BREAKING! A Tsunami of Truths Unleashed at MedhaniAlem Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
Come on, admit it! Some of you came rushing in here to see a “meltdown” thinking that I was back on the same doomsday scenario that I was warning about three months ago didn’t you? You just knew that my silence was temporary before I go back into my “savior” complex as I hurt my credibility and lose personally in order to protect the bottom 99% of humanity. I hate to disappoint you but that version of me is buried under a wall of water in Kentucky where I got re-baptized at Debre Haile St. Gabriel Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in early November.
I am no longer the hurting soul who tries to defend everyone to make up for the fact that no one was around to defend me when I was a child. I’m a man who is finally healing. It’s ironic, the very tsunami I was warning about and tried to save everyone from was actually a tidal wave that came for me. In the span of two months, my household was broken apart, my most precious treasure was taken from me and my job tried to fire me for not taking part in an ongoing medical experiment that has proven to be unsafe and ineffective.
To top it all off, I let my ego get the best of me as I decided to become Nostradamus instead of doing my job as a journalist which is to inform and let people make their own decision. However, before I beat myself up too much—which I have a way of doing because I can be my own harshest critic—let’s get the record straight. It’s not like I was warning about purple unicorns invading earth or marshmallow monsters eating us alive; the possibility of a tsunami wrought by the volcano at La Palma Island was openly being discussed by mainstream voices and the United Nations held a “Global Tsunami Awareness Day” on November 5th, 2021.
Alas no good deed goes unpunished in a time where love is treated as a form of terrorism and hate is hailed as a panacea against injustice. You see, the transgression that I am being nailed to the wall over is because I made the unwise choice to warn everyone about a potential of a tsunami that most people were completely in the dark about until I started writing about it in October. My reporting did not lead to war on a country that never attacked us which led to a genocide being committed against hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. My articles did not manifest mass chaos nor did my warnings translate into a single life being lost. Sure I was wrong for letting my pride get in the way of the actual story but let’s not make it seem like I committed some unconscionable transgression that requires legal remedies.
Last I checked, we live in America where freedom of press is sacrosanct and is still enshrined in the US Constitution. All journalists and really every American, irrespective of identity or affiliation, should make sure that my expression does not lead to unjust ramifications lest they come after you next for offending a family member, a friend, a neighbor or a stranger who has an ax to grind over your beliefs and the expression of your ideas. What’s next, silencing weathermen who get a prediction wrong or denying freedoms to reporters who did not see a recession coming as he encourages his viewers to buy! buy! buy! stocks they own personally?
Now imagine your child being taken away from you over this exact scenario, that is the crucible I am facing at this exact moment. Equally as astounding as the actions of one are is the inaction of many who
Only in a truly fallen world does a journalist lose everything for trying to warn others while corporate shills who actively hide dangers and enable global oppression are rewarded handsomely with blue check marks and monthly paychecks that have more zeros on them than the Japanese Air Force during WWII. No complaints though, if one wants to stand up for justice and fight for unity that transcends our differences, one must be prepared for the sticks, stones and worse that come with the job description.
Before I stop singing this country song that has become my new normal ever since my wife and I took a road trip throughout the South, I would be remiss if I do not make an observation about the sad state of the Ethiopian community here in America. I don’t know what has become of us; if we were back in Ethiopia, when a marriage is on the rocks, the immediate family and the church would step into the breach in order to preserve a union that was taken before God with both family and church swearing to support the couple in times of hardship.
This is especially true when a young child is involved, but I guess people are too busy watching Rachel Maddow and gossiping about others to care about the truly vulnerable. Sadly, the MedhaniAlem church in America is nothing like the MedhaniAlem Orthodox Church that I was baptized into in Ethiopia. It seems that we lost this deeply spiritual part of our culture somewhere over the Atlantic because the lack of urgency and concern by some family members and the abdication of responsibility by elders in church who made a vow to be there in times of crisis is mindboggling to me.
This is what happens when a faith is hijacked by foreigners, accepts Catholic indoctrination by changing senbet (the day of Sabbath) from Kedame (Saturday) to Ehud (Sunday)—which is a blasphemous dishonoring of the Ten Commandments—and adds insult to injury by trading money in Our Father’s house in direct violation of Iyesus’s teachings. Without knowing it, we have been praying to a Roman god while disrespecting the One True Living Igzihabier who is the Creator of everything. We are not being taught in church, we are being brainwashed to follow the Vatican by “Abbas” who are not courageous enough to speak against a baby let alone Babylon.
To be frank, what we are witnessing in church is the complete rejection of Iyesus and the acceptance of Roman patriarchy. This foreign pathology is evident when women are directed to cover their heads while men are free to show their manes when in reality both men and women are supposed to cover their heads in church, which is the reason why the church leaders wear caps laced with gold. Having one rule for women and another for men creates division, Our God is not a divider, he is a uniter who multiplies our blessings.
Likewise, women are told they cannot touch tsebel (holy water) when pouring it from the fount as if they are not worthy of Iyesus. I seem to recall Iyesus telling a woman in Samaria that she can drink from the water of life which is God’s love so why then are we telling women, the ones who break their water to deliver us, that they are not worthy of touching tsebel? The answer is simple, we accepted the doctrines of Catholicism while rejecting true Christianity. My ancestor Atse Tewodros II realized this exact thing which is why he went to war against the clergy only for the Ethiopian Catholic Church, which brands itself as “Orthodox”, to sell him out to the British. I have no problem picking up where the Anbessa from Gonder left off to speak truths that are treated like cancer in our community.
Yasazenal, we immigrated to America and left our traditions at Bole Air Port yet we want to march and protest against the “white man” or TPLF attacking Ethiopia when all along the biggest enemy of Ethiopia are her children. Only in “Africa” do the children (citizenry) abort their own mother (nation) using indifference and outright malice as aspirators. What Ethiopia needs more than anything is not more useless “selma self” but a time of self-introspection. Let’s start by telling the truth about ourselves and holding the person in the mirror accountable through love before we point at the splinters in the eyes of others while ignoring the planks that are protruding from our pupils.
But all is not doom and gloom; to God be the glory, I stand before you today free from the bondage that has kept me in chains for decades. It took the biggest adversity of my life—one that makes my nearly two year bout of homelessness in 2015 look like child’s play by comparison—for me to finally realize that my biggest enemy was not some politician in DC, a plutocrat in London or a multinational corporation, my biggest foe was always me. For decades, I kept raging against the machine not realizing the worst injustices against me were the ones being committed by the child in the mirror who refused to grow up as rebellion against all forms of authority became my self-medication of choice.
The horrors of seeing my mom deteriorate before my eyes, the shock trauma of seeing my dad take his last breath as I was sitting next to him and the pains of seeing my ex-fiancée endure the same crucibles that my mom was going through was too much to handle. Instead of unpacking these memories and dealing with them in order to move forward unencumbered by the devil’s trident of regret, shame and guilt, I chose to stuff those feelings down in my heart only to end up with more baggage than JetBlue. What could have become molehills had I faced them became mountains the more I ran from my past.
And boy did I run! For someone who currently weighs 284 pounds, I sprinted faster than Usain Bolt from the memories of my mom’s sadness, my dad’s disappearance and my ex-fiancée’s sorrows. Unable to deal with my grief, I found it easier to “help others”. Now I realize why Iyesus said “physician heal thyself”; this world is full of “mental health experts” who have more issues than Time Magazine yet pretend to be know-it-alls when it comes to leading others out of the wilderness even though they make home in the outback themselves. I am not judging, I was the king of this outside-in living where I fed people lobsters while feeding myself Raman noodles.
No more! The tsunami that came for me in the form of fake concerns, false police reports and malicious rumormongering finally woke me up from the coma of self-loathing that made me love people who did not love me back. From now on, people will have to earn my trust instead of me trusting people by default until they prove they are not trustworthy. From now on I will love myself as much as I love others and when it comes to romantic love, I will not turn myself into a carpet inviting the object of my affection to walk all over me. To the contrary, I will carry myself like a king instead of turning myself into a pawn who invites abuse from rooks who think they are queens.
If this article seems a bit harsh so be it, part of healing is expressing your true feeling in the moment. What Ethiopians call “qum neger”, presenting oneself in an acceptable manner, need to be swept out into the ocean. I am going to be real and if that means at times I write from a place of frustration and other times I write from a place of pure love, that is my guzo (journey). If readers can’t accept this level of authenticity, they can always to to Huffington Post or the New York Times where they package stories meant to sell instead of writing missives that are meant to heal.
Last night, @Teodrose3 traveled to New York City to unleash a tsunami of truths at MedhaniAlem Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Bronx, NYC. #Guzo2Healing Click To TweetWhich takes me to the podcast that I recorded last night at MedhaniAlem Ethiopian Tewehado Orthodox Church in Bronx, New York. What you will hear in the video below is the real me, a man who has confronted his past and given his pains to God. There are some who will chuckle at the thought of me brining up God in the same breath where I held people who hurt me accountable. To these folks I say to read Mark 7:5-9 and while you are at it lose that religion because it’s getting in the way of your connection to God. What many who rush to judge fail to see in their eagerness to dismiss my testimony of God’s grace is that He uses not those who pretend to be perfect but people like me who admit their brokenness.
As for my son, whom I love dearly and gives me the motivation to endure this race no matter the thorns that are strewed at my feet, though I miss him in ways I never knew possible, I know in the end a blessing will come through this hardship. Though only the most cynical among us would question my love for my son and would dare to insinuate that he is not in good hands with me, I take this forced separation as a test from God to make me an even better father. The truth is what I was repeating the mistakes of my dad; I worked too much and did not set a hard boundary between my profession and my time with my son.
It took living alone in an empty home and waking up to hollow echoes of my son saying “daddy” for me to realize just how much my father’s absence wounded my heart. This is not to infer that my dad was a bad caregiver, to the contrary Fikremariam Million is my hero because he worked ALL THE TIME to provide for my mom, siblings and me. I would not have attained finished high school let alone attain an MBA from Johns Hopkins and making more than $130K annually if my father was not breaking his back working three jobs at a time and 16 hours a day to pave the pathway to my higher education.
But I write this with the benefit of hindsight, when I was a child I felt a deep sense of loss not having my father around while my friends had their dads show up to football games and birthday parties. Sitting alone with my pain made me confront my past and deal with a trauma I did not even realize was present. Because of this gift that was given to me by the ill intentions of a partner, I will emerge from this darkness determined to not repeat the pains my father passed down to me to my son Yohannes.
Sure I have to drive 10 hours back and forth to New York City to spend one hour with my son supervised like I’m some sort of criminal, instead of stewing in anger, I choose to find gratitude. After all, for 55 days I was not able to see my son at all so I’ll take this inconvenience as just a part of the healing process. Besides, I would drive to Alaska and back to see my son for 1 minute let alone drive to NYC to embrace my little prince. My friend Rob from Harvest Farm told me that this was my Abrahamic test, if I choose God above even my most prized treasure, He will reunite me because my Father God is just and will not let the devil harm my son by separating him from his dad.
No matter the circumstances and the challenges that have yet to appear, I sleep at night very comfortably knowing that Igzihabier (God) has my back so I have zero care going forward about what people think about me. Lastly, there are some who revel at the thought of discrediting me or destroying my name to prevent future opportunities, to these people I can only say be careful before you turn an “unknown blogger” into David because the devil’s injuries have a way of turning into God’s weapons; which would be the ultimate poetic justice because my first name Teodrose means “weapon of God” and my last name Fikre means “my love”. Just reflect on that for a bit. On that note, I wish all of you a blessed new beginning, may yesterday’s troubles become tomorrow’s joys. Peace and God bless::
“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” ~ Revelation 2:7
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