Written on May 29, 2021 in response to the discovery of the remains 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation. The walls are screaming With silent cries The ground is drenched With generations of tears The earth trembles With terrible secrets buried deep in the soil buried […]
On Rainbows and Reclaiming My Place in God’s Family
by on June 9, 2019 Leave a Comment
By Jaime Riefer | Twitter: @jaimeriefer | IG: @jaimemarvin As I crossed the street a few blocks down from Main and Hastings, I heard a voice rise up from the din of wanderers: “Kids!” It was a sudden warning. Soon other voices were whispering, “Kids” in a strange chorus as people announced our arrival. Hands swiftly tucked into […]
When Those People Become My People
by on March 20, 2019 1 Comment
A quick Google search defines the word they as a pronoun “referring to two more people previously mentioned or easily defined.” It’s my experience that no one group of people is easily defined but, oh, we still like to try. We tuck people away into groups of them and those people, defining those groups as […]
Glance with Compassion and Honor, Not Contempt
by on February 11, 2019 1 Comment
2019. Tension brewed like a bubbling witch’s cauldron on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A handful of Black Hebrew Israelites yelled at a bunch of high school students who meandered over after participating in the March for Life earlier that day. The students took the bait, responding to taunts with words and gestures of […]
Knowing What We Now Know
by on December 4, 2018 Leave a Comment
“Knowing what we now know, what will we now do?” It was a picture-perfect autumn day—all slowly-detaching leaves and refracted golden light gleaming through tangled branches. We held hands as we sipped our coffee and floated in and out of shops chock full of antique globes, eucalyptus bath salts, prickly cacti. It had been a […]
