Reading · Message From the Margins

Before today’s reflection, I want to tell you about something your fellow community members have been doing.

They have been stepping up in a big way.

Two weeks ago, roughly 2 percent of this community supported Message From the Margins with a supporting subscription. Today, we are at 2.7 percent. That may not sound like an enormous change, but it represents an increase of more than one-third in just two weeks.

It has given me tremendous hope.

For the first time, I can begin to see a path toward sustaining this community for years, perhaps even decades. Our goal is to reach 10 percent paid support, and when we reach it, two deeply important things will happen.

First, we will have the working capital needed to keep this community alive, continue investing in better content, and offer you a professional experience at every turn. It will also protect Message From the Margins from becoming covered in ads, sponsored nonsense, and whatever questionable ointment the internet has decided Father desperately needs to hawk this week.

I always say, “No, thank you,” check the bank balance, and wonder whether rejuvenating skincare products are really all that bad after all.

I’m joking.

Mostly.

Anywho, the second thing that will happen is this: that little white check beside my name will become orange.

I realize that a differently colored check mark does not sound particularly revolutionary. But the orange badge tells people across Substack that readers are invested in this work. It will give Message From the Margins greater visibility and credibility, along with an opportunity to carry our message much, much, much farther.

I have made it part of my mission to fight the influence of dirtbag Christians, including the top dirtbag. You know exactly whom I mean.

They are taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ and reshaping it into a religion of domination, exclusion, cruelty, and contempt for the vulnerable.

I cannot fight that fight alone.

But 10,000 of us? Well, now we may be getting somewhere.

And if we grow to 100,000?

Bada bing, bada boom!

(Sorry, I’m a New York Italian.)

If we reach 10 percent paid support, we will have the resources and reach to push back with everything we have. We can reach people before the dirtbags do. We can help people already caught in their influence find their way back to the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

You and me, together, can preach a Gospel of mercy, justice, dignity, and radical welcome while Christian nationalism is tearing that Gospel to shreds.

If this ministry is valuable to you and you have the financial room, become a supporting subscriber today. Help us reach 10 percent and build Message From the Margins into a durable, independent Christian voice.

Please do not wait for somebody else to carry it. Click the button below and join us.

Yes, Father! I'll Support This Work!

If money is tight, remain here without guilt. I mean that sincerely. Your reading, prayers, comments, and sharing are also part of this ministry. But if you can support this work and have been waiting for Father to ask plainly, this is me asking.

Your Brother in Christ,

Now, I would like to speak to our Canadian friends.

Substack tells me that roughly three percent of the people gathered in this community are reading from Canada.

Three percent may sound rather small until you remember that there are more than 10,000 of us here. We are speaking about hundreds of people. Hundreds of our readers, friends, supporters, and fellow members of this peculiar little congregation.

Three percent is not nothing.

More importantly, you are not numbers.

Over my forty-two years, I have had many Canadian friends who have deeply enriched my life and continue to do so. Some believed in me, opened doors for me, and helped shape the course my life would take. In a somewhat circuitous way, their generosity helped make this community possible.

The particulars would stretch this article far beyond the length I have committed to keeping my writing these days. (See, I’m trying!) But the debt of gratitude deserves to be stated publicly.

I cannot imagine my life without the Canadians who helped form it.

Perhaps that is why I feel such tremendous sorrow as I watch the president of my country disrespect, insult, threaten, and cause economic harm to the people of a nation I love.

For those who have not been following the latest developments, here is the briefest account I can offer.

After trade negotiations collapsed last week, the United States imposed new 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods. Those tariffs took effect on August 22 and will reach Canadian agricultural products, dairy, alcohol, wood products, machinery, and other industries. Canada has announced that it will respond with proportional tariffs beginning September 8.

This conflict did not begin last week. For more than a year, President Trump has repeatedly used tariffs and economic threats against Canada while speaking of its sovereignty as though it were negotiable. He has referred to Canada as a potential “51st state,” a grotesque suggestion made by the leader of the larger and more powerful country. During the latest negotiations, Canada says the United States made demands that would have restricted its ability to enter future trade agreements and weakened protections for Canadian culture and sovereignty. The Associated Press offers a helpful account of the breakdown and its consequences.

Nations have legitimate disagreements about trade. Canada has policies the United States considers unfair, and reasonable people can debate tariffs, dairy quotas, automobile manufacturing, and access to markets without questioning one another’s character.

But disagreement does not require insult and injury.

These tariffs are not figures moving harmlessly across a television screen. They will reach factory floors, farms, small businesses, family budgets, and kitchen tables on both sides of the border. Workers who never entered a negotiating room will bear the cost of decisions made by powerful men. Decades of diplomatic trust are being torn apart with remarkable speed.

That is what I mourn.

Canada has been our neighbor in the fullest meaning of that word. Our countries have defended the same continent together through NORAD since 1958. Canadian soldiers fought and died beside Americans in Afghanistan. Canadian firefighters have crossed the border to help when our communities were burning.

Then there was September 11.

When American airspace closed after the attacks, Canada accepted 224 diverted flights carrying more than 33,000 passengers. Small communities suddenly found thousands of frightened strangers arriving at their doors.

Canadians opened schools, churches, community centers, and homes. They found food, bedding, clothing, telephones, and medicine. They cared for children. They comforted people who could not reach their families and did not know whether the world they had left that morning would still be waiting when they returned.

In Gander and communities across Canada, people looked upon terrified strangers and decided that their fear had become a shared responsibility. Transport Canada’s account of those four days remembers a country that “opened their homes and their hearts” and stood beside its American friends.

When we were wounded, Canada did not ask how our suffering might be used for leverage.

Canada helped us.

Jesus once told a story about a man who had been beaten and left beside the road. A priest passed him. A Levite passed him. A Samaritan stopped, cared for his wounds, brought him to safety, and assumed responsibility for what his recovery would cost.

Jesus asked which of them had proved to be a neighbor.

The answer had nothing to do with borders, shared ancestry, religious identity, or economic advantage. The neighbor was the person who saw suffering and drew near enough to help.

Canada has repeatedly proved to be our neighbor.

Now the United States is behaving like a bully toward the people who stopped beside our road.

President Trump has not done this alone. He has enablers, manipulators, instigators, financiers, propagandists, and a political party that has repeatedly surrendered its conscience to him. Many of his supposed opponents have offered the sort of resistance one might expect from a bunny rabbit facing André the Giant.

Still, the president bears particular responsibility. He has treated friendship as weakness, cooperation as submission, and another nation’s sovereignty as material for his amusement. He has inflicted damage that will outlast his presidency.

Tariffs can be repealed. Agreements can be signed. Flags can be placed behind podiums while leaders shake hands and declare the relationship repaired.

Trust does not return because someone scheduled a press conference.

Canada has learned that the United States may use economic integration as a weapon, discard its commitments, and threaten a faithful ally when that ally refuses to surrender. Prime Minister Mark Carney has warned that the two countries will not return to their former relationship.

I fear he is right.

It may take decades to rebuild what this president and his collaborators have broken. Canadians who did nothing to deserve this will carry the wound, while Americans who did not consent to this cruelty will inherit its consequences.

I do not blame Canada for retaliating. I wish ordinary families on neither side had to pay the price, but Canada has every right to defend its workers, its economy, its culture, and its sovereignty. Friendship does not require submission to abuse. Neighborly love does not leave a nation defenseless while a more powerful country tries to humiliate it.

And so my Canadian friends, I want to ask your forgiveness, although I know we have no right to demand it.

Forgiveness cannot be extracted like another concession at the negotiating table. It may take years. It may require far more repentance and repair than our country presently appears capable of offering.

So I will ask for less.

Please believe that many of us see what is being done to you. We are ashamed of it. We are grieving with you. We remember the friendship you have shown us, and we have not confused your refusal to be bullied with hostility toward the American people.

We will continue to speak against this cruelty. We will support Canadian workers, businesses, artists, and creators where we can. We will remind our elected representatives that Canada is our ally, not our enemy. We will refuse to laugh when your sovereignty is treated as a joke. We will tell our Canadian friends personally that the voice coming from Washington does not speak for every American heart.

America has a dirtbag problem. I freely admit that.

Bullies can remain in power far longer than decent people imagine they will. They can do terrible damage while they are there. But they do not hold power forever.

As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, “the arc of the moral universe, although long, is bending toward justice.” King did not offer those words as permission to wait. He spoke them after more than a year of walking, organizing, sacrificing, and refusing to cooperate with injustice during the Montgomery bus boycott. The arc bends because people of conscience take hold of it and pull.

These dirtbags will lose their power. Until they do, the rest of us have work to undertake.

I wish I could tell you when this will end. I wish I could promise that the damage will be quickly repaired and that the trust between us will return exactly as it was.

I cannot.

But governments change. Cruel men eventually lose their power. Then the work of repair falls to ordinary people: neighbors, families, churches, workers, travelers, and friends who refuse to inherit their contempt.

I believe that day will come.

Until it does, please know that many of us still regard Canada with affection, gratitude, and respect. We remember who you have been to us, even when the people governing us behave as though they have forgotten.

You have been our neighbor.

We intend to remain yours.

I am sorry, my friends. More sorry than I know how to say.

Perhaps, in time, we may become worthy of your trust again.

To our Canadian friends, what would you like your American neighbors to understand right now?

To our American readers, is there a Canadian person, business, artist, writer, or community you would like us to know about and support?

Please keep this conversation gracious. People on both sides of the border are carrying fear, anger, and grief. Let us speak to one another as neighbors.

O Canada, I’m Sorry

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