned helplessness and learned arrogance take root:

Learned helplessness when people breathe the smoke so long they collapse in despair, convinced escape is impossible. Learned arrogance when others believe they have mastered the haze—climbing hierarchies, stepping into faulty lifeboats, or being handed protective masks that still leak. None of these save us. They only keep us bound to the smoke, pretending safety while the air still poisons.

This is why it is ESSENTIAL that there is no four-part hierarchy of honour, as Dave Jamieson preached in his sermon. Hierarchies reward arrogance at the top and deepen helplessness at the bottom. They are masks that leak.

And for restoration, God invites us to the water for baptism as a somatic ritual: an embodying physical experience that moves healing deeper through us than thoughts or words.

Here, love washes over us, clearing the smoke that lingers in our hearts.

This smoke shows up everywhere:

In schools, where children sit in the anxiety of feeling like failures. In homes, churches, athletic clubs, and relationships, where hustle and hierarchy smother joy. In systems that exclude, exploit, or soothe distress ineffectively, failing to respond to cries for help.

When children grow up in communities where the smoke is thick, they grasp on to anything that looks like a saviour: religion, materialism, hierarchy, education, fame, marriage, accomplishments. But these lifeboats become smoke too when they are built on exploitation and hierarchy.

Time spent clearing the smoke is never time wasted. Showing up with love and hope is always valuable.

And part of clearing the smoke is being willing to pause for confrontation with humility. To listen when a brother or sister loves us enough to risk our displeasure and say, “I smell smoke on you.”

We need that kind of courage in community, because the smoke clings without our noticing. If we are not careful, our own oxygen becomes contaminated, and we may carry the scent that triggers someone else’s panic memory.

Listening in humility does not diminish us—it protects us. It gives us space to wash again in the water of love and to show up with gentleness, patience, and clarity instead of unknowingly carrying the smoke further.

3. The Invitation: Cast It on the Water

God is calling us into the healing waters of peace. We are ALWAYS accepted and honoured—never rejected. Never. Not ever.

The invitation is not only to put out the fire but to cast the whole smoke-filled cycle into the water, letting the sea carry it to the depths. The water does more than extinguish. It washes away the very scent and memory of smoke.

Immersing ourselves in the water frees us from panic, restores us to love, and keeps the air clear. It returns us to the fruit of God’s Spirit: gentleness, kindness, patience, self-control, and hope. Without even the lingering smell of smoke, we no longer live in fear of being triggered back into survival mode.

4. The Practice: Love That Washes

Clearing the smoke requires both symbolic and embodied practices. Baptism is a symbol of being fully washed and refreshed in love, welcomed home into the experience of God’s kingdom here on Earth as it is in heaven. Foot washing, as Jesus taught, is a reminder that gentleness and humility are what wash the smoke of the smokescreen away.

So keep washing in the water—physically and symbolically. Immerse yourself. Wash one another’s feet. Show up with love and acceptance consistently for yourself, and then for others as you love yourself.

Time spent clearing the smoke is never time wasted.

5. The Refrain: Growing Together

Thank you for your persistently courageous warrior heart, Brother Bear. Your concern helped unveil what needed to come through me.

Growth happens best in relationship—with God, and with one another. When we are willing to listen deeply and respond as loving equals, we help each other see through the smoke. We breathe the fresh air of mutuality together. And together, we remember: the gentleness of love always washes the smoke away.

God is my best friend. They’ve been with me from day one. And as I grew to know them more we became besties.

My bestie started really levelling up our reasoning sessions about how I was showing up as a parent.

They started out by inviting me to slow down enough to see that my actions weren’t congruent with my hope and intentions to build a healthy productive relationship with my children so that we might become a unit that embodied mutuality, cooperation, innovation and love.

Once I actually slowed down to observe I realized that God was right. All three of them. Creator, Son, and Nurturer – Father, Brother, Mother.

And here is where I am today. This is what I am learning:

So often, as parents, we unconsciously set two standards:
• For children: They must tolerate our moods, our authority, our corrections—even when we are tired, impatient, or inconsistent.
• For ourselves: We give ourselves permission not to tolerate certain things from them—whining, mistakes, anger, “attitude.”

It creates an imbalance: children are expected to absorb far more from us than we are willing to absorb from them.

God’s Challenge

The Spirit invited me to re-examine this imbalance:
• What if our children deserve the same patience, gentleness, and endurance that we hope for from them?
• What if love in parenting means modeling the tolerance and compassion that we want them to practice toward us?

It doesn’t erase boundaries or guidance: as parents we still carry the role of guiding, protecting, and teaching, but it shifts the posture from control to mutual love under God’s authority, not ours.

A Mirror of God’s Love

This challenge reflects God’s own way with us. God doesn’t demand that we tolerate Their mood swings. They don’t have any. They maturely maintain balance. They don’t swing wildly because They don’t blame or shame. They reflect, assess, and progress and meet our immaturity with mercy, correction with patience, and guidance with grace.

Parenting in God’s image means moving toward that same balance: holding boundaries, and not expecting from our children what we aren’t willing to give back in return.

Reflection Questions:

• Where do I expect more tolerance from my children than I give to them?
• How do I respond when my child is overwhelmed? Do I allow myself the same space when I am overwhelmed?
• What do I believe God’s patience with me looks like? How can I mirror that for my children?
• What would change in my family if I practiced the same compassion I long for in my hardest moments?
• Am I teaching endurance, gentleness, and forgiveness by example—or only by demand?

2. Daily Practices

Morning Prayer/Intention

“God of mercy, teach me to guide my children the way you guide me—with patience, compassion, and truth. Let love be my standard today.”

3. Pause-and-Mirror

When frustration rises:
• Pause.
• Ask: Would I want to be treated this way if I were the child?
• Adjust tone, posture, or words before responding.

4. Communicate With Mutual Respect

Daily Mini-Practice: Communicate With Mutual Respect

When something difficult comes up with your child, try this 3-step rhythm:

A. Listen First

Pause before responding. Give your child at least 30 seconds to finish their thought without interruption.
Really listen—train your mind not to rebut or debate, just listen.

“I hear you. Tell me more.”

B. Reflect and Name

Acknowledge their feeling or perspective before moving to correction.
As Gordon Neufeld reminds us: “We connect before we direct.”

“It sounds like you’re feeling left out.”

C. Respond with Boundaries and Respect

Hold your authority gently, not harshly.

“I hear that you are frustrated. We can be both frustrated and kind. I’m okay with waiting so that we can get to calm together.”

• Work on calming together if/when they are able.
• It’s okay to wait. It’s okay to give as much time as needed.
• Exercise your patience muscle.

Then, when calm:

“Let’s find a way forward together.”

Remember that we grow community with informed compassion.

What do we know?
Our children’s central nervous system is still developing.

They have had experiences that have activated survival skills instead of communication/thriving skills

We can be the calming component to their storm with patience, kindness, gentleness, gratitude, grace, and hope – with emotions as messengers not as motors.

Emotions are messengers, not motors. They are signals that guide us toward deeper connection, not engines that should drive us into conflict.

This is the challenge God—my best friend—has placed before me as a mama. And it is the challenge I now place gently before you.

our VALUES

🦋 Compassion with Boundaries

We practice love that is gentle and truthful, holding space without losing ourselves.

🦋 Belonging & Inclusion

We create and nurture spaces where every voice is valued, dignity is honoured, and diversity is embraced as strength.

🦋 Empowerment

We walk alongside one another, cultivating courage, healing, and freedom to live authentically.

🦋 Justice & Reciprocity

We act with integrity, with awareness of the shadows of supremacy, learned helplessness and learned arrogance, and we honour the elevation of mental and emotional safety, mutual care and accountability.

🦋 Wholeness & Well-being

We tend to mind, body, spirit, and community, remembering that flourishing is not solitary but shared.

 

our MISSION

Cultivating spaces of inclusion with love, truth, and mutual care where healing and wholeness can flourish through community, accountability, and pure, unlimited freedom

 

our VISION

A world where every person is seen, known, and nurtured in love — thriving together in strong, just, and compassionate communities.

 

 

our MOTTO

We build relationships with informed compassion: rooted in love, integrity, accountability, respect, collaboration, hope, and possibility.

 

What We Do

Nurturing Kindred is a community-driven initiative dedicated to building healthy connections and resilience.

We provide:

• Peer-support groups for single moms, youth, and racialized women

• Advocacy and guidance for navigating systems with dignity

• Support to connect with resources that help develop emotion regulation and healthy relationship skills

• Guidance in practicing informed compassion, accountability, integrity, and collaboration

We also offer one-on-one peer sessions, where those with shared lived experience hold space for you to be seen, known, and heard. Together, we build confidence in amplifying your voice and telling your story, always listening with respect and honour for your innate wisdom.

This morning, September 13, 2025, in my waking God-connection time, I was in Luke 8:19–39. And it felt as though God was reading my own story back to me.

 

In these verses, Jesus redefines family. He calms the storm. He heals the man filled with demons and then sends him home to testify. And as I read, I realized I was being invited to see my own seven-year journey reflected in his actions.

 

For more than seven years, I have carried a storm inside me—moving through grief, forgiveness, reconciliation, and many attempts at resolution. I tried again and again to handle it quietly, to protect the honour of those involved, and to find peace without bringing the full weight of it to others.

 

But storms do not disappear by silence. And Jesus never told us to stay quiet in the storm.

 

Anchors in the Storm

God often gives us small reminders of his presence, anchors that help us hold steady when life feels overwhelming.

 

Along the way, God gave me little anchors that reminded me to breathe and keep going:

 • A butterfly, reminding me that transformation takes time.

 • A turtle, reminding me that perseverance wins the race.

 • A starfish, reminding me that even one small act of care matters.

 • A heart, reminding me to take medicine  myself, and also offer medicine to others gently.

 • And a small token marked “Mom,” reminding me of family, love, nurture, protection, and belonging.

 

They may seem small, but when anxiety rises and my voice is likely to shake, these anchors steady me. They remind me that peace is possible, even in the middle of storms.

 

What Jesus Showed Me in Luke 8

Scripture does not just tell stories—it reads our stories back to us, inviting us into God’s truth.

 

In Luke 8, three truths leapt out to me as if Jesus himself were teaching me my own story:

 • Family is redefined: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear God’s word and obey it.” Family is not only blood; it is those who choose obedience to love. Family in Christ is marked by humility without hierarchy—by people walking side by side as equals in God’s love. With all as truly ordinary people – none above the other.

 • The storm requires a voice: When the storm raged on the lake, Jesus did not stay silent. He stood and rebuked the wind and the waves. Silence would have let the storm drown them. Speaking boldly for restoration and peace brought calm.

 • Healing becomes testimony: When the man was freed from demons, he begged to follow Jesus. But Jesus told him: “Go back to your family and tell them what God has done for you.” Healing was not only for him—it became testimony.

 

And in that moment, I was reassured: silence was not a viable an option for healing and restoration: Jesus directed testimony to the whole church as step three, and so although it was uncomfortable it was necessary.

 

Seven Years of Waiting

Sometimes God calls us to wait—not because he is absent, but because timing matters for healing to take root.

 

For years, I wrestled with timing. My therapist once told me my anxiety about time was holding me back. I wanted resolution quickly. But I had to learn that what is conceived in the heart is not always immediately ready to be born. Like pregnancy, it must grow until the moment of birth.

 

For seven years, I kept trying in private. I was like the disciples in the boat—bailing water, panicked, asking God, “Are you with me, or am I going to drown?” Then in February of this year, I finally sensed God saying: Now is the time. Speak peace the way I showed you in Matthew 18.

 

The Meeting That Changed Everything

And so in February of this year I began the process of accountability and restoration following the steps that Jesus recommended in Matthew 18. I sang and prayed and went often to my special place with God, fire, and water for restoration of peace as I moved through the steps of confrontation.

 

The eye of some storms reveal themselves in a single conversation, in that place where truth collides with denial and the full burden of avoidant silence is revealed. This was so for me.

 

After years of avoidant silence from leadership, I was finally granted one meeting, in the spring of this year, with two employees of the BC Conference, who told me that they were speaking on behalf of the local church and every level of administration above it.

 

I went into that meeting still hoping for a path forward, still believing that family—even in its brokenness—could find healing.

 

But their message was clear and heavy: the only response I would ever receive would come from the legal department, whose role was to pressure me into silence. Why? Because, as they said, “character is all we have.”

 

To name what had happened would be to question someone’s character, and that, in their eyes, was unacceptable.

 

I left that meeting carrying an impossible weight. How could I seek relief for my family’s distress while also protecting the honour of others? How could the body find healing if wounds were denied and hidden?

 

Why Silence Could Not Remain

Silence in the face of wounds is not peace; it is fear. True peace comes when truth is spoken, wounds are acknowledged, and healing is allowed to begin.

 

That meeting forced me to see that avoidant silence was not faithfulness. Protecting reputations while leaving wounds unaddressed is not love—it is fear. It turns the body of Christ into dry bones, polished on the outside but lifeless within.

 

Jesus never avoided wounds. He touched them. Healing came when truth was faced, not when it was hidden. And so, after seven years of delay, I finally obeyed. I wrote to the church not to shame, not to divide, but to bring wounds into the light where healing could flow.

 

Real family—humble, Spirit-filled family—cannot be built on hierarchy and fear. It can only be built on truth, equality, and love.

 

Choosing to Speak

Obedience is not about perfection—it is about courage to step forward when God says, “Now.”

 

I admit: I delayed too long because I was afraid. Afraid of what people would think, afraid of what it would cost, afraid of losing what little stability remained. And because I delayed, the storm raged longer than it needed to. I take responsibility for that.

 

But once I finally spoke, peace came. Since sending that email, on Friday, I have had conversations with people who reached out and shared their pain. Healing came. Possibility became visible for them. And I discovered again that accountability is not exposure. It is restoration. It is the Spirit of God breathing life into dry bones.

Like the man among the Gerasenes, I am grateful that I can testify with love that is honest and honours and protects: healing is possible, peace is possible, accountability is possible.

 

Family, Rebuilt

A church is not family because it says so—it is family when it lives so, without supremacy, with openness in humility and love – with hierarchy that is only about being responsible for safety.

 

True family is not held together by appearances or by reputation. It is formed when we hear God’s word and obey it—when we live not as people who would like to be family, but as those who actually choose to show up and live as family.

 

That is the future I hold onto: a body where wounds are acknowledged and tended, where leaders and members alike embrace humility without hierarchy, and where love—not fear—leads.

 

That is what I am building with those who are interested in building too.

 

And so I bless us, with patience. With love. With solidarity. And with the faith that the dry bones will live, because Jesus is still speaking peace to storms. And He has given us the authority to stand with faith and courage and command peace to reign as we share our stories.

 

Reflective Invitation

As you finish reading, I invite you to pause and ask yourself:

 1. Where are the storms in your own life, family, or community? Are you tempted to stay silent, and what would it look like to speak peace instead?

 2. What anchors has God placed in your path? The butterfly, the turtle, the starfish—what simple reminders steady you when fear rises?

 3. What would humility without supremacy, but with a hierarchy of responsibility for safety look like in your relationships or communities? How might equality in Christ transform the way you give and receive love?

 4. What testimony are you carrying? Like the man in Luke 8, what healing have you experienced that you are being called to share with others?

Take a moment to sit with these questions. Write, pray, or speak them aloud if you can. Healing becomes testimony when it is shared—and your testimony, too, can become peace for someone else’s storm.

I had been struggling to find the words and the way to move through the painful process of seeking restitution, relief, revival, redemption, and reconciliation for the last seven years.

In an attempt to keep gossip and conflict from the wider body of the congregation I had attempted to dialogue with the individual, then with the administration of the denomination and the church. Because protecting the person from harm even though we have been harmed mattered to me.

God kept prompting me to write the email that had been sitting unwritten in drafts for quite some time. I kept delaying – telling God that I had no idea how to say it all in the best possible way. He kept promising me that if I began He would have the words flow through me. I hesitated and hesitated and composed beginnings in my head for so long. I didn’t want to offend or harm anyone. I didn’t want to start a fire that might burn the house down.

This morning, Friday, September 12, 2025, as God led me to Psalm 112, I am accepting the invitation to no longer delay bringing this to this church body.

Praise the Lord!

How joyful are those who fear the Lord

and delight in obeying his commands.

Their children will be successful everywhere;

an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.

They themselves will be wealthy,

and their good deeds will last forever.

Light shines in the darkness for the godly.

They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.

Good comes to those who lend money generously

and conduct their business fairly.

Such people will not be overcome by evil.

Those who are righteous will be long remembered.

They do not fear bad news;

they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.

They are confident and fearless

and can face their foes triumphantly.

They share freely and give generously to those in need.

Their good deeds will be remembered forever.

They will have influence and honour.

Living in the community with love has always been my goal. Tending to wounds of division and nurturing the broken and the hopeful has been my passion. Learning to do this according to God’s pattern as taught by Jesus matters to me more than anything else.

My Journey of Sacrifice and Building

In 2011, as a new mom, I closed the business I had built in Surrey and moved to Aldergrove so my children could attend FVAA. It was a huge financial sacrifice, but I had been taught from childhood that Adventist schools were the safest and best choice.

I continued to serve and support the community while parenting my daughters and the foster children in my care. With their significant trauma-related needs, I sought ways to merge my passion for nurture with generating income.

By 2016/17, I began building the other level again. I had closed one business to facilitate church school and it was time to build up again—this time in response to meet a need that God highlighted for me. And I was building with others in the community who shared my vision to build a network of care around struggling families.

Someone in the church saw our venture and invited themselves in as a partner, offering their position and network as an answer to prayer. Though I was hesitant, I trusted the certainty of the others, and it seemed as if God might have opened the way, so I agreed.

The Harm

What I did not anticipate was how that invitation would instead open the door to harm. The vision we had poured our hearts into was taken over. Our labour was minimized, our voices erased, and what had been built from love and sacrifice was stolen because they had more influence and power than we had.

This decimated us emotionally and financially. It added crushing weight to an already fragile family dynamic.

A Distorted Teaching

I could not understand how this could be seen as an acceptable way of doing business until I revisited Pastor Jamieson’s sermon from March 3, 2018 (Breakthrough – Part VI).

Pastor Dave’s sermons had usually been encouraging and instructive, and were a part of the journey to my historic double-dipping rebaptism with Walter.

On March 3, 2018, in a sermon titled Breakthrough – Part VI (watch here on Vimeo), Pastor Dave began rightly—by saying that Jesus honored the widow in Mark 12. And then, almost seamlessly, he reframed the story. He slotted the widow into “Financial Crisis” (Level 1) and placed those with financial surplus into the “God-honouring Lifestyle” (Level 4).

It sounded smooth. Logical, even.

But what began as divine honour was quickly reinterpreted as human lack.

What was sacred became sad.

What was prophetic became pitiful.

In that moment, the very widow whom Jesus uplifted as the truest expression of faith was recast as trapped in crisis—less than whole, less than free, less than what “God really wants.”

Jesus never shamed her.

He never measured her gift by her purse.

He named her gift as greater than all the others.

To twist her offering into a financial tier is to distort the Kingdom itself—to align God with the wealthy and make the poor a cautionary tale. 

If Pastor Dave could make a mistake like this then it makes sense that anyone else could be influenced by this kind of mistaken teaching. Those subtly flipped ideas often create big devastating consequences. The enemy has been deceiving us in this way from the very beginning. And here we are, all wounded on Earth as a result. 

That distortion bore fruit here. We were not seen as co-labourers but as pitiful crises whose work could be taken and claimed as someone else’s “God-honouring” achievement.

The Call to Redemption

But Psalm 112 says differently:

Light shines in the darkness for the godly. Their good deeds will last forever.

This is an opportunity for the church to embody that promise, to show what accountability and integrity truly look like. My family needs tangible relief, and the church has the power to help provide it—not to erase the past, but to redeem it.

Redemption requires action.

It means acknowledging that what was taken must be restored for “loving God, loving people, and serving the world” to be more than empty words.

It means stepping into the gap where harm has been done, not only with words of comfort but with tangible action—just as my family has done for many in this community.

For years I poured out what I had, even when it cost me more than I could afford. I gave my time, my gifts, my heart, and my strength because I believed this is what it means to be the body of Christ: to carry one another’s burdens and build up instead of tearing down.

Now I am asking the church to stand in that same posture toward me and my family. Restoration is not optional. It is the heartbeat of faith.

Redemption is not abstract.

It is practical.

It is financial.

It is relational.

It is spiritual.

And for our family, it is urgent.

Our Present Reality

Leaving us with house devoured and destitute because we trusted is not within God’s heart.

I followed Matthew 18’s steps for resolving conflict. Instead of accountability, I was met with threats to silence me through legal means. Rather than pursuing truth, reputation was protected.

I recognized that they are living in fear. And vengeance is not mine, because vengeance is not for any of us to seek. Not one of us is without sin. So who would justly cast stones?  God knows the source of their fear and anxiety, and He will provide the healing and fulfillment that they need. 

So instead of taking this to court, I have chosen to pray for their redemption and appeal to you, the wider body, for help.

Our family has been left vulnerable and wounded, but not without hope. We are over $20,000 in debt.

I attempted to rebuild again with I AM With You House in 2019: Aldergrove Star coverage, April 22, 2022.

That work folded primarily because I was not meant to do it alone: it was meant to be held in community. I could not carry my children, myself, and the house alone.

Things became further complicated when I developed Long COVID in November of 2022 while serving as cook for the first Boundaries series with CIV and AOK. On the final night of that series, after co-creating with God the most amazing meal of my life, to honour and elevate the mamas and their children, I nearly collapsed as I left the kitchen. Laurie Brownlee was thankfully there to catch me and help me to my vehicle.

Even so, I pushed through, impossibly, at great cost, in survival mode. In May of 2024, in the middle of big ongoing trauma waves as my Anjali was being abused by someone with whom she had sought connection, I had to close the house.

I intended to move to Alberta to seek protection for her, since we had no protection here. And while that move helped in the height of that crisis, it was not possible to make it permanent. 

Long COVID has had a devastating impact on our family. My children have lost the mother who could and did drive over a thousand kilometres per month and sometimes almost twice as much to facilitate healing and connection for families in crisis – while still managing the day to day physical, mental, and emotional needs of the traumatized children in our home and in the community. 

And now we are in great need – abandoned by those who seem to prefer to protect reputation rather than to facilitate restoration. 

I am asking you, as the church, to step into this gap with courage and compassion. To respond not with silence, but with action. Not with dismissal, but with integrity. Not with defensiveness, but with the generosity and justice that reflect the heart of God.

The SDA administration responded first with absolute silence, and then with a message in person from one of their employees, that the only response I would ever receive would be from their legal department. Seeing years before that this was the way of the denomination, as I studied how oppression had been handled over the generations of Adventism I was already separated from the denominational books – while remaining a part of the community even before I began to actively seek accountability directly with the individual in February of this year. 

The corporate denomination is not Adventism. This body of seekers of love which extends beyond global borders is the Adventist community. 

And so I reach out to you as the part of the body to which I was connected and with whom I served faithfully for almost twenty years. 

I applied for Disability Assistance in July of 2024 and was finally fully approved this March. I had to fight through that process. I now receive $1,535.50 per month, while rent alone is $1,700 plus utilities. I have done Uber Eats deliveries to make the financial gap smaller, but with Long COVID and upcoming recertification as a Social Service and Community Health Worker (starting September 29, 2025), even that will no longer be possible.

Our very basics—housing and food—are deeply insecure.

How You Can Help

If you can help, please e-transfer to adianneka@gmail.com or contact me directly at 236-514-4491.

In this deep dark valley I have been writing poems and essays and prose as a part of my grieving and healing process. I am working now on having them published. 

This is my latest poem. Hopefully it encourages you as much as it encouraged me. 

And hopefully revival of the Spirit of God among us will erase the pain and eliminate all exploitation and fear, and ignite the Loveolution

Please do not ask me to name the individuals. I will not. God knows, and healing and wholeness in their hearts is a private matter between God and them. 

Why Do We Keep Trying to Cage Love?

By Saran Lewis

Why do we keep trying to cage Love?

Why?

 

We cage people with it.

We cage them in our doctrines, our nationalism, our rituals of control.

We claim it is holiness,

but it is fear wearing a mask.

 

Fear says:

“If Love is free, it will be abused.

If Love is free, it will be wasted.

If Love is free, it will expose our fragility.”

 

So we build cages —

and then call the cages sacred.

 

And then worse yet,

we set a wrathful god as guard…

patient until the day that he snaps

and consumes the disobedient in a blaze of final rage.

 

When has that ever been

whom Yeshua showed Him to be??

 

The God Yeshua Revealed

Yeshua showed us a Father who runs toward the prodigal,

not one who waits to strike.

A Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine,

not one who burns the lost sheep.

 

A Neighbour who speaks no shame over the woman

who has lost her bride price,

but waits with her —

inspiring her until she finds it,

and then celebrates.

Celebrates.

 

A Friend who lays down His life,

not one who consumes life in anger.

 

Even on the cross, He revealed mercy:

“Father, forgive them,

for they know not what they do.”

 

This is the God He unveiled:

not a wrathful guard over cages,

but a Love that breaks them open.

 

The Yeshua Who Refuses Cages

He touched the leper,

skin against skin,

restoring what human hands had refused to touch.

Not from a distance, not with a word alone

but with His hand,

the warmth of His body saying, You are not untouchable.

 

He let the bleeding woman touch Him,

though everyone else recoiled in horror.

He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t recoil.

He called her Daughter,

naming her family in front of those who had cast her out.

 

He healed on the Sabbath,

not to erase the Sabbath,

but because the Sabbath was made for us —

a day meant for love, for rest, for restoration.

He would not let it become a prison.

 

He let His disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath,

because a day of love and rest and nourishment of connection FOR people was what mattered

not the legalistic protection of the day.

Hunger mattered more than rules,

life mattered more than appearances.

 

He told the story of the Samaritan on the Jericho road,

not to shame Israel,

but to show that mercy itself is the heartbeat of God.

It was the despised one who stopped,

who bent low,

who bound up the wounds and paid the cost.

That was Yeshua’s definition of holiness.

 

He lifted the Syro-Phoenician woman’s voice,

an outsider, a foreigner,

a mother begging for her child.

Her plea carried more faith than Israel’s gatekeepers ever imagined.

And Yeshua said so,

making sure she was heard,

making sure she was honoured.

 

He met the Samaritan woman at the well,

and ended the centuries-old argument about holy mountains.

“It’s not about the mountain,” He said.

“It’s about spirit and truth.”

He saw her whole story,

named her reality,

and still offered her living water.

曆

The Heart of It All

This is the Yeshua who keeps refusing the cages.

Who keeps touching the excluded.

Who keeps teaching us that God’s Love

cannot be locked inside one religion,

one nation,

one system of supremacy.

 

And still 

we keep trying to cage Love.

We keep trying to chain people with it.

 

But Love cannot be caged.

Love keeps breaking the locks,

shattering the bars,

and walking out to touch those whom we call untouchable.

 

God is Love.

God is freedom.

God is covenant mercy.

 

And the Spirit is still speaking 

in every language,

through every outsider,

on every Emmaus road.

And while we rebuild we need your help, dear community.

Thank you.

By Saran Lewis

I must preface what I am about to say with this clear declaration. I do not accept the colour coded identity of ANY people. Colour coding is part and parcel of the system of White Supremacy under which human beings were separated into races which facilitated the creation of racism as a tool of control for profit.

Therefore when I speak of Black and White, I am not bowing to the system, I AM inviting us to awareness of the cages in which we have been bound so that we can SET OURSELVES FREE.
  
Acknowledging racism (or any other form of supremacy) does not weaken a community. Denying it does.

Real progress comes when leaders, neighbours, and institutions have the courage to face what is real: that we are equal in human worth and capacity, but not equally or ethically resourced or supported.

To move forward as a healthy community, we must not only refuse the myths of White Saviourism and Black Helplessness —we must also confront the shadows of superiority and inferiority, dominance and subordination, dismantling the structures that keep resources, relationships and opportunities inequitably balanced.

When we can finally do this we will be free, and only then can we begin to live the divine dream of building communities founded on wholeness, worthiness, authenticity, love, and belonging.

West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager recently rejected the idea that a bylaw complaint against the owners of a multi-million-dollar home was racially motivated. “I would not buy that for a moment,” he told reporters.

But the homeowners had received an anonymous letter stating:

“Think of this as a lesson in what you can expect if you continue to live here. OR – go back to where you came from. You are not special, you are just like the rest of us, even though your God is greed.”

If that isn’t racism, what is?

The Cost of Denial

The issue is not only the letter. It is the way institutions and individuals reflexively minimize, deflect, or rationalize racism, as if acknowledging it were more dangerous than the harm racism itself inflicts. For those of us living in skin rich with melanin, this is nothing new. The exhaustion comes not just from racist incidents themselves but from the denial layered on top of them.

The Continuity of Harm

Being told to “go back to where you came from” carries the same weight as being called “nigger.” It is also the same as hearing a less-melanin-rich friend claim that African-American community leaders were always corrupt and incapable of managing funds—implying that White “saviour” managers were needed to control community resources.

The irony is sharp: Euro-American politicians and institutions have hardly been models of financial integrity. Yet the assumption of superiority persists.

The System Beneath It

These ideas are not random. They are the fruit of White Supremacy, which:

😔found African ingenuity and skill invaluable for centuries of forced labour to build White wealth.

😔dehumanized those same Afro-descended human beings and their descendants as inferior, despite their proven capacity, endurance, and creativity.

😔conditioned White society to expect compliance from Afro-descended people while labeling any demand for equality as arrogance punishable by death. Death of the body through lynching or torture, or death of relationship and connection, or death of reputation and character through gossip. No matter what form that death would take, it must involve the infliction of severe pain as punishment.

And so today, when people of colour clearly declare themselves capable equals—though not equally resourced and supported—and refuse the hero narrative, the myth of White Saviourism is shaken.

For some White neighbours and friends, this does not bring relief or joy but anxious anger. Afro-descended friends also experience anxious anger when one of their own rises to declare themselves capable equals. Internalized narratives of dominance and subordination run deep.

Equality disrupts the myth of White Saviourism, and the anxious anger is proof.

Expansion on “Anxious Anger as Proof”

That anxious anger is proof. Proof that the narrative of superiority and inferiority was never secure. Proof that the system has depended on compliance and deference to maintain its illusion.

Proof that equality is not simply a moral claim but a direct threat to the false comfort of dominance and subordination.

This speaks directly to Carter G. Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro. Woodson described how systems of oppression condition the oppressed to police themselves, to stay in the “place” designed for them. He wrote that if you control a person’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about their actions; they will seek the back door themselves. And if no back door exists, their conditioning will demand one be built.

Anxiety arises because the ground shifts: if communities of colour are not inferior and dependent, then White identity can no longer rest on the role of rescuer, manager, or hero, and Black survival is no longer secure and attached to deference.

Anxious anger arises because loss of control and lack of security feel like loss of identity, even when both are shadows, neither of which truly defined the healthy symbiotic reality through which humanity was intended to thrive.

The Shadows of Supremacy

Superiority

Anxious anger connected to dominance is not grounded in truth or logic. It is grounded in fear of losing unearned power. It is grounded in fear of losing superiority.

And superiority is an acquired ego shadow — a projection built over centuries to mask insecurity, justify exploitation, and maintain control. Shadows of the ego always claim more than they can hold. They are fragile, inflated identities that depend on comparison and domination rather than rootedness in love, dignity, or mutuality.

This shadow superiority convinces people that their worth rises only when others are pushed down. It distorts community into hierarchy, friendship into control, and leadership into possession. It separates the human spirit from the truth that every person is born whole, worthy, and beloved.

Spiritually, the ego shadow of superiority is a counterfeit covering. It promises safety through dominance but delivers only fear, anxiety, and anger whenever that dominance is questioned. Psychologically, it keeps individuals and societies locked in defensive postures, unable to welcome equality because equality threatens the illusion that gave them identity in the first place.

Inferiority

And there is also an inferiority shadow. This is the internalized belief, born of oppression, that one’s value must never rise at all — that one’s very existence, and even the foundation of the community, depends on staying in a subordinate place. This shadow persists regardless of education or economic success.

An Afro-descended professional can hold advanced credentials and yet feel compelled to defer, to shrink, to mute their voice in rooms where truth is needed. An entrepreneur can build wealth and still carry the gnawing belief that their achievements are fragile, conditional, or undeserved. The shadow whispers that visibility is dangerous, that confidence will be punished, and that dignity must always be negotiated against survival.

They may even teach about racism as a concept. But they cannot bring the full light of that truth to illuminate the shadows in their mixed community. The inferiority shadow tells them that naming racism too clearly will cost them belonging, credibility, or safety. It convinces them to intellectualize rather than embody, to make the truth palatable for the dominant group rather than liberating for their own.

And in this way, the inferiority shadow colludes with the superiority shadow.

The superiority shadow often hides in educated, progressive White spaces. It cloaks itself in allyship, theory, or “good intentions,” but still clings to the role of interpreter, manager, or validator. It whispers that people of colour need White mediation to make their words credible, that leadership must remain in familiar hands, that progress must be “guided” to keep everyone comfortable. It manifests in committees where diverse voices are welcomed at the table but only within boundaries set by White comfort. It shows up in policies written in the language of equity but enforced through the logic of control.

The superiority shadow convinces people that their worth is measured by how well they protect their elevated role. The inferiority shadow convinces people that their worth depends on not challenging that elevation. One insists on dominance; the other enforces submission. Together they uphold the false architecture of supremacy, even in communities that pride themselves on being enlightened.

And that is why equality so often provokes resistance. It unmasks the ego shadow and reveals how deeply society has been invested in stories of dependence and deficiency. Angry denial in the face of clear truth is not evidence that racism is “overstated.” It is evidence that racism is alive — defending itself through emotion when the miseducated logic is challenged.

Why Peer Support Matters

This is why community peer support groups are not optional—they are essential. They create spaces where people of colour can be heard, believed, and supported. Because each time a leader denies racism (or any other form of supremacy) even in the face of explicit racist words, the wound deepens.

Healing requires spaces of solidarity and truth.

A Healthier Way Forward

If West Vancouver—and any community—wants to be healthy, it must begin with honesty. Pretending that a racist letter is “not racism” only breeds mistrust and erodes the possibility of progress.

Acknowledging racism (or any other form of supremacy) does not weaken a community. Denying it does.

Real progress comes when leaders, neighbours, and institutions have the courage to face what is real: that we are equal in human worth and capacity, but not equally or ethically resourced or supported.

To move forward as a healthy community, we must not only refuse the myth of White Saviourism—we must also confront the shadows of superiority and inferiority, dominance and subordination dismantling the structures that keep resources and opportunities inequitably balanced.

When we can finally do this we will be free, and only then can we begin to live the divine dream of building communities founded on wholeness, worthiness, authenticity, love, and belonging.