On Healing!!
On God!
Me: Hello God.
God: Hello…
Me: I’m falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I’d rather not.
Me: Why?
God: Because you’re not a puzzle.
Me: What about all the pieces of my life that fall to the ground?
God: Leave them there for a while. They fell for a reason. Let them be there for a while and then decide if you need to take any of those pieces back.
Me: You don’t understand! I’m breaking!
God: No, you don’t understand. You’re transcending, evolving.
What you feel are growing pains. You’re getting rid of the things and people in your life that are holding you back. The pieces are not falling down. The pieces are being put in place. Relax. Take a deep breath and let those things you no longer need fall down. Stop clinging to pieces that are no longer for you. Let them fall. Let them go.
Me: Once I start doing that, what will I have left?
God: Only the best pieces of yourself.
Me: I’m afraid to change.
God: I keep telling you: YOU’RE NOT CHANGING! YOU’RE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming, Who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light, love, charity, hope, courage, joy, mercy, grace and compassion. I made you for so much more than those shallow pieces you decided to adorn yourself with and that you cling to with so much greed and fear. Let those things fall off you. I love you! Don’t change! Become! Don’t change! Become! Become who I want you to be, who I created. I’m gonna keep telling you this until you remember.
Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yes. Let it be like this.
Me: So… I’m not broken?
God: No, but you’re breaking the darkness, like dawn. It’s a new day. Become!! Become who you really are!!”
~ John Roedel
On Juneteenth!
Meaning of Juneteenth in our culture:
The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, contained, among other things, the following:
“…all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
Texas was the most remote of the slave states, and the freedom proclaimed in 1863 was not enforced there until after the Civil War had ended. In 1865, two-and-a-half years later, on June 19, enslaved Africans in Galveston, Texas, learned from Union soldiers that they were free.
In 1921, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the site of one of the country’s worst episode of racial violence, when white mobs attacked a wealthy black business district known as Black Wall Street or Greenwood. The black community was trying to defend a man who had been falsely accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. It was later proven that he had tripped and stepped on her foot. The community gathered outside the prison and a mob gathered and destroyed more than 1,200 homes and killed as many as 300 people.
On January 1, 1980, forty years ago, Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas, it the first, and only, officially recognized emancipation celebration. Today Juneteenth is celebrated as an occasion for encouraging self-development and respect for all cultures.
Prayer: That those entrusted with authority in our nation may support the changes needed in order to exercise leadership and promote healing in its most authentic, responsible, and peaceful manner.
Sister McBride, Margaret
