Zambian Irish singer & actress

SAMANATHA MUMBA

ROAD RAGE

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

2009

The inexplicable moment distinguished by a good cigar, the soft murmur of snow falling upon snow, gentle cold winds, a moon, and a fire buring deep in the forest of the mountains in Virginia.

–Gregory E. Woods

LORI ANNE WILLIAMS: a story of excellence

Lori Anne Williams, Washington DC recording artist

BEAUTY

“Inexplicable beauty has always confounded and overwhelmed the senses. To approach it without truth is as precarious as entering the sacred lodge of serpents without respect, stillness of mind, or permision. The lodge of serpents is a place of healing protected by maya (illusion). Stories were created by Gods to control the movement of men towards the mysterious respect due the enormous energy of the sacred feminine that holds, creates, designs, and defines Life directly, indirectly, by allure, and from the the depth of knowing required to be a sacred being. The stories were meant to undo the powers of the Goddess. But over time the creatures from the divisive stories of the Gods found themselves without their strength over the intricate weaving of Spider Women’s designs. Those stories found themselves in a new era; an era without peer.

Balance made a quest for the attention of our children as they grew up. The serpent medicine was taken out by the healers from the dark places of undoing into the lights of daytime. Songs were created to gift the People at dawn. As the newness of unlearning crippling paradigms gains momentum wars increase against the promise of sacred unions, the multi-linguistic soul of deep beauty, and the music ancient to the future that will restore the balance of the Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine!” –Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Drum

ELDERS SONG: HEALING

“Healing is a deep work requiring time and introspection, and a clearing of the paradigms, and beliefs that creates the dysfunctional relationships in the first place.” –Gregory E. Woods

Tamala Jones

KIM KARDASHIAN

KIM KARDASHIAN'S GLORIOUS YOUTH

Kim Kardashian's deep set eyes

FREE SPIRIT

Lori Anne Williams, DC-based Recording Artist

Creation story of Lori Anne Williams

...she was given an introspective beauty capable of reaching, tutoring, probing the inner sanctum of knowledgeable uses of language. All she required of her admirers was their presence, and of her students they were required to look deeper into themselves to find the mirror of what they saw in her within them. This was the lot of Lilith who chose not to be Eve.

-Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Drum

ELDER'S CONCERN: TIGER WOODS

Gossip has no value

The story of how a man loves cannot narrow itself into tight places within men who have large energies swirling within them, and around them. Fame does not give strengths an average person does not have. So, in defense of Tiger Woods, the cliché, 'He is just a man’ hides a truth about the condition, the state of being a man, and Walt Whitman said it best when he wrote, "I am large. I contradict myself. I contain multiples."

I am a man and I know myself. And discovering nuances to my darkness is fascinating at this point in my life, and serves as a Teacher as I live a life not based on birth into sin, but mystery. I say let Tiger Woods learn the deeper, and darker aspects of his being, and eventually evolve into a more balanced man on his true path.

-Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

“I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children. I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I've done, but I want to do my best to try.
I would like to ask everyone, including my fans, the good people at my foundation, business partners, the PGA Tour, and my fellow competitors, for their understanding. What's most important now is that my family has the time, privacy, and safe haven we will need for personal healing.
After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person.
Again, I ask for privacy for my family and I am especially grateful for all those who have offered compassion and concern during this difficult period.”– Tiger Woods, December 11, 2009

“I am of the mind to allow Tiger Woods to embrace and explore his darkness, and unravel his mystery, as he becomes a better man. He has to know most of his public critics themselves haven't the discipline to turn down Punany. They are just relieved that for the moment they haven't been exposed. Gossips must be going nuts inside for fear that their weakness will come to the surface.” Gregory E. Woods

Tiger Woods is a man
Elder Talk: Tiger Woods

DEATH & TRANSFORMATION

My Mother is Dying

My mother is in the process of dying. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. She did not want to be kept alive artificially, so her wishes are being honored. We are dealing with it relatively well, except for my father. Please pray for him especially. Tonight, I am resting at home while he stays with her through the night at the hospital. My brothers, father and aunt and I are staying with her in shifts until her time comes. Hope you and your loved ones are well. Many blessings to you all.

When all of her doctors talked with us, they all agreed that there was no hope for her recovery. She was dying despite the life support measures in place at that time, only more slowly. It was only extending her misery. So, they said we should make a decision about life support. We got together and discussed it. At some point in time over the last couple of years, she told each of us, including my aunt, that she did not want to be kept alive on life support. We did not want to make her miserable when it only extended her life by a few more days at most.

So, they pulled the plug. The only measures taken at this point are the administration of pain medication.

Even though we knew we were making the right decision, as we have watched her dying process, we began to second guess ourselves and feel a little guilty. What if the doctors were wrong and she could make a complete recovery?  I mentioned this nagging doubt to a friend of mine who prayed that we would find peace with our decision. Not long after she prayed, I googled "the stages of death." And what I discovered lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, and I hope the rest of my family as well.

My discovery was that mom's dying process began more than a month and a half ago, before she ever went into the hospital. Continuous sleeping, not interested in eating or drinking, hallucinations, disinterest in things that had interested her, and various other symptoms I did not know about. She was experiencing these symptoms long before she went into the hospital. I was worried about these symptoms, but I thought it was just that she was getting older. I had no idea they were the symptoms of the dying process. So this information has really helped me to realize we did make the right decision.

Several of my aunts and uncles are coming down on us hard about this. Especially on my dad, because like wild animals, I suppose they sense he is weak right now. He's really torn up about it and I pray he too can find some comfort.  One thing I am learning about this is as soon as I reach a point I can think clearly about it, I'm going to do a living will. So my wishes are known ahead of time. So I am making the decision myself. And no family member will experience the guilt and second-guessing that we have been feeling the last couple of days.

Mom has been suffering for years. Truly suffering. And allowing her to go on to wherever the spirit wanders after death, is an act of mercy. I have cried and still do. But in all honesty, I'm crying for myself, crying because I will miss her terribly. My heart aches to see her go. But soon, she will be free from all the pain and misery in which she had been living.

From Lady Hawke's Blog (Laura Lawless)

Melyssa Ford's beautiful face has many voices

SACRED FORM IN MEDITATION

“Every Christian feels a natural yearning of the heart towards God, a true desire to taste the sweetness of communion, of being with Him as He created us to be; but the impurity of our hearts—full of passions, conflicts and fears—bars the way. Yet there is a cure for the weight of sin which burdens the heart and soul of each one of us and afflicts the conscience, keeping us from inner peace and from peace with our neighbors and loved ones.

“If our Savior were to come, He Who is bringing the greatest gift—His heavenly grace with which He makes our souls happy and saves them—and if He were to seek shelter for Himself in our souls, where could He find a place to rest?” —Fr. Seraphim Aleksiev



The Mystery of Repentance

ELDERS PRAYER: TIGER WOODS

“It is sad that a man of such impeccability, and commitment to the highest standards in many areas of his life attracted the lowest elements of the female into his life, and became a whipping post for millions of people unable to conduct their lives with such a high level of commitment to excellence. His actions tell a story. He stands with Elegba at the crossroads. May he leave an offering as he contemplates his next right step, learning to heal as a priest-warrior over himself before he can move to stabilize his family. It takes great strength, and enormous weakness to see the places within that waited to be recognized. Those elements have waited to be called into service. I know the feeling of exposure. The Hunter’s sense understands these things and takes it in stride with difficulty. My prayers are with him hoping to assist in his transition from this place to the next place closer to where he needs to be a man among men. Tiger Woods cannot be alone. His ancestors, his Muse, his medicine, and the connections with the Earth he has golfed on have been talking to him. Perhaps they will be heard.” -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods

JESUS - part 2

The elegant beauty of a mature woman brings to mind the gross contradictions of the Christ teachings filtered through the European people, culture, and institutions. The Rabbi's in Jesus' time were required to marry. Men who exude power, particularly extraordinary powers, arouse women the world over. Men who work in the dangerous professions, and wear uniforms arouse a lot of women because of the powers these men have at their command, and the relationship they have with power is stimulating. “The clitoris tingles with excitement”, I have been told many times, moistening with the possibility of the man inside of her warm Punany. The elixir of sexual powers bridges the distance between logic and mysticism at the speed, and release of copulation, the probing of a man inside a woman, the resultant union, and orgasms.

The vitality of lust, and sexual fulfillment could not have escaped the sensory perceptions of Jesus Christ. As fine as women are from his part of the world, and as alluring as women are in veils, and long loose flowing garments Jesus in command of so much power, and in possession of so much knowledge, wisdom and insight was a sexual magnet. The substance of his being, and his healing, and divination powers was composed of the primal elements of female ejaculation, sensuality, allure, magic, and foresight. Copulating with the masculine principals of taking, giving with an eye for the well-being of family, and the powerful ability of a man to consume and destroy illusions, and malefic forces threatening his equilibrium the powers of Jesus could only be balanced on the Earth plane in the arms of a wife, and supported by the women who gave of their energies to support his ministry.

The women married to the men who followed Jesus gave a lot of themselves to the their husbands to be a part of the three years of Jesus' final work on the Earth plane. The cords from wife to husband tied through sex, and covenant connected their men, the Disciples of Christ, to their children, and their marriages, and to the land, Mother Earth, that supported their families. The sexual powers of women were fundamental to the work of Christ. Without it his work would not have happened. Imbalance cannot create at the level of energy, and power Jesus required in his short time on the Earth plane of existence. Even in death the female principle and the physical presence of their wombs, and the lips of their vaginas beneath their garments were portals between the worlds he traveled for three days and three nights and Mother Earth after his Roman death.

Woman had to bring him into the Earth space in the Land of the Blacks, and women's energies expressed and released through their hearts, grief, wisdom, and from powers held between their thighs had to guide him through the underworld, and back to this plane of existence. The diagram of this is much like the Cherokee worldview. The Tsalagi people see the Upper, Middle, and Lower worlds. The relationship woman held in the scheme of existence is in their blood. The women held power with their blood during their sacred moon time (menstrual cycle), and the time of giving birth. Men held their relationship to sustaining life through the shedding of blood when hunting or in warfare.

In the crucifixion of Jesus these roles were played balancing each other in an extraordinary drama. Within the depth of this teaching the Mystery of the Messiah makes sense if one understands the life-death-resurrection dance of Life. Many creatures dance this dance on the Earth plane. The Vulture, whom I know through Death and Relationship, knows and teaches these things, but the intellectual conflict in seeing these things without fear lies in the teaching of the Church, and its insistence on denying the Female part of the process of the Christ Consciousness. And from this denial comes a Death to Jesus’ wish that we all live life more abundantly, and the stubborn belief that he conquered death maintains and supports a non-relationship with the Mysteries of Holiness.

-Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

WISDOM KEEPER

true Dawn
I challenge you to continue to deepen your commitment to the solution as not only a keeper of stories but as a torchbearer. What you know and your insights inspire people to think and contemplate. I need your assistance in spreading the message of light. I think a great part of the solution is Kujichagalia. We must redefine ourselves and understand our true nature. One heart at a time. I ask you to put your considerable talents and logic to finding out how we can disseminate this information to the most receptive way.

Because of the incidents in my journey from hearing heavenly music at 17 and praying that It would stop, to studying Buddhism and meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ching Hai and going to Brazil and receiving the Violet Flame and even meeting you playing with Kenny. Each event was a trigger to awaken me to my true identity and start an unstoppable search to return home.

But first things first. What is common in all the modalities are prayer, meditation and decrees. Whether it is the Adhan in Islam, the mantras and dictations in Buddhism, or the calls/decrees of the Ascended Masters. The foundation is that we must remember our true nature the I AM Presence; some call it the Christ Presence or Christ Consciousness, and enlightenment. I Am a little hesitant to call it the Christ Presence because it takes a religious overtone that in some cases is unavoidable.

We have a supreme opportunity because you/we have received knowledge that has never been readily available in such a "simplistic" form. So we must take every opportunity to spread the knowledge of light and sound. You do this already thru your words and actions. Your drumming, your teaching. We have to begin to include questions as to who we are. For this will start the dialogue with people. It also awakens the God presence to the recognition of itself in the lower bodies.

Thus we begin to finally overcome our addiction and captiveness to our feeling body. Every time we acknowledge through prayer, devotion, calls and songs the I Am Presence our connection is strengthened. We receive more light. Then as the channel is further strengthened and purified. It is a continuous effect until the Ascension occurs. Even before the Ascension occurs the karma we currently have is lessened or transmuted to such a degree that we no longer have any problems manifesting prosperity.

We must still be attentive to details but we will have spun our lower bodies to such a vibration that the Electronic body of the I Am presence is now supremely in charge. Manifestation or precipitation is the least difficult of our abilities we acquire along the way. Healing, the gift of speaking, the gift of the ability to move our various bodies huge distances without physical transport are other gifts that also come.

enough I Breathe, Peace Atiba

TORCH BEARERS

eye from the sky

“The Souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of Lights; Each takes a Taper, often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls are rare fortune, are detained longer and have time to grab a handful of Tapers, which they weave into a Torch. These are the Torch-Bearers of humanity, its Poets, Seers, and Saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, towards the Light. They are the lawgivers and the Saviors, the Light-Bringers, Way Showers and Truth Tellers, and without them, Humanity would Loose its way in the Dark...”

~ Plato

Marque, recognizing the twinness of ourselves is, in some respects, contrary to and identical to the Christ teachings. The modern church teachings burden us with guilty elements that weigh down our spirits you know. But your poetry seems to divine your individual self from the web of religious perceptions. Am I on the right track, or way off base?

In respect to your comment about our youth culture there is the thin hope that their will be an awakening of fundamental truths, and people will taste the bitter fruit of trying to live in a perpetual motion of immaturity. Immaturity is the element of youth that was designed to stimulate growth. Youth becomes, at some point, contractions in a birthing process from innocence, physical strength, idealism, and high energy into maturity. Life was meant to evolve into depth.

Eldership is a complex process of simplicity going through a series of deaths towards the ascension of souls. I stress the plurality of souls because an Elder will deepen his/her life force in such a way that it benefits others making their journeys from immaturity into the depths of Life’s mystery, and passages into the Unknown.

The divinity of a moment of intimacy can expand life or plunge it deeply into the mysteries of beginnings. ~ Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Wes' new baby - Danda in Brazil 2009

JESUS CHRIST

200 pictures of Jesus

I have long had a deep conflict with the image of Jesus. It didn't take many years for me stare at the traditional picture of Jesus Christ, and glance at my own father standing near the picture on the landing leading into the kitchen before I saw the contrast between the images. On the one hand as a teenager my own father was, to people the world over, the epitome of a man. I had seen him do extraordinary things among ordinary people caught up in the humdrum dance of convention many times before I was seventeen (17) years old. And looking into his eyes when he was angry and raging, or laughing deeply, or looking at Mommy with love, understanding who she is, and wanting her, or see his countenance as he gave counsel stood in stark contrast to the feminine picture, on the wall, I was told was the image of Christ.

I had to say it aloud. There was no way a man such as Jesus was sissy like. It didn't make sense to the sensibilities of a boy raised by a man to become a man. So I did the most logical thing. I stood in front of the picture in the family room and spoke the words out loud! It was quite a moment. There was a stunned silence in the room as those present stared at the picture and me. Doubts raced in my mind stirring up fears of hell, judgment, and condemnation but I couldn't back away from this. Not if I was going to be a man one day! So I spoke it again and began to answer the questions that started first from Mommy.

Here is an image of a man, a savior, a teacher, the Messiah who never had sex, never married, and was a Rabbi 2000 years ago, and I am supposed to fashion my masculinity around this concept of manhood, and around his life of celibacy, power, and spirituality and take on Christ-like attributes to become a Man of God in the 20th century? How can that be when I stand in front of the image of Christ the Church has deemed to be his holy likeness, and he looks like a girly-man? It was too impossible an idea to grasp as the son of my father, Herbert L. Woods! My father was a man who loved Mommy, and protected us from all dangers including the white man and Jim Crow. The sissy didn't live within Daddy's essence, and my little teenage mind couldn't bring these contradictions together.

As a descendent of both the African and Indian nations the ethnicity of Jesus holds an importance very different from white Christians because I don't have protect a tenuous hold over altered truths. I got older in my my thinking and recognized the obvious. There were only two fair-skinned peoples in the Land of the Blacks: the Romans and the Greeks. I lived in Africa, and Africa taught my spirit about spirituality from the Land of the Blacks. The differences are profound. There are solid reasons such a powerful man arose from her soil. A picture of a man from that continent speaks volumes about powers that have never been captured in the Euro-pictures of Jesus. To draw a fair likeness about a man who was never drawn from the people he came from shifts the power of his teachings. To be a white, and European trying to shift that power in his direction directs the power away from him into the illusions of power in ways my white relatives are just beginning to grasp.

If I had not called into the question the essence of the artist's intention, and the intention of the Church, and the old colonial powers what kind of man would I be now? Would I have found my voice, or been capable of receiving the things I am receiving now? Would I have developed access to the spirit world as it is now? Those are good questions I will never know the answer to because I chose to walk the path that opened up as I opened myself to the mysteries behind the illusion of holiness and pretense.

Gregory E. Woods,

Keeper of Stories

Can you have a Merry Christmas?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

ELDER TALK: TIGER WOODS

I disagree. I include myself among the masses who know nothing of Tiger Woods' inner life. Marriage is a revelatory arrangement. It is a covenant altered over the span of the globe, and history by the understanding of each tribe or culture's relationship with the Earth energies of their homeland, and their understanding of the Creative forces of the Creator. Marriage primarily serves two masters: economics and intimacy. This brother and sister relationship has had to submit itself to laws that contain the fiery passions of our need for intimacy, and vulnerability, and the economic realities of surviving, and in wealthy countries, like the United States, living above and beyond mere existence.

Most of Tiger Woods’ detractors are coming out of the woodwork, cowardly, because they have found a weakness within the giant, the impeccable giant they fear because the level of impeccability developed within Tiger Woods lies dormant within average people. Everyone who has trained their minds, bodies, spirits, and molded their emotions into a mature state recognize the fragility of being too comfortable with their strengths. Weakness is part of every giant, and every weakness requires observation, and work, and weakness requires a sacred space to develop into strength. Where does a man like Tiger Woods go for sanctuary? Who creates sacred place for him? Who provides a spiritual covering for him? Who can he confide in exposing the deeper chambers of his being without a Delilah showing his weakness to the jowls of the raging beasts outside of his domain?

The greatest challenge as an American celebrity is privacy, and the deep level of disrespect accorded them by average under-achievers who call themselves fans. Tiger Woods’ fan base is composed of a life-force fed by a business that feeds gossips, and into the minds of people who worship mediocrity speculation replaces objectivity, compassion, understanding, and in the end a better soul is not nourished into its higher destiny.

Black Americans have profound trouble in the arena of identity. African-American, the title worn fought a hard battle to be accepted by a people defined by a color, a subservient mentality, and a deep sense of not belonging. Deep into dysfunctional relationships with white Americans there has not been a pause taken advantage of to access the soul loss of a people who despise any blood allegiance of Black Americans who recognize their Native-American, Asian, White, Brazilian or any other bloodlines. It is a bitter truth. And for Black American’s to stand on the world stage and condemn Tiger Woods for not having black lovers is the high definition of a jacked-up paradigm, a testament of soul loss, and the clearest indicator of our inability to become a major world player of power.

Our criticism of Tiger Woods is revelatory, and places us beneath the butt of countless jokes behind our backs, and in the eye of insightful criticism on the world stage. –Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Elders Gathering in Greenland 2009

TARAJI P. HENSON

There is something left in the wake of hard work employing the laws of attraction to become the essence of who you are supposed to be in a cruel world of Western business. The hardness of character it takes to affix hard paradigms into softness cannot be anything but cruel. Trying to fit the strong aspects of African womanhood around a watered down African connection to life within the Western laws of acquisition leaves a hardness in the eyes because of the compromises. That hardness is hard to gaze upon if your main objection to the struggles of achievement is the work ethic you must employ to rise out of the doldrums of being just a Black woman.


It takes a great deal of spiritual work to rise out of the active paradigms of the phenomenon of the consciousness called Black American. The Elders celebrate them and you. Without embodying the work of become a working Hollywood actress those of your people who are healers, and magic workers hold you in our ceremonies while you work in the light to translate stories for the uninitiated, the uniformed, and the fearful amongst us. The work is in your eyes. The square of your shoulders talks about strength and a relationship with powers, and the cut of your hair tells a story of grace, and challenge.

How do you balance the lowest common denominators within Black American culture with the high spirituality, often dormant within the souls of Black folk, without compromising your inate sense of the delicate flower? How do you maintain a core commitment and emotional ties to the Black community that loves you and believes they understand you? Being Taraji P. Henson means something very deep. Its elegance and depth is hidden in the open. It is your name. It is the insistence upon the use of your whole name with one inkling of privacy behind the P that speaks so clearly, to the Elders, about the essence of the warrior-priestess craft of old women ancestors who hid secrets within their tired breasts as they lifted life into their descendants with prayers, slight-of-hand tricks of magic and manipulation.

It is difficult holding a torch, a gift, a responsibility, and working to embody the Sacred Feminine, but try you must, do you must do, and be you must be. Taraji P. Henson you are not alone. These are my words. I am a Keeper of Stories, a Grandfather-Teacher, the first born of my parents, Herbert L., and Constance B. Woods, father of four, grandfather of five, wife of one. I am Gregory E. Woods named Dawn Wolf of the Absaroka, the Muskogee, and the African people.

A letter to Bruce

Bruce, I have been engaged in non-stop writing and editing of my book. I am sorry I took so long to get back to you. You have a rich and powerful lineage to probe, and glean from Bruce. I am Crow (Absaroka), Creek (Muskogee) Indian, and African. I am the first born of parents, and the father of four children. I disagree with you about President Obama, and I read your blog on Yahoo 360! for a couple years. Whether you are a racists or not isn’t my concern. You have valid points I like to chew on because I can’t see every side of every issue. When you question the President’s birthplace it baffles me because those things are so easily confirmed. It is an issue because of something else concealed from view. But on the other hand I understand something of the insistence to question his nationality on a personal level because my nationality has long been a subject of debate even though I was born in the US.

I am a Rotarian. In my little club in Virginia I was president two years in a row. One of our long time members, a retired general, quit our club and transferred to another club because I never pledged allegiance to the American flag. It almost broke our group up, his leaving, but it forced me, as president, to speak for myself. I told the general that being American requires deep thought. I told the story of an 8-year-old boy (me) who suddenly understood what the flag meant to an Indian, and I simply stopped making the pledge. I got it! I told my mother that afternoon, and she told me, “It’s OK. I stopped saying the pledge when I was in 2nd grade too!”

My telling followed a long course of years across America, to Asia and further into Africa, and back into this country as a young man. My telling spoke to the core of patriotism and the need to be intelligence about it. There was more but my truth kept our group together, and we remained friends and Rotarians. When I finished the general walked up to me, shook my hand, and said, “Greg, I didn’t understand a damn thing you said!”

The vice-president of our club and I talked to our general-friend an hour and a half afterwards. The general had fought in Vietnam, Korea, and other places in his long career. He was understandably offended that the President and Vice-President did not pledge allegiance to the flag. Yet he shared with us that in Alabama where he was once stationed he disobeyed his commander and integrated his unit. I asked why.

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

I insisted on an explanation from different angles but got nowhere. He simply stared deep into my eyes and repeated himself.

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

I don’t need to be friends with Bill. I like him. I want to remain friends with him because there is much neither of us understands within the other. What we do gain from each other is warmth and validation. At the root of every relationship is a meaning, and finding the meaning, connecting to core values is crucial to the development of friendships. – Gregory E. Woods (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stores

white women, race & black rage

photo: Marina Sirtis, actress Star Trek the Next Generation

Marina Sirtis gave me the sense of the elegant that lurked outside my peripheral within white women in the years before now. I associated ugly, and fear and death around white women for many years of my life.  I was well into my thirties before I was comfortable to talk to white American women because I was old enough to remember black men being hung for the most trivial of things: looking at a white woman too long.  My father, a Civil Rights activist and leader, hung a black and white poster of two dark skinned men haning from a tree with one crudely tied rope.  The image and its meaning held me captive with its meaning as I read the lists of names of colored men hung across the United States from month to month. 

Fear can turn into ugly things within a man living in a country so prone to violence, and I didn't escape it.  But I needed, as I got older and able to see with more and more clarity, to be rid of animosity.  I needed to find the beauty within these people, and the best way was through their women.  I believed that white people were a cross of a cat, rat, and a dog.  It defied logic but younger readers need to understand that image is fundamentally important to programming masses of people to fear you.  And it comes through various guises.  Altering beauty was the key to maintaining fear within me.  I was one of those people who was going to alter my perception of the bane of my existence. 

My approach was simple.  I altered my Eastern altar slightly with images of white women, and began the slow process of unlearning a view, a perception.  The altar helped me overcome my revulsion, and in my practice of changing my words when I saw white people began as a laborious word for word change.  Some years passed before the fears subsided.  Do you want me to remember the first break through?  

Walking towards K St NW in Washington DC from 14th & I Street a white woman in a black dress was walking towards 14th & I.  Her white skin stood against the black of her dress, and the yellow of her hair with a force that slowed time around and above her.  I stumbled ever so slightly.  She caught it, cast a glance my direction and continued on.  Instead of interpreting her quick glance as a reflection of racism I decided I should speak to her.  I spun on my next step as she passed me, and she, sensing it, hastened her step.  The light stopped her. She clinched her purse under her left arm.  I could have sung the old adage: "Damn white girl thinks I'm gonna rob her 'cuss I'm black!"  But I decided not to. Instead I inhaled confidence, drank in the afternoon sunlight and said as gently as I felt, "You give new definition to a mini skirt."

She visibly melted, and smiled.  We walked and talked amicably for two or three blocks until she went one direction and I another. 

That is the best way I know to explain the process.

-Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

moon, star & nights

“The sanctity of evening. I am awestruck at how the Universe is so balanced and harmonious in it's entirety. I gazed at the stars this night and gave "thanks" for all the people I have come to know and for the one's I have yet to meet. May you all have a Silent and Holy night. I celebrate you!!!” - Nakomis Maher

“I spent a great deal of my life well into my 40's in the forest. Even now the night deep, dark and embracing of my soul holds its poetry for me. The stars spread out like a blanket hiding mysteries they reveal. But people have changed the earth, and the heavens above us.


I like sleeping outdoors on the ground. The forest has always been full of songs, and the safety of the woods is the sounds and voices of the living telling stories of the movements in the forest. But every year, in my lifetime, fewer and fewer animals and birds, and insects live. Last year I lay on my blankets a fire burning near me up in the Virginia mountains I heard something I had never heard in the forest, or the mountains: silence. That silence gave me no song, or voice, or notice of moving hunters in the dark forest. I had to rely on my medicine, and medicine animals to inform my spirit of danger from bears, stalking coyotes, and white men with guns (the scariest of all). So I slept waking up here and there watching the faces of stars moved, seemingly by hand, across the sky shifting the moon in its dance across the dark, chased ahead, eventually, into the morning light. I love the night, its dark peeping out between stars looking down at me asking who I am on that little planet Earth.” -Dawn Wolf

A Healer: Eden Sunyatananda

Facebook Eden Sunyatananda

RITES OF PASSAGE: MANHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Herbert L. Woods, my Father

“My father, Herbert L. Woods, was the Chairman of C.O.R.E in the 1960's in Washington DC. When asked a few years ago by some young black men, "What should we have done, as a people, after the Civil Rights movement?" Daddy's answer came quickly.


"We need to return to the church, the black church, and unearth the beliefs, assumptions, the source of our tragedies! The church brought us up to that point, but it will never take us any further until we do that as a people."

"Why have we not done it? Have you?"

Daddy's eyes burned with conviction as he gestured with clenched fists, and said, "Black folks own their tragedies, and going into the church is a scary thing because black people own their tragedies!" In the following silence my father sat clutching himself, as if he were the embodiment of the odd paradigm.

I am deeply engrossed in this work. I had my time within the black church, and with deep sadness I learned in my twenties and thirties, with force, the truth of Daddy's assessment. I have learned to live what I have overcome. I have had to unearth and ceremoniously shed the elements of dysfunction unique to Black American's from my own being by unlearning what I knew: the first lesson of power. Fortunately, there is a collective of spirits around the globe engaged in this work able to assist who assisted my development. But unlearning, an act of power, is only one first step, and I have learned to employee ceremony, and rituals of empowerment into this work in collaboration with others because there is no savior, and there are no lone wolves. There is only us, and help within the white, red, brown and yellow peoples, and the teachings, insights, and relationships they hold with specific energies, and medicines.

My journey began in the darkest part of my time on Earth. Artists paint their canvas black. One notable artist, painting her canvas black, explained to me in her studio, "...all life comes from the dark." The mystery of night taught my spirit many things, but before I can introduce the deeper part of reconciliation and healing; baby steps...” -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

DAWN WOLF

Let me take a liberty and introduce one my of sites:

http://fireandiceceremony.ning.com/profile/GregoryEWoodsDawnWolf

A STORY OF & FOR OF OUR TIMES

The Story of Stuff

Aboriginal Art - Heart of My People

CELEBRATING LIFE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY

Rastafarian woman smoking ganga in hot tub

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER !!!!

Delmarie & Jennifer Hines

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER!

December 18th is one of those sacred set-aside days on my calendar to remember your gifts, and the sacred knowledge you gave me. The medicine I received from our friendship has made me a deeper spirit in this world. I have developed an affinity for the subtle energies I absorbed from you necessary for the medicine work I have been called to do in my lifetime.

You are the type of woman who teaches the spirit, carries the recollection of seeing, truly seeing the Web of the Life as a special creature. One can best perceive Jennifer in dreams, or dream and stand before your presence perceiving the etheric qualities of what you say, and how you see the world within you and around you by being in touch with the potent energy of growth, re-growth, and the tools to build a cord between the two Sacred energies that hold a life together. A special soul lives with you, Jennifer. I honor it. I see it. I love it. - Gregory

abused Lagos strippers & the law 2

“This is intriguing. I am here in the US. You are struggling with the same Puritan ideology we struggle with over here. There are different threads woven into the fabric of your challenges and contradictions, but the common denominator we have is England. The conflicts rising out of the loins of policy makers, religious zealots, and greedy men who see women as chattel come from somewhere, and that somewhere is hidden by the questions you and I don't ask or are reluctant to ask. Nigerians are as resistant to ripping apart the assumptions, and teachings, dichotomies of Christian and Islamic faiths to ‘see’ the source of their angst as African-Americans are over here. Doing that kind of spiritual work penetrates into the heart of the matter. If Christians and Muslims, here and there, were honest in their quest to understand what women suffer at the hands of men, or try to explain to their daughters why men are not blamed, and shamed in party raids they need to turn upside down the creation story the two religions hold dear to their hearts. But who among us has that kind of integrity?” - Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf), Keeper of Stories

another related story from Nigeria

Alexandra Cousteau and the Grand Tetons

The stories that could be written from this one picture alone. As a Plains Indian myself memories have arisen within my breast of a time and and a land I have not, in this lifetime, had yet. - Dawn Wolf, African Absaroka

ORAL ROBERTS DIED

Oral Roberts died.

"From whatever side we see someone the fact remains that we all have sides to us. We are all complex, and seen from any angle we look different to everyone who looks at us. In the end the questions are did we live the dream given to us? How did we love, and how did we make people feel when we were in their lives?

As an African-Indian I had many problems with Oral Roberts and men like him, but recognize, I did, his strengths, and took to heart the things I learned from him. His life and works were teachers to a student of his life. It takes great courage to live a life of purpose before the entire world. It takes the same amount of courage, and force to live and work within the space of a smaller sphere of influence, and for that he was worthy of study. He represents what has been the bane of my existence as an Indian and a Black American but he was a man, like others, with gifts, or insights that assist the growth of anyone who lives in a constant state of learning.

There is a lot of hurt in the comments I have read online that tells a lot about how his ministry, and stance in the world affected them. There are a lot of believers who benefited directly from the side of the man that enhanced people’s lives. If anything Oral Roberts is guilty of being complex, focused, committed, and in the public eye under more scrutiny than most of us could bear. Oral Roberts is a man worthy of our praise and our contempt. He earned it." -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Oral Roberts as an older man of God

Evangelist Oral Roberts dies in Calif. at age 91

Evangelist Oral Roberts dies in Calif. at age 91 and I read some angry, biting diatribes against him.  Some came out and said, "I am glad he is dead."  Others expressed themselves thus, "I'm sure he died in poverty...no...wait...that was the people who gave him their entire life savings so he could wear $500 suits and fly on private jets."

"Good riddance, Oral. May you be bilked of your savings in your own personal Hell."

"I've learned one thing from Oral (what a stupid name) Roberts. If you cannot become a rock star, start your own religion. Based on the fact that a sucker is born every minute, you are likely to become rich."

 "It's sad to see all of the haters spew like this.....as a kid from a broken disfunctional home I remember seeing Roberts say "god loves you" and "something good is going to happen to you" and it eased my yound pain filled heart,....he was a decent man with a mission and got smeared by God haters in the press,...do I think he was perfect? hell no,..no one is,...but he was a good man that helped a troubled kid by having a t.v. show telling people there was a God that loved him,....R.I.P. Mr Roberts and thank you for the good that you did in my life..."

"I used to get a real kick in the ass as a kid out of watching Oral Robert's Jim & Tammy Fay Baker and Jimmy Swaggert every Sunday morning, raising hell and then with a blink of the eye be crying and sobbing all over the place. Can't wait to see the looks on their faces come judgement day when the real waterworks show happens!"

"If you love Jesus, if you love God you will give me money and I will pray for you with a special prayer that I will say for you on TV, in front of the whole world. As long as the money train keeps running. And I am here today to say that Jesus wants you to send your money to me, so I can stay on TV so keep on sending me those dollars. So I can drive my Rolls Royce,live in a mansion, own my jet, go on vacation, eat steak and lobster while you eat top ramen. Wear $1000.00 suits, have affairs and all the while tell you how to live a life closer to God. So much for organised religion."

 And this one from a body called, Jack: "As a Satanist, I don't believe in the man's message he spread, nor do I believe in his God, and I damn sure don't agree with him ripping off those who believed in such BS. However, I'm not exactly fond of people making jokes about him dying. He may have been a scam artist, but its not as if he was Bundy or Dahmer either."

photo: Oral Roberts praying with Pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen

CELESTE'S INSIGHTS

American Life

“When I have to buy an energy drink to keep up with my frantic pace, I should just trust that maybe I need to go home.” – Celeste Morgan

What a profound statement and revelatory glance into the American thought process, and sense of self in the world at large. - Gregory E. Woods

Beyoncé Knowles & her mother Tina Knowles

SPORTS: THE RELIGION OF

Serena Williams

If sports fans devoted as much critical thought to important issues as they do to sports We wouldn't be in Iraq, jobs wouldn't be outsourced at the alarming levels of today, unions wouldn't be on the verge of disappearing, Wall Mart wouldn't have a foot hold on small and mid-sized towns, and business, and large segments of society would not have voted against their best interests for so many decades. Religion is a defined, and powerful force in American society, and chief among religious devotion is sports. The games themselves are fun. The feats of notables like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters are testament to the power of the game, and the amount of money it engineers, and generates. 

I can't watch sports on television.  It is mind numbing, and I usually fall asleep because I am a participant in the game of living.  I love to play games.  I love running, moving my body, and challenging myself in the forest with life and death play tracking and stalking animals with the propensity to tear me to threads. But it is more than games on TV that has prompted me to write.  It is the business of sports that holds the true elements to the fixation of too many of the average American sports fans outside of the spectrum of true political power.

Allowing Black American athletes into the major leagues and breaking down the laws of racial injustice sent the owner's money making potential through the roof.  The lesbian athletes of the early 20th century were the consistent testament to the excellence of women athletics, and without them women's sports would not be in its prominent place in the 21st century.  The football fans for the Washington DC team are a force unto themselves, and their story is a story worth looking closely into.  No matter what kind of injustice the owners inflict upon the Black players of the Washington team the fans hold on to their team devotion.  No matter how many racial insults fly from the business side of the Washington team to their DC fan base they suck it up and continue to pay their money to the franchise, and show up at rally's, and games. 

The Washington football team was the last team to admit Negro players into their employee rooster, and year after year the owner/management paradigm around race has remained consistent knowing that Black fans are typical of Black Americans.  It does not matter what company in whatever industry openly discriminates, alienates, insults, or takes from Black Americans typically we will return to supporting them after we rant and rave, bitch 'n moan, call Al Sharpton, and make the 10 o'clock news.  It is a paradigm that enriches so many industries.  There is no need to enumerate the past incidents. Sports fans know all this, and Black Americans talk about it enough.  It is an open insult to the richness, and the contributions of the African in America to America.  But that doesn't play into the informed decisions made to support teams that don't respect the core values of a community like the Black American community, or the Native American nations. 

Something of the soul, of the higher intelligence of devotion is sacrificed at an altar atop TV's across the city as sports fans in DC take hit after hit and send their money to the DC franchise.  This is one paradigm that feeds the dysfunction within Washington DC's Black families, and our community. It lives and thrives like cockroaches within the cracks of walls, and ceilings, chews on light fixtures, and finds its way into the bread box and nests in wet spots behind the fridge, or in the bathroom upstairs. There is a logic to parenting.  If, for example, rape is an area of concern for our children do we, as parents, allow the images of violation to permeate the spirit of our home, our actions? 

Among DC football fans the answer is expressed in actions.  There is a danger in these words, and I run a personal risk speaking thus. I have come close to physical altercations raising these alarms.  Save for my physical presence it never happened but there is truth to the relationship between sports, family, social standards, abuse, and abandonment.  It just does not serve the business of sports entertainment to lend itself to the deep analysis of behavior, truth, sports, outcome, and value or the impact of unexamined devotion.  None of this became clear to me until the first time I toured with some black kids from DC to the football camp.  Darrell Green, a friend of both our learning center, and my sister-in-law Sherry who runs the center, gave our kids a personal touch.  Other stars came out, and one of the sales people leaned over and said, "You're not really into the game are you?" 

"No. I am not. I just love the kid's excitement."

"What are you interested in?" 

"The business.  How it works, and the cameras."

"I'll be right back."

He returned shortly and gave me a personal tour of the camp business man to business man.  I was in business sales at the time.  The things revealed were eye openers.  One of the things I noticed I questioned him on, and as an answer he said, "You're right my language does change when speaking with fans, and business people.  The players are product." 

If the players are product who are the fans?  - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of the Drum

the SACRED FEMININE

 I discovered a site titled Sacred Feminine Matters that is worth the reflective thought it engineers. Helen Mendel, a published author, has teachings for these times.  This is the sacred work important to the development of a boy to a man.  Boys, and men I work with in ceremony are crippled by a deficency of soul, and a mind warped by lewd pictures of themselves dominating pussy, and controling women. The men and women around them foster a cultural attribute that cannot develop within the boy an ability to control his spirit.  What good is a man who cannot control his spirit?  King Solomon said, "A man that cannot control his spirit is like a city without walls."

Sinclair and I worked together a few years ago with a group of young men, and discovered a disturbing paradigm living within a lot of young men.  Despite all the warnings many young men will risk contacting HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease if a beautiful or simply fine woman or girl would give them unprotected sex they thought they would never get.  The thought processes of our young men come from somewhere, and some place we have neglected to guide them from. - Gregory E. Woods

POLITICS OF BEAUTY

actress, Stacey Dash

African American actresses have risen to heights limited by the vision of a business dependant upon insights of a dominant culture clinging to the tentacles of white supremacy, and a doctrine of entitlement that slowly barters with the notion that women have value and worth beyond the fancy of endless access to the sexual being within every woman. Black Americans did not name the period of the so-called black exploitation movies of the 1970’s. Whites made a last ditched effort to quell the surge of black pride that was foremost upon the consciousness of a people evolving out of the restrictive culture of Jim Crow. Business-wise the image of Black women was slow leaving the controlling personalities of business people who control Hollywood as the genius of the fashion industry was getting hip to the allure of dark skinned women. The features of African women were long the envy, and source of bloody retribution of white women upon African slave women, and men in the hidden chapters of relationship between the two races.

Whole industries were created to attain the “exotic African look”, but the business of beauty, and the business of sales within the movie and fashion industries was searching for ways to hold onto the aesthetic mystery of Black American women without the presence and contributions of Black women, and then along came Science. Science came into the game of race relations with technology that could create African looks on white women, and the years passed as the fashion industry found reasons to let go of the 'ideal' of Black womanhood, and seized upon the enhanced features of white women from Europe and America. The direction of these tendencies nestle within the tentacles of success white Americans have had living off of the paradigms of supremacy, and entitlement, but at what cost?

The cost to their souls has been more than brutal. Many healers have passed down a wisdom to younger healers, and developed the spirit and technique to assist in the developmental process of our white relatives initiation into adulthood. In the medicine wheel teaching from the Man Who Looks Like His Uncle, Angaangaq, the white man, and the elements he is composed of speaks of their spiritual responsibility to bring people together. They have done that but at what cost to the souls of all mankind affected by the approach and life way of the European? That is too large of a question to answer in so narrow a space, but as we plunge deeper into the "war with no end" perhaps Americans will gain a little of the old wisdom and listen to the Peace Keeper from the Iroquois nation, and become adults in the Human Family.

Gregory E. Woods

"Dawn Wolf"

Keeper of Stories