I love it when the Spirit of God blows my mind, as He breathes life into my character with simple words through someone else. We all matter. God loves when His community of believers grow together, with authenticity.
On April 5, she paused during a meeting, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Don’t throw your pearls before swine.” I heard her. You know, the kind of hearing where time seems suspended as rainbows, stars, and love-tinged promises bathe your mind. I heard her. I heard Him. My Father spoke through her, and when later I would tell her how that the third yime that she had unknowingly profoundly affected my thought process, my outlook, and my character, she was in awe of how our Father loves His daughters.
“Don’t throw your pearls before swine.” Jesus first said those words thousands of years ago. In that moment, when she spoke those words, He was advising me to be careful with whom I shared my dreams and my vision. Not everyone has an eye for pearls of great price. I heard Him, and right there in that space, and in other spheres, some minor clouds were lifted. I saw what He needed me to see, and my heart rested.
But somehow it rested with a tinge of arrogance. Because of course, I was not “the swine”. And so He took me in hand again. One day, I expressed a thought out loud, fortunately, only to myself, and immediately felt as I imagine Peter might have felt as the rooster crowed, and his eyes met Jesus’ knowing compassionate gaze. Oh the shame. Yes child, sometimes we each are “the swine”. We don’t see the value in the person in front of us, and we therefore miss the opportunity to make connections, to build community, to show love, that could literally be world-changing.
So while you must be careful not to throw your pearls to swine, check your nose, and be sure that it’s not a snout. Love wins.
https://youtu.be/IG6QIoF3Frc?si=1lM-UhCo0kcV1Gu0 God recently reminded me that I have always continued to try to show up as a neighbour even while wrestling with the wounds inflicted and wielding weapons of destruction in this experience of good and evil.
Often rearranging our home and life to make space for someone, investing in equipment to make their stay as comfortable as possible, sleep-deprived nights supporting people in and outside of our home, showing up when they needed help, adjusting our days to support them, jumping into their vehicle or taking mine for the ride into the city, or to some appointment so that they would have company and extra hands and eyes to handle their little people, and extra ears to hear, interpret, and advocate while continuing to work on my handy dandy little pocket warrior which the rest of the world calls a phone, listening to hopes and fears, celebrating wins and being available to listen to fears and anxieties day and night, sometimes very late at night, investing time and money in challenging my norms and moving towards healing etc. etc. etc.
Because when a barrage of major storms hit our family back to back and I had to ask for help it cut me so very deeply that some people expected an apology because they showed up for us and I was so battered while trying to keep our ship afloat that I did not do things exactly as they wanted or expected.
It’s been eye-opening to see how many people have been willing to take liberally while seemingly counting and keeping a tally of every second that they give.
It’s been incredible to see how many people think that giving means that the receiver has no right to use their voice to express their perspective about the experience.
It’s been more incredible and deeply saddening to see how many of us don’t even know that we have received, because we so misguidedly use money as the measure of giving.
God needed to remind me that I am a good neighbour because I was really struggling with depression at losing whom I thought were friends, and depressed with the thought that I must really not have much to offer at all.
God needed to remind me that I am a good neighbour because I have been unapologetically fighting this fight as a human being living in the experience of good and evil, consistently fighting to love through the experience of good and evil, continuing to seek to honour freedom in this experience of good and evil, consistently sharing the message that we win when we wrestle with openness and honesty to feel and heal the wounds made in this experience of good and evil.
God needed to remind me so that I could keep being a good neighbour who was open to having God scold me when I was forgetting to show up with love.
God needed to remind me that there were periods of my life where I enjoyed pinning a fellow wrestler mercilessly to the wall with my tongue and relished keeping them pinned to that wall in my mind.
God needed to remind me of all of this so that I could keep loving people since we are all wrestling to figure out how to consistently be neighbours, because we are all people worth fighting for.
And while I strive to be a good neighbour, I get to be human worth fighting for too.
“I am a safe person” is a false statement which is a product of shame, and prevents true healing and growth.
What Moms Against Racism says in response to this declaration of safety is the very reason that I feel a strong need to encourage us to challenge the shame attached to racism so that we can accept that we ALL have to dismantle the roots of White Supremacy/racism within us.
We tend to become very attached to the idea that we are safe people because of the pain that we have experienced when we have felt unsafe. Emotional pain is as palpable as physical pain. That pain connected to resentment and unforgiveness as life preservers creates a layer of shame which we throw on the person whom we feel has hurt us. That layer of shame marks them as bad people whom we should avoid so that we can survive.
The cognitive dissonance associated with racism creates deep emotional pain. Instead of looking inward to challenge and resolve the dissonance, we turn our resentment and unforgiveness outward towards the subject whom we are struggling to honour, and make them a bad person, because shame makes us feel that we must find a source of pain outside of ourselves in order to survive. Our pain then becomes the fault of the person against whom we are racist. If we acknowledge that our own dissonance is ultimately the source of our pain then we would have to acknowledge that we have been shaming ourselves. If we have been shaming ourselves then that would make us individually bad and unsafe for ourselves and if we are bad and unsafe for ourselves it is impossible to survive.
Until we face this truth we exist in the intense pain of survival mode using immense amounts of energy just to fight to stay alive.
What we truly mean in our hearts is that SOMETIMES we are safe people AND we continue to be open to dismantling racist/supremacist roots that exist in us from more than 500 years of conditioning.
That openness and compassion towards ourselves creates peace which gives us the energy that we need to wrestle to heal and soothe ourselves. We can then extend that compassion outside of us and we struggle less to survive. We become more able to turn our energy towards thriving in the chaos of the process of creating beautiful monuments of love together.
Regarding racism: recently I excitedly shared that I was challenging the whiteness in me – whiteness IS supremacy. No people are white. The designation of Whiteness caused some people to think it okay to take sexual power away from their enslaved people, and either breed them, rape them, or have a sexual or platonic relationship with an imbalance of power.
Anyone offended by the reality that as a descendant of enslaved people I have had to fight with the whiteness which was forced into me, AND also fight with external whiteness which seeks to keep me subordinate, is either unconsciously maintaining or consciously choosing to maintain the roots of supremacy.
That struggle to maintain supremacy comes through in relationships, and ignored it breeds resentment and supports a continued imbalance which means that people in such relationships may be neighbours and CANNOT be friends.
Friends are equals. Friends can freely live with equal power. Friends are heard. Friends are known. Friends understand the struggle and mutually support each other through it.
Everything else is at best neighbourly acquaintanceship and at least tentative untrusting toleration.
If we are to love our neighbours as we love ourselves then we need to listen as openly and as generously as we want others to listen to us.
Where there is an imbalance of power in a system of oppression, if those who are unjustly designated as dominant want to create a safe environment they need to create equity by centering those who are oppressed, consciously shifting a portion of their power on to the side of the oppressed.
The oppressive system of White Supremacy has conditioned those designated as White to believe that they naturally know more, and are naturally more competent than those who are not White.
Therefore until they persistently invest in eradicating the virus of supremacy so-called White people (WP) will always unconsciously struggle to relate as equals to so-called Coloured people (CP). When they are faced with competence in so-called CP’s, WP’s naturally unconsciously assume that such competence best serves to generate the WP’s profit. They cannot see the CP’s competence as equal, with the capability and the right to generate profit of its own. Therefore CP’s competence is seen as a gift to the WP’s system.
When there is a crack in the system which allows WP’s to be faced with the wounds which CP’s bear as a result of oppression under White Supremacy, White Saviour complex is activated. White Saviour complex distorts CP’s wounding and relays it as incompetence.
White Saviour complex is a function of cognitive dissonance where the reality of innate equality battles the fallacy of innate superiority, which results in WP’s needing to create a plan to save CP’s for clout, in order to preserve White sanity, which is White psychological profit at the expense of CP equity and agency.
That is not safety.
A person is always safe when they can consistently set aside defensiveness, and slow down to listen to AND believe a person’s lived experience without elevating their ideas and plan for success as the center of the relational experience. A person is always safe when they can always discuss and plan together with openness and flexibility. A person is always safe when they can hear the reality of another’s experience without feeling a crack in their identity.
Defensiveness or apathy from a person in a position of power who is perceived to have done harm is received as oppression.
Intention does not matter when experience is ignored.
No human being becomes unconsciously competent at being consistently safe without repeatedly consciously engaging in being challenged on the obstacle course of relationship in THIS world which is littered with mounds of supremacy.
Pushing away listening to the experience of microaggressions/unconscious racial abuse means that the White Saviour is repeatedly centering themselves and steamrolling over CP’s thereby maintaining the system of White Supremacy.
This holds true for all systems of supremacy: parental supremacy, religious supremacy, ableist supremacy, gender supremacy, educator supremacy etc. etc. etc.
I had this very experience with a mother who was a client.
I intended to be safe, I was trying to be safe, AND because I felt a sense of urgency to achieve success to prove that my ideas around fixing the cracks in the child protection system were valid, I did not take the time to LISTEN to her continuously express that she was hurting deeply from being misunderstood and oppressed, and needed to heal.
So although I was successful in advocating for her to have much increased time with her children, and although her social worker accepted that some of the system’s concerns were not valid, and so moved forward with a plan to help mom transition to reunification, mom did not, and still does not feel safe with me.
Although the social worker extended mom’s grace period by two to three years before beginning permanency planning, mom still felt that I was a part of the system – and although I functionally was not, I essentially was no different to the system, because I failed to listen.
I learned a lot from that. As a parent, I’ve also learned a lot in that regard. Safety is not a reality unless there is freedom to be heard and shifts made in equitable discussion.
Living equitably does not mean living without boundaries. Finding boundaries with equity is a complementary challenge because we can only really know the difference between boundaries and controlling manipulatively when we truly feel personally unoffendably safe.
Tupac was a lyrical genius and a very deep thinker. Life was rough in many ways for him and so he was also deeply wounded.
Recently I listened to an interview with Dave Chapelle. Dave was asked if he had a close relationship with Tupac. Chapelle asked one question: have you ever felt the energy in a gathering where Pac was?
Pac had really close and dear friends AND sometimes the wounded part of his energy was difficult for those who were very sensitive to it, and who had not yet learnt to be safe no matter what.
I can almost absolutely guarantee that Dave Chapelle today would have been good friends with Tupac whether Pac was able to heal or not. Well not necessarily good friends but at least good neighbours.
That’s because personal healing is the determining factor in the enjoyment of safety and freedom anywhere.
This is a core part of the truth in Aunty Maya Angelou’s statement that we belong everywhere when we first belong to ourselves.
I needed that reminder today as I continue to move towards belonging to myself, and therefore become an actual part of everything in the truth of the oneness of us all.
This does not negate the need to maintain sensible boundaries, and does not remove the need for accountability and integrity in relationships.
Boundaries, accountability, and integrity are supporting pillars in the oneness of us all.
As an Afro-descended woman living in North America, I speak for love and freedom. I speak from God’s gift of sensitivity to White Supremacy with the birthright of divine authority passed down through my enslaved African ancestors who continued to be free though exploited, and who did the hard work of healing so that they did not wreak vengeance on their enslavers.
I stand on their hope-filled shoulders with the clear power to see the evil which continues to shape shift in an effort to maintain the system of White Supremacy in order to keep us divided in fear and scarcity as enslaver and enslaved.
I am not casting stones, because I heard Jesus when He said, “Whomever is without sin, cast the first stone”.
I heard my mother deliver the message from my maternal ancestors that I must speak as they did for love and freedom even while I wrestle to love and be free.
I heard my father deliver the message from my paternal ancestors that I am a grace-full queen who must wrestle with God for my inheritance of forgiveness.
I chose to feel the pain of White Supremacy so that our world could have the opportunity to heal, so that we could choose to turn to our merciful Creator God who wishes to lift the evil one’s burden of shame in exchange for freedom in love for a thousand generations, through forgiveness.
And so today I speak these words for all and not against other.
The modern system of White Supremacy has been elevated among us from the 1400’s when Prince Henry of Portugal was influenced by forces that he did not understand to begin a war against freedom in order to feel significant.
The “explorers” brutality towards Indigenous people in the Caribbean, and African people in Africa is well documented. They stole land, enslaved natives for forced labour, and used them inhumanely for sport, with the blessing and encouragement of the country’s religious leaders.
Henry was deceived into believing that he would be more powerful if he could conquer and rule others. The deceiver devised a plan that would not just be restricted to geographic land squabbles. In order to divide and conquer all of humanity the deceiver planted seeds that would reap a harvest worldwide. If war on Earth was tied to survival by amassing riches, and if the enemy was identified not by geography but by the colour of skin, then humans would forever be at war. There would never be peace.
And there began the expansion of war to a global battle. No matter what geographic squabbles rose and fell, this global battle was created to last, through the deadly pandemic spread of the virus of White Supremacy. Religious Supremacy is a tool of White Supremacy.
It affects us all. It infects us all. Healing will only come when we acknowledge that we are all infected by this iteration of the original sin of supremacy, and its by-product shame, which propels us to run away to hide ourselves with whatever defensive leaves we can gather, and to blame each other.
There is no white, or black, or red, or yellow among us. We are humans.
The shame and division created by Supremacy robs us of vulnerability. It robs us of the freedom of being confidently naked with each other.
We crave the leaves of apologies and restitution instead of embracing the nakedness of forgiveness and vulnerability.
Arguing about the reality of the various strains of Supremacy is as foolish as arguing about whether or not COVID-19 is a real disease while millions die and others suffer varying long term effects of the virus.
As surely as all of us, and every child born hereafter will be exposed to COVID just so it is with White Supremacy.
It was a disease that first infected us in the 1400’s. The cure is love, compassion is the vaccine, and forgiveness is the oxygen used for healing.
We were not gifted with a sensitivity to Supremacy to feel superior to others. We were gifted with a sensitivity to Supremacy so that we could compassionately offer each other the opportunity to turn to love for the oxygen of forgiveness, so that we could return to the confident unmasked nakedness of vulnerability.
I hope that we choose love, forgiveness and the vaccine of compassion. None of these is passively received, all are freely available, and require action and commitment to the process of healing.
And so when we find ourselves clearly seeing Supremacy of any sort in the world, if we do not see our own struggle reflected therein may we recognize that this means that we are still actively infected, and need to turn to receive the cure of love, the oxygen of forgiveness, and regular boosters of compassion.
If we continue to deny the existence of Supremacy in us we are sentencing ourselves to death be it slow and steady or swift.
If you are an Afrocentric person of colour, I declare a blessing over you: freedom for you lies in disentangling yourself from the colonizing spirit which you have been taught is god.
Remember who you are.
And now I bless us all. Freedom for us lies in disentangling ourselves from the colonizing, genocidal bully spirit which we have been taught is god.
Remember who you are.
God restores. God frees. God comes with equity. Any person, organization, or system which elevates itself over you is still bound by a colonizing spirit. Rebuke that spirit, receive God’s gift of grace, and claim your freedom.
“Free YOUR mind. The rest will follow.”
This weekend, the government of Canada appropriated Phyllis Webstad’s Orange Shirt Day, calling it Truth and Reconciliation Day, in a country whose federal and provincial policies still feed predatorily on the freedom, energy, and pain of non-Eurocentric people, while trying to gaslight us into celebrating them as saviours instead of as debtors who owe the people whom they oppressed an incalculable sum in reparations. One needs only to glance at federal and provincial statistics to see the glaring truth. That truth is also played out in every day interpersonal relationships between Eurocentric and Afrocentric people, where there is still unconscious incompetence or conscious incompetence in the skill of living with equity.
And so as my Sunday morning on September 29, 2024 began with a circle of seven BIPOC women who gathered to bear witness to the pain “Behind the Smile”, in a space hosted by Moms Against Racism an organization created by Kerry Cavers, a courageous Afrocentric woman, God, whom I now experience in freedom, lead me on a quest which certainly did not begin with me, and which will not end with me.
God, who continues to free me from fearing or seeking the approval of colonizers and their god made in their image and after their ways, inspired me to follow a path of freedom across the ocean by choice, to reclaim the peace and freedom stolen from my ancestors through a journey of forgiveness, to forgive my debtors as God forgives my debts.
Since my Afrocentric ancestors were stolen from their homeland hundreds of years ago, and forced to cross the ocean as cargo, then tortured and treated inhumanely in an attempt to perpetrate genocide through cultural hegemony sanctioned by Eurocentric law, I have no earthly access to the spiritual legacy of my ancestors.
BUT GOD! I use the word but very carefully, as I have come to learn more and more about being impeccable with my word. But erases the power of everything that came before it, and so this time I boldly and intentionally declare: BUT GOD who loves perfectly, and whom I have also forgiven for the atrocities perpetrated against my ancestors, holds the wealth of my ancestors’ inheritance of spiritual connection perfectly in tact in Their hands, and so I trusted Them to guide, provide for, and protect me on this journey.
I love and care for all of humanity as I continue my quest to encourage every person to seek healing for the deep wounds which these atrocities have inflicted on our collective psyche. While I encourage us all to seek healing, I stand to bear witness to the process as an Afrocentric woman. For whom, and as whom, do you engage and bear witness on this quest for truth, restitution, restoration, and reconciliation?
As a woman who has continued to be silenced, ignored, and deliberately destabilized as I speak to governments, churches, and para-church organizations about the harm that their policies are doing to children, and to vulnerable people and families, I share this information publicly as we approach Truth and Reconciliation Day, in Canada.
Today, is Friday, September 27, 2024. It is currently 07:26 PST. I have been lying awake for several hours thinking deeply as usual about what merely I can do to motivate the community, we, the people, to move forward with using our power to actually create a healing equitable culture, in British Columbia, in Canada, and across the world. I opened social media to try to give my mind a break from the heaviness of the matter that has long been simmering in my mind, and the article below from the UBC Indian Residential School and Dialogue Centre (https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/Detail/objects/11902#) was the first thing that I saw. I cannot ignore the synchronicity of this.
Survivors have spoken their truth, at Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and other events hosted by government, churches, and other Eurocentric-centred para-church organizations. Yet none of these power and wealth hoarding bodies are truly doing anything to move forward with creating the restoration and healing that will result in progress through reconciliation. In fact, historically and continually, they have silenced and attempted to assimilate or harm speakers who have attempted to shine light on the continuing atrocities of racism and other forms of oppressive discrimination.
They claim to have conversations about these issues that continue to deeply affect the mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial wellness of Indigenous and other colonized and oppressed global majority and other marginalized communities.
Yet, the conversations are still centred around the comfort and upward mobility of the colonizing minority, while the voices of the affected are silenced, as marginalized global majority speakers for progressive reform are muzzled, discredited, and effectively institutionalized through insidious smear campaigns.
And therefore I must be more resolutely vocal henceforth. Today, I begin to share my story. Who will actively stand with me to both listen and speak for progressive equity? I shall be silenced no more.
September 28, 2024
This morning I awoke and read an email, purportedly mass sent yesterday morning, from the Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, leader of the NDP. Mr. Eby was asking me, and every other British Columbian, including BIPOC families, to help him win the biggest fight of his life. He wants us to help him win this coming election, to support him in his quest to be a champion for all, and especially for the most vulnerable of us.
Mr. Eby shared his story, showed us where it all started, told us that he was an advocate for the downtrodden unhoused on Vancouver’s Eastside. Mr. Eby says that “[he has]… always believed if something’s not right, you speak up. If somebody needs help, you help them.
And right now, [he needs our] help” to get elected. He paints Mr. Rustad as a conspiracy theorist who would gut vital socioeconomic policies, and ignore the needs of every day British Columbians, and I agree.
I agree that we cannot afford to elect to leadership anyone who elevates narratives of division. We cannot afford to elect anyone who consciously subscribes to an elitist hierarchical system which relegates a large percentage of humans to the category of collateral damage who live or die in support of the hoarding of money, influence, and control by a few.
We cannot afford to elect to leadership anyone who directly or indirectly pits members of British Columbian communities against each other with direct or indirect assertions that British Columbia is being economically and culturally destabilized by “newcomers “ or ungrateful Natives.
Such a narrative is grounded in the very government initiated and sanctioned atrocities from which we say we seek to heal through official Truth and Reconciliation processes.
Therefore I agree that this quest for leadership is one with which we need to to help Mr. Eby. But then what?
Can we trust Mr. Eby to actually listen to those of us who speak up when we see something wrong? Can we trust Mr. Eby to lead us to action as a community empowered to work respectfully and effectively together? Can we trust Mr. Eby to build a team which helps us all to thrive by facilitating ways for us to help each other when we need help?
I wish that I could confidently trust Mr. Eby to do any of those things when he seems to continue to refuse to listen to all British Columbians, especially the most vulnerable of us, especially those of us who work with the most vulnerable, and who have been enduring personal suffering as we attempt to serve the very demographic which Mr. Eby says started it all for him.
We are less than forty-eight hours away from the celebration or observance of Truth and Reconciliation Day, and in the City of Chilliwack, where I live, homelessness and economic poverty is at an all-time high. I specifically stipulate economic poverty because there is infinite wealth of love, diversity, innovation, and creativity in the Chilliwack community.
As a queer, single, BIPOC mother, it has been my experience that Mr. Eby’s NDP does not listen to nor welcome most who speak up when they see something wrong, and they certainly have not in my experience welcomed or supported those who take action to mitigate and/or prevent damage, and promote growth and healing in the most vulnerable in our communities.
As Truth and Reconciliation Day approaches, Indigenous and BIPOC children are still grossly overrepresented in the Child Welfare system and in the lowest socioeconomic bracket in BC.
And as a foster parent who served under the NDP government for nine years, and who was penalized and fired specifically for speaking up and for helping when help was needed, as a mother whose children adopted through MCFD, have been abandoned by Mr. Eby’s NDP and left to come to harm, and neither served nor protected by the RCMP under Mr. Eby’s NDP, as an independent community worker whose initiative to inspire the community to stand with vulnerable, traumatized women and children was ignored and undermined by Mr. Eby’s NDP, and as a person who now has a disability and who continues to valiantly fight to stand when left to flounder by Mr. Eby’s NDP, I ask, if with my vote I give you the opportunity to lead, what good will it do for those of us who are consistently systemically disenfranchised, much like those on whose backs, in your email, you wish to stand to encourage us to choose you as leader of ALL the people of British Columbia?
To be honest, Mr. Eby, the only reason that I would consider you for leadership is because you clearly have some sort of vision, and some sort of wisdom which lead you to align with Kelli Paddon, who listens and is therefore able to take proactive action when she sees that something is not right. When someone needs help, she helps as much as she is able. She sees something in you that makes you worthy of leadership. Given the poor lived experience that I and many others according to statistics have had under your leadership Mr. Eby, what can you say to us that will build our confidence in your ability to do better.
Truthfully, what will you do to promote healing, restoration, and reconciliation which are key components of the recipe for building prosperous, successful, healthy communities in BC?
There’s an elder Eurocentric dude, whom in my pissedness I used to refer to as “that fucking old White man” who tried to fix me by getting in my face about dismantling what he defined as my self-made prison bars, as he also tried to confront me into “healing” by shaming me about what he called the unhealthy size of my body.
I responded to him that my defensive bars and my unhealthy body have preserved my life, and they would be perfectly transformed when I was free to be me.
He was a potato whom I had to decisively and consciously separate from me without smashing him to smithereens, so that he could have the opportunity to grow and thrive. If you know you know. Choices. They matter.
Thankfully, before I stepped into that arena, I had already decided to hand mental fuck yous to these saviours who refused to hear that I was not a victim who needed their fix. My decision to arm myself with those fucks protected me from their unwitting well-intentioned harmful methods of engagement. My decision to arm myself with those fucks prevented me from allowing their egos to reign over me, prevented me from allowing them to silence my voice, prevented me from accepting that they were experts who knew better than I what I needed to progress. I was created master of my own medicine.
I armed myself with those fucks, and my self-protection also prevented me from being able to focus my energy on sifting for the load of gold which I knew was a part of their planned process, even though the gold was mixed in with a load of bullshit. Wheat and tares. Sometimes I forget that this is the reality of life for all of us.
I retreated into myself for a while fully enraged to the point of laughter, which showed up as contempt. Thankfully, that smirking contempt was challenged by one of the saviours in the space. “This is not a joke,” they said.
I didn’t fight with them. That’s growth. That was my healing ability to listen kicking in. Though rage filled me, my spiritual ears sifted and translated their words through my heart instead of through my detached raging head. The gold that was left was this: hey, we’re here to heal together.
And so I let God (The Team of Three) hold me in that space safe from the supremacy of saviours, and bring me into engagement with equals, not because they saw me as an equal, but because I knew whom I was. God let me roll with my fucks because my need for protection is and was one hundred percent genuine.
And so I handed my defensive fucks over to God, so that the gold of healing could be poured into me. I allowed My Love Most High, God called Father, whom I firmly believe is non-binary, to use Their gold of love to fill the cracks in my connection with the saviours. It took years of exposure therapy to get there.
The saviours are saviours because they are unable to face the reality that the dehumanizing virus of racism is still in them. They don’t consciously want to enslave us anymore, although they are willing to exploit our coloured bodies to increase their clout and influence, to build their legacy as hero-saviours, and they still, sometimes unconsciously, see themselves as our superiors who are the only ones able to teach us how to become at least marginally as good as they are.
They still see us as children looking up to them as parents – children who must be teachable, obedient, and pliable, for whom they will provide significance if we comply with their wishes. They see us as children whom they will punish in the prison of disconnection if we fail to comply.
And so if you are a person of colour reading this, I hope that you will exhale enough to consciously connect with your armour of fucks so that you can allow God to take those fucks which have been plugging up the rage that we have often turned into laughter and tomfoolery in order to survive. I hope that you will allow God to clear that plug so that you can release the rage into Their hands, and finally consciously stand firmly in your place as an equal made in the image of God, instead of merely surviving as someone whose value is found in closely as possibly conforming to the expectation of the Eurocentric saviour.
Remember that we all need healing so that we can be awoken from our systemically induced comas. Remember that we were all created master of our own medicine.
And may that release fill us with compassion for those who are still saviours because they are still grappling with an inheritance of supremacy which is deeply ingrained in their identity.
Pray with me that we will all wake up and remember that we are all humans created in the image of God, all equally designed to reflect God’s light. And as we wake up may we not build bigger barns to hoard our light. May we liberally share the light so that all may see before we die, and our light dies with us.
Asé and amen. So it is done, in the almighty name of revolutionary Jesus who came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword. The sword is the word of God, and that word is NOT the Bible.
It may be that you’re not ready to talk about that. That’s okay. Fair warning. I AM.
OH! PS:
There is one very important detail which I forgot to include, a pivotal detail really: “That fucking old White man” has his own rainbow room at home in my heart now. Now I think of him by his name, Mike. Because while I was incredibly fucking raging because of him, his was also the voice that helped to shore up my courage and validate my choice to participate in the process before I even entered the room.
Here’s the story: As I prepared for that working retreat, I was both excited and sick to my stomach because I did not trust the people in leadership at that event, though I trusted the process. Just before I left my house for the drive there I had a strong message that I NEEDED my own Warmth And Loving Kindness rainbow blanket. I had never made myself one.
I didn’t have time to make it, and I did have time to cut it. So I cut it and brought the fabric with me. When I got to the venue, Sxexet Spath ‘s welcoming warrior-defender energy greeted me, and Cally’s encouraging wink and smile reminded me that no matter where I was, I was with family.
I bubbled up with big bright canary-eagle energy as I usually do, AND I also felt like I needed to find myself shelter where I could bring myself to calm, to reclaim my peace.
I found a warm little nook. At first I thought I was alone, and then I noticed that an Indigenous aunty was already quietly enjoying solitude in that space. I asked permission to come in, and she invited me to join her. I did.
I asked about her, and she told me her story while I tied knots of warmth and loving-kindness for myself, to reclaim my peace.
After a while, Aunty left the room, and I was alone with my thoughts and my blanket. I had almost decided to leave because the weight of distrust sat heavily in my soul. And then a voice broke through my thoughts. It said to the person with whom it was speaking: “Remember that you get to decide whether you participate or not. You’re in charge. No one can make you do anything.”
I was like, “OH fuck! Yeah! IT’S ON!” And so it was.
Turns out that Mike and I are a lot more alike than not. He’s good people who bring out the fucks in me, and there as many and varied of those in me as there are stars in the galaxy. And that is a perfectly beautiful thing, because it means that I am living indeed, in freedom.
Living life as exposure therapy has been such an incredible experience. Below is but a minute fraction of the family which healing has brought me. I love you all.
October 22, 2021 mental health break, or break. I chose to live, and so took this beautiful break with Tina and Francis Douville.
Over and over every day, I choose life.
Finding and creating unicorns, living with supernatural power is essential to being for me.
I share the sunsets, oceans, stories, and people which remind me that life is beautiful, and which heighten my resolve to keep choosing life and its joy over and over again.
God – all three – and I profoundly experience lessons and gifts in the tiniest people and organisms and pests throughout every day. We do this because celebrating the wisdom and inestimable value of connection with all proves that all are of equal importance and influence, whether that is seen by the blind or not.
You don’t see the time spent wrapped in God’s arms as we move through a lifetime of healing from and living with excruciating pain.
And I share the medicine in photos and stories because there are others who experience the world similarly who need to know that we can keep choosing life every day until we have fully lived and wrung the last drop of joy out of living and magnifying the light of life undomesticated and free, because God is with us.
Aunty Maya said, “only equals make friends”. And for a while I argued with her about that.
Then I stopped trying to prove to her that since all people are equal, she must be dead wrong.
I began to listen to and more closely observe the world around me to try to understand her point of view.
Along that listening journey I happened to read Ecclesiastes 7:28, and there is where my big mental wrestle with Solomon began and where my questions about the purpose and origin of the Bible increased.
Ecclesiastes 7:28 NLT Though I have searched repeatedly, I have not found what I was looking for. Only one out of a thousand men is virtuous, but not one woman! 29But I did find this: God created people to be virtuous, but they have each turned to follow their own downward path.”
NOT ONE GOOD WOMAN??? What the fuck, Solomon??
And then I began to understand Aunty Maya. Only people whom we perceive to be our equals can truly be our friends. Only people whom we choose to accept and understand can truly be our friends.
It’s a you thing, not a them thing. It’s a me thing, not a them thing.
We look at the people in our lives, and without deep thought we are to immediately identify them as either a giver or a taker.
Do a mental inventory of your friends. Into what category does your mind automatically file them?
At the end of that assess why you perceive them as you do, and ask yourself if you have truly been relating to each as a friend, or as a dependent, or as a saviour.
How does your energetic relationship with each person shift because of your perception before and after examining your thoughts about them?
Nurturing Kindred 