Blister on the Finger of God.

If God were writing always in his book - writing our transgressions,

Imagine the size of the blister on the fingers he would be using to hold the pen.

If God were holding always in his heart - holding the memories of our transgressions,

There would be no space left in his heart to love us!

If God kept records - of all humankind's travails against nature and Mother Earth,

His filing cabinets would overflow,

There would be no space for him to rest his feet,

Or even tiptoe towards us.

Is the concept of Rapture really a concept from God?

Or a concept from man, imagining:

Blistered fingers,

Loveless heart,

Overflowing filing cabinets,

Divine feet on tiptoe trying to get

Divinity a little closer to us?

Intentionality & Silence.

Silence leaves the door open - it leaves intentionality undeclared so one can claim "Oh, I hadn't realized that you thought / expected / wanted ... ". When one does not claim intentions, and one functions in silence, the door is left wide open for all unstated commitments (or the lack thereof).

Rupert's Land (sometimes called "Prince Rupert's Land") is a prime example of intentionality trumping silence; the taking of Canada from the First Nations by colonial powers is another prime example of intentionality trumping silence. Culture had a big part to play in intentionality trumping silence. The irony is that the culture of silence was seen as no culture at all - especially when you consider the culture of Mother Earth is a culture of silence.

We cannot take the earth with us when we die; and while we are alive we cannot fit physical tracts of earth, acreage, into our pockets, into our backpacks, into our carry-on luggage - boarding a plane with land and taking it to another country - it is possible only in the mind, and in the power-hungry eye of the person who thinks they can own that which they cannot even begin to try and carry: the Land, Mother Earth, remains as she always has been - present and immovable, available, but not really take-able. Get that. And get it good - you cannot take Mother Earth with you - whether or not you have a title, a piece of paper claiming your entitlement to her, you cannot take her with you. The best you can do is hope to return to her - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She will win every single time, even if she has been ravaged and raped, seeded and succeeded by ownership changing hands on paper, she is un-own-able, un-capturable, solidly silent. She may be destroyed but she is indestructible, whether fallow or fertile, she will outlast all of our puny little human existences, all of our paltry power struggles on paper with ownership and titles. Mother earth will remain un-annihilated, long after each war-monger and capitalist is dead and gone.

Don't mistake her silence for a language in competition with this modern-day intentionality, this nouveau need to know what everything is about - the status of each and all. Mother Earth does not need Facebook to tell us her status - unlike us, she does not need to declare her whereabouts (for she is everywhere) and her what's-she-up-to's (for she's up to it all, about it all, around it all, in it all, through it all - through and through).

There is nothing we use, eat, buy, sell, trade, keep or throw away that is not of her, that she did not in some way provide the raw material for, the energy of, the coming into being of. There is no antique that she does not predate. There is no artifact that she does not supplant. There is no history whose truth she could not reveal were she to speak the language we speak. But she's not into the business of stated intentionality - she is silent, our Mother Earth. She leaves words up to us.

Who is this Christian God juxtaposed against this Mother Earth? The Christian God speaks intentionality into the silence of nature; speaks of the power concepts like sin, salvation, redemption and rapture. If language had not given voice to these power concepts, if the concepts of power had not been named so intentionally, would God be able to be as silent as our beautiful, ever-present, Mother Earth?

Yahweh, Jesus Christ, God, Holy Spirit - do you realize that Mother Earth predates your naming? No doubt you existed as force before she did - but you were not called into named form until humankind had need to put title to concepts of power and predecession. Before you were named, Mother Earth was the throne of all power. Language is a tool to name concepts, not always sound concepts. Language allows us to use words as metaphors, to hang titles on things our minds can scarce conceive. When our minds go to the powerless places, language allows us the words that, knotted together form the rope ladder that brings us back to a place of some sense of power.

Oh Mother Earth, I never saw you bear forth a dictionary tree or a thesaurus vine; Oh Mother Earth, your rivers never flowed with intentionality, your mountains were never sign-posted and billboarded with ads until humankind felt the need to compete with your huge and perfect nature.

It's not enough for humankind to spring forth from the earth, from you, Mother Earth, in silence. We need a drum-roll of intentionality to lay and pave the way ...

Think of the human relationship - man meets woman; they like each other, there is attraction, there is sexual chemistry, there is lust. They have sex. If there is no declaration of intentionality about their relationship, what do they have? If they declare their emotions (as love) and they declare their union (as marriage), then their sexual relationship is blessed. The declared intentionality has converted what would otherwise have been (perceived by some) as sin, into a beautiful act that is part and parcel of a blessed union of God. Words, words - how beautifully do you wrap sinful silence with the powerful presence of intentionality. Does the God who pre-dated spoken and written word, who created our silent Mother Earth, recognize a blessed union if it is a union of silence?

Intentionality - declared in words, on paper, was a big part of what was missing from Canada's First Nations'. The French and then the British would have been much harder pressed to justify their behaviour had they landed on these shores and been met by First Nations' people who handed them paper titles for land ... if intentionality of ownership had been declared in the language of sovereignty, the language of power, the only language the colonists understood. But the First Nations of these lands did not see land as something to be owned by individuals - they understood that a leaf, a seed, a feather, a bit of bark could fit into a pocket or a pack, but not Mother Earth. They saw no need for declaring intentionality over something they could never pack up and move with - something to which they belonged, rather than which belonged to them. They spoke the language of Mother Earth - a language of silence.

Colonial declarations of intentionality had no trouble trumping the language of silence. The lands the First Nations had occupied, worked, lived on, been supported by for thousands of years, these lands by the swipe of ink across some colonial parchment became "Prince Rupert's Land"! Ownership was declared and the logic of who was there first, who had the most rights to the land, those logics went the way of the silent sexual union - unblessed by declarations of intentionality into the sacrament of marriage. Declaring intention does not make it right.

I trust Mother Earth. I trust the God of my understanding to speak with me directly. I trust them both before I trust any words on any paper provided by any human hand.

In the silence, God speaks loudly, and Mother Earth holds me safely in the palm of her hand.

I Joined a Tribe.

Last week I had a cascade of days of frustration that forced me to examine a number of things.

I've joined a religious tribe that has a history replete with cruelty and evil executed in the name of God. Colonization happened under the steam of missionary work, often displacing original cultures with Christian rituals to prevent the ancient Aboriginal and African practices perceived as pagan. Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonization were fueled by slaves brought in ships to the western world. Ships where they lay like sardines, skin rubbed raw and festering on unpolished splintery boards, ankles and wrists shackled - human beads forming a human chain.

I am now the product of three nations of colonization. And in all three nations I am the lower denominator - not the colonizing Caucasian race. In Sri Lanka, I am the brown-skinned Sri Lankan ... the product of an Anglican Sri Lankan father and a Buddhist Sri Lankan mother. One half bowed to the spirituality of the colonizers, the other half holding fast to the traditional religion of the nation of Ceylon.

I am Jamaican - I grew up in Jamaica from the age of three, amongst friends and peers whose predominant race was black - of African descent, of the slave ships. A tactic of managing the slave population was to get the slaves to disown their own, home culture. Removing identity was a tactic of control. Creating separation was a tactic of slavery also - systematically creating an attitude of distrust and fear amongst slaves kept the white slave masters safe in their homes at night, on plantations whose greatest numbers were the slaves, whose main labour force was slaves who were treated more like animals than human beings, by Christian masters.

I grew up in a Christian country that had been made Christian by the colonizers. The same colonizers who completely eliminated the entire race of native Aboriginals (Tainos, Arawaks) whom they found on the island. The Tainos were a friendly and peaceful people and when Columbus' landed his boats, with his syphilis bearing crew on Jamaican shores, the curious and friendly Tainos did not know that the end they were greeting with open arms and beads as friendship offerings would include enslavement and disease and culminate in death. Yes, a land can be discovered, so long as the race that was there when it was being discovered can be subjugated. Discovery by Christian colonizers is not about who was there first - it is about which Christian got there first.

The story in North America, where I now live, is similar. Colonizing missionaries came to these shores and discovered Aboriginal people here and destroyed a sustainable way of life that had existed here for thousands of years. But it is called discovery because for Christian colonizers it is about which Christian got there first. Aboriginal people who had an amazing relationship with the land and the environment were lured into the materialistic ways of the white man, the Hudson Bay Company; bears and animals began being killed not for their meat but for their pelts. The practice of wasteful use of the environment was begun. Families were torn asunder as missionary schools ripped children from the bosoms of loving mothers who were perceived as "savages". But these savages lived cohesively with their environment, and with an environmentally whole spirituality that was completely sustainable before colonization and Christ was brought to them. This Christ is not the Christ I know.

Being a Christian is joining a tribe with a history of cruelty and injustice, especially against people of colour - and I joined this tribe as a person of colour knowing that I have joined with this history. My decision to join this tribe came about after a long spiritual journey. And I confess I do not live primarily in my Christianity, but rather in the spirituality I knew before I became a Christian. I live constantly in relationship with God, but I often am angry and saddened by the tribe I have joined. I am often angry and sad at the way the Christian scriptures are interpreted to abuse and abase and isolate people, to exclude when Jesus' main message was one of inclusion ... when God's main message is grace available to all as gift.

This tribe still has in pockets the racist and colonizing mentality. This tribe still has in pockets members who want to be in the tribe because of the power it gives them over others, and not because of the opportunity it offers them to empower others in faith, and to introduce others to God's grace. This tribe still has in pockets people who think being Christians gives them the right to judge. These pockets make me want to dwell on the fringes of Christianity - it is the feeling one gets if one's own family behaves shamefully ... they remain your family but you are not necessarily proud of what you see.

God is a powerful, amazing God. After a long search, it was not optional to join this tribe. It was a calling, and a loud one at that. It did not happen through discussions with people, or through missionizing - it happened through long, genuine, often painful discussions, negotiations, pleadings, questionings and reasonings with the God of my understanding, the God understanding of me. I learnt that you do not turn away from a calling. Now I am having to learn how to live with the family members of whom I am ashamed, I am having to learn how to live with the history which makes me want to hang my head in shame ... this is my tribe that behaved so badly. This is my tribe that even now continues to behave badly, in what should be an age of enlightenment.

The only way I can make sense of it is through my belief that God works through us. We are His instruments, and in so much as we say "Thy will be done" and mean it, we enable His work to be done. I am only one person in the tribe. I am an instrument of God's will though, and I make the commitment to go where I hear God calling me. He called me into this tribe, and I won't let the grimy history and the power-hungry chase me out of this tribe, or displace me from my calling. "Thy will be done" is a very powerful formula for change. I believe in this with every fibre of my being, with all that is my soul. No colonizing missionizing Christian need tell me what God's will is for me, because as my father once said to a pastor who offered to intercede to God on my father's behalf, "I am not a step child of God, but a child of God, and as such I can speak with Him directly". Thank you very much.