When the Tiger Roars

by Graeme Cann

  Mishka was about to step onto the platform when, without warning, the night sky turned black: a large dark cloud, which had not been there a moment before, moved across the face of the moon. The only light that remained came from the torches. The gentle breeze that had been cooling the evening air dropped completely and an eerie silence fell on the whole area. No one in that great crowd cried out in alarm. In fact, as amazing as it may sound, nobody spoke at all and no one moved.

  Mishka, anxious to reassure the people, made a move to mount the platform, but hesitated when she saw the Elders, who had been standing with her, pull back from her, alarm written clearly on their faces. When she saw what they saw, she understood their fear. Coming slowly and silently from the direction of the rainforest was the enormous white tigress which had met with Mishka several times in the last few days. The beautiful calming voice in her mind said, “We must step on to the platform together, for something that has never happened before in the history of Sampa and Loloma is about to occur.”

  Puzzled but not alarmed she joined the tigress, and they walked onto the platform together. At that moment, the enormous cloud that had plunged the area into darkness a few moments before disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

  The gasp that rose from the crowd at the sight of the tigress was not the sound of fear, but an expression of wonder and amazement. Many of those who were gathered there that night had never seen a normal-sized tiger let alone a giant white tigress who was so large that she dwarfed their Mother-Father who stood calmly beside the great animal. As the people sat fixated on the amazing spectacle on the platform, they gradually became aware that both Mishka and the tigress were looking intently at something beyond the fringes of the crowd. As they turned, they were dumbfounded by what they saw. Behind them, and on both sides of the crowd, stood thousands of rainforest animals and birdlife. This amazing gathering stretched back as far as they could see on this brilliantly illuminated night. They made no sound, as if they were as overawed by this whole occasion as the people were. It was as the crowd turned their eyes back to the platform that they first heard the voice. It did not seem to come from the platform but rather seemed to descend from somewhere above them. Neither Mishka nor the tigress appeared to be speaking. Indeed, both of them stood with their heads reverently bowed. Someone later described the voice as the sound of a mighty waterfall.

  “Standing before you on the platform tonight are the two custodians of Abele’s Covenant. Mishka represents every Mother-Father who has served Sampa and Loloma in their entire history, and the tigress represents every Great One of the Forest who has ever lived. Every one of these great people and tigers have, each in their own time, represented me to the people of the valley and the animals of the forest. By their total commitment to the Covenant and by their unquestioned integrity and compassion, they have reminded both their worlds that above every person and wonder of nature there stands a Great Creator who is also a covenant keeper and who deals with all creation with the greatest integrity and compassion. I who speak to you now is that one.

  “Before Alpha and his family came to live in Sampa, and before Abele became the first Mother-Father, another Mother-Father had walked and lived with the people of another world. His name was Yeshua. I sent him to declare to the whole world who I was and what manner of universal Mother-Father I had always been. He was the most remarkable person who had ever lived. In the thirty-three years of his life, no one who knew him could accuse him of wrongdoing. He was a person of the greatest compassion and capable of the most heart-stopping miracles. He loved the poor and the disenfranchised, and he healed their blindness and their sicknesses. He fed the hungry, forgave the guilt-ridden, and released those who were captives of fear and anger. He told all who would listen, including unbelieving religious leaders and brutal commanders and soldiers of an occupying army, that I had sent him to show them what the universal Mother-Father was like.

  “The common people loved him but the religious leaders and the soldiers of the occupying army hated him, and together they conspired to kill him by crucifixion, which was the method the occupying army used to kill criminals. They took him and hung him on a cross by driving large nails through his wrists and his feet. As he hung there in great pain, he asked me to forgive his enemies, and before sundown that day he died.”

  Those who sat in the crowd that night said that the voice they heard was both powerful and compassion-filled. No one stirred, and no one noticed that the great crowd of animals and birds had pressed in even closer.

  “On the third day after he was buried, it was discovered that the stone in front of his tomb had been rolled away and he was gone. Then, when people began to report stories of him appearing to his friends, the world began to realise that I had raised Him from the dead. Ever since then, millions of men and women have come to know that he died for their sins and that through him they can have absolute forgiveness. Throughout the whole history of Sampa and Loloma, except in the days of Rubin and Kaluba, there have been Mother-Fathers who I have chosen to show you what I was like, so that you would love and trust me. Abele showed you that I was a covenant-making and covenant-keeping Creator. He also demonstrated the importance to me of people living in community without fear. Others who followed him also lived by these values. Then Galildra came. He was a man after my own heart. No one knew who his mother and father were. He was deformed and disabled, yet the community that Abele and the other Mother-Fathers had built welcomed and loved him. He was a person of the greatest wisdom, and like Yeshua he spoke in parables. During his time, another rose up against him. His name was Mordeca. He did not come from me but from the chief adversary of humankind. He hated me and he hated Galildra and plotted to kill him. But Mesila his son stood in his place just as Yeshua had done and died to save the people of Sampa. But I raised him up just as I had raised Yeshua. Mesila became the symbol of salvation and when he became the Mother-Father, he was seen by the people as one who had died because of man’s wrongdoing but had risen again. Those who understood had no sense of fear, even as the clouds of unbelief began to gather on horizon.”

  Some of the people who sat listening to the voice began to weep. They had all heard the story of Galildra and Mesila, but few had understood. Now for the first time some of them realised that there were two reasons why the people of Sampa had had the potential of living without fear. One was because of the Covenant that protected them from the animals of the forest, and the other was that Mesila’s death and resurrection spoke to them of love, forgiveness, and hope.

  “Then there was Marita,” the voice continued. “She was born blind, and as Mesila had prophesied many decades before, she would be known as ‘one who sees as no one else can see.’ She had the capacity, as Yeshua had, to introduce people to a heavenly world; he did it through parables and she through her visions and her songs. Her time as Mother-Father was important for three reasons. The first was her endless compassion for the homeless and refugees of her time. She knew my heart was always toward the poor and disenfranchised. She never refused hospitality to the stranger and the refugee. The second reason that her time as Mother-Father was important was that she demonstrated amazing faith. The night before the Mordecan armies attacked Sampa the first time, I spoke with her, through the Great One of the Forest. She believed what I said without question and the next day she marched at the head of her people knowing that she and they would not be harmed. Even in the face of murderous gunfire, she continued to trust me. The third reason for the importance of her time as Mother-Father was that when Rubin, her own brother-in-law, rose up against her, she was unflinching in her belief that a life without fear was only possible when people lived in a loving and trusting relationship with me. She died as a martyr because she would not give way to fear. For the next one hundred years, faithful Sampians continued to believe in me even in the face of death.

  “That brings me to Alofa. If Marita was ‘one who sees as no one else can see,’ then Alofa was ‘one who could hear as
no one else could hear.’ On those many, many times that he sat listening to my faithful servant Muralu, he knew deep in his spirit that it was me who was speaking to him through that great man. He listened, he learnt, and he obeyed, and in doing so he teaches all who believe that it is always my intention to speak truth and courage into the lives of women and men. Alofa, Misha his wife, and their friends Ofa and Domoni and their courageous wives risked their lives by opposing Kaluba, and their other friend, Loloma, gave his life so that you could live here today in the valley that bears his name. I gave wisdom to these men and women so that they could understand my purpose, and I gave them the courage to lead you out of Sampa before it was defeated by the Mordecans. They are special heroes because they refused to be driven by fear and instead were empowered by faith.

  “And now there is Mishka. Her heart was burdened to the point of breaking because of the violence that some of your men perpetrated against women and children. She could not understand why men, who had so much to be grateful for, and who believed in lofty ideals and values, were capable of such horrific acts of control and violence. I showed her through the great tigress that unbelief and fear reduces people to act like tigers, which aggressively guard their territory and deal violently with their own kind. I showed her that simply believing in great values and ideals does not in itself enable you to live up to them.

  “As humans, you either live toward others out of your peace or out of your pain. Those who have been the victims of abuse and of sexual violence are deeply wounded. Your memories, your pain, your bitterness, and your anger now control your ability to respond peacefully and positively to the words and actions of others. You are too fearful to surrender to the experience of belonging to family and community, and instead in your fear you try to own and control the people you love. When you ‘own’ them, you demand that they meet your needs and keep your rules, and when you are angry with them you punish them with your words or your fists. You are powerless to change. Your regrets will not help you to change. Your self-righteousness or your self-loathing will not help you change. You are a slave to fear, and that fear will ultimately destroy your relationships, your loved ones, and yourselves. There is only one way! You must be healed, and I have taught Mishka how to help you find healing, and she in turn has passed it on to the Elders.

  “The first thing you must do is to acknowledge your own pain. If you have been unloved, abused, betrayed, deserted, or violated emotionally, verbally or physically, then even though the abuse may have stopped, the pain remains. Do not deny or internalise your anger. Your anger and fear is justified. You had a right to expect to be loved and protected by the most significant people in your life. Your abusers knew that what they were doing was wrong, and they kept doing it. People who should have been aware of what was happening could have intervened and rescued you, but they did not. It is right for you to be angry. It is right for you to lay all the blame on the perpetrator and to express your anger. It is unhelpful for you to carry guilt and shame for something that someone else did to you. It is wrong for you to suppress it and pretend that it doesn’t hurt. It is wrong for you to project your pain and anger on those who love you. To be hurt is unjust and unfair, but to then become the ‘hurter’ is unjustified and destructive.

  “My wounded children, I must tell you an unpleasant truth. It is not the abuse you suffered in your past that is doing you the greatest harm now. What is harming you now is how you have responded and continue to respond to the painful event or events, and to the perpetrator. I know that the abuse has left you feeling so ashamed and disempowered that it seems impossible to ever feel clean and confident again. It seems to you that both the hurtful event and the perpetrator of that event will always have the power to diminish you as a person and to rob you of any possibility of feeling like a whole person again. But it is not true.

  “No past event, no matter how hurtful, and no perpetrator of a hurtful event has any power over you now, unless you give them that power. When you continue to carry the blame for your own abuse, internalising the guilt and anger, and conceding that you can never be ‘normal’ again, you remain under the control of the past. You can, and must, come out from under that control, because it is destructive and self-defeating.”

  The voice ceased for a moment, but another sound had begun. It was the sound of sobbing that came from deep within hundreds of wounded hearts. It was the sound of inexpressible emotional agony and lifelong anger and regret. It rose from the hearts of a people who had been betrayed and used by their abusers. It was the cry of a people who had felt broken and internally destroyed. For most of those who wept that night, it was like the breaching of a dam wall. What poured out and threatened to overwhelm them was a toxic torrent of internalised anger. It was the anger felt by little girls and boys whose innocence had been stolen by someone they had trusted. It was the pain of self- hatred and false guilt, carried from childhood by a people who knew no other way to comprehend what had happened to them other than to blame themselves. It was the pain of a people who had just begun to realise that the many years of suffering that they had borne could possibly have ended long ago if they had known what they were learning now.

  But they were not crying alone. Parents, partners, and children of deeply damaged survivors wept with them. They had watched helplessly as their loved ones had lived out their troubled lives haunted by what had happened to them long ago. They had often felt the pain of becoming the objects of their loved ones’ anger and self -hatred. They had watched and often been deeply affected by the inability of their wounded loved ones to build and maintain loving and secure relationships. Until this moment, they had believed that there were no answers to the questions that had plagued their minds for so many years.

  As the sound of the people sobbing seemed to recede a little, another noise could be heard. It came from beyond the edges of the crowd and sounded like thousands of small children sighing and groaning. True it was the empathic groaning of those who were deeply moved by what they were witnessing, but it was also sighs of relief that for those who had suffered for so long, healing was beginning and hope was emerging. The sound came from the animals, who till now had stood in silence. This was not the first time in the history of Sampa and Loloma when the animals of the forest had been present at a special gathering of the people of the valley, but it may have been the most significant.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SECRET OF HEALING

  Individuals who have been hurt, betrayed, and abused have the right to be angry and resentful. These are normal reactions and emotions when feeling the crushed spirit that can come from being disrespected or abused. If not dealt with, such angry reactions can damage personal health on several levels. These include killer cell cytotoxicity, autoimmune suppression, disruption of personal relationships, acute coronary syndrome, and consequent increased mortality.”

  Dr. Jeffrey Bernstien, PhD, Psychology Today.

  As the sobbing of the people and the groaning and sighing of the animals gradually stopped, the voice began again. “What I am telling you today is that you have the power to change your entire life. You have not believed that before today, but I assure you that I am speaking the truth. Till now you have believed that those who abused you have stolen any potential that you have to be a whole and effective person. You have given up hope of ever feeling differently about yourselves and others. You have embraced depression and self-hatred as your constant companions. But you can take your life back. Your abusers had no right to take your life from you, and they have no power to continue to do it. Take it back. Make a choice to stop blaming yourself for what happened. Make a choice to take control of your life and to be assertive rather than defensive and self-protective. Make a choice not to continue to see yourself as irreparably damaged by someone else’s behaviour. Make a choice to cease from being angry and resentful and you will have the energy to love yourself and others. This is the first step in your healing. Own your painful emotions as your own and
stop blaming others for them, then make a choice to change.

  “Many of you know that you have become the abusers of others. In your anger and pain you have verbally attacked others, putting them down and belittling them. Sometimes you have been abusive to those who love you by blaming them for your unhappiness and your depression. Some of you have abused others physically and even sexually.

  “An important step in your healing, after owning that your painful emotions are yours, is to recognise the destructive behaviours that come from those painful emotions. This is the second step in the healing process. When we understand that not only have we been hurt by others but by our behaviours we are also hurting the people we love, that becomes a powerful reason to change. It is horrific to think that abuse can be, and is, generational, and that you, despite being a victim, can be an unwitting participant in a cycle of abuse. Most of you do not want to be a part of that sort of cycle. Make a choice today to cease your destructive behaviour and ask me to help you change.

  “The third step is to ask those that you have hurt, albeit unintentionally, for their forgiveness. Apologise to them unreservedly. Do not try to rationalise or justify your behaviour. You will find that those who truly love you want more than anything else to be able to forgive you. They know you are hurting and they want you to be healed, but they also want to be in a loving and safe relationship with you. You have sometimes felt guilty when you have seen the pain on the faces of your loved ones, but asking them for forgiveness will wipe that guilt away. The giving and receiving of love and the giving and receiving of forgiveness are the two most important relational transactions. For many of you who have been abused, both of these transactions will be unfamiliar and even threatening. But be brave, for when you dare to give love and dare to receive the love others give to you, you have begun to breathe the fresh air of hope and joy instead of the stale air of fear.