Toni V. Lee

Let's talk about Christopher Columbus... 👩🏾‍🏫 In 1492, there were already millions of folk in the Americas--the indigenous people. 👩🏾‍🏫 Leif Erikson, a Viking, was the first European to sail to North America. He reached Canada 500 years before Columbus ever pointed his ship west, intending to reach Asia. 👩🏾‍🏫 Columbus did not discover America in 1492. In fact he never stepped foot on North American shores.  👩🏾‍🏫 October 12 marks the day Columbus arrived in the Bahamas. He did reach the coasts of what today are Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, as well as explored the Central and South American coasts. 👩🏾‍🏫 What Columbus did in Hispaniola (what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to the indigenous and friendly Taino people is absolutely abhorrent: he forced them into slavery, punishing them with loss of limb or death if they didn't collect enough gold. The indigenous population was destroyed by his brutality and transmitted European diseases. 👩🏾‍🏫 C...

There's a whole lot going on in churches where folk are professing to be Christians that requires the church's attention.  If they invested quality time sweeping around their own front door, they won't have time to police the choices of folk who are not and never have professed to be Christians.  If there wasn't so much known dirt going on in churches, more folk may turn to the church to find a way out of their life choices. Instead, what they're seeing are church folk doing the same things they're doing--and sometimes worse--while preaching against and excluding them for their choices.  I have never heard anyone say they became a Christian because folk excluded, devastated, or turned their back on them. Just keepin' it real...

Some folk will work against you simply because they can. It satisfies their need to have some measure of control over you no matter how small. Life Lesson:  I can save myself a lot of aggravation (and sometimes dollars) by working AROUND difficult folk instead of trying to work WITH them. The first question I asked myself changed from "How can I get them to cooperate WITH me?" to "How can I accomplish this WITHOUT involving them at all?" Listen, you've got stuff to do and places to go. It's not worth the aggravation, your time, and/or the expense. Find a new path. Just keepin' it real...