The Mirror’s Hymn

I find myself awake, sitting by the low light of a fire at 2am, wandering around in deep thoughts. I would like to share a story with you all. Something I hold close to my own heart. 💚 Its called the: “The Tale of Two Johns (Yochanans)”   By JoshM Let me tell you this story slow, like we're sitting around a small campfire and the night itself is leaning in to listen. No pulpit here, no fancy stage, just us sitting in a circle, watching how the flames make our shadows lean toward each other. I'm not some scholar in robes. Just someone who's walked by rivers, read by lamplight, and picked up a whisper that came to me once and never really left. There were these two guys, both named Yochanan, John in English, and for a while their voices got all tangled up in the same story until people started listening more to one than the other. I want to tell you about both of them, not to settle some theological debate or anything, but because remembering both keeps us honest, you know? ...

I write this with my head bowed and my heart open. I am not here to argue. I am not here to win a debate. I am here to tell the truth as I have lived it and as I have learned it from the Most High. Racism is a sin against Yahweh. It is a sin against the breath that made us. It is a sin against the dust that shaped us. It is a sin against the children of Abraham and against the prophets who walked this earth before us. The first of us was formed from the dust of our mother earth and the breath of our Father. That means every shade of skin carries the same origin story. That means every human being carries the same divine fingerprints. When someone chooses racism they are not just rejecting a person. They are rejecting the Creator who shaped that person. They are rejecting the breath of Yahweh that lives inside them. And when someone chooses racism they are standing against Yeshua. They are standing against Muhammad. They are standing against Abraham. They are standing against the prophe...

There are two Gardens.   A higher one and a lower one.   A spiritual one and a physical one.   A place where God walks, and a place where God is felt.   The higher Garden is the one our ancestors spoke of with trembling voices.   The place where Adam walked with Yahweh in the cool of the day.   The place where the breath of the Most High was not a mystery but a nearness.   The place where the rivers began at a single spring, flowing outward like veins from the heart of creation.   The lower Garden is the reflection.   A shattered memory of what once was.   A world that still carries the fingerprints of the Holy One, but not the footsteps.   A world where the presence of God is known, but not seen.   A world where the rivers still flow, but two of their names have been lost to time because they do not exist in the reflection.   The Pishon and the Gihon belong ...

To the Ones Who Still Believe in Neighbors My brothers, my sisters, my neighbors. I am not standing here as a politician or a scholar or someone with power.   I am standing here as a worker.   As a father... As a caretaker.... As a disabled man who has plowed fields, scrubbed floors, fed strangers, and prayed for a world that keeps trying to forget its own heart. I am standing here as one of you. And I am standing here because something sacred is being broken in our land. Our government, both local and federal, keeps asking us to pay for our own oppression.   They take our taxes, our labor, our sweat, and they turn it into a weapon against the very people who built this country with their hands and their hope. They tell us it is about faith.... But it is about fear. They tell us it is about morality... But it is about power. And they dare to invoke the name Jesus Christ while doing it. But hear me.   Our Yeshua was not the mascot of an empire. He ...

My name is Joshua.   Some folks know me as JoshM.   And this is the truth of why I speak the name Yeshua instead of Jesus Christ. I do not say this to divide.   I do not say this to correct anyone.   I say it because this is the path the Most High walked me through, barefoot and trembling, until I could stand again. I grew up hearing the name Jesus used in ways that broke me.   Not by him, never by him,   but by people who carried his name like a weapon instead of a blessing. Jesus was shouted at me in anger.   Jesus was used to shame me, to silence me, to control me.   Jesus was the name invoked by those who hurt me, betrayed me, and tried to crush the spirit inside me. So when I say I flinch at that name, I am not flinching at the Son of the Most High.   I am flinching at the hands that misused him. But the Most High is merciful.   He led me back to the one who healed the broken, ...

Children of Abraham, hear me.  To my Jewish family, to my Christian family, to my Muslim family, to every soul who traces their story back to Abraham’s tent, I come with no title, no authority, no robes, no rank, only a heart cracked open enough to see what we keep forgetting. I am not a scholar, not a rabbi, not an imam, or pastor, no... not today...  I am Joshua, a simple man that believes in the Most High... a man who walked through fire and lived long enough to tell you what I saw in the flames. Judaism taught me the Holy One is indivisible. Christianity taught me love is stronger than death. Islam taught me surrender is freedom. And all three taught me that every human being carries the image of God. So why do we act like God is tribal, like the Most High belongs to one group more than another. I have prayed in churches, wept in mosques, stood in awe before the Torah’s fire. I have seen beauty in all three faiths and I have seen cruelty in all three faiths. And if one fla...