Fur and Bone

This New Years reflection has two parts. The first is a reflection I wrote six months ago which serves as a beautiful insight, or introduction, in how I will be embodying the call to be a prophet this year. The second is myself coming to that realization.

“August 10th, 2022

I’ve always felt like something was wrong with me when I drove by roadkill.

I’m too sensitive.
I’m too dramatic.
Toughen up.
Don’t be such a cry baby.

Because every time I see that collection of blood and fur, something in me dies a little. Suck it up. But I want to cry. But I know it’s not sustainable to live like this, pulling over and crying on the side of the road every time I see another innocent victim of human industrialism. So I suck it up.

Except for tonight.

Tonight, after seeing a deer laying on the side of the road, where someone moved it out of the way from traffic, head outstretched as if calling out to the stars, I pulled over. I hesitated for a kilometre, but I eventually stopped suppressing my just reaction and pulled over to pay my respects.

Unceremonious.

That’s the word that came to mind. That’s the revelation that lead me to, for the first time in my life, take a moment on the side of the road to honour a deceased animal.

Unceremonious.

How unceremoniously we discard their bodies, still on display, bones rattling with every passerby at 60mph. How unceremoniously we hurl our vehicles past the sacred spot where life was lost, where it’s soul-vessel remains on display. How scarcely we acknowledge our fellow mammals, with whom we share this sacred land with. We plow them over as if they did not breathe the same air we do, as if they do not see with the same eyes as we do, as if they do not feel physical pain as we do. We are made of the same flesh and bone and sinew and muscle.

This deer has ancestors, trickling through the millennia, bringing them here to this moment where we crossed paths. Did my ancestors ever crossed paths with theirs?

Life is ceremony.

Life deserves respect. Life deserves burial. Life deserves a moment. So I pulled over and now I am letting myself feel what I’ve always been ashamed of feeling. Grief for the deer discarded on the side of the road. A moment of silence. A deep breath. A heavy heart.

As soon as I began to let myself mourn the life and unceremonious death of that deer, I had a prophetic vision. I pictured the spiritual roadkill of society. All of the discarded tragedies in plain view which we hurtle by on a daily basis and suppress our compassion for because life is already too much and we are too busy. Ads for the crisis in Yemen, news of the war in Ukraine, reports of school and mass shootings in America, murdered and missing indigenous women in Canada, the climate crisis, LGBTQ+ suicide rates, nurses having mental breakdowns, people begging in the street. And all of these people are moved just far enough off the road so that we don’t have to stop.

What are we sacrificing when we suppress our compassion?

Our humanity?

What would it cost to stop the apathy?

Our sanity? Our joy?

What would happen if we took a moment, pulled over, and let ourselves grieve instead of driving on as if nothing happened?

What would happen if we stopped unceremoniously discarding our love in the heap of fur and bone?

Tonight, the answer is that the full moon will nod, rise a little higher, and the night won’t seem as dark.

My joy was not robbed, and neither was my soul.”

January 3rd, 2022

For eight years I’ve been called a heretic, and I’ve worn it as a badge of honour: “one who challenges religious power.” I’ve been full of fire and righteous anger, ministering to those healing from religious trauma and being a voice for those suffering, unapologetically correcting the hypocrisy that ravages the spiritual and emotional lives of so many. In doing so, I accumulated more religious trauma, labelled an enemy of the church for trying to heal it.

I’ve recently realized how a prophet and a heretic share some similarities. Both are loud. Both disrupt hierarchies. Both go against social consensus. Both breed discomfort. Both solicit persecution and violence. Both threaten those in power who are unwilling to change. Both are outnumbered. The difference is that “heretic” is the label the powerful use to silence the dissenters, while “prophet” is a label one inherits in the hindsight of truth and justice being achieved.

Most importantly I’ve realized how the prophet is a lamenter, the heretic is a fighter. The prophet resigns themselves to the turmoil of truly witnessing the suffering they are destined to help heal. The prophet weeps, the heretic shouts. Both stand in solidarity with the suffering of the world, both carry healing in their steps and in their voice. But there is a subtle distinction of grief and anger between these two different sides of the same coin.

I will still be called a heretic, but this year I am adopting the calling of a prophet. Not in the sense that I believe I am superior, anointed, or set apart, nor do I plan on making grand predictions or announcing doom; things the word ‘prophet’ has been reduced to. Instead, I am leaning into the hard work and gift of being a compassionate witness to the suffering around me and no longer turning away in avoidance and fear. I am re-melding my spirit to my soul. This year I will be intentionally testifying to the ceremony of life and death. I will lament with those who lament, mourn with those who mourn, and in the divine love that pulses in shared suffering, hopefully witness healing and restoration take place in our collective soul.

This year I will no longer dissuade myself from pulling over to the side of the road to lament with the universe.