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.

Make no mistake that many racialized people who are sensitive to the reality of White Supremacy are in deep pain today, consciously or unconsciously.

For those of us who are unconsciously in pain, I pray for an awakening to the pain, so that the necessary treatment can begin.

For those of us who are consciously in pain I pray for support through the pain and sadness, and hope that treatment is close at hand.

Today, some people will be celebrating and others will be sitting in disappointed disbelief.

And I guarantee that we think that here in Canada, and wherever you read from in this world today we are better, or you may think that we are doing just fine.

And in the midst of all of that I just want to say that I can so clearly see that we are not okay.

We are not okay.

White supremacy and its pillars patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia are being given new life because we are choosing to pretend that it is not a virus which is deeply embedded in us. We keep blaming “those people” without stopping to look at ourselves. If we could see the disease in ourselves, we would work towards healing, and then we would be more compassionate and less contemptuous, and there would be change as we worked together to build a better world NOW on Earth as it is in heaven.

In 2020, we watched the horrific personification of White Supremacy as Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck refusing to believe that he was robbing a human being of life.

We blamed the police as if the police were not living by the same policies which run the whole world. I did too. Until I recognized that I was blaming and scapegoating which meant that I was not really looking at the truth.

We flocked together to create scapegoats of police, and Derek Chauvin. We othered and othered instead of looking at ourselves to try to understand how this injustice could continue to be perpetuated.

We continue to turn our faces away in shame from the traumatic core injuries that allow the every day racist abuses that deplete our mental and emotional health and rob us all of healthy neighbourly connection.

I know that what we really want is to be in kind loving neighbourly connection with each other.

I wish that when we saw an ill in others we would pause to check in to see if that ill is also present in us. I wish that we would get curious about why.

I am still hopeful as I observe exactly what I expected to be. I am also sad that what I expected to happen has happened.

Contempt has never elevated our world.

I hope that this time around we will humanize and analyze, instead of demonize so that we can get to the path of healing which we so deeply need, so that we can have the energy and focus to be a part of the power that smashes the poisonous thrones of supremacy to bits, to create a new and loving world together.

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

The creator of the content in the link above did a great job of showcasing the absurdity of forceful guidance. And this is what many think great leadership looks like.

Our world is in trauma expecting freedom to come through violence.

This shows why we think that name-calling is effective therapy.

This shows why we lean towards harsh coaching and think that it is effective.

This is how we think God is.

This is sad.

We deeply underestimate how much power God has packed into the rare moments of connection to counteract our deeply flawed harsh ways.

Can we even fathom how much more effective healing spaces would be if we intentionally incorporated gentleness?

I’m so grateful that God sees our hearts and compassionately brings Their glory to the room even when we think that barbarous rivers of blood literally or figuratively are what we need to be successful.

From Solomon’s forced labour and barbarous sacrifice, to parents fear tactics to force good behaviour, to hell-fire threatening religious beliefs, to neutral disconnecting aloofness, we are deeply misinformed about how to work together to mine for the gold of love.

But God shows up anyway and magnifies our 30% best.

What if we consciously moved through the struggle to get to gentleness the other 70% of the time?

Black lives cannot matter as long as the lives are Black.

Whiteness will always wield a colonizer’s whip and carry the harshness of supremacy.

BIPOC will be inferior as long as they are BIPOC.

Because there is great power in names.

When we become people again we will rise.

When we grow into being our real selves, just beautiful people, we will collectively finally be free.

This might seem like an obvious or a foolish statement depending on who reads and their perspective or experience.

Nevertheless let me also state that in order for us to become simply people again we will individually and collectively have to face and weed out the racist supremacist ideas that have been planted in us which have made us take on the functional identity of White and then other – BIPOC.