The Truth about Love and Elephants

What The World Needs Now...

Like it or not we are ALL culpable when humanity is denied and hate prevails anywhere on this planet. Hitting too close to home is God's way of getting us to pay attention. Let's not get distracted by skin color, that's what got us in this mess in the first place. Dividing by devising a value system for human life based on ANYTHING is a violation of spiritual LAW. We will continue to have hurt being the justification of self righteous revenge until we understand the lesson imbedded in our suffering. 

Reaction is not power. 

Justifying a heinous act does not balance the scales

Not one soul will be left behind. So history WILL repeat itself until our consciousness has been purified and we learn to embrace our differences as if we were embracing God. 

Racism shows one of the most primitive, barbaric, stunted forms of human intelligence. This low form of consciousness is the cancer of America. A country founded by people escaping persecution only to repeat the mentally deprived cycle of abuse. What is a pedophile but an abused innocent -- un-healed?

Hate is a damaged psyche.
Revenge does not heal.
Supremacy is impotence personified.
Hate crimes are self hate projected out. 

Racism = Mental Illness 

Life is school. Lessons will be repeated until learned. Suffering stops when we get the lesson. We are our brothers keeper no matter race, color, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or creed. 

And that is all Mattilyn Corelia Rochester daughter of Bishop Enoch Benjamin Rochester and Dr. Mattilyn Talford Rochester has to say. Until my next inspired message. 

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The Bear Whisperer- Bad Mood Bear narrated by Mattilyn Rochester

INSPIRATION FOR web series Faith & Justice

I was robbed at gunpoint in Los Angeles, CA in 2007.  The experience was surreal.  So surreal in fact that one the detectives who interviewed me afterwards said that watching the surveillance was hilarious.  "What in the world were you doing?"  He asked me, noting that I behaved opposite a victim during a robbery.  Every frame of the surveillance camera captured me in a different part of the store, never maintaining the hands up stance typical of a robbery.

It was St. Patricks Day.  I woke up and decided to just do it!  Today was the day! I was going to shoot my first short film.  After a few phone calls, I was on my way to meet my friend and begin my journey as a filmmaker.  She had even been kind enough to offer her beautiful home as the back drop.  I borrowed a camera from the equipment department at UCLA  and had written what I thought was a great script.  Everything seemed to be lining up.



I wandered in to a video gaming store a little after noon.  I had a little time before meeting the amazing artist Monique DeBose, my counterpoint in my film.  An Asian gamer looking skateboard guy who seemed to be friends with the clerk, a chubby Hispanic guy with fluffy, unkempt multi colored hair, were the only two in the store.   I was just killing time, I thought maybe I could get an "in da hood" deal on an X-Box for my boyfriend.

3 non assuming African-American guys of various sizes, dressed  in black -hoodies and sweatpants entered the store.  In a split second one jumped over the counter with a dark garbage bag, another ended up next to me, and the other hovered around the door.  I figured the clerk must have known them because his expression didn't seem to change much.  Time halted to a stop when the guy at the door yelled, "This is a stick-up!"  My brain struggled to make sense of the next 4 minutes, they slugged forward in slow motion.  The fluffy haired clerks expression didn't change but his hands went up, almost in front of his face.  The 3 assailants pulled black bandana's over their faces.  The one next to me at the counter brandished a gun and pointed it directly at the clerks head.  I had never seen a gun before.  Was the gun real? Was this a joke? Was I in the middle of the filming of some reality show? Was I being 'Punked'?  I could hear my heart pounding in my throat. The rush of adrenalin suppressed my sudden urge to slap the gun out of the assailants hand.  The blank look on the clerks face had been utter terror. My brain began to slowly compute, "Matty you in danger girl", this is a robbery.

Still in a haze of disbelief, I mechanically turned and marched directly to the door guy. He seemed to be the brains of this mid-day mayhem.  "Excuse me" I politely said,  inferring that he needed to move from in front of the door.
"What you doin?"  He asked me.  We were face to face, eye to eye.  I remember nothing of his eyes or his face.  The detectives were lucky they had footage because I failed selecting any of them in the photo line-up.
"Is this a robbery?"  I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"Yeah it's a robbery shorty."
"Well, you don't need me for that, excuse me, I'mma just go."  I tried to pass him, and for a millisecond he smiled.  By the time he said, "Get yo ass back over there, this is a robbery yo!"  I figured I better not try my luck.  I resumed my position at the counter next to the gunman.

My brain immediately switched gears from slow to fast motion. Don't let them take you to the back.  I was in my "What Would You Do?" TV mindset.  Don't ever go to the back.   Put your hands up to show your submission.  Cover your eyes to show you won't be able to identify them later.  Girl how you gonna cover your eyes and have your hands up at the same time?   Why is the back of my neck aching?  I rubbed my neck.  "Don't nobody move.  Yo, didn't I tell you to put yo hands up?  This is a stick up!"  I was sure I was having a heart attack.  I struggled to breathe.  My hands went up.  

Again, the gears in my brain shifted, this time into several simultaneous parts, some fast and some slow.  A calming all is well echoed ever so quietly and ran from the back of my ears down through my chest and over my stomach - my eyes darted back and forth taking in information too fast to even recognize but grabbing little details that for some reason popped out -  the guy at the door belted orders.

Without meaning to, I whispered to the gunman, "Please don't shoot him in the head."  The thought of the fluffy haired clerks brain splattered all over me urged me to the present moment.  "I won't be able to get over that if you shoot him in the head."  I pleaded "It'll go everywhere.  Please."
"I ain't gonna shoot him."  He reassured.  The clerk however, wasn't so sure.
I keyed in on something on the tip of the gun, that begged the question, is that gun real?  I thought just slap it out of his hands and tell him to stop.  My hands slowly moved toward the gun.  "Hurry up!  Hurry up!"  from the door shot my hands back up.
"You promise?" I took a quick glance at the gunman.
"Yeah, I promise.  You gotta be quiet shorty."
"Just promise."
"I promise."  He paused, as if to question the pact made with me.

My father transitioned about a year and a half ago.  From somewhere inside my head I felt like I could hear him speaking.  He didn't sound concerned and said, "This might be a good time to practice that seeing the loving essence stuff you are learning in that school you go to."  I closed my eyes in obedience.  Ron Hulnick, President of the University of Santa Monica where I was earning a Masters in Spiritual Psychology stated in class that we are all divine beings having a human experience.  If that statement where true, I thought, then I was a divine being having the human experience of being robbed and scared almost out of my body.  And, if I was divine were these 3 in fact divine? Divine beings having the contrast, the human experience of robbing?  I noticed details of the hand holding the gun.  There was a mark, maybe an old scar from childhood.  His hands had a precious softness, an almost tender baby quality.  He is divine, I thought to myself, he is a child of God.  I prayed for safety of the three of us being robbed and for the 3 robbing.  I prayed for the gunman,  I prayed that his hands would remain steady and that he would hold to his promise.   That no harm would come to anyone on St. Patricks Day in a dinky game store in South Los Angeles, just off the 10 freeway.  I felt my father's smile.  He knew for some reason unknown to a terrified me that this was an important experience.

The rest of the robbery seemed a blur.  I had a few random thoughts like, why are they only taking video games, why not the game machines, why not an X-Box?  "Let's go!"  the guy at the door ordered.  The gunman backed away from the counter.   The other jumped back over the counter and headed for the door, his trash bag full with their booty, the spoils of the day.  It was almost over.  Then, "Get her stuff!"  The gunman and the doorman stood eye to eye.  Slowly, the gunman put his gun in his pocket, but the doorman was not having it.  "Nah man get her shit!"  The gunman turned to me and shrugged an I'm sorry.  He ever so gently removed the brand new Coach bag my aunt had given me for Christmas, my car keys, and my cell phone.  His hands were as soft as I imagined.  We both looked down.

"Ya'll wait 30 minutes before you call the police or we will be back."  Just like that the ordeal was over.

They didn't take the thing that was most valuable next to our lives, the video camera that was hanging from my arm.  I wasn't in much of a mood to "shoot" anything having been so close to a shooting.  Almost 7 years to the day I shot Faith & Justice, my freshman film project.  The series explores the divinity of 3 seemingly, lost souls and seeks to answer the question, does Faith have faith? 

I have learned to honor the creative impulses that come from within me.  At the time I didn't realize the correlation between the fateful day in March of 2007 and how it would relate to my determination to birth this seemingly wacky story in March of 2014.  Many times we do not know why we are inspired to tell one particular story over the next.  Exploring righteousness and forgiveness and right doing vs wrong doing has many facets.  It is indeed a labor of love.  To support this series please click the link below.


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Episode 1 Faith & Justice Starring Mattilyn Rochester, Maryam Myika Day, and Pierce Minor.

We are worthy....
The resurrection is really about restoring the years the locusts have eaten.  Forgiveness is knowing that in any given circumstance knowing that we do not know what our choice would have been.  Knowing that grave has not placed us in circumstance to have to choose light over darkness, but knowing that we have faltered before and our lack of consciousness, fear, disconnection from God had caused us to choose darkness.  But by the grace of God, there go I.  We have chosen darkness before.... Abandoned ourselves in the face if something.  Knowing that none of us has the right to condemn another and knowing that the moment we do, we have set into motion an event or series of events that will show us. Show us not to punish us or break us down, no, but to have us experience our faliability, to open us to our humanity, our compassion, our hearts; to open us up to God.

So what can we learn from the resurrection?
I have learned that I am enough.  The symbolic meaning of a man dying for me that didn't even know me, brings to mind that I am enough just because I exist.  My heart opens with joy knowing that soldiers who have never and will never know me fight for my freedom.  People in the civil rights movement sacrificed there lives so I would have the right to have my voice heard, acknowledged and respected on celluloid and social media.  That women have been slaughtered to say I have a right to be here, that I a woman am worthy.  Christ's example is materialized each and every day in our taken for granted, inalienable rights.

I also have learned that forgiveness is the treatment .  Father forgive them for they know not what they do.  In our unconsciousness we destroy, betray, lie, hate and steal.  And in our unconsciousness we feel righteous in condemning the molester, the Judas's of our time, the sinner .

The resurrection is also about lifting us up to the high road of abundant prosperity, guilt free.  Knowing that it not only is our right but our destiny, not only our destiny but our responsibility to shine.  To live life and live it abundantly.  To shine is to share God's love.  To shine is to restore past hurts and offenses.  To shine is our job, one of the very reasons that we exist.   So what we need to forget is who we are not and what we need to remember is who we are.

My heart is hurting for my brother.  My heart aches for the times I have betrayed not only my brother, friends and family, strangers, colleagues, friends, teachers, institutions,  but also the millions of times I have berated and betrayed myself, times I have forgotten who I am.   By saying too much, overcompensating because i was operating out of the misguided cloud that i was not enough.  By not saying anything or not saying enough because i was too scared to disappoint, disrupt or fall out of favor with those with whom i had become emotionally enmeshed with, even though my heart was screaming a truth I was so afraid to utter.   The resurrection teaches me that it is a narcissistic disease for me to tarry to long burdened by guilt, shame and remorse.  I was blind but now I see, ergo when you know better, you do better.  Forgive them for they know not what they do.  The most  profound and fundamentally transformational form if forgiveness is self forgiveness.   The resurrection is about remembering that our unconsciousness is forgiven.  No matter what we have done if we are alive we have an opportunity to transform, we have an opportunity to renew, we have an opportunity to shine.  So my heart aches for no reason.  I am forgiven the offense of my forgotten brilliance, waiting in the balance, for me to just be.  Be and know that I am held in the bosom of Abraham.  All the needless sins and burdens we carry because we don't give it up, let it go to God in prayer.

Our pain in life is from our unconsciousness and lack of trust.  Fear, pain, bad choices, mean spiritedness, bullying, revenge, petty grievances, condemnation, and betrayal  comes from a lack of trust.  Fear that we are not held, that our needs won't be met.  Bitterness not expressed, words spoken and not spoken build into a toxic expression of madness that shows up on the doorsteps, in many of our lives.

So the encouragement is to move about the world with authenticity knowing that no matter what that all is unfolding as it should.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, happy Resurrection Sunday , happy today is the first day of the rest of your life.

- written by Mattilyn Rochester

COLD CASE - THE LETTER