Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Mystery, Maturity, & Wild Woman Songs


“Mystery within a black woman's maturity is a song worth remembering; a lesson lived to be taught, and perceived as a force of nature, vulnerable, and not in competition with the-Spirit-that-moves-in-all-things. That mystery is in the bones of her men. It is our breath of life, and the source of blood ceremonies that allow men to be men in a world not of their making. The mystery of African-American women is integrated into the fabric of American life through her breast milk, and grief; betrayal, and triumph; contradictions, and Earth medicines. Her wisdom and knowledge of how things work for and against her people; her family has saved the race from insanity, and deaths.


Her life and her mysteries are forces within creation whose very essence is upon the consciousness of a nation that does not want to hear its stories of conquest, feel, hear, or want to count the cost of raping women, desecrating the land, killing men, or altering and destroying cultures. This mystery holds out her hand to be followed; shows her face as an elixir, and we watch, spell-bound, as she dances in the streets, in our lust she gyrates, in our homes she rules and guides, and in school yards she teaches our children, and runs up and down the church pews on Sundays in a puzzling contradiction!


And we Black men love her, and contradict ourselves by not teaching the spirits and minds of our young men from the depth of knowledge that fathoms, and is the teachings of the Sacred Masculine. What a grave responsibility we hold as men to learn how to accumulate old teachings, re-visit the fundamentals of a variety of Old World religions from our forefathers, and mothers like the Yoruba, Ibo, Akan, etc. incorporating them into a 21st century context. It requires a profound shift to become a man of knowledge, humble and familiar with Power in its dynamic forms. Our women need, and are easily aroused by the presence of such men…”

~Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

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