Thoughts, Prayers & Art

Remembering Enmegahbowh, Priest and Missionary, 1902 in the Shadow of Empire

He stood
not with sword,
but with Spirit.
Not to conquer,
but to heal.

They called him Enmegahbowh
the one who stands before his people
and stand he did,
between the Cross and the Crown,
between tribe and church,
between war cries and whispered prayers.

He did not bend to empire.
He did not sell his people’s soul
for a seat at the table of the colonizer.
No, he carried the Gospel
in the language of the oppressed.
He prayed in the cadence
of rivers and birch trees.
He baptized without erasure.
He preached without betrayal.

And still,
he stood.

While the white church
wove flags around altars
and turned Jesus into a mascot for war,
he remembered the one who was
broken, brown, and free.

And now,
in this America,
where Trump chants like Caesar
and the proud stomp the poor
while draped in crosses they do not carry
we remember him.
Enmegahbowh,
your name is a mirror,
a mantle,
a marching cry.

We who tremble with rage and grief,
who kneel in prayer and rise in protest,
we too must stand
before our people,
before the system,
before the silence.

We must speak
in the old tongues of justice.
We must call the church back
from nationalism’s altar.
We must unlearn empire
and relearn Christ.

So say his name.
Say it like a psalm.
Say it like thunder.
Say it for every child locked in a cage,
for every mother separated,
for every father, hunted and detained,
for every truth buried in textbooks,
for every holy elder whose voice was stolen

Enmegahbowh

The One Who Stands.
And we, too
we will stand.
In the streets.
In the pulpits.
In the ruins and in the rising.
We will stand.

Because peace is not passive.
Because silence is not neutral.
Because the Gospel is not for sale.

We will stand
with the crucified,
with the colonized,
with the Christ who still walks barefoot
through the ashes of empire.

And we will not move.

(Originally Published: June 12, 2025)