The majority of Caucasian Canadians like to tell themselves that racism, domination, and oppression against Indigenous and Afrocentric people is an American problem. Until you can look yourselves in the face, and acknowledge the truth, there will always be a veiled darkness that prevents you from being in the true process of transformation. You’ll be stuck as caterpillars masquerading as butterflies.
Just prior to Canada Day in 2021 children spoke to you from the grave – two hundred and fifteen dead children called you to honesty, so you could not celebrate reaching colonial goals without being aware that you celebrate brutally won victories, pyrrhic ones.
For many decades I and others have been calling you to look at where the legacy of those dead children have taken you.
For decades, Indigenous and Afrocentric people have been speaking and you have refused to really listen.
Now, today, thousands of living children, most of them Indigenous, traumatized by inept child protection systems and apathetic communities are crying out for you to look at what your systems, your ways of being have done to them. And you are refusing to look. Until you see them, and lift that veil of darkness you will never be able to see your true self.
The sad thing, or maybe just the reality, is that you won’t really give a damn until your children are the ones screaming to be seen and heard. And we know this, because you’ve demonstrated just that by creating screaming convoys and flocking together and labelling “the others” covidiots in this season, because you are afraid for YOUR life, freedom, and power.
And that’s okay. Because freedom always comes. The sad fact is that oppressors can only hope that those whom they oppress with complicit silence or active persecution will not seek vengeance when in the fullness of time they win their freedom.
You can only hope that one awakened to love leads the people to freedom, unity, and reconciliation, instead of one consumed by hate who will orchestrate a bloodbath.
You’ll function as caterpillars with your version of butterfly ways. I hope that one day you will allow the veil to be lifted so that you can become real butterflies with butterfly hearts and ways. Because although love will eventually ultimately win, your choices now determine whether that journey will be fraught with pain or alive with joy.
I said, “okay God, I’m going to church”, and He activated my premium subscription in training to practice what I believe. If you believe it, you gotta live it.
I got teary angry and walked out and came back three times, with God reminding me why I was there.
Because I don’t go to church to learn what I am supposed to believe. The Spirit of God takes care of that in a plethora of ways through interaction with all people as I fully live in the real world.
Church for me is an exercise in tolerance and unity, where the singing is great, we can learn to do meaningful service projects together, and I can ideally say both “right on dude I’m with you on that” AND “are you serious what the fuck are you saying” and wait to hear. For that last bit God and my teacher, David, are working on getting me to inhale/exhale and say “Tell me more”.
So I am going to sit here and inhale – exhale, fellow human, and remember that interacting with other people in church is about choosing to listen, knowing when to gracefully exit before rupturing relationship with strong emotive words, and knowing when to call a viper a whited sepulchre viper. Because that’s what Jesus did.
And because I went to church, I have some thoughts to share.
This is not the most divided that Canada has ever been. Indigenous and other people who are not Caucasian have been advocating for equity for generations. There has been a massive imbalance in your favour.
When movement started being made toward equity, you used your platform to complain about how your children would suffer in this more equitable world, since they might no longer have the benefit of oppression on their sides (but I don’t think you realized that this is what you were saying). What you actually said is that hiring requirements were being dumbed down to give people of colour an opportunity to generate income, and this was unfair to your better educated children. See a problem there?
You suggested that if people of so-called colour wanted you to support us that we should probably be nicer to you, because we hurt your feelings by speaking candid truth, and so you were likely to stomp away from us, and refuse to help us at all.
So, this is not the most divided that Canada has ever been. This is the most divided that Caucasians in Canada have ever been. Because the majority of you are worried about losing your life, your agency, and your money, whether you are vaccinated, unvaccinated, for mandates, or against mandates. The problem is that all of you are worried about losing your life, your agency, and your money, and mandates are the scapegoats that you are using to avoid looking more closely at what really scares you.
Do you hear the rest of us now?
That listening part is where unity begins. People know that they are loved, when they know that they are seen and heard, and believed. That’s how Jesus loved. The loaves and fishes were incidentals. The oil changes and homes repaired are incidentals. They are the scapegoats that allow you to look away from the children and families who need to be seen, heard, and believed.
Jesus went to find the woman at the well, sent pigs careening over a cliff, challenged all the unjust ways of all humanity in His parables and His daily life. So He definitely took a side, the side of love and justice for all humanity, and He was crucified for it.
The thing that Jesus resolutely refused to do was to participate in useless nationalism. Because nationalism was a scapegoat and He was not here for that.
This is my last word ever, I think, on church and its ways of being. I hoped to be able to work with the people who gather each week and say that we gather as a family. Clearly that is not to be. Because if we are family, we are a hella dysfunctional family, who is always focused on how nice our house is, and who have made this house which is supposed to be a house of love and prayer and unity, a marketplace where we need to focus on paying the bills to maintain its beauty. Jesus wasn’t here for that either.
In fact, God specifically said that He didn’t need a house. He knew what the house would become. I realized that this was likely so, as I read the temple story in the Old Testament books of history. Geeky Christian breaks this down well, here: (https://geekychristian.com/evidence-the-temple-was-not-gods-will/ ) God knew that the wise one who would build it would use forced labour (1 Kings 9:15 – The Bible), and would have a bloodbath flowing across its floors supposedly in His honour (1 Kings 8:5 – The Bible) . And He stayed around for it, because He recognized that this husk of a marketplace was the best that humanity could do, and it would carry the seed of His glory. We needed the seed, not the marketplace. And we still haven’t learned that.
Anyway, this is my last and final word ever, I think, on church. I am now focusing on finding other incompetent people like me who will let the Spirit of God guide us in unity to learn how to see, hear, and believe people so that we can serve them in love. I think that’s what Jesus did, and I am here for it.
There has been a lot on my mind this week, and so this video is a bit longer than usual. I promised Leah that I would do a regular Saturday post, and so far I’ve been able to do it. We’ll see… I was about to say that we’ll see how long this lasts, and I am choosing to reshape that thought. I am committing to posting whatever is on my heart. I’m not committing to a post of a specific length, or promising to only show certain emotions. I will show up as myself, with care and consideration for you too, every Saturday.
This week my heart was focused on how to continue to be the truth of being enough, even in the middle of painful and challenging circumstances. Thankfully, early on Saturday/Sabbath morning, my Father, our Father reminded me that because He is all, He will be everything, and He will hold me while I find my footing in hard places. And so I share from that place in my heart bits of my story, a little of the story of melanated (containing higher concentrations of the skin pigment melanin) Afrocentric people as we hold to the hope of the dream of unity, on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, and I look at some hard parts of the ancient story of Esther, orphaned Jew who became Queen of Persia and also of Joseph, son of Jacob.
What I do not say in the video, but will say here, is that as my best friend, Tina, who is Caucasian, and I, were reflecting on the black dog incident, she said that while she wondered if she had heard what she thought she heard that Caucasian man say, she saw several emotions flash across my face so quickly that she wasn’t sure if she had indeed seen them. And further, she thought, as I confirmed what she saw, that someone who did not know me, as she does, would never have seen that microsecond internal battle.
I speak to that because this a weight that melanated people, who do not live in denial, carry as a part of daily life – specifically those of us who do not live in denial that racism exists. This pause to process robs us of energy and focus that could be used in the wonderful business of building our global community of love. Unfortunately, those of us who live in denial of racism and its impact lose the benefit of building the superpower to do intense battle in microseconds, which includes making a plan and a promise to tend to the emotions which we cannot address in the moment. So although it is a weight, it is a weight that we shed, which allows us to continue to thrive. Denial means that this invisible weight continues to expand and robs the denier of space and time to heal. The poison of unprocessed and unacknowledged hate robs you of gentleness, love, and joy, my friend. And so I share with you Carl Jung’s words which I hold close to my heart, and which are now an unconscious part of my consciousness, “What you resist will persist”.
There is great power in acknowledging the truth of things as they are, for it is in so doing that one can know how to be well equipped to clear the stumbling blocks on the path of love. Because my friend, there are obstacles on that path, and even so, you are still enough.
Choose to actively plant love and equality for all people in our collective consciousness. Choose to uproot the lingering polluting ideas of dominance and submissiveness that were deliberately branded into our minds and bodies. LoveTip444 #HealGrowLove #AntiRacist #ARCVancouver #BlackShirtDay #Movement
What if I told you that Jesus did not create Christianity?
What if I told you that Jesus said that He came to show us His Father? John 14:7-11
What if I told you that Jesus said that He came to create division, to have even families challenging each other’s thoughts about the way to be? Matthew 10:34-36; Luke 12:49-53
What if I told you that I love the Bible as a book of history and hope, compiled by people, each author’s contribution a recording of their experience and understanding of God in their world?
What if I told you that God did not write the Bible and did not ask humanity to let the Bible be our perpetual ultimate cultural or moral guide?
What if I told you that people chose the writings that would be a part of the compilation called the Bible?
What if I told you that the Spirit, the Comforter, the Essence of Love is living with us as Jesus promised?
What if I told you that the Spirit wants to personally interact with each one of us?
What if I told you that every person, young and old, of all abilities, skills, and knowledge, can depend on the Spirit as our one and only final Source of inspiration and wisdom?
What if I told you that humans have created many religions from many revelations, because the Spirit can speak to all who wish to listen?
What if I told you that humans in all religions and all traditions got some things right and some things wrong?
What if I told you that the advice to study for ourselves means that we are not to follow any leader blindly?
What if I told you that we are each responsible for what we know and learn?
What if I told you that we are each responsible for what we create with what we learn?
What if you hold all these things in your mind?
What happens in your heart?
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
Nurturing Kindred 