A part of my anti-racism work is connecting with and honouring my roots. On the weekend of September 29-30, when I went across the ocean on a forgiveness and cleansing quest to find the answers that my soul needed, with just me and My Love The Creator, I found that my roots are with the Shona people of Zimbabwe.

My sweat lodge experience was divinely gifted to me from God and my ancestors, as I slept beside the water, and as I later washed the family icon in the water of the ocean, as my soul felt lead to do while invoking the power and names of my God Team (except that I used the term father which was from habit and not at all from heart).

There was no person present to teach me. I was completely alone, except for the energy of the hearts of those of you who connected with mine as I asked. I was entirely guided by God and the ancestors.

Two weeks later, I found out, as I had a conversation with a Zimbabwean aunty whom I “randomly” met in the community that my strong connection to the water was because of this root connection.

May our freedom work return us each to our roots. And may we understand the deep energetic significance of remembering AND being whom we are.

So I relate deeply to Michael Jai White’s story of his experience in connection to his homeland.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Adsvzojji/?mibextid=UalRPS

Judaism is a religion. Anti-semitism is anti-Judaism. It is intolerable to persecute and/or hate any group because of a difference in religious beliefs.

Is anti-semitism the issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or is anti-colonialism and protection of Palestinian homeland the concern?

In 1948 a chunk of Palestinian land was taken from Palestinians and given to Jews who were looking for a place to call home.

The continuing genocidal war is supported with funding and weapons by a sect made up of a wealthy minority which continues to misuse the Bible to assert a supremacist right to control the world.

This sect of Christianity has sold Christians the idea of being allies in supporting the seizing of this land as holy land since Jesus is said to have been a part of ancient Israel in that area of the world.

Christianity has misused its religion and its Bible to give itself permission to support colonial seizing of land and to support gross oppression of their neighbours all around the world.

People are holy. The divine lives in us. Genocide is atrocious. War is destructive. This is not of God.

Jesus claimed zero property. The founding couple, Abraham and Sarah, who formed the nation of Ancient Israel set up their home territory with peace and just bargaining.

The founding couple, Abraham and Sarah, lived peacefully among the people who occupied the territories to which they moved.

I struggle to see consistency between the God who guided Abraham and Sarah to live peacefully with their neighbours and the God who ordered genocide to reclaim land.

Which God did Jesus model for us?

Colonialism and supremacy are the core of this conflict. This is not of God, of Judaism, or of Israel. This does not support the healthy forward movement of humanity.

It seems like a racist colonial movement which needs to be abolished as apartheid was abolished in South Africa.

Do you guys realize that as Antiguans and Barbudans, we have been living on stolen Indigenous land?

We have been stolen people living on stolen land.

The Caribs and Arawaks and other Indigenous peoples were brutalized by Columbus, who treated the Indigenous people on the land like non-living items to be moved out of the way, crushed and demolished to make room for European domination. And then colonial powers fought over land that was not theirs in order to build their wealth, using African and Afro-descended people as their free and oppressed labour.

This continued in the name of the European monarchs who claimed to be appointed by God to subjugate “heathens” and reclaim the land in God’s name.

This is one of the core reasons that I have a huge issue with the Bible and its genocidal land reclamation stories.

God gave Abraham the job of leading a nation which was to ethically settle in an area. Abraham was an immigrant. Nowhere does God ever in Their dialogue with Abraham advocate the use of any violence or oppression to build a nation.

In fact, Abraham is said to have moved many times when locals disputed land ownership.

Jacob was disgusted by his sons’ attack on the Shechemites whose prince had raped his daughter, Dinah. Jacob’s willingness to give Dinah to her rapist is a different and equally problematic issue. That’s not the point of this though.

The point is that nowhere in any of God’s many conversations with Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob was genocidal claim or reclamation of land proposed or supported.

So how can I trust history that claims that Creator God suddenly decreed that Israel should begin a campaign of genocide to claim land as “God’s people” when the minor prophets and other writers state that all people are God’s people, and that ALL had come short of God’s way of being?

Jesus came and debunked the idea of Jewish military campaigns to reclaim control of land.

So whose word do I trust? Definitely not the genocidal colonizers who “translated” the books of the Bible and anglicized it to support their brutal white supremacist colonialism.

I 100% trust Jesus though, and having accepted God’s invitation to be unravelled from the tangle of lies mixed with truth, I personally experienced the energetic healing of baptism by immersion in keeping with the rituals of rebirth in connection with Creator that I do not understand.

I did it on faith. And just so with faith I claim the full healing that has continued to unfold.

A major part of that healing is being absolutely clear that COLONIALISM IS EVIL! GENOCIDE IS EVIL. SLAVERY IS EVIL.

God has NOT ordained Israel to force Palestinians out of their land now OR EVER!

The widely taught Israel-Canaan narrative of reclamation is a lie.

Freedom from slavery, yes, that I can accept. Genocide and supremacy ABSOLUTELY NOT!

This Bible is rife with white supremacy and its white supremacist ideologies continue to be a major part of modern Christianity where people are exploited so that “the chosen” can build their personal legacies of influence and wealth.

Equity is NOT a part of modern Christianity. The worship of money and control from a white supremacist colonial perspective is foremost. Thankfully, God who HAS ALWAYS lived can show us a better way if we choose to trust the discomfort of the process to healing.

And therefore I can reiterate Maya Angelou’s statement that only equals can be friends. I accept her assertion that friendship requires an open and uncomfortable assessment of history and its impact on the present.

Until there is willingness to actively and consciously dismantle the lies of white supremacy and build a system of true love and togetherness, I accept that I will continue to have many friendly acquaintances and very few friends.

Israeli Zionism, the Western Euro-centred White Supremacist World, and the Modern Christian Movement are centred on supremacy and oppression and a long history of colonialist propaganda.

Time to build our world on better pillars.

To refuse to confront policies embedded within us that rob persons of their freedom is to be complicit in stealing the individual’s healing connection to the Divine.

For a person fighting to survive through the many daily waves of racism into which they are cast cannot begin to fathom being heard by the Divine.

And just so persons refusing to confront the channels of abuse which have been embedded in us cannot be the vessels of safety which we think ourselves to be.

The flood of racism may not have begun with us, and we are choosing to deny its clear existence and therefore perpetuate its devastation.

Core thoughts in my mind/heart today.

1. It was a beautiful Sabbath – a wonderful time of rest and connection with God and my immediate family.
2. The desire for supremacy was the original sin. So why are we continuing to try to gain the gaze of the well known in order to feel as if we contribute significantly to the progress of humanity? Why is it not enough to invest everything possible in just one? Why do we keep trying to be well known instead of knowing how to love each one unconditionally well.
3. If we need (underline and emphasize need) and demand apologies in order to be made whole are we declaring that we are better than the people from whom we expect or demand apologies?

Are we debtors oppressing debtors, instead of forgivers forgiving forgivers? Are we punishers punishing and being punished or are we lovers loving and being loved?

4. Jesus told us that we would learn best and be most successful if we become like little children, so why do parents feel and behave as if superior to children, teachers feel and behave as if superior to students, employers feel and behave as if superior to employees, pastors feel and behave as if superior to congregants, husbands superior to wives, mothers superior to fathers, heterosexual superior to all etc. etc. etc.
5. When we stop blaming and shaming others and start to recognize that we are all looking at a reflection of ourselves in other people’s bodies regardless of age, skin colour, gender, we will become more and more grateful for grace.

We are souls with equal portions of divinity experiencing life in human bodies.

So far this has been my experience. And I am very deeply grateful that God is patient with me as I see these truths and struggle to improve.

We keep conflating awareness with proficiency, and so we struggle with the blight of superiority which robs us of joy.

Awareness has never been equal to proficiency, that is why forgiveness and grace are such valuable tools in relationship.

I am learning to keep trusting God to fill in the gaps where people have caused me harm, and I am learning to admit that God is filling in gaps where I have caused harm.

My goal is to be more consistently a forgiver forgiving forgivers and a lover loving and being loved with the wisdom of God’s grace equipping me to internally experience and interact with each person with the equity that they need. For this is the only way that I can live with good boundaries for self and not against other.

To do this I have to keep letting God teach me to feel everything and learn what to do with the information gained from my feelings, until my heart absorbs enough light to finally be able to see.

Oh my friend, Paul, blinded externally as you were internally on the Damascus road. You and I have wrestled for so long. And my heart this morning is so deeply connected with yours in understanding that we see through glasses meant to help our vision, and even then what we see is still shadowy and broken up by the thin lines of gold with which our shattered lenses have been repaired. For now, we see through a glass darkly and then we will see with perfect clarity, with new glasses with perfectly restored lenses one day.

We have this hope.

Since 2011 I haven’t tasted the ocean, or sea water as we call it in Antigua. Yesterday, we finally did this thing that I’ve been wanting to do, and at the end of the night as I was making sure that everything was safe and solid before we left the beach, I drank of the ocean. I had no idea why it had taken me this long. And now I realize that I’ve been experiencing it as a lesser than body of water. My home ocean was formerly superior in my mind. And now that I have opened myself fully up to this Canadian water I saw that it tasted just the same.

It tasted just the same.

These two precious amazing young ladies have mamas who have individually personally invested in healing, growth, and in understanding friendship. Our children reap the benefit of our decision to feel and heal, and I could not be happier for them.

I love watching their friendship develop though I have personally taken a step back from friendship for a while.

I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do research on friendship while investing my heart in it recently. It means that my kiddos had an example based on my life, which I didn’t even think of as being an example at the time.

And I love experiencing them both (though only one is pictured here) growing friendships intentionally.

Today, one of them said to me that their teacher was so excited to see the choices in connection that she and her new friend had made.

I am a super satisfied mother. There will absolutely be ups and downs, and when I see the fruit of the thing for which I and my children’s friends’ parents have laboured lovingly my heart is 100% full of hope, and I am 1000% proud of myself and very grateful for the neighbours who have stepped into our lives along this journey.

Good neighbours come and go, and need not necessarily be good friends. Coming to see and embrace the difference in that is life-enhancing. Good neighbours are a balm to the soul.

So it is with renewed gratitude for a world full of neighbours that I am resting and recovering for a while before I continue on my quest to be a part of building friendships which will be mutually treasured like that pearl of great price.

BeautifulBuddingFriendships #HeartFull

Dear racialized people, as we go through the process of healing, I want to share that we will encounter the energy of White Supremacy with which we have had a contemptuous relationship for all of our lives.

In order to heal and fully experience the love in our world, we will have to confront and purge ourselves of this contempt.

Healing in spaces with Euro-descended people will provide the opportunity to deal with the unconscious presence of this energy. It’s exposure therapy. Lean in to it. It’s worth it.

I continue to be sorely grieved that we need to see some grisly evidence of racism instead of believing the plainly obvious truths shared by those of us who are most grievously affected by it. The every day abuses of racism are perpetuated because we are blinded by shame and shame’s shroud blame, which makes it deeply painful for us to look up. If we looked up, we would see the love, compassion, and significance that we seek standing right there in front of us. We would recognize that we just need to stand up and throw off the weight of shame and blame and work through the grief of all that we have lost while buried and blinded by the system of White Supremacy.

As a person raised in Christianity, I can only speak about the disinformation attached to Christianity which has hidden the true freedom of God and Jesus from us. I can’t speak to this from any other religious perspective. This disinformation has caused real trauma to us as it is intentionally mingled with the pillars of White Supremacy.

Hopefully we can allow ourselves to be distentangled and healed in real relationship with God instead of relationship with religion.

Dear You,

I see You with your hopes and dreams and longing for change. And I see you in this “Not Yet” space with the world banging on your back and throwing shame at what they think is a delay. We hold such toxic stressful ideas of time that did not start with us. That is why there is such anxiety around the timing of your growth and development. It didn’t start with us, and it can begin to change with us.

And so Dear You, I send you the gift of peace from God’s heart to my heart to yours. Rest. And in perfect time all of the moments will lead to THE moment where you rise and with power declare, It IS finished; peace; be still.

And in the meantime I wish for you hope, as you wait for the coming of beautiful neighbours who will be for you with acceptance, and not against with supremacy, superiority, fear, and anxiety.