This message filled my heart on Wednesday. I recorded it then, and I’m sharing it with you now.

Have you “Marie Kondo’d” your heart today? Seriously, fam. It’s important that we declutter our hearts, because as my old friendly acquaintance Solomon says, our hearts determine the course of our lives. A heart that is full of the toxic energy that is the by-product of the hustle for worthiness never has enough room for the fuel of joy which allows us to enlarge our territory of love as we focus on our appreciations instead of fighting to defend or meet expectations.

In my journey through life I have found that pseudo-friendships tend to create the most clutter. And so I have had to learn how to know the difference between people who are friendly and those who are my friends, because friendships refresh your soul, and you are always perfectly enough for your friends.

“Just as lotions and fragrance give sensual delight, a sweet friendship refreshes the soul. Don’t leave your friends or your parents’ friends and run home to your family when things get rough; Better a nearby friend than a distant family.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭27:9-10‬ ‭MSG‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/97/pro.27.9-10.MSG

“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭4:23‬ ‭NLT‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/116/pro.4.23.NLT

#YouAreEnough

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who play small and either make clowns or emotionless scholars of themselves so that they can survive in a white patriarchal world.

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who have too often turned their self-loathing about being unable to stand up for their women, while they were whipped, raped, or staring at the possibility of a literal or figurative lynching, women whom they have historically been unable to defend.

Let’s dive into the conversation about emasculated Afrocentric men who choose relationships with Caucasian women over Afrocentric women at whom they sneer, and whom they insultingly call loud with bad attitudes, because Afrocentric women have had to develop the strength to tend to and protect their wounded boys and men in a deliberately racist world designed to brutally subjugate and disempower them.

Let’s talk about all that and hear Sister Tiffany Haddish say: “When I saw a Black man stand up for his wife. That meant so much to me,”…“As a woman, who has been unprotected, for someone to say like, ‘Keep my wife’s name out your mouth, leave my wife alone,’ that’s what your husband is supposed to do, right? Protect you. And that meant the world to me. And maybe the world might not like how it went down, but for me, it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”

Was the slap beautiful? No. The hope of support was the very beautiful thing.

Let’s dive into the conversation about Afrocentric women who refuse to be infantilized and stereotyped, and who have begun to call our men out to stand for us as women, as we have stood for them.

Having been unable to defend his own mother from his self-loathing father, and having digested Queen Oracene’s pain as she called out King Richard for his failure to acknowledge her significance as a cornerstone in building the Williams family legacy, Will Smith’s well of pain at being the shrinking Afrocentric male who clowns or who over intellectualizes to survive overflowed as he saw yet another broken Afrocentric man insult his queen, and especially about that beautiful crown of hair which has been another source of Afrocentric female pain.

Hopefully someone will prominently position that slap in its proper place so that it will have the incisive impact that it needs to have to effect change.

Look at that slap as the whips with which Jesus created space in the temple for inclusion. Own and use anger as it was meant to be used, to create change – without sin (Ephesians 4:26).

“I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know, to do what we do, you’ve got to be able to take abuse. You got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business, you’ve got to be able to have people disrespecting you, and you’ve got to smile, you’ve got to pretend like that’s OK.”

Nope. Nope my brother you do NOT need to pretend that it is okay. Pretending is detrimental to your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Wake up calls live in truth. Faithful is the slap of a friend, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Now I don’t know that it needed to be an actual box in the face like you delivered tonight, and I surely understand why you delivered a solid wake up call to Chris Rock’s foolish mouth.

The thing is that this slap was the boiling over of all the pent up rage that you carry from making the privileged people laugh so that they’re comfortable with your “blackness”. Let that shit go brother. Stop trying to make them laugh so that you can be in the same room with them. Use your words. Speak the truth. And let a few rip like King Richard did when they tried to use him for their personal gain. No resentment. No bitterness. All love and truth.

This isn’t the devil trying to get you when you’re on top, like Denzel said. This is your soul trying to find the true freedom that boils in your heart.

Your anger is the perfect response to sitting in a room full to the brim with toxic positivity. Next time deliver a more solid verbal slap full of truth. I am here for that.

Last night’s incident is the compounding effect of being repeatedly infantilized and made to feel helpless in a system where Will Smith also felt that to survive he had to engage with toxic positivity – keep them laughing he said, because there is no racism when a person is laughing. Inaction as a child and inaction throughout adulthood. Being Richard Williams broke through that shell of toxicity. It was a beautiful thing. Though he should have used words, that slap hopefully jolted North America awake!

And this is why I will continue to say do not piss on my head, and try to convince me that it is rain. I do not need an umbrella, you need to aim at the toilet. However, I will protect myself with God’s healing love while calling you out on your piss!

Chris Rock took the slap, that I hope shook every single one of us out of the stupor of toxic positivity.

These are some of the personal experiences that helped me to wake up and live in reality in that agonizing battle to stay in love

1. Wondering why someone as intelligent as I am not working for YOU when I am already working for myself
2. Seeing Afrocentric and BIPOC minds and bodies used to diversify your personal and professional portfolios on the surface, so that you can access pseudo-progressive mental, social, and economic profit
3. Experiencing and watching Afrocentric and BIPOC being gaslit with toxic unaddressed unconscious racism and classism, by being told that we are defensive while you continue to piss on us with your privilege
4. Forcing us to either continually stop to use our already stretched energy to filter your toxicity through healing lenses to integrate our experiences as love, or
5. Forcing us to pretend that all is well while we assimilate your pure toxicity into our systems

Hopefully Will Smith, given the gift of having his toxic positivity broken open by Richard Williams, shook every single unawakened soul awake to reality last night which was indeed the “greatest night ever in television”.

Where do we go from here? I am commending your heart into God’s hands so that you can begin the exodus that will finally free love. And I know that He will help you to figure out why you were able to slap Chris, while making yourself a clown in other spaces.

I feel deep gratitude, Brother Will, that your anger in this moment was stronger than your initial toxic smile. I am sending you love as you continue to heal in support of your calling to be the River that leads your people to freedom.

God has given us NOTHING but angels to guide us back to being whom we really are! Wake up!

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” James Baldwin

My very first teachers were my parents, James and Adamae Lewis. Their whole life was based on transgression in love and truth. My parents, especially Mommy, were unafraid to live truth and love rather than tradition. God honoured this way of being by usually speaking to her first whenever He had a message for our family. Our Father clearly flouted tradition for honour in love, because He knew what no one else did: Mommy had long been fighting the agonizing battle to stay in love that Jesus also fought, and she did that with grace, often alone, repeatedly, and sometimes without grace, and I know this because not only did I experience it, but I do the same thing. It must have been difficult to feel somewhat invisible in that fight, but God honours while history absolves (her recent words that mean a huge deal to me this morning as God has opened those words up to me).

I love my parents and their strong love, their example of living for truth as best they could rather than for tradition. And I especially honour Mommy for her warrior’s heart of love. Piglet ask Sow wa mek it snout so long. Sow say “When you come you will see”. I am beginning to see. Thank you for your legacy.

Thank you to other teachers in my life for sharing in love. My favourite teachers are those who keep challenging us to learn how to transgress so that love can grow in truth. This has been your lifelong work, Teacher Marian (Susie) Carr, Dr. Keith Yearwood, Jennifer Doede. I pray that as the fire of love grows in you the strengthening flame will continue to ignite love in your students and everyone with whom you interact. And so truth in love will change this world.

I pray that God will remove the scales off of our eyes so that we may see the church as He sees it, and as He does may our giftings and its impact for the growth of love stir like a wildfire in our hearts. I pray that this mind will be in us as it was in Christ Jesus.

⁵ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

⁷ But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

⁸ And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

⁹ Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

¹⁰ That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

¹¹ And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May our spiritual leaders teach the church to transgress in love, as Jesus did, with truth instead of being prisoner to tradition.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%202%3A5-11&version=KJV&interface=amp

Teaching To Transgress by Bell Hooks. https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=bell+hooks+teaching+to+transgress&adgrpid=62652304793&gclid=CjwKCAjwrfCRBhAXEiwAnkmKmSfoH0BvJxg8AtgKo8hplTFhLFHtQL9V8w6J-IlJh2ywWLX-OfiqbRoCcqkQAvD_BwE&hvadid=310046534875&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9001525&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=17671030615687548363&hvtargid=kwd-301784804581&hydadcr=8741_9621882&tag=h0a61-20&ref=pd_sl_9aph1iixek_e

I have known that there is a story, but I did not know how to tell it. It’s so big. There’s so much. It’s wonderful and painful.    For many years I’ve struggled with this beautiful burden on my heart. I have lived a life of thunderstorms and rainbows. I have experienced the light and the dark of this world, brilliantly, from the safety of my Heavenly Father’s hands.  And I am certain that my telling will guide someone else to light, because others’ telling has guided me to light. How do I tell it though, while keeping safe myself, as well as these loved ones, whom I cherish?

Why do I even worry about our safety? I worry, because I know that we are all imperfect and delightfully perfect at once. I know that we all desire to be known, to be seen, to be loved. And I know our deepest fear is that someone hearing our truth will grasp us by the most delicate parts of our being, our weaknesses, our secret hopes, our shame, and will unforgivingly dash us to pieces. We worry because that worry is real, and I promise you now, as I promised you before, LOVE WINS. It will all be okay.

“I am always good”. Those seemed to be impossible words. How? Nothing and nobody is always good. And so I did what I do, resolutely assert my truth. If you asked me how I was doing, I would respond with “Mostly good. I’m doing my best.” And as I write this I can see my Father fondly smiling at me with a little grin on His face. He knows that His girl is resolute with a tinge of stubbornness. We’re working it out.

https://youtu.be/Dnl9ZvrM_yQ

Anyway, as often happens when I pick up a writing instrument truth begins to flow. Several years prior as I sat in worship one morning, and read Peter’s thoughts on authority the Spirit of God told me that I needed to apologize to Pastor Dave, not for being “mostly good” but for holding disrespect in my heart. He reminded me that we all have highs and lows, and He further told me that He never allowed me to see anyone to hold it against them, but to know how to pray for them – how to come in agreement with them before the King of Kings for healing and growth. And so I apologized. Alpha Adia needed to do that, so that I could see more clearly and love more dearly.

Mostly good 😅. Dudes I fought with that little sentence for so long, and then on the day that I sat with a card, pen in hand, trying to hear what my heart really wanted to say as he was going into surgery, the truth came to me: we are always good because we were created that way. And when God had completed His work of creating humanity He said it was very good. Not just good, but very good. Always and forever good. And even though life’s troubles and trials might make a mess of our royal robes, our Father runs continuously to cover us with His love because we are still, always and forever very good. I wrote that, and I commended all into the Father’s hands so that many many many more people would come to know that they were also always very good.

Why the struggle though? Because years before I had seen a vision of everything burning to the ground as love grew cold. That hurt my heart in conjunction with the same spirit that lead Noah to curse Canaan. Thoughts spoken were causing harm. Unconsciously perhaps, and in reality all the same.

As I saw I began to listen to God tell me that I did not see to hold in contempt, but always so that I would know how to pray. And as I prayed love began to heal the hurt. As I healed, I would encounter people who were hurting too, and I could hear them and guide them to pray too. No contempt only love.

I believed in the vision. I invested in the vision. The ark was built to hold space for healing and restoration of humanity on Earth as it is in heaven. I believed in the love that designed and called Noah to build the ark, and I believed in that for us too, and so in alignment with God’s heart I brought people to the ark, even as I worried about our safety.

BUT GOD held the ark, and all its occupants in His hands, and He didn’t accidentally select Noah to build it. Just so with us.

As 2020 unfolded I was proud of our Noah for holding the vision of building this ark. CIV was a lifesaving space for many in our community, and still there was the pain. If we wanted to heal it could only happen with truth. And friends as we prayed God did that too. He brought healing through truth telling, even though that did not happen in the traditional church setting.

https://youtu.be/Ci-

And so I did the things that God showed me to do and watched Him literally surround me with His beautiful waters

as I engaged for growth and healing.

https://youtu.be/a0WRd4QTTC0

Friends as we prayed together and read through the Bible in Route 66, I saw how God’s held us all in His hands, how He wants freedom and renewal for us in truth not in tradition. While we were hurting, working, healing and praying, God was opening the doors of the ark so that there could be renewal.

https://youtu.be/8anjc5QCuNk

And here we are in this season of renewal. Just like Noah we have held space for healing, and like Noah we have also sometimes caused harm. Yes, we. Those beams have often blocked our eyes, knocking others out while we squint at our neighbour’s dust. We have sometimes betrayed Jesus and each other. But better days are here if we allow Him to work on upgrading our status to: healed in truth and reconciliation.

https://youtu.be/7HPwgLH9ql0

We worship together, we work together, we build together, we live in renewal together because of whom God is. We look each other in the face so that we can see the image of God reflected in each other and in ourselves, because we are always good, created for love. We examine our hearts with Him and seek healing and renewal of our vision in His hands. We must make a choice. Do we go forward together, we and our houses serving the Lord in love, in alignment with His will, or will we hide from healing in shame? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua+24%3A15&version=NLT

As for me and my house we will serve the Lord, because of Whom He is: Love.

https://youtu.be/MyUMFZb2kfI

May we find our identity in Him.

https://youtu.be/SoeOcyVnNKs

Victory is ours. May we dance in renewal, as we get up off our knees and do the work in Jesus name.

https://youtu.be/EdZWMKxJpDc

If you watch the game closely enough, through the Master’s eyes you will see. You won’t see everything, but you will see enough to know what matters most.

If 40 people wrote a book about their interaction with your daddy, inspired by his deep investment of love in their lives, none of those 40 would have a complete understanding of who your daddy really is. But someone who read through the entire book, would see his character, and understand his values. He believed in love, freedom, and unity, and because he travelled widely, he understood that because of culture and tradition, love, freedom, and unity would be understood differently in different places. So in each place, he spoke love, freedom, and unity in language that the people understood.

But some people tend to be greedy, and want control of truth to amass wealth and power. So they picked one single story, and tried to convince everyone that your daddy, who was the epitome of love, is this one thing. And then they figure out that to build wealth and power they must create a system that has just enough of your daddy’s ways of being, combined with their own cleverly designed psychological, spiritual, and physical traps to keep generations of the yearning masses focused on their single story.

So your daddy and your brother decide that your brother, who is the spitting image of your daddy, in character, will come in person to live with the people so that they can see and hear the fullness of all the stories for themselves.

All your daddy really wants is to have the people see the great value of love, freedom, and unity.

The power seekers cannot abide the thought of losing their power and wealth. They see that if pure truth is told their single stories will crumble. They do not see that they will gain love, freedom, and unity. They only see their lost power. And so they conspire to kill your brother, to maintain control of their wealth and power. They do not care that the masses will lose out on the great treasures of love, freedom, and unity.

But because your daddy is the epitome of love, there will always be those people who are drawn to the whole book, the full story. They see how his love continues in the same pattern. He speaks to people in the way that they understand. He speaks through their cultures and traditions, and as has always been the case, his love, freedom, and unity eventually help the people to shed traditions that do not build love, freedom, and unity.

Those who grasped for wealth and power conspire to do everything possible to keep focus off of the whole story. Some people see some things, because your daddy’s love is such that no person is ever blind, unless they choose not to see. They see that there is conspiracy. But instead of focusing on the whole story, they become consumed with conspiracy, and they begin to teach that conspiracy is everything. They too seek power, the power of being the truth-tellers, of their incomplete stories. They wish to highlight the importance of freedom, but they forget, or choose to ignore, love and unity.

Through all of this, your daddy is still hoping that more people will be drawn to the whole book, so that more will be willing to share his deepest desire for all to reap the benefits of living in love, freedom, and unity.

And so little sister has accepted Daddy’s invitation to tell the stories more fully: truth with love and unity. Buckle in, friends. Love is about to take off into the darkness; love and truth hand in hand in a race against time, and just in case you missed Sister’s favourite spoiler here it is again: LOVE WINS.

You ready? Let’s fly. Hold on to your hats, because LOVE WINS.

Loving sometimes means fighting to stay in love with the kind of agony with which Jesus fought in the garden, where He was in such deep mental and emotional anguish that He sweat drops of blood.

I have fought with that kind of anguish to stay at Church in the Valley from 2009 to now. And every time that I have asked God for permission to leave, He has told me that it is my choice but that it would not be the best choice.

For all of these years, He has helped me to worship, serve, and love where I have been hurt, and He has brought healing and fulfillment to me and to those who were instrumental in that pain. He guided me to my healers, most of whom were not in what we call church. All were a part of the real church, the family of humans with whom we share life in this realm.

He has especially helped me to check the beam in my own eyes that also cause others pain.

He has protected my children by guiding me to different places of safety, where they were surrounded by people who really saw them, while the people in the church did their best. And as I have healed and matured He has shown me how to protect them, and how to honour their freedom as they choose their healing path.

And as I have matured in healing and freedom, He has shown me that I go to church to see the face of God reflected in every human being there, and especially in the faces of those whom I cannot stand, as my big sister Brené says; and God threw in a little extra sauce one morning a few weeks ago when He reminded me that there are also some whom cannot stand me 😂. Come on now – what’s not to love? 🤷🏾‍♀️

Church is a place of complex unity and love that is absolutely perfect and beautifully reflects our Father’s love for ALL of us.

May we live in the renewal of the anguish of love with the certainty that God will send angels to minister to us just as He did for Jesus.

So if you struggle today know that our Father is with you in this very agonizing fight to stay in love. Look at the faces of all and see God reflected in you and also in them.

The vision of God’s glory, and the representation of unity in the Spirit is such a beautiful one. I love reading these passages in Ezekiel and Revelation that describe the depth of complex beauty that is unity in the Spirit. We move as one in the Father’s glory when we live according to His Spirit in us. No confusion, only glorious complex oneness.

He wants us to open to Him, so that His mark of love can be imprinted on our minds. And then we will have unity when we can see that our ways are not God’s ways, and allow Him to set us free and set us in motion in love – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. When we can see each other through these lenses, and receive everything as a gift that will bear the fruit of love if we allow God to help us see through the outer layers, there will be unity in the Spirit.

Ask God to help us to see the gift of love in everything, and how to get to that gift.

When Jesus went into the temple with a whip, He harmed no one, but He did cause them brief discomfort. The end result was that the temple was cleared, and the space was open to be filled with the excluded who needed space to be included.

May we welcome and recognize these moments of brief discomfort, so that we can allow the Spirit to open up space for inclusion and unity. For all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Father open our hearts for Your message that creates space for unity and inclusion – love.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1&version=NLT

I have said this before in different ways and I am saying it plainly now:

You do not love people of colour if you will not look at yourself and actively challenge the racism embedded in your psyche by generations of deliberate oppression. You do not truly love your husband, wife, bi-racial child, adopted child, friends, or friendly acquaintances of colour, because you are more willing to continue to cause us harm than you are willing to do the uncomfortable work of self-reflection and change.

You prefer to try to force us to suppress and mask our pain than to do your own work.

That is not love. That is selfish pride.

Meanwhile, people of colour either choose to do our work, to be able to bear the weight of conscious and unconscious racism, or we choose to pretend that conscious and unconscious racism does not exist, and so harm ourselves with unaddressed depression and anxiety that presents in both high and low functioning ways.

No flowery language.

You do not love us, you cannot see us, you do not know us, if you refuse to do the work of actively addressing the conscious and unconscious racism that is embedded in your psyche from generations of deliberately planned systemic oppression.

“What you resist will persist”. You either “name it and tame it”, or allow it to wildly wreak havoc. You choose. I choose. We choose.

And PSA: this applies to all areas of our life and history. We either look it in the face, and handle the truth of it, or we create a legacy of pain that bears fruit in a myriad war-ish ways.

Well, I guess I do need an umbrella. His banner over me is love. Love. Wild, barefoot, and free.

I think that if you have read this far you may feel frustrated, angry, accused, shame… if you do then it means that I, who also feel and have felt frustration, anger, sadness, accused, shame, in this relationship between us fellow human, might have missed the mark in communication. What I am saying, is that love is not seen and known when systemic poison continues to infect our relationships. That poison is killing us. We are losing each other. The only way to purge the system of poison is for each of us to acknowledge the poison and choose to purge it from us, because we are the system – together we are the system, and our life depends on us.

So please, aim that poison at the toilet, flush it, and stop pouring it on my head. In the meantime, I will shield myself as best I can with the umbrella of love, because I want to stay in relationship with you, who at the core are also wild, barefoot, and free. Innocent.

So in my morning Bible reading I read wherever the Spirit guides – one book at a time. Luke was on repeat, because there was a lot that I needed to mine for that is relevant to my journey. We’ve been through a few different books with breaks of varying lengths in between. For the last week or so, we’ve been through the minor prophets in no particular order.

This morning it was clearly Obadiah. I usually share it after I’ve read it, and say something in the caption. Today, I shared it as soon as I heard, along with the song of the morning, and then continued to write the other things that were on my heart.

But there was this pressing call to read Obadiah before I left, not an alarming call, but an anticipatory frequent reminder. I was pushing it for time, and one of my community pick up kiddos requested a shift in the schedule, so that pushed time even more, because everyone needs a win with some understanding, and if we can make it happen why not do it.

Still there was that anticipatory request to just stop and read before I left.

Finally I sat to read – felt a real closeness with my Father and His assurances and reassurances. Had a mini moment of tears.

But guys when I got to the last page of Obadiah, I could totally feel Their joy for me in the room and all around me. There were butterflies on the page! It was so cool. I fully revelled in it. These aren’t small things. They’re the things that let me know how dearly I am known – and loved.

PS. My little buddy made a request, and everyone else in our morning circle pivoted to create the possibility that he needed. If you haven’t met the kids of the “snowflake” generations I invite you to take the time to do so. I was the only one who knew his story, but when the call went out everybody recreated reality and everybody won – easy. Go check out the snowflakes. They are individually unique, perfectly beautiful, and when they get together they give us the opportunity to pause and appreciate the glorious wonder of life – if we want to.