It was given to me years ago by Bishop Eugene Tyrsson SilverWolf Kyle a dear friend and brother of our religious order. It came about as a play on words from the old children stories of Br'er Rabbit (Brother Rabbit) and because I was the abbot of our order and he knew of my affinity for Saint Melangell, the patron saint of hares.
What he couldn't have known was my love of the Br'er Rabbit stories and the Disney movie the Song of the South. These stories were made popular in the United States by Joel Chandler Harris, though he wasn't the first to publish them.
They were based upon the continental African people's folktales and subsequently the derivative folktales of the enslaved Africans of the Americas. They were my first introduction to liberation theology, though I didn't know that at the time.
I grew up in a deeply racist family and these folksy tales helped me struggle against learned generational racism and to start to discover a different world around me and a different way of being at an early age. Those folktales and stories would inform and thus shape my world, political, spiritual, and emotional view for the rest of my life.
To this day I still treasure the memory of those books. For good or bad, right or wrong, they helped make me who I am today and I treasure my dear brother's nickname that he gave me all those years ago. I am humbled and grateful.
+Br'er Abbot
