CHAMPION the displaced. 10 Years Later...

Ten Years of Brewing Against the Machine—CHAMPION the displaced.
To celebrate a decade of Mad Priest we’re looking back—one year, one roast, one glorious mess at a time. This is the story of our evolution: through chaos and clarity, hustle and heresy, growth and grind. And maybe, just maybe, how we found a little balance in the brew. Each year we’ll reflect with a word that we feel encompassed who we were and what we were doing.

If you have been following along, you know that I recently wrote a reflection of each year of our existence, and last week, the second part of our mission statement. And last but not least… the final line.

I suppose the fact that each line, though retaining it’s foundational properties, has evolved over the years, indicates something about change – which is good right? Or maybe a better word is growth. Change implies a shift or turning away from, whereas I am seeing a lot of this, just like my own life, as building blocks. Truly the definition of evolution. But then again, they’re just words. Words that carry meaning based on our cultural agreements on them, and yet always carrying varying degrees of meaning based on our projected understanding of the world. Like, the word fuck. Okay, if you’ve never seen it, please watch this video of a Father explaining it to his daughter… if you need a good laugh. Or don’t watch it if you get offended easily. Actually, if you get offended easy, then you may not really like Mad Priest. 

Okay so WORDS. 10 years ago, we made a mission statement out of words which carried one meaning, and now they’ve grown to carry deeper more intentional meaning. 

So what did it mean?

Championing the displaced was originally rooted in the idea of working with refugees to give them job opportunities and a place to land. This stemmed from the relevance of the Count of Monte Cristo and how Abbe Faria empowered Edmond Dantes with education. Additionally, it was what I knew. After working with refugees for years, it continued to be an area I found life-giving with passion.

My intentions were good. But if we’re being real honest (which I have been doing a lot of recently), it still carried a white saviour complex that I no longer associate with. This began to shift as I found myself working with other “non-refugees” and seeing how displaced carried a much deeper meaning. There were humans in our backyard also being displaced. I remember meeting with a student after attempting to do some mentoring at a local high school, and our first hang out he was explaining how he just starting sleeping at his Aunt’s unexpectedly due to family trouble but that she also didn’t know if he could stay more than a day or two. This was a senior on the cusp of graduating not even sure where he’d be sleeping later in the week. 

Talk about a whole new understanding of displacement. 

Fast forward a couple years later, when I am forced to be reckoned with my own healing. It’s easy to hide behind the guise of helping others and neglect the deep reality of my own bullshit when you can be the “hero” to another’s problems. 

Here is the deeper truth in my humble limited opinion – we are all displaced. We were balls of energetic love forced into the physical 3D world with no choice of geography, family or culture. Then, depending on how all that madness plays out, we get displaced further, sometimes by choice, or sometimes by force. Maybe we will move. Maybe we lose family by attempting to be more authentic. Maybe we run from our own shit and just keep changing the scenes around us (hint, though all are true for me, that one is the real culprit). But if we just peel back the layers and attempt to be vulnerable, we are all scared. Confused. Hurting. Uncertain. 

But the good news is we do not need to stay in that. Because each one of us is whole and complete within ourselves. You are perfect. You are not lonely, because you are not alone. Yes, lonely is a real feeling, and 100% needing attention. But the attention, if you dig deep enough, is to see the why behind the loneliness. 

You see, curiosity isn’t just about wanting to learn something about something else, or something we pat ourselves on the back when we show interest in something we don’t really care about or resonate with. Nah, it’s being able to continue asking the deeper question of WHY to it all, especially ourselves. What is the real WHY behind my (fill in the blank). Stay tuned for next week if you wanna go on a journey with me on some of my whys… I hope that my story and experience is worth even just one person feeling seen and empowered to push through and feel the hard feelings and ask the hard questions.

So we CHAMPION the displaced… meaning we CHAMPION YOU. All of you. All of us. Because we are all displaced from our original existence into this world that only knew love until the reality of the world, pain and separation set in somewhere around 6-9 months with the learned experience of object permanence.  

You are beautiful. You are whole. Learn to pursue yourself relentlessly. I am rooting for you. 

 +Michael, High Priest