I am burning sage and Nagchampa in my home today. I have lit the white candles and poured the water of the Combahee River and spilled the sands of Robbin Island. Today I needed their mojo. I needed something stronger and bigger than me to help me through. I listened to the soft-spoken wisdom of Muhammad Ali. I cried. I breathed. I moved and I prayed. I started with forgiveness for me.

This is how I am feeling. It is closer to who I am and a departure from the rage I felt yesterday, when all I wanted to do was invoke the pain of othering onto those who have othered me. I had a moment. It wasn’t cute. It was full of cursing and anger and vitriol. And honestly, I really tried not to care about how venomous the words felt escaping on my loving breath. I knew that the thoughts already invading the sanctity of my mind had poisoned my soul so much so that I had become physically ill. Poison is like that. It is insidious in its reach. Once you poison the well, well…

Today, I am better. Today I being still. I am allowing my body to heal from the trauma of so much othering. I am allowing the conversations and listening with a loving heart.

We are hurting. All of us. Every single last one of us and by us, I don’t just mean the gays, the blacks, the women, the Muslims. I mean all of us. The straights, the whites, the Hispanics, Asians, Indigenous Peoples, the Christians, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the transgender, the gender queer,  the bathroom segregationists, the klansmen, the entitled, the one percent, the democrats, republicans, tea partiests, independents, young, old and everything and everyone in between. We are ALL hurting.

We are all hurting. America, this country is hurting. We have harmed and been harmed. We have hated and been hated. We are hurting. Creating more hurt will only hurt more. Not only those on whom it is imposed, but clearly upon ourselves. I don’t know how to help heal this. I don’t know what the answer is to fixing something that is so horribly broken. We have crippled ourselves and we aren’t even smart enough to know that we are limping along into a battle that we need not fight. We are not each other’s enemies. We are each other’s brothers and sisters created under the same sun. It doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside, how we love, how we pray or where we came from. What matters is, that we are. We are. I AM. All the same.

We are Love made manifest beneath all of our wounded selves. We are Love and Light, and even in my deepest anger, I couldn’t deny that truth. It is the very truth that if we should choose to look at and embrace it, would remarkably set us free. We are that Creation. All of us defined by something greater than ourselves. Even if we don’t call it God or Allah, or Elohim, or Jehovah, or Olurun Baba, Brahma, Abba, haShem,  Vishnu, El-Shaddai, Adonai, and Oludumare, . Even if we are non-believers. Even if we only see ourselves as multi-celled organisms, we understand that we are a multi-celled organism that is a part of a bigger multi-celled organism. We have to work together. We have to learn to look at one another and see beyond what the eye can see, into the infinite divinity of it all. Into the Greatness it was designed to be and then be that, be that part of that we are ordained to be. It is what it will take to heal.

It will take each of us standing in agreement that we are bigger than this. We are better than who we have allowed ourselves to be. We are who we were ordained at the beginning of time and agree that this isn’t it. And maybe we can forgive ourselves, for not being that which we were created to be. Maybe we can forgive ourselves for erring in our human nature and learn from this experience so we can move forward in peace. It isn’t impossible. All things are possible through the christ which strengthens me. I believe this. I know this to be Truth. I am holding myself accountable to be who I AM created to be – Love made manifest. The rest is illusory and limiting. It is not who I AM. I AM the All. This othering is nothingness. It is time to let it be.