Tag: Awakening
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Heaven Is the Worst Thing On Earth
Heaven as a Place Holder For Dreams Deferred One of the biggest complaints that women in romantic relationships with me have had is that it feels like I can live without them. They are right. I have never been in a relationship with anyone or anything that I wasn’t living without before they came into…
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Everything Always Forever
NOTE: This piece was originally posted on my Substack where the majority of my writing lives right now. Beginnings, Endings, and Beginning Again Again Imagine if everything lasted forever. Not just some things. Everything. Imagine a reality where there was no death, no degradation, nothing that truly wore out or disappeared. Things might change form.…
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Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other
Black, White, or Other? “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” Being Black and growing up in the South—between Virginia and Mississippi—with a name like Pedro Senhorinha Ramos Montero Silva brought in many unwelcomed experiences in my life. One of which was the othering…
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History Is Not a Competition
Trying to Win History Is a Lost Cause “To study history means submitting yourself to chaos, but nevertheless retaining your faith in order and meaning.” Herman Hesse, German writer and poet (1877-1962) True History is Full of Histories As some of us continue to honor what used to be known as Black History Month across…
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No! You Do Not Totally Get It
Do you know what always annoys me? When people always talk in absolutes and never understand that there are things they may never understand. Did you see what I did there? I used absolutes to explain that I am always annoyed with people who speak in absolutes. Annoying, right? Absolutely Ludicrous So in the off…
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Do the INR (Individual Narrative Responsibility) Work
How often do you reflect on how much the stories you tell yourself impact your life? Personally, I think about it everyday. Because since I was a child, I have always been keenly aware of narrative dynamics. Consciously or unconsciously we all perceive ourselves as characters in a narrative. And how we locate ourselves in…
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Race Doesn’t Divide, Racism Does
After I shared my piece on whether or not Jesus’s skin color matters, I had someone suggest that what I write about race is divisive. I, of course disagree. I look at it as more of an intervention because I love everyone and I would like for us to get to a place where we…
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Despite Reverence for Variety and Diversity…
In reflection, I wonder if what makes so many “well meaning” folks show up so hypocritically (myself included) is the unexamined discriminatory brain function that tells me, “Weeds are magnificent models of creation and I don’t want them in my yard.”
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Emotional Distraction: Why We Project Past Feelings on to Present Moments
Did you know that we, as individuals, families, communities, societies and cultures can be addicted to emotional states? Yes. We can be. And many of us are whether we are consciously aware of it or not. What’s more, we use each other for our fixes. And once we get the sensation that we’re looking for,…
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Gender and Pay Equality is Not a Threat. And yet…
Whenever I think about gender and pay equality, I think of my highly intelligent mother who was never treated fairly in any workplace that she ever worked in outside of a family business. And even when she decided to determine her own destiny, by creating her own business, JoSi and Sons, I saw people try…
The Roofless Church 