Tag Archives: freedom

Cuba

Cuba: My Recent Visit

Cuba is a miracle. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to it. I love miracles, and in every nanosecond of every day miracles are happening in this world. I try to keep my eyes open to see as many of them as possible because I know that far too many will go ignored or unseen. It’s very important to see a miracle when it happens. Recognizing miracles is fulfilling God’s hope in us, and when I look at Cuba, I see a big wonderful glorious miracle…the most precious and rare kind.

I know, I know, I’m not conforming to the narrative we are supposed to follow. The one where the Cuban people are poor and suffering, and require rescuing by ‘magnificent’ us from their scary government. That narrative is really an American creation, but is followed by many Canadians who, over the years, have simply come to repeat American egotistical ideas. Every once in a while, they may scream the word ‘hockey’ to create the illusion for themselves that they are unique and bold, but they are really silly parrots afraid of critical thought. My Canadian people need to grow a backbone and a stronger brain, but that’s another issue.

Anyway, I’ve examined every aspect of it and have found that narrative about Cuba to be false. The Cuban people are not poor at all. I know this because I’ve known poverty and what it involves. It’s a parasitic beast that burrows its way inside of people then eats away at them slowly. It has a paralyzing sting that makes people afraid and unable to move…unable to look up…unable to grow. It is a destroyer of the will and a ruthless prison guard. Even if you escape its visible grasp, it will still remain inside, invisibly clawing away at you. It is an unrelenting monster. It’s a social thing, not a material one.

The truth is that in order for real poverty to exist, it requires a society with a base savage apish hierarchy, (like the Canadian-British hierarchy I grew up in.) It is a brutal thieving classist conspiracy…cruel especially to children. It involves a turning away from humanity for a lesser unevolved existence. It is a crude perverse social construct…an intentional thing birthed from pure avarice, and no one within a society that institutes poverty is left untouched by it. It tightens around the throat and emotionally deadens everyone no matter what your status.

The peace I feel around the Cuban people tells me that they have none of that. They are not poor at all. On the contrary, they have been made rich by what has not touched them. I noticed that the young men and women do not constantly fidget in neurotic worry about how they look. They do not carry themselves with a cruel bold exaggerated fake confidence as many do here. And they do not constantly peck at each other in competition like angry little chickens crowded into a small yard. They have been mostly protected from the warping consumerism that consumes us daily.

But within the calm centeredness of their world, I sensed that the “liberal” globalists are down there…trying to infiltrate. And with the help of the CIA they whisper, “The dollar is my shepherd, I will want, want, want, want”, into the ears of the young to try and turn them towards the Temple of Shame…to try to steal from them and bring them towards real poverty. They want to initiate one of those staged revolutions they are so fond of. I know that because I can smell those devils. They smell like sulfur.

This does worry me a little…the possibility that the Cuban people will be kept from self-determination by the piggishness of foreigners, but my faith reassures me that God did not create Cuba to simply be ravaged by the same knuckle-dragging rapists who greedily bumble through our world trying to possess everything they see. No, Cuba is the light that has resisted being put out. When I look at it and when I think of the warm confident smiles of the people there, I feel that Cuba was meant to be the miracle from which more miracles will come. I have prayed in their churches and in their streets for their safety, and can’t help but feel that God has heard.

classism, Thank you

Two Little Words

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How many times in a day do you hear the words thank you? Depending on the circumstances, it could be quite often. Most of the time, it’s simply a mere social requirement…a necessary courtesy with limited meaning. You hold open a door…“thank you.” You purchase groceries…“thank you.” You move out of someone’s way…“thank you.”

Over the years, many people have said “thank you” to me, but it’s mostly like that. Just something as much about affirming personal civility and feeling the comfort of an orderly world, as it is about showing appreciation. Not that it’s a bad thing. No…it’s nice to hear some thank you-s even if they are not all that heartfelt. But there was this one time when someone gave me a truly sincere thank you that rose above all the rest.

I was about seventeen at the time, and had gone into the ‘big city’ to meet up with a friend and catch a movie. It was the ‘big city’ because there was a store with an escalator to an entire second floor, and also two, (count them), movie theatres. If I remember right, the movie we went to see was “Every Which Way But Loose” which is a terrible movie by the way, unless you like that sort of thing. It was a warm sunny day, and the line in front of the ticket booth was long. We took our place.

While we waited in line on that calm and peaceful afternoon, something a little unusual happened. An odd man suddenly appeared on the sidewalk up ahead. He seemed troubled as he began pleading to various people in the line-up. I watched as each time he approached somebody, he would be ignored or turned away. I never saw such a thing before. An upset man going down a line of people, pleading, and all of them turning their backs. It was a strange sight.

I didn’t know about the homeless then…this sub-class within our society. Where I was from there were no homeless, and the one guy who did sleep out in the woods had a home. He just didn’t seem to like it very much, and only went back when the weather made him.

And at that time charities had yet to become big business, and the homeless had yet to become media pets, and people had yet to be socialized to politely condescend and patronize instead of just calling them “bums.”

It’s also possible that the man himself may have actually had a home, but just didn’t like it…much like the guy in my village. Who knows? But he was raggedy, and didn’t look like he had much of anything in this world.

So everyone was turning from him as he worked his way down the line, until he finally comes to me. He looks in my face and desperately asks, “Will you talk to me? I’m coming down from a bad trip and it’s bad. I need help.”

Well, I wasn’t naïve. I knew what a “bad trip” was. It was the 70’s. I watched T.V. So he started talking, and I started listening. I didn’t turn away because I could see he wasn’t violent or a pervert. He just needed to talk. He was in pain for the need to talk.

I don’t think I said much of anything at all. I just looked at him and listened, and he mostly talked about how bad his “bad trip” was, and how someone had given him some “bad stuff.”

It wasn’t long, however, before the ticket booth opened and the line started moving. Now as it happens, we Canadians take lines very seriously. The British taught us that. When the line moves, you must move also. So I explained to him, “Sorry, but I have to go now,” and pointed at the line. I was a little worried that he’d be sad, but to my surprise, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Thank you,” he said in a way no one had ever thanked me before…or since. “Thank you for talking to me.” That’s when I knew his feet were firmly on the ground again. His bad trip was over. He then calmly turned and walked away.

It was a sunny warm day, and someone had given me the gift of a proper ‘thank you.’ I was feeling really quite good about that when I suddenly noticed a girl from my High School coming back through the line towards me. Sensible-clothes-wearing-educated-parents-good-marks-never-in-trouble-with-the-teachers-didn’t-even-say-a-swear-word-girl. Why would she walk back through a line that was moving forward? Had the British taught her nothing?

So, she comes up to me all icky-giddy-Gladys-Kravitz-like and asks, “What did he say to you?”

“He was coming down from a bad trip and needed to talk. That’s all.”

“And you talked to him?” She spit out the words ‘you’ and ‘him’ like we were both trash to be cast out. She wanted me to feel ashamed for having talked to that man. She wanted to feed upon that shame…exalt herself upon that shame. I’d seen it before in others.

I didn’t reply, but just kept moving in the line. I never did tell her how much she filled me with disgust…this girl who I knew to be a long standing member of the High School Christian Club. What would be the point? I learned early on that when people don’t want to know, they can’t even begin to understand.

Racism

Killing the White Man

Everyday I work at killing the White Man. It’s not easy, and he still refuses to die, but everyday I work at it.

I didn’t notice when he grew there. I wasn’t born with him. He wasn’t genetically encoded by my European ancestors. No, he was a virus. When society began to form my mind…began to pull and prod and twist my thoughts in its different soulless directions, that was when the virus was planted and the White Man grew.

He came from movies, T.V. shows, wisps of adult conversations, and even kids’ cartoons. He came when, in grade one, Sandy Dingleberry told a story of the horrible things that could happen when a ‘black’ man marries a ‘white’ woman. I learned quickly that Sandy was a liar, but the disease had already touched me in her words. Disease is like that.

He came when someone at sometime taught me “Eenie meenie minie mo” and that word came out of my mouth before I knew what it was. When I discovered the meaning, it was too late. That word had already crossed my tongue. Never saying it again could not change the fact that it was said. In finding a way to grow, the White Man will use all sorts of trickery.

It was my mother who helped save me somewhat from the White Man. She said, “I am a Negro; I am an Indian.” She was deep in White Man territory, and the people around her didn’t like what she said, but she would not be silenced. She kept saying “I am a Negro; I am an Indian” regardless of how they treated her.

Unfortunately, she could not completely kill the White Man that had infected me, but she crippled him. She left him without legs or arms or a voice, but I still hear him breathe, and everyday I try to kill him.

I see him everywhere. Not just on the inside. I see him on the outside too. The White Man is in everyone. That’s what a virus is. It doesn’t discriminate. It just invades. The symptoms may vary according to a person’s situation, but that’s him…that’s the defiling White Man…defiling humanity every chance he gets.

In some the White Man is strong. You can tell by the way they defend him…protect him…embrace him. In others he is a wasted mess, clinging to life, but if you don’t admit he’s there, you can’t kill him, and he’ll keep on breathing his diseased breath into your mind. You have to see him to destroy him completely.

I have a dream that one day, I will finally get him. I will at last hit him in just the right spot, and he will be dead…gone…obliterated from my mind. After that, I will then become the antidote. Every breath I expel out into this world will be filled with White Man antibodies, and then as the wind carries these antibodies to every corner of this planet, eventually everyone in the world will breathe them in. When that happens, he will finally be destroyed, and we will all learn how glorious and wonderful it is to be alive and free at last of the White Man’s tyranny.

Mom
Mom