The Gift of Your Faults

The Gift of Your Faults

Rise up oh daughter of mine

Bow your head low no more

For you have been strengthened from the inside out

And the ceiling has become your floor

Look now at your chosen pathway

The journey you have been on

See the sum of all your mistakes

The miscalculations of all you have done

Know that I will not erase even one!

For this is the gift of your faults

The gift of adversity, tenacity, perseverance and patience with many tries

Wrapped in a package of plain brown paper that you simply did not recognize

So, you ran, resisted, cried out for Me to come and save you

Unaware that this was Me answering with what you need to be the brave you

The mind being released from the thoughts that enslaved you

The flesh dying to the evil that craves you

This is the gift of your faults

For within creation there exists a sweet tension that keeps it all in place

So too there is within you, the wrestle you must face

The gift of a treasure yet still not embraced

The gift of your faults is not a mistake!

Lessons learned, evil spurned, flesh burned, treasures yearned, jury adjourned, intent discerned, fear overturned, victories earned,  no more concern, you have returned.

This is the gift of your faults

So, as you continue remove the lenses that call a thing good or bad

If you surrender it all to me it becomes good in the end

This is the gift of your faults

For with true authenticity

In humble vulnerability

The passion of your intensity

All the parts of you a wanted necessity

Just always take responsibility

For every failed opportunity

To increase your capacity

Of growth in human personality

spiritual identity and God given destiny

This will be the gift of your faults

Charmaine  Hinds December 2018

  

Black Tax

I recently watched an episode with Oprah where she has Trevor Noah on Super Soul to discuss his book "Born a Crime" and at one point in the discussion he mentioned a term that resonated with me. It was one of those terms you may have never heard before, but I could somehow tell what it meant because it so accurately described itself. The "Black Tax", as used by Trevor and many others relates to having to continue to pay for the historical sins of the past. Here is his example.

“Growing up with a black mum in apartheid South Africa gave me a very different experience. Simply put, a mixed child walking around with a black woman wasn’t something one saw every day and being her son was indeed a crime. My mum however, was determined that I didn’t feel such pressures and went out of her way to give me a life that truly started with a blank slate.”

The "Black Tax", is a term that has been used in America to mean paying more for things simply because one is black. Just a note, this doesn't always just refer to finances. 

This example I completely understand. I was born a mixed child from a black single mother in Jamaica that was third generation free slave. And the rest of my maternal heritage were slaves in Jamaica with the full African slave experience. My husband has the same situation and we determined to stand in the gap and pay the “black tax” for our children as well. We coined the term “Firstlings” to describe our situation for payment of the black tax. We were the first in our families to accomplish many things. We unfortunately did not have the privilege of climbing on the steps that were created before us by parents and grandparents. This has greatly shifted our educational, social, spiritual, economical and fundamental status. We should have been able to at the minimum begin life at ground zero and work our way up like most other people.

In truth and actuality, the "Black Tax" over the years has been compounded, and we felt like we began at a deficit minus 100. This is the privilege that we are given for being born into a history of colonial oppression, curses to our family line and injustice that has never been fully addressed. 

My husband and myself have used our opportunities and finances to bring our family back up to zero, because the generations who came before us have been raped, robbed and pillaged.

We are the pioneers who made it out of the “ghetto” or “Egypt” and have not truly been able to enjoy the spoils. We have been trying to get “Egypt” out of us and get our children into the promised land. 

 As pioneers from a black family we have had to spend prayers, time, money, and resources ensuring that our loved ones live a "regular" life. This has been a hard journey and an experience that we corporately share with many other black people in Canada, America, South Africa and other places that have suffered from systemic racism. 

Imagine this scenario; you are playing a board game and every time you pass “Go” instead for getting $200 like the other players you somehow get the snakes and ladder experience and have to begin all over again.

I end sharing a quote from Trever Noah that explains many of the effects of the “Black Tax” and “Privilege”. 

“If you think of it like this — you know a lot of the time when you hear people having conversations about white privilege, male privilege and so on, I think sometimes what gets lost is with the word “privilege” comes the connotation of having a good time. You know, people go, “What privilege? I may be a white man but I’m poor. I may be a white man but I’m suffering.” And that is completely true. And sometimes I go, “Maybe in the labeling, it’s almost like it could have gone the other way and it’s like, is it a black disadvantage? Or is it a female disadvantage?” Because we cannot deny that there are certain handicaps that come with these certain labels you know that exist. If you look at the effects of what you’ve lived through in your life, you cannot deny that they compound. You cannot deny that they grow over time. So people who say things like, “Get over it, slavery’s done” or “Get over it, apartheid is over,” then I go, “You cannot get over it because it ending is merely the beginning of your journey.” And so, you think of it like this—in my family, I was the first person in my family who was allowed to go to a white school or a school that was considered white. My grandparents were not taught the things that other people’s grandparents were taught if they were white in the country. And so now, even if we’re not talking about financial inheritance, we’re talking about now educational inheritance. My grandfather and grandmother couldn’t bequeath to me an education that they would have learned because they didn’t get it. My mother, self-taught for many things. She was lucky in that she encountered a missionary and that’s where she learned things that the government wasn’t teaching to many black people. So, there you see someone equalizing or get her back to zero, which is where everyone should be able to start from.”

My prayer will be that as we continue to have conversations such as this one in mainstream that the ears and hearts of all involved will begin to deal with the truth around the feelings that we have so long ignored and pretended that they don’t exist.

Freedom

I was taking a course to become a bereavement companion and was at my weekly training class and the instructor that week was running us through an exercise that taught me something so valuable about what I believe.

She handed all of the students, twelve small pieces of blank paper.  She then instructed each of us to write down three people we love , three things we have that are important to us , three activities we enjoy doing and three quality traits about ourselves, all each on a separate sheet of paper. This took a lot of thought for me and in a short amount of time I wrote down the following.

3 people I love - I chose Wayne my husband because he is my soul mate and very important person in my life. I have five children and could not choose between any of them and so I left them out. I choose my mother and one of my girlfriends.                                                                                                                                

3 important things to me - My wedding ring, my writings, my bible,                                                                                     

3 activities I enjoy- dancing, writing, talking                                                                                                                      

3 quality traits about me- intelligent, creative and free

After this she asked us to close our eyes and she began to walk us through a visual meditation and gave us instructions as we moved along.  

You are not been feeling well and have made several visits to the doctor and are now in his office where you have received a fatal diagnosis. Take a moment and breathe and pay attention to what you are feeling.  You leave the doctor and get in your car you are finally alone, what thoughts are coming to you? You arrive at your home and begin to process this information before sharing the news with your family. How will you tell them? How will they respond? What are you feeling now? Days begin to pass and you begin to experience the loss that comes with this illness. At this point she asks us to throw away any 2 pieces of paper.  

Now I am a very visual person and because I meditate often, I was very much involved in this exercise. My whole being began to see myself with a fatal illness and I began to experience the feelings of helplessness. I took time and thought in what I would throw away and discarded 2 pieces of paper.

As she walked us through the rest of the exercise going into detail about what someone who has a fatal illness experiences and then gave us the choice to throw away pieces of paper that represented “you” it became more difficult and harder to throw away. I also began to understand that this was all about the loss that comes with death. We were finally down to three pieces of paper and all this time I had been thinking and prioritizing the order of what I would choose next and slowly letting go of the loss of things that I thought represented me. Then suddenly she sprung a surprise on us that caused me to gasp so loudly that everyone in the room looked my way to see if I was ok.

She was going to come and take the next piece of paper.

Right then I lost something that I realized was very important to me. I didn’t have any more choices. This profoundly impacted me and I began to pray as I had three things left that were very important to me.  The three pieces of paper were Wayne my husband, my Bible that represented my faith and the quality of free which represented my freedom.

I quietly under my breath began to say take my Bible or Wayne , take my Bible or Wayne , please don’t  take my freedom. I wanted to be left with my freedom, because I felt I knew the word in my heart and that was enough for me. I knew I was one with Wayne and I was willing to let him go as well.

Sure enough she picked the piece of paper that said Bible and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was even sweating at this point and was very heavily invested in this challenging pretend exercise.

Now she had come to the end of our journey and we were near death and at the hospital and she would come around again and remove another piece of paper. I was a bit more relaxed this time around as it worked out ok the last time and I just believed that just the thought that I wanted her to take Wayne was good enough and as I looked at the last piece of paper in front of me- there was the word Free. I was so happy that I had my freedom and that no one could take that away from me.

Then she told us to rip up the last piece of paper because we had now died. She told us that everything was gone and nothing was left.

As I slowly ripped the paper containing my freedom I had a thought, then a feeling and then a revelation. I would never lose my freedom even in death I would still be free or maybe even freer than ever before, because of my faith and my beliefs about death. I would gain back everything and more of what I had lost. I was so happy and relieved at this point that my heart became full and I began to smile with my teeth showing!

She gave us a few moments to sit quietly and to process this exercise and then asked us to share with the group anything about how we were impacted by the exercise. I shared what happened to me and was able to use this as a platform to share my faith in the midst of this class that had many different types of people with different beliefs about death and the afterlife. But this would also set the undertone for my work in bereavement. Freedom would be a pillar of my belief surrounding death and loss. I would use it to frame my life work in every way as I could now see the importance of this state of being to me. This thread has been woven throughout the course of my life and is my eternal message to the world. I am free to be me, you are free to be you and no one can take that from you.

I would have never imagined that one of the greatest lessons I would learn in my life would come from a pretend exercise to help me understand how to be a compassionate bereavement companion.

I am No Longer a Slave

I am no longer a slave

Chains of bondage holding me captive

Keeping me from the liberty to run free... unchained

Unseen barriers of fear paralyzing a thought of escape

Will I surrender to be a servant locked behind imaginary bars? 

I am no longer a slave...

Yet this generational pain demands to be felt and paid for

Though my mother was born free and my father was liberated

The overseer of my torture has become my mind stuck in the past

So I hang on the tree as a memorial to my ancestors

Though I am no longer a slave...

True freedom has tortured my soul 

As I relinquish to be controlled by a master of my choosing

Why this yoke? when in ultimate truth 

My captors have left the doors unlocked

Yet I am no longer a slave...

Are there keys that release me from this paradigm?

Words that break the hold of these shackles

No more self cruelty with memories that terrorize

Just a prayer that I would be recognized 

I can not be sold for I am not for sale!
I am no longer a slave...

Set free, liberated, unlocked  no fear, no boundaries, no jailer, 

I command all darkness and evil tormenting me to leave

I shall survive, my people  thrive, I will stay alive
Freedom flowing in my veins

For I am No Longer A Slave !