Lent as Story

2020.02Feb25LentOurStory

Lent as (our new) Story

One of God’s gift to us humans is our ability to understand stories, to hear them and experience what is in them, and to write stories to convey more than just the words describe, or as in movies, more than what the images portray by themselves.

Imagination More Than We Could Know

Imagination More Than We Could Know

Stories have the key to communicate the most hidden, the most complex, the most poignant, the most critical, and the most beautiful aspects of life itself; and in that communication to the reader, listener, or viewer to teach something new, to connect at an un-imagined level, and to reveal something even beyond what the author, reader and creator conceived possible.

Our Words and Images Reach The Pinnacle and Depth of Beauty

Our Words and Images Reach The Pinnacle and Depth of Beauty

This Lent we embark on 40 days of fasting, reflection, prayer and meditation which themselves reflect a long tradition of the preparation to hear the story of Passion week and Easter Sunday, and which in themselves each year are a new story for each one of us.

What is your story, the one you are always part of?

What is your story, the one you are always part of?

What new will you learn, imagine, encounter on your 40 day journey this Lent?

Can you see something new?

Can you see something new?

Lent has it’s own stories, worthy of hearing again and again: Shrove Tuesday: the yeast and oil used in one last meal so the house has none in it during Lent. The ashes of our origins and ends as organisms on this earth. Marked in the sign of the cross, branding us as belonging to Christ. No meat. Fasting severe or limited. Giving up something. Engaging in something. Praying daily or even hourly, especially for one’s enemies.

Can we see through the fog?

Can we see through the fog?

All this to prepare our hearts, mind and souls to hear, imagine, and celebrate Jesus’ sacrifice and victory over death and all our sin.

Christ’s story is filled with Light!

Christ’s story is filled with Light!

All this to prepare our hearts, mind and souls to hear, imagine, and celebrate Jesus’ story lived out in our lives.

Finding our way through the frozen of life.

Finding our way through the frozen of life.

The Reality of Gaslighting

What reflects who you are?

For the last seven years I have been gaslit by so many people. First at home and then it spread through the church as the lay pastor started in, by people in the community recruited by the RCMP, the RCMP themselves, by lawyers, the prosecutors and even my own lawyers, and most recently by the judges and justices who created their own lies in order to convict me, and to deny my applications.

This may be difficult for many to believe.

It used to be unimaginable to me.

But no longer.

Now it is the truth that impacts my daily life, as my ‘ex’, the lawyers, and the courts have completely ruined me financially driving me into debt so far I cannot see the light or the tunnel. I have left to my name a huge debt, a bicycle, a tent, a sleeping bag and my clothes. I live alone in the woods. I survive on money borrowed from family and friends, using borrowed highly modified equipment to survive the elements on next to no money.

It appears that the lies told about me and those who have told them, and the judges who have ruled using them, have completely determined my life.

This is not so. They have determined some of the external circumstances of my life, and they seem to persist at determining more. But they cannot determine who I am and what I have done (or not done).

The truth reflects the beauty God created in the world, which lies do not change.

I am still the same kind, gracious, man of faith that I have always been, with a good set of skills and knowledge, and abilities, and above all the assurance that, because God loves me, I am able to love, forgive (or not as it is), breathe, and extend Grace as it is extended to me.

Those who have gaslit me, those who have repeatedly and intentionally lied about me, in order to try to create a reality about me that simply is not so; these people have not created a reality about me. They have created a huge set of lies.

Their lies do not determine who I am. They do not define me.

The fog of lies cannot conceal that lies are lies, as weeds are weeds.

Their lies determine who they are. Their lies define them.

My ex and the children I have long since forgiven. They were, at my ex’s invitation, my life, my love, and God’s gifts to me.

But all the others, those who are given authority and responsibility to investigate and rule based on the truth. those whose positions are to be respected, they are not only guilty; they make a habit of gaslighting others, and some have laughed at their maniacal fun at hurting innocent people.

As I am ordained to extend grace and forgiveness to all people whom I meet, I am also ordained to bind the sins of those who should not be forgiven. This is a rare thing. But these lies are all too common, oft repeated, and engaged in as sport, as the record of innocent men convicted by the courts belies.

The damage their lies do to the innocent men and the children is incomprehensible. They leave children in the care of people who create lies about men who healthily love their children. They leave children with sole parents who suffer psychotic breaks, who project their own faults on to others near them including the children and their spouses. They leave the children without a healthy parent, and with a most unhealthy parent, who does the unspeakable to the children, and then adds those terrible things to the list of lies about which they gaslight their spouses.

The damage is also to the spouse (and children) who lie to create a false and terrible story about their innocent men. Being believed when one lies, and encouraged even to lie more, disrupts any trust even the liar could possibly have in the just and fairness of the world. At any moment someone else could start lying about them and they would be ruined based on those lies.

The damage is to everyone, for at any moment anyone can start lying about anyone else, and the person lied about will be ruined, even though they are innocent. This is the destruction of trust, without which society disintegrates into a morass of nothing being true or trustworthy or healthy, for anyone.

This is who the people who gaslight others are: they are those who dismantle everyone’s ability to trust the rule of law, the word of people, the basic justness of our country. Many peoples, against whom prejudice and bias has run rampant, have known this for generations.

Now I known it, personally.

No matter what you expect or believe, that leaf is there. The truth is there.
No lie can change the truth.

Whether you believe me or not is immaterial, but it is vitally important. You could easily be next.

This is what those who gaslight others do to our country. This is who they are. This is how they try to determine others to be worse than themselves, but that is a futile effort. This is who they determine themselves to be: corrupters and perverters of all that is good.

Thus their sins are bound, and they are told, so that they are as aware as they can be made to be. They have time to amend their lives, through telling the complete truth about their lies, openly, publicly, and through making restitution as it can be made.

Then they can be reconciled with their victims.

Until the day of them telling the full truth or God judging them, this is not something they can leave behind. It is what they have to look forward to, to that day when the Light of Christ will shine. May it shine soon, now on this earth, during our lives. But if not, then soon enough.

When the Light of Christ shines on what they have done, and the truth I have always provided, no witnesses or rules of evidence will be needed. God knows everything. There is no statute of limitations or excuses of lack of resources to judge fairly according to the truth. God knows the truth, the absolute truth. God will judge their sins.

I am not determined by their gaslighting. I do struggle to survive the effects, but I am blessed each day. I live thankful and even joyful at times. I will survive until God brings me home to the New Jerusalem, the city of light, into the room prepared for me by Christ.

I know who I am. I am blessed to have lived a very self-aware life.

Lies do not determine or define the person whom they are told about; they determine and define the person who tells the lies.

The truth always leaves tracks. The truth will be known.
The Light of Christ will shine.
It is and will be beautiful!

The reality of Gaslighting is that it is destructive for everyone, but most of all for those who tell the lies.