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.

Building With Nurture and Belief

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 so that I could be present and flexible for my children.

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 community support need that God highlighted for me. I began to build 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 asset to growth. Though I was hesitant, because I did not trust the individual, I submitted to the certainty of the others, that God might have opened this partnership opportunity, 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. For our family it added the crushing weight of financial and emotional instability 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 the trusting listeners missed was that 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”, less than the rich men.

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 profit-based tier is to distort the Kingdom itself—to align God with the socio-economically wealthy and make those with less financial stores 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 in the community. We, vision-builders, 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 our 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 tear 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 our house literally 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 $40,000 in debt that I used to try to keep the community support service alive while meeting our family’s basic needs for food and shelter.

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. We had to stay in BC, as I respected her choice.

Additionally, 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 2025. 

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 30% 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 unprofitable.

If Love is free, it will be wasted.

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

 

So we build cages for love —

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 as punishment.

 

Yeshua showed us 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.

 

Yeshua showed us 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 neighbourliness .

 

He lifted the Syro-Phoenician woman’s voice,

an outsider, a foreigner,

a mother begging for her child’s healing.

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

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,

inside any 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 crises.

 

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.

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.

One week ago, as the last week of my forty-ninth year of life began, I awoke with the term learned arrogance conceived between my heart and mind.

And as I sometimes do when something is conceived—the fullness of whose life I can already see—I rushed it into birth. Then later, as I read it, I was so frustrated at its incompleteness. I almost threw it across the room as garbage, calling it “pretentious bullshit.”

Then that still small voice stepped in and suggested that just maybe it was a beginning—not pretentious bullshit at all—especially considering that tears had been pouring from my eyes as the words streamed out of me. They came straight from my heart. And as I reviewed them again, I knew there was more.

Here now is what has developed so far. I don’t know if this is all there will be, but I do know that these precious ideas born from love, hope, and faith will somehow be part of the healing that moves humanity forward—together.

So I have been contemplating it all more today, seven days later, on my fiftieth birthday, and this is the gift that has emerged.

Learned Arrogance: The Counterpart to Learned Helplessness

As a participant and observer of life and relationships, for many years I have witnessed nuances in interactions that have been destructive to the development of successful symbiotic mutually beneficial relationships on both interpersonal, and group levels. The element of helplessness has been highlighted and so has always been obvious. There seemed to be some thing missing though – some force which was just as detrimental but not named.

Then on August 23, 2025 as I watched a social experiment meant to teach a group of students how learned helplessness occurs, I FINALLY RECOGNIZED that the experiment also revealed the alternate state to which I have been extremely sensitive. It was learned arrogance.

Learned Helplessness tells us: “My actions don’t matter, so I stop trying.”

Learned Arrogance whispers: “My actions always matter, therefore I must be more capable than those who struggle.”

Both are distortions. Both are shadows born of systemic manipulation, social hierarchies, and wounds passed down through culture and history.

Where one is crushed by barriers, the other is buoyed by supports—but the supports are mistaken for personal superiority. Together, these two states create the illusion of natural hierarchies, calcifying into supremacy: classism, racism, sexism, ableism. Entire systems are built on the interplay of these shadow-states.

As Carter G. Woodson observed: “If you teach a being that they must enter only through the back door, they will build back doors so that they may enter where no back doors exist.” The reverse is also true: teach someone they alone deserve the front door, and they will see others’ attempts to enter as violations of the order of the world.

My Journey Through Both Shadows

This is not just theory to me. It is story. It is wound. It is healing. It is my lived experience.

My first encounter with helplessness came as a baby, when my cries were not answered. My parents loved me deeply, and they cared for me in countless ways—but they had been taught by those misinformed that independence was built by ignoring a baby’s cries as long as they were fed, clean, and had some measure of connection time. They silenced their own instinct to comfort, believing it was for my good.

In that space where connection was meant for healthy psychological and emotional and in darkness which was meant for rest, both helplessness and arrogance began to grow.

• Helplessness locked in with a sense of perceived abandonment: No one comes. I must not be worthy of being held. It’s dark. I am alone.
  
  Arrogance, its defensive twin, locked in with survivalist contempt:  I began to grow as is the natural process of physical development, and as I became mobile the arrogant seed sprouted: I don’t need you anyway. I will get there on my own.

And indeed, I did eventually get there—I crawled and then walk toward whomever I chose—but I arrived carrying a hidden contradiction: I am not worthy to be held, and I will be held by my own strength.

The viruses of shame, blame, and fear had already entered the system:

• Shame: I am not worthy of being held.
• Blame: It is your fault for not holding me.
• Fear: I am alone. I must protect and achieve by any means necessary.

These infections of the soul formed the soil from which both helplessness and arrogance grew. Both are seeded in the brain’s earliest foundations—in the consistency or absence of responsiveness from the little one’s big people.

This is the iniquity that wounds us to the third and fourth generation.

But arrogance came to me again in adulthood.

In 2005, after watching Blood Diamond late one night with friends, I was undone. The credits rolled after midnight, but I could not sleep. Rage coursed through me at the cruelty of humanity—how wealth and luxury are built on the backs of the youngest of us, whom we should cherish and guide to maturity, and on the backs of those deliberately dehumanized and diminished in the hierarchy of socio-political caste.

I stormed toward the stairs, speaking contempt and disgust to God: How could the world still be this way? How could I have lived nearly thirty years and not been able to do anything to change it? My words burned with arrogance, with sarcastic eloquence designed to scorch hierarchy to ashes—without concern for whether the person listening might be consumed in the fire.

And then, as clearly as day, I heard:

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint.”

My birthday was approaching. By conventional measures of success, I had not “arrived.” Yet in that moment I realized I was both helpless and arrogant: carrying wounds of unworthiness that told me I could not change the world, and flames of contempt that told me I alone could see clearly enough to judge it. Both shadows lived in me.

That was also the moment I began to glimpse informed compassion—not pity, not superiority, but the possibility of meeting shadows without surrendering to them.

And even then, I was not walking alone. The cloud of witnesses surrounded me—siblings of blood and siblings of spirit, ancestors of blood and ancestors of spirit. They have expanded my definition of family beyond the limits of biology or culture. Some stood right beside me in flesh and breath. Others whispered through scripture, history, or memory. Still others were strangers crossing my path just long enough to remind me that God’s withness was embodied in human touch and human words.

I would not be who I am without them. Their presence—spoken, silent, remembered, or freshly met—became part of the golden thread that bound me back to life whenever shadows tried to convince me I was alone.

Chaff as the Pillars of Supremacy

Learned helplessness and learned arrogance are not just personal distortions; they are the very pillars of supremacy. They are the husks of wheat that never nourish, yet are still consumed. Empty and weightless, they take up space where the true grain of dignity and mutuality should be feeding us.

Because they are mingled with shame and blame, these shadows blind us to themselves. We learn to say: “That’s a those people issue”—projecting arrogance outward to preserve our own innocence. Or we internalize: “I am unworthy of love, even though I experience it”—the helplessness that keeps us locked in cycles of self-doubt.

We become stuck between the arrogant idea that the shadows belong only to others and the helpless despair that we ourselves are unworthy of love. The resulting fear of loss and abandonment feeds what the world calls impostor syndrome. And impostor syndrome, at its core, is not just about performance—it is the terror that even when we are loved, we will be left.

The unholy recipe of fractured relationships is this:

• Anxiety rooted in loss.
• Fear rooted in abandonment.
• Unworthiness rooted in shame.

Together, these shadows corrode trust and intimacy, creating cycles of brokenness that, unchecked, eventually lead to despair.

At the heart of this lies a dangerous theological distortion: the false teaching that God can only be with us in perfection. This subtle and dangerous shift turns the story inside out. It whispers that God resists our presence, when in truth it is we who resist God’s presence. It whispers that God withdraws when we fail, when in truth it is our fear and shame that withdraw us from God.

Supremacy is built on this lie: that worthiness must be proven, that love must be earned, that belonging can be monopolized. And as long as we consume chaff, mistaking it for wheat, the lie holds.

But wheat remains. Wheat is always there, waiting beneath the husk, ready to be ground into bread, ready to nourish life. The invitation of informed compassion is to face the shadows of chaff in ourselves—not to despise them, but to release them—and to make room for the wheat that heals and feeds.

Encountering Informed Compassion

And yet, even there—in the silence of the nursery—I was not abandoned. Though I did not know it until decades later, God was with me. The divine withness did not erase the darkness but refused to leave me within it. That presence became my first glimpse of what I would one day call informed compassion.

Informed compassion is not pity, nor is it sentimental kindness. It is the clear-eyed recognition that both helplessness and arrogance live in us all—twisted responses to joy and sorrow, love and cruelty, connection and abandonment.

It sees that light and darkness themselves are not the problem—joy and sadness are simply the day and the night of our humanity. The problem is the shadows—hatred, contempt, disgust, fear—born of evil’s distortions. Shadows that harden into helplessness or arrogance, stealing peace and fracturing relationships.

Informed compassion names these shadows without fear. It refuses the lie of hierarchy. It restores agency where it has been buried and limits where it has been inflated. It is the molten gold thread strong enough to mend community. It is the hand that separates wheat from chaff—not to discard what is human, but to make room for what can truly nourish.

Purified Gold

When, at last, we turn toward the God who has waited for us in the darkness, we find healing offered not just for ourselves but for generations. What was once wounding iniquity—passed down like a curse—becomes, in divine hands, a blessing extended to a thousand generations.

This healing is like kintsugi: wounds once gaping are now traced with purified gold. The gold is not abstract—it is purified in the fire of lived experience, filtered through love, poured as molten mercy into the fractures of the soul. This is the wheat that nourishes after chaff has blown away. This is the molten gold thread of informed compassion.

As I am now here at my fiftieth birthday, I no longer measure success by contrived standards. I measure it by peace—peace that could only come as God continues to heal the wounds of both helplessness and arrogance.

Therefore, every day, I choose life.

I choose to live by the purified gold of informed compassion. I choose to believe that community can be mended—not by denying our shadows, but by facing them, naming them, separating wheat from chaff, and letting them be transfigured into light. I choose to embrace the day and the night—the days of joy and the nights of grief—movement and rest that lead together to life, to reconciliation, to progress as a community mended with the molten golden thread of informed compassion.

Will you choose life and honesty too?

August 24, 2025

Dear you,

As a participant and observer of life and relationships, I have long witnessed subtle dynamics in interactions that corrode the possibility of truly symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships—whether at the interpersonal or group level.

Then yesterday, on August 23, 2025, as I watched a video which randomly appeared on my timeline—a social experiment designed to demonstrate how learned helplessness develops (https://youtu.be/gFmFOmprTt0?si=zsuZ7l5rqVDBD3uh) —I finally identified the alternate state to which I have been acutely sensitive for years: learned arrogance.

🦋

What is Learned Arrogance?

Learned Arrogance

A psychological and social state in which an individual or group, consistently supported in their ability to control outcomes, unconsciously develops a belief in their superior competence.

This belief arises as one observes others experiencing learned helplessness—where agency has been eroded through systemic barriers, trauma, or artificially limited control. Over time, the supported party internalizes a sense of comparative superiority and continues to act from this belief even when evidence of equal or greater competence is present.

🦋

Key Features

• Mirror dynamic: Emerges as the opposite pole of learned helplessness.

• Reinforcement: Social structures and privileges reinforce the illusion of greater ability.

• Persistence: The mindset endures despite contradictory evidence.

• Impact: Maintains hierarchies, justifies inequity, and normalizes supremacy (e.g., classism, racism, ableism).

🦋

The Duality

• Learned helplessness: “My actions don’t matter, so I stop trying.”

• Learned arrogance: “My actions always matter, therefore I must be more capable than those who struggle.”

Both are distortions of reality, shaped and reinforced by systemic conditions.

Whole belief systems are built upon the interplay of these two premises. Their impact extends across every type of relationship in which artificially manipulated social constructs assign superiority to some and inferiority to others—whether among humans or animals.

This is the bedrock of supremacy.

🦋

Illustrative Outcomes

As Carter G. Woodson observed: “If you teach a being that they must enter only through the back door, they will build back doors so that they may enter where no back doors exist.”

The reverse also holds true: If you teach a being that only they may enter through the front door, they will regard all others who attempt entry as interlopers and will feel unconsciously compelled to correct this so-called existential error.

🦋

The Antidote: Informed Compassion

The antidote to both learned helplessness and learned arrogance is informed compassion.

Informed compassion is the psychological state in which one becomes conscious that agency itself can be either inflated or eroded by manipulated social norms—and also recognizes that these states typically co-exist within us all. It is the willingness to face both learned helplessness and learned arrogance in oneself.

From this awareness comes recognition that individuals and groups have unconsciously built multiple hierarchical structures which prevent authentic mutuality. Out of this recognition emerges the possibility of dismantling false hierarchies and building nurturing relationships that honour the dignity and agency of all.

This has been my lived experience.

The realization began when I was unintentionally neglected as I cried by parents who loved me deeply, and actively cared for me with conscious and unconscious competence in every way but one. They, doing as they had been instructed, silenced the gut instinct to pick up and stay with their crying baby. But God came to me in the darkness of aloneness, and stayed with me.

I did not become consciously aware until about five years ago, during meditation, that the presence of God was so dearly close to me as I was terrified in the darkness which seemed to separate me from all others, though they were only resting.

The consciousness of the divine with-ness of God was deepened as I accepted Their invitation to get to know Who They really are through observation and interaction with Yeshua M’shikha.

Leaning more deeply into that invitation came one evening in 2005, after I watched Blood Diamond with friends who were a part of my broadened definition of family.

We had finished the film at almost two o’clock in the morning. They went to bed, unaware that I had been hiding an increasing seething searing rage —at how cruel humans could be to each other; at how wealth, luxury, and power were built on the backs of the youngest of us, whom we should be cherishing and guiding to maturity; and on the backs of those deliberately dehumanized and diminished in the hierarchy of socio-political caste.

I was so angry that I had aged this far in life and was still not in a position to be able to do anything to significantly shift that unjust dynamic. I was headed toward the stairs, speaking outrage and contempt and disgust and disappointment to God, when as clearly as day I heard:

“But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their wings. They shall mount up on wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and shall not faint.”

My birthday was approaching. I was almost thirty years old, and by traditional markers of success I had not “arrived.”

And yet, I felt powerful and competent and capable and successful—not arrogant but content. I was living with friends who felt like family. I was nurturing and loving people every day—cooking and feeding hearts, minds, and bodies. I was engaging in dialogue that challenged systemic norms. I was observing multiple attempts to build wealth and influence in community.

And I was also arrogant. Disgusted by hierarchy and harm, I pointed it out with sarcastic eloquence meant to burn arrogance to ashes—without concern for the person who might, at worst, be consumed or, at least, scarred by my words.

Within minutes of hearing God’s voice, I bumped into the little sister, Cece, who had also been up worrying about relationships. God’s message comforted her then too. 

Although that message and the eagles featured in it has consistently been a comfort and source of encouragement throughout my life, it was only about six weeks ago that I finally understood that God was calling me to be patient, and with that patience, to also be gentle, and kind, joyful, peaceful, good, with integrity also called self-control. 

And now, as I approach my fiftieth birthday a few days short of two decades later, I cannot deeply enough express gratitude for all of you, the cloud of innumerable witnesses who have been with me through the darkness which felt as if it separated me from all others when it truly did not.

So today, exactly one week before my fiftieth birthday, when by the same contrived sociological standards I might have thought myself unsuccessful, I rest in the certainty of the power of informed compassion within me—grateful that God continues to heal the wounds of both arrogance and helplessness, which are the root of anxiety within us all.

 And I am immensely, infinitely grateful that as those wounds heal, incomprehensible, indescribable peace emerges, and everything that I do and say flows from this new kintsugi mended heart.

Therefore every day, I choose life.

So that we can finally build a world guided by informed compassion which we consciously enjoy together—will you choose to be more open to divine healing through the expert surgical excision of both learned arrogance and learned helplessness too?

With love, hope, faith, and solidarity,

Saran Lewis

Hey friend: our jobs, our norms, our financial wealth, even our passions may be our comfort zones.

But here, I am focusing on the idea of the measure of our monetary accumulation as wealth or poverty, and inviting us to focus on true fulfillment which is the nucleus of all forms of success.

Monetary poverty has been falsely defined as inferiority on the social model of hierarchy. THIS is why Jesus spoke about money so often. He was dethroning it from its position as god or the indicator of God’s favour.

In all of the MANY places that He talked about money, Jesus did everything that He could possibly do to help us to recognize that while money is a powerful tool it is not the definer of success. Nor is surplus of money what makes us God-honouring.

To be fulfilled – poor in spirit – equal to all – anti-supremacist – we must engage in life with love, and all its parts: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

None of these qualities is dependent on academic education, monetary wealth, or intellectual abilities. These things: academic education, monetary wealth and intellectual abilities are tools of life that are utilized as a part of the building of a healthy symbiotic society.

But love: and all its parts: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23) is the state of being in which we can healthily exist and co-exist, and this state is where we develop the skills to use our tools most effectively and efficiently to move our symbiotic society forward together.

Take Jesus’ conversation about money in Mark chapter 12 verses 38-44.

Let’s especially look at punishment in verse 40. Jesus’ whole life on Earth shows us that God never punishes. Not once. No matter what anyone did punishment was never imposed by Jesus.

So what is punishment?

The burdens that we are asked to cast on God is the natural burdensome shame which is the product of choosing to engage with evil. That burden is punishment. The longer we accrue it and refuse to surrender it the heavier it becomes. THIS is what Beelzebub was experiencing in Paradise Lost. It was not remorse.

I cried for him as I read this work by Milton in Jennifer Doede’s English class. I literally asked God if there was no way that He could forgive Lucifer turned Beelzebub.

God took that blame and doubt from me for yearrrrsss, until about eighteen months or so ago when I finally understood that HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN FORGIVEN.

The full weight of the burden of Beelzebub’s stubborn prideful choice to stay rebellious is entirely his doing. His choice.

The consuming fire produced by the absolute ultimate rejection of love is created by him, and humans are invited and WARNED not to be lulled into the conflagration which he has made.

We are invited to choose the healing freeing path of love, as he also has the opportunity STILL to do. If only he would choose it then he would finally have the glory that he craves, and that glory would have him ascending higher than he could ever ask, dream, or imagine, and he would enjoy it infinitely more – because it would be in harmony, in unity with everyone and everything in connection with the Source of all.

Seeing this finally freed me enough to feel real anger. This moved me towards seeking accountability from myself and from others, because FREEDOM MATTERS.

I am inviting us to release that guilt which we unconsciously carry when we refuse to repair our relational ruptures and acknowledge the pain that we have caused.

The fire of rebellion burns bright in the cosmos, but the light of love shines quietly in the temple courts of our hearts where God wants to gather with all people with equal honour.

While Beelzebub clings to power and pride,
the widow releases all she has—not in despair, but in sacred defiance of the lie that money defines worth.

She is the sermon.
She is the answer to “what is wealth?”

Yeshua M’shikha highlighted the widow as wealthy. Because she gave her all from her heart. She was God-honouring. She had done the hard work of getting to love through forgiving those who deliberately devoured her earthly possessions.

That is the value of love. That is wealth. That is fulfillment. That is the joy of being ourselves as a part of the whole.

Yeshua is not praising poverty.
He is praising the release of false wealth, the surrender of the ego, the dwell-in-Love kind of giving –
the dwell-in-Love kind of living.

The kind that is not about giving things away, but about giving oneself over—to the One who frames us in joy, truth, and belonging.

This is freedom.

#DecolonizingDivinity #NurturingKindred