09/03/2026
A Statement for Our Centers for Spiritual Living Family in Canada
Beloved family across the forty-ninth parallel,
I write to you this morning with a full heart, thinking of our shared work, our shared prayer, and the current that has always run warm between our two countries, a current far older and far deeper than any headline. I have heard from some of our communities in Canada and I want you to know, I hear you.
This has been a season of real strain, brought on by the actions and rhetoric of the current U.S. administration toward Canada: tariffs imposed as leverage, ridicule aimed at your leaders and your sovereignty, economic pressure designed to destabilize rather than to negotiate in good faith. You are living inside the consequences of decisions you did not make, decisions that affect Canadian businesses, Canadian families, and a relationship of trust that took generations to build. I want to name that plainly, because naming it honestly is where spiritual integrity has to begin. This is not a mutual disagreement between equals; it is something being done, and it deserves to be called what it is.
And still, I write to remind us of something we teach and something we trust: Spirit always holds the final word, beneath every appearance on the surface, including this one.
Ernest Holmes taught that there is one power in the universe, available equally to every person: to a border-town family, to every one of us gathered in circle on a Sunday morning from Halifax to Vancouver to San Diego. That power responds definitely and directly to whatever we hold in mind. So today we choose to hold something true in mind: the dignity of Canada, fully intact and needing nothing from us to complete it; and the accountability of those wielding power irresponsibly, called back toward wisdom, restraint, and right relationship.
Robertson Davies once described humanity as beads strung on a single cord, separate in appearance, but never actually apart. That truth doesn't erase what's happening; it insists that no amount of bullying or economic coercion can sever what is real.
Canada and the United States remain bound by a shared continent, shared watersheds, and families who cross the border every week for dinner, but that bond does not obligate Canada to absorb harm quietly.
Margaret Atwood warned that war begins where language breaks down. Part of our calling as a spiritual community is to keep speaking clearly, not softening what is happening into vague talk of "tension" or "disagreement," but affirming, in the same breath, both the truth of what's occurring and the truth of what cannot be touched by it: Canada's dignity, Canada's sovereignty, and the deeper unity that no tariff or insult can undo.
This is sacred activism: not silence dressed up as peace, but a clear-eyed refusal to let intimidation go unnamed, held together with an unshakeable knowing that Spirit does not take sides against anyone, it simply will not be moved by force.
Every time one of our communities gathers whether in Toronto, in Calgary, in Montreal, in Kelowna, alongside every congregation south of the border, we affirm that dignity cannot be legislated away, and that the people of the United States, in their own hearts, are not the source of this harm even when their government is its instrument.
I invite every Center for Spiritual Living community to join together this month in a shared affirmation for Canada's dignity and for the restoration of a relationship built on respect rather than pressure:
I recognize one Power and one Presence moving through every nation on this continent. I know that Canada's worth, sovereignty, and dignity are whole and complete, untouched by any attempt to diminish them. I call for wisdom, restraint, and integrity in those who hold power, and I know that force and intimidation cannot have the final word where truth is spoken. I hold the relationship between our two peoples as it is meant to be: honest, respectful, and free.
Holmes left us a promise to carry through any season like this one: there is a power greater than any of us in the universe, and we can use it. I am using it today, on your behalf and on behalf of every family and business bearing the weight of decisions made without your consent. I am grateful beyond words for our Canadian communities, for your resilience, your depth of practice, and the light you carry into your corner of this continent and beyond.
You are not the ones who need to change. Our prayer is not for Canada to bend. It is for what is being done to Canada to end, and for the deeper unity beneath this moment to become visible again, in form as it already is in Spirit.
