Jesus did not have to die. Our Father did not require Jesus to die. Nor did He require us to die. Our Father was not so angry with us that He needed to pummel the life out of Jesus instead of pummeling the life out of us. That is not love. That is torture. Death in all its forms is torturous. Torture is not the consequence of our bad choices. Every choice comes with its natural consequence, not a contrived punishment, a natural consequence.

Jesus came to teach us how to live. Jesus came to show us the personification of His Father’s character. Jesus came to show us how to be love.

I believe that animal sacrifice was instituted to prevent humans from selfishly killing each other to seek favour from the hollow gods whom they created because of the deception of the enemy of Love. And we might ask why God never told people that animal sacrifice was an ineffective ritual. I believe that He did.

Hosea chapter 6, verses 4-7:

“O Israel and Judah, what should I do with you?” asks the Lord. “For your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight.

I sent my prophets to cut you to pieces— to slaughter you with my words, with judgments as inescapable as light.

I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings. But like Adam, you broke my covenant and betrayed my trust.
Hosea 6:4-7 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Hosea%206:4-7&version=NLT

And if He said it once, I am positive that He said it before, since, and over and over again. But we do not listen.

Therefore because He speaks to us and interacts with us in language that He knows we will understand, He allowed sacrifice for a while. And maybe knowing that the horror of the brutal murder of His innocent Son, Who perfectly lived love, would forever stand as the best example of the horror of blood sacrifice, They allowed His death to be, knowing that Jesus would be resurrected. Humanity has never simply done what we are told is best.

Truth is God’s only weapon. The truth cuts through our brokenness with divine accuracy, and allows love to be born and to mature in us, if we let it be so.

For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish, but would have everlasting life.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved.
John 3:16-17

To be honest, I don’t even know if I believe that God instituted the sacrifice of animals. This is a conversation that we shall have, maybe.

Do animals fear us? Do animals typically look at us with fear and terror, if we have not terrorized them?

Something does not compute.

May we begin to learn how to live in love. May we begin to embrace truth, truth-telling, and truth-tellers in our lives. All in love.

I cannot tell this story in any way that truly conveys… I have been trying, and I can’t find the words. So I’ll say what comes, and it will be what it is.

Almost a week ago, last Tuesday evening, my heart was full to bursting, and broken to bits. Jesus didn’t have to die. He came to live love, and because we were hell bent on proving that we were powerful enough to be perfect without His love, we killed Him.

It’s hard to understand what that feels like, if His love hasn’t literally saved your life, and driven you to show others that He would do anything to save theirs too. If we let Him. It is hard to explain what it feels like to visualize both the beauty of hearts and their depths of pain, to carry the beauty of one’s own heart and its depth of pain, while continuously trying to inadequately communicate the message that all our healing is in love, where we are perfectly seen.

So my heart was full to bursting, and broken to bits, as I saw mountains of pain overshadowing the beauty. And I felt helpless. Helpless and angry and tired because we refuse to see how easy it would be to be better together, with Love. And I vowed never to set foot in church again. Because church is a world of hurt still labouring incessantly to prove its ability to be perfect without love.

And in the midst of that pain a message came through, “Peggy is going to call you. Answer the phone.” It was good that it was a message, and good that I was being obedient to my Father who told me not to talk to anyone unless I talked with Him first. Because my immediate response would have been, “Fuck off, CHURCH!”

And thankfully, Peggy did not call. She sent a message. She is a beautiful soul, and I was not in a beautiful space. I stared at it, and only because of years of being taught to do the right thing, along with my Father’s Friend pressing me to respond in the affirmative was I able to propose that I could follow through with a call in forty-five minutes (when I might be better able to breathe and be polite). She offered to gift us tickets to Imagine Van Gogh for that coming Saturday afternoon. There is a story; the tickets had been on a long journey to us, and here we were.

And so came Saturday morning where habit was trying to press me to be in church, and Spirit said no. I had been through a gruelling heartbreaking week, and my Father needed me to take time to heal. He showed me the wound, and carried me through a beautiful hour of infant healing, built of every moment of His nurturing essence in me combined with the light of His essence in others, Bradshaw, Loyst, Lewis et al. Stage 7 of many.

We carried on to Van Gogh. Lunch in Vancouver under a tree, with enough warmth to be comfortable and enough breeze to soothe our souls. We arrived at the Convention Centre early, with time for the needed bathroom break, and enough time left to be as lost as we might be while we found our place.

We went through the motions, received directions, and then stepped into Van Gogh’s world. Using snippets of his story, written, framed, and suspended in air he was introduced, and then we moved through to the space where we could share a little bit of his heart as expressed on canvas. And there I was, in church, in connection with Van Gogh who could also visualize the beauty of life and its depths of pain. My eyes met his, and I cried, as I think he might have cried. And there I would have stayed for many more hours if my knee and event policy would have allowed.

This week, I don’t know if I can make it into the building, where people smile and pretend that all is well while burying depths of pain, and fear being real, because we have allowed pride and hollow ambitions to overshadow the beauty of being guided by the honesty of connection and the simplicity of compassion, in Love. We’ll see.

Kofi Annan said; “all the cruel and brutal things, even genocide, start with the humiliation of one individual”.

Conversely, all the lovely and wonderful things, even sainthood, start with loving one individual.

In both scenarios that individual is usually you. You choose your journey with humanity when you choose how you will treat you.

I choose love.

I had a good little chuckle on Sabbath afternoon. I’m always amazed at the impact of God’s peace and our acceptance.

Angie Gaull⁩ commented on my outfit and something else. Priya was like “Woah Mom! You got the best lighting ever!” Something was clearly visibly different.

I’d been laughing since earlier that morning at the little things that make a visible difference. I’ve worn that outfit many times before – probably as many times as a five year old wears their favourite dress or watches their favourite movie. What was different this time?

This was the end of long long back and forth discussion/argument with my Father about a thing in my life. Several years ago I asked His advice on something. He guided and I followed the guidance albeit reluctantly. I had two choices and I asked Him this: given all the factors which of these two right choices would be the best long term? Both right. He guided, but it wasn’t the choice that I would have made if left to my own devices.

For YEARS I’ve gone back and forth with this. I’ve made small adjustments to God’s guidance, and done my own thing, several times. What’s more interesting is that I celebrated the adjustment as if it was THE best way to go. SMH 🤦🏾‍♀️ humans, LOL. What humans? This is all me. 🤦🏾‍♀️

We really got into it over the last few weeks. Like I went back and forth and back and forth with Him on this. And He just took a step back and said this is now all on you.

A sister did some wrestling with this. Back to square one on my own. But the thing is that we are never really alone. Our Father never actually just steps back and throws His hands up. He had set things up so that I would have a clear picture of both outcomes, so that I could make a solid choice once and for all. And then last Sunday I finally saw why He choose as He did. He knew. He knows. He knew what would make me happiest. It wasn’t anything majorly tangible, and still the accompanying peace and satisfaction have clearly had an impact from the inside out. That’s how God is. He knows. And man alive! He is patient with us until we make a final choice. Those choices have an impact on us from the inside out – every single time. So will we choose the healthy glow of life or will we choose to keep on the hamster wheels of second rate choices?

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are, and were created.”
Revelation 4:11 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Revelation%204:11&version=KJ21

We exist because God wanted a larger family, created in His image to love. He gave us limited power to create as He does, together male and female, and individually with our unique gifts and talents. We have children from this place if we choose to. Or we create from the other places in our souls that bring beauty to the world.

He gave us the freedom to choose to love Him, and in that freedom we cannot continue to exist forever with His essence – His breath – if we choose to perpetuate evil.

His Son chose to ransom us from the perpetuator of evil with His own life. The first of us were deceived into allying with the accuser. Therefore, to free us from a life of shame and accusation, Jesus came. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17).

If we fully choose to perpetuate evil, His breath returns to Him, as it did with Lot’s wife. And though there is the anguished realization of the magnitude of our choice, that anguish is mercifully brief, and we will be consumed with the holy fire that cleanses the earth of evil.

For generations, Creator Lord Father, has communicated with us as we understand. He encourages our questions. We may not each understand as the other does, and we shall each understand as we can, until the time when the fullness of Earth’s probation is complete, and we gather as those who have chosen unity and love. In that space with open hearts we shall learn everything that we have not learned and have not understood.

You are worthy oh Lord, oh Father of Love to be worshipped and honoured.

Bringing this to this space, because it is crackling with lightning, resounding with thunder, and full of hopeful rainbows. Originally written on May 07, 2020.

From November of 2016, I chose to severely limit my interaction with news items and social media threads about the American presidency, because while I see people, I am still learning the language of love, and so I thought it best to operate as I would parent an infant, with safeguards, and limited exposure to negative influences, with a saturation of love and compassion.

And as infants do, I observed the goings on through the mirror neurons, and the conversations of the people around me.

Therefore, as infants do, when the big people were inflamed and frenzied, and trying to figure out how to rid themselves of the person whom they named as nameless, I was able to smile and coo and say hey everybody love, love, love, and sometimes I’d cry, because everyone was in so much pain that we were missing the best part of being together: love and connection.

Recently, I listened to Dr. Bonnie Henry address British Columbians, and she spoke with love and care. Then auto-play happened. There was an American COVID-19 briefing. I was horrified and immediately looked to God for reassurance.

I understand the angst. I see the impact that the leadership style or the style of maintaining and building a fan base has had on society. I have experienced the myriad conflicting emotions that flow through our collective consciousness. I see us screaming in grief and pain as our fellow humans are deeply harmed by this dysfunctional way of being.

And like infants do I wonder who will stop and offer a hug, an ear, and a place to heal, learn, and grow.

And now our brother, Ahmaud is dead, and our brothers, Gregory and Travis stand accused of killing him. Who will help the family to heal through justice and reconciliation? Who will pause from castigating the leader long enough to see that OUR way of being has been unsuccessful? Who will seek to bring change in the best way, with compassion and love?

The waiters served Joseph at his own table, and his brothers were served at a separate table. The Egyptians who ate with Joseph sat at their own table, because Egyptians despise Hebrews and refuse to eat with them. Genesis 43:32

Jacob’s children allowed jealousy to set events in motion that lead to the enslavement of their family for generations, for four hundred years. To take a step further back, Jacob allowed blatant favouritism to set in motion the jealousy that lead his sons to sell their brother into slavery.

BUT GOD!

Two generations before, our Father told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved for four hundred years. And He promised Abraham that He would rescue them, and have them leave with compensation for their years of slavery. He also promised Abraham that the enslaving nation would bear the consequences of their actions (Genesis 15:12-16)

As imperfectly perfect parents our mistakes affect our children in ways that we do not intend, and would never condone. But God promises to restore. The sins of the parents affect the children for up to four generations (You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.
Exodus 20:5-6 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Exodus%2020:5-6&version=NLT).

Consequences are not interminable. God is merciful, and He builds restoration into spaces of failure. That is a guarantee. Consequences are also certain, that is another guarantee. God has built blessings and consequences into His perfectly just system of operation. Both blessings and consequences are activated entirely by our choices.

So dear parents, let us be mindful of how we are with our children, how we are in life, for our actions set the tone of their lives. And thankfully our Wonderful Loving Father is with us through it all.

My heart bleeds and breaks for clergy. Ever since I was a child, I saw how embattled this group of people were, how isolated, how somewhat arrogant they could become, because people often worshipped them instead of worshiping God.

Israel did this to Moses, instead of walking together to the mountain to listen to God’s voice for themselves, they delegated Moses, who had weaknesses and struggles just like they all did. And soon they began to elevate Moses’ ways over God’s.

Somewhere along the way, clergy began to be trained to teach of this vengeful genie god, fashioned after Moses’ error. For thousands of years, Moses’ error has plagued us. And now, many of our loving leaders who are called to guide to love, have turned to worship themselves, in the face of the truth of the false genie god. They are losing faith, thankfully, in this false god, and because they have been taught that the misconception in which they have been solidly trained is truth, they often stop short of looking for the truth of I AM, Who Is Love, and they worship themselves as they have been worshipped. They become humanists.

Several years ago, I sat with a fellow mom, among a group of seminarians, in a workshop taught by a retired theologian with a passion for building community in small groups. I cannot recall his name. He took us out of theory into practice as he guided us through a simulated small group Bible study using John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman taken in adultery, as the focus.

We read through the passage, and we listened to each person speak of the light that they had gleaned as they listened to or read that story in scripture. I find the whys and the underlying original cultural context and language, the hermeneutics of the stories, fascinating. It was delightful to listen to these fresh excited seminarians discuss their newly gained knowledge, and listen to them each take a turn to use that knowledge to unpack the treasure buried in the Word.

Then one of them, a fine young brother, looked around at the sister momma and me, and said “It must be so hard for you to sit here among a group of seminarians”. I smiled. His slightly inflated ego ran headlong into my slightly bruised ego, but thankfully I was in the thick of an incredible journey of love with the I AMs, so I smiled.

The facilitator then asked me if I had anything to contribute from our reading. I shared that for the first time, I noted that Jesus allowed all the accusers the opportunity to speak, and He listened without interruption, while positioning Himself to be with the woman in a place of both support and protection. I shared that for the first time I saw how He cared for the hearts of everyone involved, speaking truth quietly, clearly, and closely to every heart while protecting them. The facilitator noted that in all his years of study he had never seen that. Neither had I. The Spirit of God, present with us in our common passion to see deeper truth, had revealed that to us.

So, dear clergy, as you delve into the Word through the lens of the ancient Hebrew and Greek, be humbly grateful for the role that you play in bringing light to the human search for the Redeemer. Be certain that you guide your congregants to close personal interaction with the Spirit of God, and may we together crush the idol of ego, as we look with gratitude to the God of all-encompassing love.

Did Moses lose his inheritance because he did not enter Canaan, if he gained heaven? Let God show us our boundaries so that we do not carry burdens that we cannot and were not meant to carry. It seems that Moses’ ways, when he repeatedly took matters into his own hands, created more harm than good. Jesus references this habit in Matthew 19, where he speaks of Moses instituting divorce.

Moses struggled with carrying the unbalanced weight of outcome on his back. He killed an Egyptian and then had to run for his life, because he thought that he could save Israel in his time, his way. After God freed them His way, Moses was killing himself with the burden of single handed leadership. He could not naturally delegate authority, and release outcome. Were it not for his father-in-law, Jethro, Moses would have worked himself into an earlier grave.

In Exodus 32:27-29, did Moses lie to the people? Did he again take matters into his own hands, and order people killed? Did he then congratulate the murderous men by telling them that they had ordained themselves for God, when God had not given them any command to kill anyone?

Did Moses convince the people that God had sanctioned his bloodbath? When he went back to God piously offering to sacrifice himself, God told him that people’s personal choices created their consequences.

Back in Exodus 23:20-32, God told the people that He would create panic among those who had been squatting on Abraham’s land for generations, so that they would leave before Israel arrived. He told Israel to destroy the gods – not the people. Was the Israelite practice of genocide created because of Moses’ lie?

In Genesis 32:35, we read of the consequences that the people activated because of their choice. This seemed to be the natural consequence that God built into the good/evil ways of being. So did Moses lie?

When Moses finally struck the rock instead of speaking to it, as God had told him, again using self-directed violence instead of following God’s way, God told Moses that he would not be able to go into the Promised Land. Would Moses have created more bloodshed than he had already built into Israelite culture if he had been allowed to go into Canaan?

Do we see how well-intentioned spiritual leaders, who have been genuinely called and equipped to lead, can create such a mess by doing things their way instead of God’s way?

And yet, Moses gained heaven. Look at God’s amazing grace. He sees beyond our actions to our hearts. What amazing grace.

Jesus came to show us God’s way of being: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. John 3:17.

And as they crucified Him, He looked with love at them all, and He said “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”.

Seek God’s ways like the Baereans; verify always whether the things that you are taught are truly His ways. Acts 17:11

God’s way is love: 1 Corinthians 13.

“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace…” Amanda Gorman.

Throughout these last four years I’ve repeatedly said that I am incredibly grateful for the term of the 45th president of the United States. Why? This was the minor explosion that fully exposed the intensely destructive heat of hatred in the core of the nation. Trump was not the issue, he was thankfully the spewing rock that signalled the lurking danger of the eruption of hidden festered hatred. We should be grateful that we can no longer mask the mess; it was poisonous, painful.

During President and Mrs. Obama’s eight years of service to their country as President and First Lady, the monstrous volcano of racism began to publicly rumble at about a level 2, code yellow, with cowardly attacks of chicken and watermelon derision, the constant birth certificate requests spearheaded by the Manhattan real estate tycoon who could do a better job, and repeated loads of sulphuric vitriol directed at the First Family. The sanctioned racially motivated attacks on Michelle Obama during their presidential campaign were unconscionable and unrelenting. Mount Bigotry was no longer just comfortably poisoning the daily lives of BIPOCs with deadly silence. We knew that quiet did not mean peace. Up till then we had been choking on the fumes. It was stealing our oxygen. We could not collectively breathe. And our panicked eyes and muted screams were being ignored.

Then, on June 16, 2015 there were warning bells that signalled Mount Bigotry’s possible escalation to level orange. Instead of carefully assessing the danger, and collaborating with the people on how to get to safety together, the two powers began to squabble for supremacy, drawing the masses into their unhealthy ruckus with rhetoric designed to polarize, designed to inflame emotions that bypassed the seat of reason, that eliminated the need for accountability and which settled instead for mind-numbing, baudy entertainment.

And we continued to gasp for breath, though sometimes they would pull one of us out to the surface where the air was cleaner, and they would direct the controllers of the bellows that pumped that sulphuric vitriol into our atmosphere to move less vigorously in the environs of that one, so that they could stand as the bait of hope, knowing full well that there was no real intention of bringing us all to the surface to fill our lungs with breath, the essence of life. And while they breathed, we still gasped for breath.

Poor funding of schools for us by us. Quiet.
Affirmative action with many left behind. Quiet.
Integration into a pool of hatred. Quiet. Eventually.
Planned parenthood. Quiet.
Food deserts. Quiet.
Policies that splinter our families through child protection and prison. Quiet. Saviour. Quiet.
Cheap labour through undocumented immigration. Quiet.

Quiet is not always peace.

And so the hazard level continued to rise, until it finally hit level orange. The dwelling of a black family in the White House interrupted the unholy quiet, the temperature began to rise. Imminent eruption. And the people blamed the hazard level. Blame the orange.

I’ve listened to Mrs. Obama lament the fact that many black people did not vote in the 2016 election. I don’t think she understands how those eight years of attacks on her family dampened hope. Trayvon, Tamir, Michael, Sandra, worshippers in Charleston, Philando, shot dead. And amidst all of that crushing weight, no candidate for leadership spoke hope, they incited hatred and division, deplorables and losers. So heavy. So hot. So suffocating.

And now. Now again, someone has begun to speak of hope. And even though they are speaking of hope, make no mistake, this change, this shifting of the orange level downwards was wrought by people like Stacey Abrams who guided black, indigenous, and other people of colour out of harm’s way, who empowered us to walk ourselves out of harm’s way. Another Moses risen.

We’re not gasping anymore. We are standing. And if we who are now standing, can combine strengths with those who have seen how close they came to a destructive hate-filled explosion, we can eventually lift voices together in loud celebrations of real love and unity. Then we will know peace.