#michif prayer

[this-is-my-main-i-follow-from]

the rosary in michif

So the way I rewrote this is how to pronounce it with symbols that make sense to me. I also changed the english versions so you know how these things are pronounced.

ɑ = anywhere between father & mop

a = the a in the french la, or anywhere between the a in above & father, (not in between like the way the o in above is in between u from rut & o from mop), except the a in above is more like the u in bun or the e in the, but in the english I started using u to symbolize the u in crutch/a in above/o in above (even tho it is more like the o in mop or the o in more without the w at the end)/e in the

é = the e in met or pen

æ = late, bait, may eidelweiss

i = if, bit, some ppl even use this i in both halves of spirit (if they don't say spyyrit), & sometimes that sound that is like "eu" crossed with "uh" crossed with "o'" crossed with "a" crossed with "e" & you just can't exactly tell what it is

í = eat, feeble, meme

o = anywhere between boat & the first two "ho"s of ho ho ho, it can be the o,w of words like hope, or it can be just the o' like if someone interrupted you before you finished saying "go". It's almost like how er starts with eu & ends with r, this starts with o' & ends with w,

oo = on in french, between boat & boot, it's like the "o" from above was a little more short/fat in your mouth so it is slightly more like a "w" but not quite, & then you do end it with that diphthong w. Like if you end the french garcon with a w as well as an n.

ʊ = oo, like shoe which can be eu'w, or it can be just the w (which is a vowel, the welsh are right), who, the first part of when, or when you say a really elongated "ooh" not just an euw but an euwwwww!, the end of "oh!"

eu = book, look, cook, hurt, the french feu, birch, earl, like take your tongue down from the back there & stop saying the r, it's like how we say "uh" in north america but they spell it "er" in england, they don't mean ir/eur, they mean euh. Like heard in a british accent

ä = a like cat. It was originally written as ae, but ae to me means éy (or ah-y), while in michif according to my legend it is supposed to mean a like ban. I actually do get it being spelled ae, but I used to spell it aa & have taco be spelled ah & lot be spelled aw (cahmmin vs cawmmun being two ways to say common). Anyway this is the a like fabulous or the way your white (not european) grandmother says pasta.

š = technically sh, but I actually often pronounce this as an s. Many cree speakers, especially as they get older, say things with a bit of a lisp, making the s turn into sh, & we have taken that into michif. In fact, the word michif comes from the lisping of the t in metis into ts, & the all-too-common lisping of ts into ch. You can say as s or as sh & it is fine

č = ch, in michif we usually say it more like ch, the "tsh" sound, but in cree it is more like ts, sort of like the japanese tsu. You know how ts is at the very front of your mouth but ch is a little farther back & a little more on the edges? Go halfway in between. Keep a little more contact with either side of the front of your tongue, & say it. Mix ts & ch to get smth halfway between. It's almost like chs in the way it sounds, but more like tch in the way it feels. Evn throw in a bit of soft "th" in there if you need.

I don't think I have ñ, but it is like a "ng" that doesn't quite make contact. It's the french n

r = Two options here. Option 1: earl but hover before you close your teeth on the r. Feel how far back that is in your mouth? Push it a little farther back, push that r a little further in general. Instead of that r being stupidly in your teeth (that's the reason kids way w instead), keep it closer to your throat, more in your soft palate, not where the bone starts. Option 2: khrkhrkhrkhrkhr almost like that arabic crackly h, & it can be voiced or unvoiced. It's a trilled g. Not a trilled d like in spanish though. Make the sound like the dentist's vacuum. It's a fricative.

ž = j, like how ch is just tsh, j is just dj, like how s becomes sh, z becomes zh. It is j without the starting d.

Some of the Gs can also be Ks occasionally, along with many other consonants. t/d, p/b, etc.

In fact, k/p/t are often pronounced softer, less aspirated.

hk can be either h,k or it can be the semitic/celtic ch like in bach or loch. hp can be like the filipino f that they make bilabial instead of labiodental.

I think that's everything. It is a lot more simple than writing it out seems.

Oh & in english I used eth & thorn, eth being bath/thank & thorn being bathe/that

Li Shaplæ - The Holy Rosary

Wíčæwagɑnɑ Tapætamwag –

Apostle's Creed

Ndɑpwæténn li Bonjeu,

li Papa kašokatišidmawači,

kɑkiw kaožitɑt li syél ékwa la tér.

Ndɑpwæténn li Jéyzʊs

kɑgíkičítotɑt péyʊg égo son

Garsoo, kɑnígɑníštamagoyak,

kíošíéw očé

okičitawišokišíwinn avik

ékičitwɑwak Kinígígwann,

ékwa énítawigit očé la Sänt Vyɑrž.

Pontyas Paylat nɑšpič kígwatagíéw

li Bonjeuwa, kíšagawéywag

denn krwa, kínipo, ékwa kínačigɑšo. 

Kíšidša'hwawandagɑnipočig,

dɑn la trwazyém žʊrnæ kípašéygo mína.

Dɑn li syél kítotéw,

ékwa kíapígɑšo andɑ

tapiškoč Papa.  Mína tapætotéw

čipæwíéšowɑdat kapimɑtišíid

ékwa kɑnipoyit.

Ndɑpwæténn ékičitwɑwak

Kinígígwann, kɑkičitwɑwak liglíz,

kakío kapimičawɑčig li Bonjeu

awɑ dɑn li syél ékwa dɑn la tér kakío

li Bonjeu sa famí, čiponéy čigɑtég

kamačítočigɑtég, li kor číapačipɑt

ékwa čipimɑtišik tapitaw.  Answičil.

Aí bilív in God, þa Fɑþer ɑlmaítí,

kríæter av hévén änd eurð.

änd Aí bilív in Jízas kraíst, hiz only San,

äwr Lord, hʊ waz kɑnsívd baí

þa päweur av þa Holí Spírit, änd

born av þa Veurjin Méry.

Hí suffeurd undeur Pɑnčas Paílit

waz krʊsifaíd, daíd, änd waz beuríd. 

Hí déséndid tʊ þa déd, änd ɑn

þa ðird dæ hí roz agén.  Hí

aséndid intʊ hévin, änd iz sítid

ät þa raít händ uv þa Fɑþeur.  Hí

will kum ugén in glorí tʊ juj

þa living änd þa déd.

Aí bilív in þa Holí Spirit, þa holy

käðlik čeurč, þa kommyʊnyeun av

sænts, þa forgivniss av sins, þa

réseurrékšan av þa bɑdy, änd laíf

éveurlästing.  ɑmén.

Ton Pérínɑnn - Our Father

Ton Pérínɑnn, dɑn li syél kayɑyénn

kíčitwɑwann ton noo.

Kiya kɑníkɑništamann péytotéíé

kɑndawætamann tɑtočíkatéw

ota dɑn la tér tɑpiškoč dɑn li syél.

Mínɑnn anoč mon pänínɑnn

ponæíminɑnn kamačitotamɑk,

níštanɑnn nkaponæmɑnɑnik

aniké kɑkímaítotɑkoyɑkʊk

kayakočíinɑnn, mɑka

pašpíinɑnn ɑyik očé

mɑčíšíwæpišiwinn.

Kɑníkɑníštamawíɑk,

kišokišíwinn, kɑkičitæmíak

kiya aníé, anoč ékwa takíné.  Answičil.

Awr Fɑþeur in Hévin, yor næm

iz holí.  Mæ yor kingdeum keum,

änd yor will bí dun ɑn eurð äz

it iz in hévin.

Giv us teudæ þu fʊd þät wí níd

änd forgiv us for aʊr sinz,

just az wí forgiv þoz hʊ sin

ugænst us.

Giv us stréngð to résist témptæšun,

änd kíp us frum ɑll ívil.  ɑmén.

Kičítéím Li Bonjeu - Glory Bé

Kičítéím kí Papaínɑnn,

ékwa li Garsoo,

ékwa Ékičitwɑwak Kinígígwann.

Tɑpiškoč kɑmɑčipaíik,

ékwa šæmɑk, ékwa tɑpitaw ~

la tér ékɑ čiponipɑyik.  Answičil. 

Glorí bí tʊ þa Fathér, änd tʊ

þu Son, änd tʊ þa Holí Spírit, äz

it wuz in þu béginning, iz naw,

änd forévir šäll bí ~ weurld

wiðawt énd.  Amén.

O Mon Jéyzʊ - Oh My Jízus

O Mon Jéyzʊs, ponæminɑnn

kɑmačitotamɑk, pašpíinɑnn

dɑn li feu očé dɑn lenfér.

Nígɑníšta kɑkío ninígíawɑnɑnig ékwa anigé nawač kandawéítakig

číkitimɑgæ mɑčig.  Answičil.

O mɑy Jízus, forgiv us awr sinz

änd sæv us from þu fɑyrz uv héll. 

Líd ɑll soolz tʊ hévin, éspéšullí

þos most in níd uv yor meurcy.  Amén.

Kigičítéímitínɑnn Marí - Hail Mary

Kigičítéímitínɑnn Marí,

ékičítéímit, Li Bonjeu wiya

avik twa.  ékičítakišoyénn

kiya ki tʊ lí fém, ékwa

kíčitwɑwɑnɑ mawišwɑnɑ

kapimotɑtayénn katɑk Jéyzʊ.

Kíčitwɑwann Marí, Mér di

Bonjeu, ayamíéštémoinɑnn

šæmɑk ékwa atinapoyɑko.  Answičil.

Hæl Mærí, full ɑv græs, þu

Lord iz wið yʊ.  Bléssid ɑr

yʊ amung wimin, änd

bléssid iz þu frʊt uv yor wʊm

Jízas.  Holí Mérí, Muþeur uv Gɑd,

præ for us sinneurs, naw, änd ät

þí aʊr uv awr déð.  ɑmén.

Míawɑtann Mɑmaškɑč

i.  Li tɑnž Gabríél kípæwítamawéw la Sänt Vyɑrž än pičí Jéyzʊ  æwéyɑwat.

ii.  La Sänt Vyɑrž kígíogawéw sa koʊzinn ílizabéth.

iii.  Li pičí Jéyzʊ natɑwagéw.

iv.  Li pičí Jéyzʊ kítotaígɑšo kɑkičitowak la Méyzon.

v.  Kímiškɑgɑšo li pičí Jéyzʊ kɑkičotawak la Méyzon égoté žérʊsalém.

Mɑmatawinɑgwanɑ Kɑwašaškotéígé

- þe Luminous Mysteries

i.  Jéyzʊs kíšigayatagašo dɑn la rivyér dé žordan.

ii.  än nas aštéw én Kana.

iii.  Jéyzʊs itwéw kakičitowišid pé ayaw.

iv.  Jéyzʊs wapataíwéw ogičitoišíwinn éywɑškošod kíošta'ayik wiya dɑn li montaynn dé Téybor.

v.  éškwač Jéyzʊs sʊpí kɑmíčišočig avik wíčéwagana kígímíægonɑnnwiyawɑnn ékwa son sɑn, číwíčéwayak tapitaw. (the institution of the eucharist at the Last Supper.  Jesus gives us his body änd blood so that we can choose to receive eternal life.)   

Mitɑtætɑgwann Mɑmaškɑč

i.  Jéyzʊs kwatagætaw dɑn li žardan. (I've heard it as "jargin" not just "jardan")

ii.  Jéyzʊs kínočígɑšo än fwét kíabačitɑwag ékwa lí ploon égígamogé.(the scourging at the pillar has a much longer name here: he is tied to a pillar & beaten with a whip made with lead)

iii.  Jéyzʊs kíačigɑtéw än koronn oči šnélí.

iv.  Jéyzʊs kípimíwatægɑšo la krwé. (I'd actually say krwa like krwoa bc it is croix in french, but michif is like cowboy french)

v.  Jéyzʊs kíšagɑwéywag dɑn la krwé očičig ékwa očitak.

Mɑtawpayinn dɑn li Syél - Glorious Mysteries

i.  Apičípaw Jéyzʊs niponik očé.

ii.  Jéyzʊs dɑn li syél itotéw.

iii.  ékičitwawišid péítotéw.

iv.  La Sänt Vyɑrž šipwétaígašo dɑn li syél.

v.  La Sänt Vyɑrž ošigašo la Rénn dɑn li syél.

Kígičítéímitínɑnn Kɑgičitwɑošyénn La Rénn - Hail Holy Queen

Kígičítéímitínɑnn

Kɑgičitwɑošíénn La Rénn,

Mama očé gɑšɑgí'íwét. 

Kičítéítɑ mbimɑtišiwinínɑnn,

kɑšíwišíɑk, ékwa

kɑpagošéítamɑk.

Nimɑtonɑnn mon Sänt Vyɑrž

anɑnn očé kɑwæpinigɑšoyak

líz enfen očé ív.

Ota dɑn la valí mɑtowinn, ékwa

kɑgɑškéítamik,

kígagwæčímikawinn

číwíčí'íɑk.

Ayamíéš tamɑwínɑnn

wíjí'ínɑnn čimiškawayɑk

ton garsoo Jéyzʊs.  Answičil.

missing in the translation so idk if it is correct: thine eyes of mercy toward us & after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy woumb, o clement o loving o sweet virgin mary pray for us oh holy mother of got that we may be made worthy of the promises of christ let us pray grant we bessech you that by meditating on the holy mysteries of the most holy rosary of the blessed virgin mary we may both imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise through the same christ our lord amen. It's missing it after it says "pray for us most gracious advocate & help us to know your son jesus" which is skipping the "turn" your eyes & the exile part. It is also missing toe rosary closing which is not technically part of the prayer but I associate it with the salve regina bc that's when I usually say it.

Ayamíɑwinn očé ékičitwɑwak Kinígígwɑnn - Prayer to þa Holy Spirit

 Kɑníganíštamɑwíak dɑn li

syél, ana kaočicanawapamigoyɑk,

onígí'igwɑnɑ kɑtɑpwæit

mišíwæayaw ékwa kakío

kégwéy kaítagwak, anda

kaočikičitotagawíak, ékwa

pimɑtišíwinn kɑmí'igoyak;

Pépítigwæ dɑn mon čoér,

kišípégininɑnn

čígɑšíɑpawitayénn ægok

kɑpémačitotamak,

pimɑčitɑ ní'ígígwaínɑnn

kɑkičitowišíénn.  Answičil.

Jéyzʊs Mon Bonjeuínɑnn - Jesus prayer (better translates to jesus my God(our's)

Jéyzʊs Mon Bonjeuínɑnn,

li Garsoo kapimɑtišid očé

ton Bonjeuínɑnn,

kitimɑgæminɑnn

kɑmačigækwyʊiɑk,

kiyanɑnn očé kapašpí'íwét.  Answičil.

[winnipegwinterpeg]

For decades, a trio of roadways in Winnipeg bore the name of a bishop who led the campaign for residential schools.

Today, new names for a new chapter.

On National Indigenous Peoples Day, elders, knowledge keepers, and city and provincial officials gathered at a renaming ceremony for Abinojii Mikanah.

Among dancing and fiddling and prayer, reflection on the tough road travelled to arrive here and the hopes for a smoother one ahead.

"Abinojii Mikanah is an opportunity for all of our children to walk over that bridge. We are very humbled and thankful for the recognition and acceptance," Frank Beaulieu, an Anishinaabe Knowledge Keeper from Sandy Bay First Nation, said at the ceremony Friday.

The changes come after city council voted in April to approve a bylaw change that formally renamed the three streets that once paid tribute to Bishop Vital Grandin.

What were once known as Bishop Grandin Boulevard, Bishop Grandin Trail, and Grandin Street are now called Abinojii Mikanah, Awasisak Mēskanôw, and Taapweewin Way, respectively.

"The renaming of these streets is more than a symbolic gesture - it is a step, an important step for our entire community, our city, our province, our nation toward reconciliation, acknowledging past injustices and honouring the resilience and the strength of Indigenous communities," said Mayor Scott Gillingham.

What's in a name?

While new signs have been up for weeks, Friday's ceremony made the name changes official.

The new names were chosen by an Indigenous naming circle made up of elders, residential school survivors, knowledge keepers, and youth.

"The goal was to select names that honour Indigenous experience and Indigenous culture," Gillingham said.

Abinojii Mikanah means “The Children’s Way/Road” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, and is meant to honour the experiences of Indigenous residential school and day school survivors, and those who didn't make it home.

Awasisak Mēskanôw means children and journey, and represent the "journey" that was discussed during the consultation process.

Taapweewin means truth in Michif, and is an effort to include each of the seven languages outlined in the Manitoba Aboriginal Languages Recognition Act.

A legacy reconsidered

The previous roads were named for Bishop Vital Grandin, whose legacy has been reconsidered following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report.

In addition to its 94 calls to action, it included a detailed history of the residential school system in Canada, and identified the bishop as one of its architects and champions.

He appealed to the federal government to increase grants to these schools and encouraged the building of industrial schools in Western Canada.

[fandom-space-princess]

Keep Your Victory (But Give Me Little Death)

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Explicit Pairing: Michael/Sam Winchester Length: 6.3k Other tags: canon compatible but not necessarily canon compliant, you can't prove to me this didn't happen, Madison!Michael, She/Her Pronouns for Michael, this is sort of michifer-adjacent but not really, in that michael and sam are both just weird about lucifer, they're not talking about that but. it's there., Oral Sex, Dream Sex

Summary:

“You fear to touch me,” Michael spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Something like that.” “Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.” “You know,” he said. “You already know.” “Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?”

Continue reading below, or on AO3

“I admit, Sam, I’m intrigued,” said the night, seeping in past his curtains. The stars were in that voice, and the void. “You have some idea, now, what is required of you. And still, you pray.” 

Sam became aware that he was in a bed, familiar only for the sense that he’d slept in a thousand so like it as to be indistinguishable. Stained blankets, threadbare sheets. A bed that was not a bed, but a representation of archetype. Archetypal walls, too, shedding flakes of old paint, and grimy carpet clinging to the distant memory of beige. The dream of a motel room, then. Not as specific place, but as ethos.  

He had the sense that he’d awoken; he knew he was not awake.  

The night spoke again. 

“You invoke my Father. You seek exemption from your place among His plans. You will tell me why.” 

The night took form. There was darkness and potential, and then there was a face: sharp, pale, and beloved, haloed in ashen curls.  

What Sam wanted to say to her was: “I missed you.” Or: “I’m dreaming.” Or simply to call her by her name, to reach for her and kiss the word “Jessica��� into her open palms until his lips remembered the texture of her skin. But what he choked out instead, shrinking from the memory of two nights past when her face had evaporated away to reveal the nightmare underneath, was: “No.” 

The creature who was not Jess raised an eyebrow. “You fear me,” she said.  

Sam propped himself up on his hands, blankets puddling in his lap. “I told you, it’s never going to happen.” He enunciated his words with care, watching her eyes, cornered prey tracking a predator. “I’ll never say yes to you.”  

The creature that was not Jessica Moore didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, but at his words, a subtle shift in the tension of her muscles changed the way she held herself. Her chin tilted up, and she gazed at him along the bridge of her nose. “Ah. You believe me to be my Brother. Not unexpected, I suppose: he hears your prayers as well as I do. He has visited you, then.” She studied him. “And worn this image, as well.” 

His eyebrows furrowed together. “You... you’re not Lucifer.” 

This earned him the ghost of a smile. “Correct.” 

“Then what...?” 

It was odd, her presence in this room. Sam realized what had been bothering him since the moment of her appearance. It was the way she held herself, broad-shouldered and rigid. Lucifer had been all fluid grace, both as Jess and after, her movements deliberate, certainly, but organic. And she had shone with an almost imperceptible aura, a light interior to herself. The creature before him now wore the same borrowed face, but otherwise was her opposite in almost every way. When she moved, it was with precision, and only so much as was necessary to convey her point. She did not shine in the darkness; she displaced it. 

“In truth, I should have met with your brother first,” she said. Her words shared the same rote, pointed quality as her movements. She held her hands out in front of her, palms up. “But I wanted to give you answer. Whether you like it or not, Sam Winchester, you’re special. Chosen for a purpose, one as important to me as it is to Lucifer.” 

Understanding clicked into place for Sam, roiling his stomach. “Michael. You’re Michael.” 

Of course. Hadn’t he pleaded for this? Putting himself to bed with the same reassurances he’d been grasping at since he was a child. Even after—especially after—the revelations of two nights ago about his place in the universe, prayer had felt imbued with that old, imperative weight. Sitting on the edge of his bed before sleep, reciting: deliver us from evil. If he was honest with himself, he had held out hope, however tempered by disillusionment, that some power on high would take notice.  

It was small wonder that angels flocked to his dreams.  

His heart wasn’t real there (nothing was real, there). And still, it thumped hollowly in his absent chest. 

She took a step toward him. Reflexively, he shoved himself back. His spine cracked hard against the headboard. She stopped. 

“This form displeases you.” Michael’s eyes slid over his body, his taut and coiled frame, the twist of his fists into the sheets. Assessing him, measuring him. Then they flicked back up to his own. 

He couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked, instead, at her hands. This memory of Jess, the one Michael must have pulled from him to craft a likeness... he’d all but forgotten. She was so beautiful. How could he have forgotten? This woman wore the same cutoff jean shorts, faded to grey and fraying, and a crop top the delicate pale pink of the inside of a conch shell—they'd gone on a hike. On one of the last bright days between the death of summer and the true advent of fall. Vivid, sun-baked and alive: Jess then had been everything that Michael was not now. He’d hugged her to him, buried his nose against her scalp where her hair was damp with sweat. Her laughter had echoed between their bodies where they pressed together. They’d intertwined their fingers, and her nail polish, chipping, had left flakes behind wherever she touched him. They’d stayed on his skin for days—cobalt fragments, and the smell of her. 

Michael wore Jess’s chipped blue nail polish in the same way as he wore Jess’s fingers, and her face: as an afterthought.  

Her voice snagged him out of his memories. “I require something of you,” she reminded him. “Tell me.” 

“Why I prayed?” 

She nodded. “Why you pray.” 

“Could... uh...” He cleared his throat. Steadier, he tried again. “I don’t... want to presume, or anything. I just don’t think I can...” His voice cracked. Once more. “D’you think you could look like someone else?” 

She cocked her head.  

He felt her rummage through his memories. She was not careful. It was not malicious, and her face as she watched him betrayed nothing but casual, imperious indifference. Still he felt the substance of himself riffled, examined, the pages of his mind turned rapidly under vast, deft fingers.  

One moment to the next, she was no longer Jessica. Lucifer had taken a perceptible amount of time to exchange one face for another. Michael simply became, in an instant. And where a moment before Jess had been, Madison stood. 

Sam wasn’t sure if the question was safe to ask, but it clawed out from between his teeth anyway. “Why her?” 

Michael stepped forward again. Madison’s brown hair snaked over her shoulders. The motion transfixed Sam: he could no more have moved under her eyes than had she been kin to Medusa. When he didn’t back away, she replied, “I take the form your mind provides. She was dear to you. The two of you achieved... a rapport, for want of a better term, that suits my own desires. You wish you could have saved her. You cling to the idea. It gives you comfort.” 

“What do you mean, your desires?” God, but his voice was unsteady. Like being 16 again. Even talking to Lucifer hadn’t made him feel so young, so aware of his own mortality. “Am I supposed to read into that?” 

“You are supposed to do many things, some of which are more relevant to my interests than others.” Michael lowered herself gingerly on the foot of the bed. She appeared no more relaxed there than she had standing; she merely folded her hands across her lap, and continued to watch him. “I understand what you think you know of angels. Believe whatever you wish, but know that I do desire your comfort, insofar as it is an achievable thing. I am not here to hurt you, Sam.” 

“Then why are you here? I mean—you could help me. Right? You’re... I prayed because... I wanted... I hoped...” 

Her face turned away from him again, fixing on an unseen horizon. In her silence Sam counted his breaths, noted again the absence of hers. He worried that he had mis-stepped. The darkness around her thickened and churned with her thoughts. Whether it was only an effect of the dream, or a natural extension of the fact of her, he could not have said. 

“I am here to know you, and to offer perspective,” she answered, after a time. She drew her legs up onto the bed, folded them under her, rearranging her limbs as though at the command of a puppeteer. It brought her closer to him. “You will see the rightness of your purpose, yours and your brother’s. You seek clarity. I can help you achieve it.”  

Her knee bumped his, through the blankets. It seemed to him that she should have burned where they touched, or he should have. But the sensation was only solid, only human, in the ways of knees and shinbones and blood-warm bodies. In the ways Madison would have been; in the ways Michael should not have been. 

“I thought you guys knew everything already.” 

“I know what I am required to know to fulfill my duties. That is much. It is not all. As I said, you intrigue me. I thought I understood you. You are my Brother’s vessel.” Her knee knocked his again; this time, she watched it happen. “I would have sworn that in your position, Lucifer would not have sought intervention. Yet here we are.” 

Michael’s words took root between his ribs, wrapped tendrils through his chest and squeezed. His breath stuttered. “I’m not him. Lucifer. I’m not like him.”  

He was acutely aware of being examined, still, again, but he couldn’t look at her. 

“I’m curious,” she said. Her voice came out strange, rougher. It might have passed as human. “You beg intercession, on terms that—you must understand—are not mine to accept. Lucifer would bear no compromise. You, who claim to be so unlike him, what compromise would satisfy you? Imagining for the moment that such a thing were possible.” 

Sam bit the inside of his lip, hard, once, then again, until his words tasted copper-tinged. “I can’t,” he started.  

He stopped. Started again. 

“I can’t be the thing that destroys the world. Just tell me I don’t have to be that,” he rasped. “Tell me I don’t have to be that.” 

A light touch on his forehead. He lifted his eyes to find that she had raised her right hand, placed her fingertips gently but with intention just below his hairline. They were at eye level, her knelt there and him, seated; he couldn’t be looking up at her. And yet he felt himself become small. 

“We have different conceptions of destruction, but... I understand. You would give yourself for that outcome.” She slid her fingers higher, tangling into his hair, her palm spreading flat over the crown of his head. “You do not ask for your own life, but to spare the pain of others.” 

His back bowed. He swayed toward her.  

Madison had worn no nail polish, and had manicured her nails to neat points. On Michael both of these things presented themselves as natural, facts to be accepted without question. But Madison had smelled like clean laundry, like warm pavement and leather car seats and the thrill of teenage delinquency. Michael smelled like none of this. Even in dream, Michael was sharp at the back of the sinuses; she smelled like ozone. 

“Why would you touch me?” he managed. “I’m not your vessel. I’m corrupted. Impure.” 

A frown wrinkled between her eyebrows, pursed her mouth, then was gone. She tightened her fingers at the roots of his hair. It brought the breath rushing out between his teeth in a hiss.  

She looked down at him, and she looked, and looked, and at last she sighed. “My Brother is many things, Sam. But he is not now, and has never been, impure.” 

Bit by bit, her movements were losing their rigidity. Her right hand still palming the crown of his head, she brought her left up to cup the curve of his jaw. She touched him like a priest would, he thought. As though she were anointing him. 

“This shape you have been given,” she said, stroking the point of her thumbnail over his cheekbone, “the destiny you wear as flesh, and would reject? It is an enjoinder: a commandment to glory. What Lucifer has wrought is monstrous. I must give answer to his deeds. But you—as your brother, as my Brother, as I myself—you are not monstrous. You are only potential, Sam. We are all of us only potential, awaiting fulfillment.” 

Michael’s mouth formed his name the way Madison’s mouth had done. The bow of her upper lip was soft, and pursed, and unbidden he remembered what it had been to kiss her. He wondered if Michael would taste the same, wearing her body, or if she would taste as she smelled, like cold high atmosphere. 

Her hands lifted off him, untwisted from his hair. He leaned after her in their wake, bereft of the loss, and confused at it, but wanting more than anything for her to lay her hands on him again. She did. The frown returned to her forehead, his confusion mirrored on her, but her hands flittered back down to him, doves settling fretful on his shoulder and the nape of his neck.  

“You miss him,” he said to her, understanding this fully only as he said it. He leaned more firmly into her touch. “Do you really have to kill him?” 

The doves lifted, hovered, settled again. Now she touched his collarbone, his chest over his heart. Nothing between his pulse and her palm but his thin and too-worn shirt, his thin and too-worn flesh.  

“He has made his choices,” she replied. “He is making them, even now, as I am making mine. My Father’s will for us is absolute. The conclusion is foregone.” 

One heartbeat. Two. “Then how can we be—potential?” 

Her lips parted, a little. The edge of her tongue traced the line of moisture along the curve of her lower lip. “The path we take matters. Our methods matter. I do not believe Lucifer can do other than make the choices he must, as I do not believe I could. I am not even certain that you can. But you would give yourself for a different outcome, where my Brother would not. I find this to be in conflict with my understanding of my Father’s will, and with my understanding of my Brother.” 

He swallowed. “So I’m... what, to you? A thought experiment? A problem to solve?” 

“These things, yes, among others. You are a part of the path, Sam, and a method for traversing it.” She took a breath, the first he had seen her take, slow and deliberate. “My will is my Father’s will. And it is my will to know, fully and completely, the means by which I am to pursue my duties.” 

Sam absorbed this, and didn’t know what to do with it. It was one thing to beg for the intercession of the divine, but quite another entirely to be pinned under the regard of the first and holiest of divinities. She was no different from Lucifer, he reminded himself, but with her hands on him, her eyes on him, it rang hollow. He wondered what he would give her, if she asked for it. He wondered what he wanted her to ask for.  

What came out of his mouth was a plea: “Your question. I want—I’ll pray for you. I’ll show you. Let me show you. Please.” 

A shiver ran through her. Her right hand returned to his hair, curving over the back of his skull, left hand on his chest, and she lowered herself atop his lap as gingerly as she had first seated herself on the bed. Legs slung over his and blankets bunched between them; once again he felt himself impossibly smaller than her. He had been able to pick Madison up and hold her against him with one arm. He could not imagine doing it to Michael. And, just then, he could imagine doing nothing else.  

She pinned him in place without apparent effort, as though it were nothing to her. “I’ve watched you,” she said. Her words raised the hair on his skin to gooseflesh. “Your brother as well, of course, but you, Sam—your little rituals. They do fascinate me. You bow your head to pray, do you not?” Her fingers tightened over his scalp, and the touch no longer felt quite so like an offering from saint to supplicant. His head dropped forward, his cheek brushing hers. His neck felt terribly exposed.  

He tried to speak; could only rattle out a half-coherent slurred aaehhh. How did he endure the touch of something like her? Scalp, chest, the curve of his jaw, his hips and thighs where she straddled him: it seemed impossible that he did not burn or freeze at these places, these junctures between her holiness and his all-too-human flesh. He lost himself, for some moments, caught half between longing and terror. 

“And then?” she prodded. 

“H-hands,” he stuttered. He tried to shake himself, succeeded only in settling her more firmly across his legs. His hands were—somewhere, a million miles away, doing nothing for him, he’d forgotten them so thoroughly. If her hands on him were unearned blessing and undeniable benediction both, his hands on her would be unthinkable blasphemy. He uncoiled his fists from the blankets, down near his sides, and clasped them together, pressed to his stomach in a fearful attempt not to touch her more than he already was. 

At this, Michael tutted her disapproval. Her hand left his chest, and he regretted the loss only for the second it took for her to grasp his hands instead. Her fingers insinuated themselves between his palms. She pulled his hands away from his body—he offered no resistance, could offer none—and she pressed them down, still clasped, until his forearms rested across her thighs and his knuckles grazed her stomach.  

“You fear to touch me,” she spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear.  

“Something like that.” 

“Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.” 

“You know,” he said. “You already know.” 

“Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?” 

For one dizzying instant he thought she was asking him for another “yes,” a different one. But she remained statue-still over him, and the thought passed, and with it, some of his trepidation. The concession was unexpected: that between his desire for this strange communion and his fear of her, the latter might be the more powerful. He was left feeling distinctly wrong-footed, yet undeniably reassured. 

In response, he loosened his hands. Allowed them to rest more gently against her. “Yeah,” he replied. “I just... you’re kind of a lot. Uh, no offense.” 

Michael’s pleasure was obvious in the lines of her body, in the breadth of her shoulders and the way her head tipped back as though to accept a crown. She pressed the hand that still covered his clasped ones more insistently between his palms, until they opened around it, and he held her hand in his. “I am what I am. It is what you are that I am discovering. To which point: you were providing me a demonstration. Your hands—what about them?” 

What indeed. His head remained bowed under her hand (and he was thankful for that, a gratitude that surprised him, for her soft-immovable living iron grip that held him aloft in the moment) and he closed his eyes. So it was by touch that he undertook to relearn her body. By touch, alone, that he traced his fingers over the contours of her waist, down the arches of her pelvic bones where they disappeared beneath the denim of her cutoffs. Then back up, around the hem of her shirt, over each jut of ribs, to the column of her spine. This body was a country he’d traveled before. He could have wept for the familiarity. 

But she wasn’t Madison. It was impossible to truly forget for even a second. Michael upended reality simply by existing in it; the world moved aside for her. She was warm, but not as a person was warm. Michael was warm in much the same way as a star: an inferno, self-sustaining and consumptive, survivable only if kept at a great distance.  

Sam wanted to bridge that distance. The implied question of the relationship between that desire, and his own survival instincts, he set aside for later.  

His fingers drifted down her vertebrae, slowly, feeling their shapes. He muttered under his breath.  

“What aspect of prayer is this?” she said. 

“Rosary,” he chuckled back, and he thought he felt her huff a breath of laughter across his throat. 

He pitched his voice louder, meaning for her to hear. When he spoke, what came out was not prayer—not exactly—but fragments of half-remembered poetry that looped in his ears like a refrain: 

“If I profane—” he began. He felt the weight of her curiosity, her expectation. He pressed on: “—with... with my unworthiest hand... this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a...” His mouth was dry. He swallowed. “... a gentle kiss.” 

Christ. Shakespeare to an angel. Shakespeare to Michael. But that was where he was. Nothing else felt adequate.  

He expected to move on. He expected his words would have amused, bored, perhaps even offended her. He did not expect her to return the next verse. 

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” she replied. Her lips were at his ear again. She ran her left hand down his arm, pulled his hand off the small of her back to knit their fingers together between them. Her voice held a smile. “Though I accept the proposition, regardless.” 

She kissed him.  

He’d been right, and wrong. She did taste like she smelled, her lips all static pop under his own, but it held more of bioelectric feedback than the hum of the void. The motions were all Madison’s. It occurred to Sam that Michael might have only his memories for reference; that, wearing Jess’s face, she would have kissed like Jess kissed, too. Realizing this, he slowed. He kissed her with deliberate languor, with a luxury of time he and Madison hadn’t possessed. Some of the earlier stiffness returned to her. She became still under him. He hooked one finger into her waistband and tugged her flush against him, and crushed his mouth against hers, and she let him do it.  

“What does this feel like for you?” he wondered aloud. He lifted his hand to trace her lips with the tips of his fingers.  

Michael took a rare moment of deliberation before she answered. She kept her mouth pressed to his fingertips, speaking against his skin. “Much as it feels to you, I expect. Your nerve endings provide useful information. The sensation is... not unlike taking a vessel. It is novel.” She was quiet for a moment, then added: “It is not unpleasant.” 

“That’s... good,” he managed.  

“It is. Though you have unusual taste in prayers.” 

“I could stop. If you wanted.” 

She raised an eyebrow at him, mirth that took on shades of disbelief when he grinned back at her. She tightened the hand that was in his hair once again, quick, nearly playful, and draped the other arm across his shoulders behind his neck.  

“You will do no such thing.” The arm around his shoulders flexed. She guided his head down to her shoulder, and ground her hips against his. His breathing broke, broke again, and he gasped against that place under her jaw where her pulse should have been but was not. 

“Another,” she said, nearly as breathless.  

“You want something more traditional?”  

“I would know you, your interiority. Whatever you feel most demands to be heard.” 

He set his lips against her throat, considering. Her skin was pliant, soft and yielding, and he moved past lips to scraping with the barest edge of his teeth. Felt the buzz of her underneath the veneer of humanity.  

“... It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,” he started. He slid both hands over her hips. Dipped fingertips under her waistband. Pricked her skin with his fingernails. She startled, at the sensation, or the change in meter, or his choice of poem, he could not say. “I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it.” 

Again she surprised him. “Books, art, religion, time,” she said, eyes slitted almost closed. She wasn’t looking at him, now, had turned her head away. “The visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now consumed.” 

Abruptly speech deserted her. Sam leaned forward, pressed a kiss to the exposed ridge of her collarbone. Her eyes remained closed, her face turned from him. She bit her lower lip. 

What did he want from this? He hadn’t gone into this encounter certain of the answer to that question, was no more sure now. But the shame and shock that had festered in him since Lucifer appeared had steadily abated in Michael’s presence. There was something in this for her—she'd said as much—but he suspected there was depth there she hadn’t made visible to him, or at least nuance to the desire.  

What he was certain of was that with every touch, she unhistoried him; transformed his past into kindling for the burning future she commanded. She had spoken of a compromise they might, hypothetically, have reached. Maybe it was foolish to hope that she might want that, or something like it, as much as he did. But he didn’t want her to leave yet, either way. He wanted her to stay.  

On impulse, he wrapped his arms around her waist and unseated her from his lap, swinging her back against the headboard. Their positions suddenly reversed, she looked at him seated between her knees with wide eyes full of earnest bewilderment.  

Sam kissed the inside bend of her knee. “Realized I wasn’t doing it right,” he murmured. He stole a glance at her. Another kiss, an inch further up her leg. “You’re supposed to kneel. Sorry.” 

At his third kiss, again further up the bared skin of her thigh, he heard her head clunk softly back against the headboard. She threaded her fingers back into his hair. 

“You are without fault,” she said to him, or maybe just at him. “Provided you atone for your oversight.” 

His mouth, traversing up her thigh, had reached the ragged edge of denim that demarcated the parts of Michael that Sam had seen and touched from those that still belonged only to the memory of the woman she wore. He wanted to see beneath it, wanted to know how much of the impossible creature in his arms and his bed was recognizable. What commonality might be found between woman and myth. 

He wanted, he realized, to know her for herself. As she had made it clear that she wished (via the mechanism of this intimate, unexpected exchange) to know him. 

His hand found the button of her shorts, and worked it until it popped free. But her hand fell over his. She looked down at him with placid eyes. And then she wore nothing at all.  

It took his mind a stuttered instant to catch up, which clearly amused her. His hand, which had rested on denim, she now pressed onto the dip below her bellybutton where the velvet skin of her stomach gave way to soft black hair. His eyes raked up her body, recommitting it to memory: the pale spread of her breasts and the flushed brown nipples, the peaks of her ribs beneath rippling skin. The curve of her pelvic bones, the mole on her right hip: these were the same as he remembered them. But Madison’s body, beautiful as it was, had never pulled his gaze in like this. Had never entrapped him in her own personal gravity the way that Michael did. 

“Tell me what you make of me, in this form.” 

“I don’t know that I have the words you want,” he said, truthfully. “Show you instead?” 

“... I’m amenable.” 

Under the pressure of his hands her legs fell apart. Every time she yielded to him, every time he moved her, the part of his mind still staggered by insistent awe reminded him that it had only happened because she had allowed it. That there was no better indication that what he was doing was not only at her consent, but by her will, and that there was a small but vocal part of him that delighted in being the subject of that will.  

He urged her to extend one of her legs beneath him, propping himself above it; the other he slung over his shoulder.  

There seemed no preamble that would be suitable, apart from what had already passed between them. Still, if his intuition was to be believed, this was the first experience of such mortal intimacy that Michael would know for herself. His own first-time memories were all rushed, fumbling, teenaged things. It felt wrong, for that to be what he offered her. 

And so he took his time. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against her stomach. His lips skimmed along the top of her pubic bone, mapping the boundary between her structural hardness and the soft expanse of skin and muscle that overlaid it. He slid the fingers of one hand into her pubic hair, feeling the way it curled around them, rough-soft. Her own fingers tightened in his hair in return.  

When he nudged his head back, they loosened again, and he took advantage of the renewed range of motion. His mouth dropped to the divot between her hip and leg, and he ran the flat of his tongue down it. Her skin here tasted more like he remembered of Madison’s body: still buzzing with power, but with none of the ozone sting that kissing her mouth had carried. It lacked the tang of salt that sweat would have given it, but if he hadn’t known what she was... well. It was better not to dwell on that. 

Sam’s life, beset by storms as it had been, had set him running more often than he cared to dwell on. It was why he was here—in Oklahoma, apart from his brother, on his own—and why he found himself in this bed, now, with this creature of embodied primordial fire of creation spread beneath him, naked and wearing the face of a woman whose life he had taken with his own hands. Michael was not safe haven; it would have been a grave mistake to think of her that way. Yet he was drawn to her regardless, in a way that he thought might be similar—perhaps complementary—to the way she seemed to be drawn to him. If he were allowed to scald himself in the inferno of her, perhaps he would be more worthy of finding the shelter he sought. 

Between her legs, the warmth that radiated from her dared him to try. “What was it you wanted from me, again?” he asked in a surge of boldness, his mouth pressed against her in a grin.  

Though quiet, her voice had lost none of its command. “To understand you, within as without. Your interiority.” 

He slid one finger inside of her.  

She exhaled hard, though her nose. “Irreverence is unbecoming,” she said, but he thought he heard laughter in it.  

For all that she had professed unfamiliarity with physical intimacy, her responses were as animal as if her body had been her own. He stroked inside of her, once, twice, and the wetness of her slicked against his palm. He leaned his head down, and licked small, light circles around her clit in time to the motions of his wrist.  

Her laughter deserted her then, and he heard her take a breath, and then another. She drew them in time to his movements. He felt the beat of her pulse under his tongue, where before she had none; it kept pace with his own.  

Sam was aware, distantly, of his own investment in the intimacy between them. His skin prickled with sweat, and with the electricity of touching her. Somewhere either here in dreams or in the world of waking, he was hard, an ache in the pit of his stomach and between his own cramping thighs. He ignored this. As they had come closer together, he had felt more distinctly the places her power insinuated itself into his mind. The way it spread out along his nerves. His experience of his own body seemed relevant only insofar as for what she might gain from it. He suspected that she would not prefer the immediacy of learning what his nerves had to teach her, were he to focus on himself. 

So he focused instead on her. He extended another finger inside her, and then, when her body welcomed him, a third. The circling of his tongue became more focused, harder, a rhythm that he matched with his hand. He sucked more of her into his mouth, clit, labia, and her muscles spasmed around his fingers. With his other hand, he pinned her leg back hard against the sheets, bearing as much of his weight and strength down over her as he was able.  

Her hips bucked against him, but he held her in place. And she let him do it.  

He was under no illusions about his control over this situation. But Michael’s breath had turned ragged, and shaky, and when he dared to glance up at her she was staring down at him as though transfixed. She met his eyes for only a handful of seconds. In those seconds, he saw the emotion she had so carefully guarded slashed across her face like a wound. Her expression mirrored the one he thought he must have worn to see Madison’s face again, and Jessica’s. 

Then her eyes shuttered. She shoved his head back down, and he wrote his apology with the tip of his tongue.  

Her body clenched, hard, harder; her hands twisted in his hair. Panting. Pulse racing. She ground herself against his hands and his mouth, wet heat, friction. He would have moaned her name if he’d been able. As it was, he just moaned. Senseless noise, vibration, but he knew she understood it.  

Michael came with a word on her lips in a language that should have shredded them both to pieces. He couldn’t have said what it was, that thing she reached for at her most open and vulnerable.  

Although—if he were being honest—he could have offered a guess. 

He did not stop immediately, but gradually slowed. The ringing in his ears and the movements of his hands tapered off in tandem, until he pulled himself away from her. He leaned back on his heels. He remained there, between her knees, silent, as though he were waiting for acknowledgement or dismissal.  

Her pulse stopped first. He saw the moment it ceased to flutter in her throat. Then her breath, the rise and fall of her ribs tapering off, her chest going still. She sat up, her face returned to the cold confidence she’d worn when she entered the room. As she moved forward to meet him, her legs folded underneath her, and her movements regained some of their earlier, pointed stiffness.  

She grabbed the bedsheet, and then his hand, still wet. Turning it delicately between her own, she dried first the hand, and then, with soft strokes of the cloth, his face. She held his chin cupped in her palm for several seconds after she let the sheet fall away.  

Then she kissed him, once, mouth closed, like a blessing. 

“Was it enough?” Sam asked, his voice shot. “Did you get what you wanted?” 

Michael stepped away from him. She smiled.  

“Your eagerness is endearing,” she replied. Her eyes turned away from him, toward the horizon she always seemed to be searching for. He wondered what she saw there. “Yes. I always get what I want.” 

She sounded smaller than she had earlier, he thought. As though she had not found something, but had become more lost. She turned her back to him. Under him, around him, the dream began to evaporate. He called out to her, “When will I see you again?” 

She didn’t reply. 

He awoke to the sun on his face, and every muscle in his body sore. As though he’d slept wrong; as though he’d spent weeks curled atop his bed, grieving, starving. Wanting.  

The burn of a distant star still thrumming under his skin, he rolled to his feet.  

A shower, he thought. As cold as he could get it. 

[abpoli]

A new radio station featuring programming in five indigenous languages has launched in Edmonton.

The Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA) launched 89.3 The Raven on Monday. The station features blues, hip hop, classical rock and pop music alongside language programming in Cree, Dene, Nakoda Sioux, Blackfoot and Michif. It will also broadcast news and indigenous culture programming.

“All our staff and management have worked really hard to make this a reality. I’m so proud of them and our new baby,” said Bert Crowfoot, founder and CEO of AMMSA, in a news release issued Sunday.

The station is scheduled to start each morning at 6 a.m. with an indigenous prayer, a welcome song and the news. Raven Mornings will broadcast from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and will be followed by a half hour of language programming. The afternoon show, known as the Tribe Drive, will run from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The station will also feature a number non-daily block programs.

The radio station was originally supposed to launch last April but was delayed because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission granted AMMSA a pair of broadcasting licenses four years ago to launch two radio stations. The society is currently operating a station in Calgary, which launched in 2018.

Continue reading

[riverspatrick]

The Devil Is In The Detail

This is a story of abused power, of divine authority and the institutionalised evil and devils earning their wings for doing it. Background check: I grew up in the Catholic institution at a time of transition. Priests and nuns were being replaced by educated citizens within the school system and whilst the head of our school was a priest and some classes were still taught by dog collars, they were outnumbered and gone by the time I graduated. The purge had already happened in larger cities and our rural community resisted the change for far too long. Our school was once a college devoted solely to theology, putting white collars on young sons of farmers who could not afford an education and didn’t fancy the farming life, which would have otherwise been their only option. The college would be downgraded to an all boys private boarding school where they taught European superiority, latin, and the sciences of the great bearded architect in the sky. The priests didn’t relent their hold on power easily and they would have remained in power had it not been for a terrible event which forced them to step down from their posts.

When the abandoned nunnery at the back of the building was destroyed in a fire, the authorities on the scene uncovered the bones of children buried between the walls. It made the headlines of course, but further details were never made public and it remains unknown if the scene was ever investigated by officials. The rubble was swept under the rug quickly and a giant greenhouse sealed the grounds within months. Few people remember this. I asked the city for archives. The official word is that the nunnery was replaced by a greenhouse at such and such date. A matter of fact.

I remember because my father was a teacher there. All the local children went to public school but I had to go to this horrible private school because my father was a proud man. My father kept every newspaper clipping which mentioned his holy school, good or bad. After the fire and the horror exposed, my father reassured me with his favourite fit-all quotes: it-is-what-it-is, things-were-different-back-then, what-god-wants-god-gets. Such apathy did not come from his mother.

My gran fell in love with a white lumberjack, losing the respect of the Métis community who raised her, and her official status as first nation on her wedding day because of the ruling patriarchy. I loved my kokum (Michif for grandmother) and she loved me the most. I spent whole summers at her house. By that time, following her husband’s death, she had moved up North to be with her ageing siblings, far away from where my father lived, up steep hills and through man-made forests of towering twigs that magically grew from barren land. You never heard the song of a bird in those woods. A deer couldn’t walk between the pine trees and the sun-deprived ground offered no sustenance for the smaller animals that could, but the desolate landscape eventually opened up onto a great lake crowned by dozens of identical houses and a tall church spire. I never felt more at home anywhere else and that says a lot about my father’s home.

She had two surviving sisters and a brother for neighbours. We’d be together every day, sharing a meal or a song around a fire whenever possible. Between them, Koko (nickname for my kokum) was the only grandmother. The joy on their face when I arrived and their sadness when I left will always be imprinted in my memory whenever I think of them. When I hear about the residential schools scandal, I remember their own story of loss and grief, but I also remember their prayers to baby Jesus, the virgin Mary and the holy ghost. They all told me that I looked like baby Jesus and that one-day-without-a-doubt the Holy Mother would appear to me.

A colonised people converted to Christianity and made to suffer by the church they worship. It puzzles me still. I wish I had had the opportunity to ask them how could they keep faith in their tormentors?

I hear about institutionalised racism. Looking back in history, I see something far worse: institutionalised evil. Whilst the Catholic residential schools in Canada made it their mission to whitewash First Nations, the same systematic evil happened in Ireland where a sea of unmarked little shallow graves flows through holy grounds. These were the innocent children of the Irish nation. Orphans or sons and daughters from dirt-poor families.

The forest for the tree.

Colonisation, missionaries, conversion. It’s still happening today. Christian aid feeding a set-menu of bible and porridge to poor nations where there is no alternative.

I loved being outside with Koko and her siblings more than spending time inside their home. There were crucifixes in every room above doors and tables. In the bedroom where I slept, at the foot of the bed hung an illustration of the virgin Mary and the holy son sitting on a golden throne at the edge of a river of fire filled with distorted bodies. I remember how serene Mary and Jesus looked overseeing a sea of agonising souls. A perfect portrait of apathy. I remember the twisted eyes and mouths of the unholy. Above my head was a painting of Jesus holding his heart in one hand. A heartless man with a Mona Lisa smile. I always averted his roaming stare but I felt it piercing my flesh and pricking the marrow of my shivering bones.

Koko and her family told me about the horrors of the church before heeding the toll of the bells and kneeling at the pews for an hour every day during which time I collected crayfish by the lake for our supper. I’ll never know Koko’s reason for not forcing me to go to church with them, but I’d hazard a guess. I only wish I knew how they could kneel before this priest who later retired following a child-abuse scandal of his own.

No, these were not different times – empathy and love are not new virtues! Fear the leader of people who has the power to absolve his own sins. Good would never appoint evil as its servant.

(...)

Jesus-Christ-on-a-popsicle-stick – I need a coffee.

[phonaesthemes]

A new radio station featuring programming in five Indigenous languages has launched in Edmonton.

The Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA) launched 89.3 The Raven on Monday. The station features blues, hip-hop, classic rock and pop music alongside language programming in Cree, Dene, Nakoda Sioux, Blackfoot and Michif. It will also broadcast news and Indigenous culture programming.

“All our staff and management have worked really hard to make this a reality. I’m so proud of them and our new baby,” said Bert Crowfoot, founder and CEO of AMMSA, in a news release issued Sunday.

The station is scheduled to start each morning at 6 a.m. with an Indigenous prayer, a welcome song and the news. Raven Mornings will broadcast from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and will be followed by a half hour of language programming. The afternoon show, known as the Tribe Drive, will run from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The station will also feature a number of non-daily block programs.

[theshygirloverthere]

Okay but a Michifer fic where instead of sending Lucifer to hell, Chuck sends him to earth without his powers. And in order to get back to heaven he has to learn to love humanity. At first he thinks it’s stupid, but then he spots one of the brightest souls he’s ever seen. And his name is Michael and Lucifer can’t stop gushing about him to Chuck through prayer. And Chuck realizes that Lucifer has fallen in love, so he brings Lucifer back to heaven. But Lucifer would much rather just stay on earth forever so he begs until Chuck sends him back.