AWARENESS

Awakening The Black Community is an odd, and sadly predictable task. I was listening deeply to the Honorable Louis Farrakhan's speech in New Jersey addressing the Bloods and the Crips today It was a powerful talk in the tradition of the African and African American culture's elders have had with upcoming generations. The next generations are always the best of the preceding generations, and the product of prayers of our Ancestors.  In the Realm of our Ancestors(Ikole Orun) lives the spring board of our actions. Minister Farrakhan brings to the surface, for me, the living angst the inactivity of a brilliant and potentially powerful people's commitment to being the less of themselves. The few workers involved and committed to community activism, and the development of youth typically are a minority of our people. The majority do not participate in because the majority of "Members" are inactive participants in their communities. I use the old adage, Members, as a reminder of what Black Americans used to call themselves during Jim Crow's years.

In their down time the spiritual people, social activists, social workers, ministers, youth organinzers, etc. are resting, and re-accessing their work, and their techniques. They make prayers, and are doing their spiritual work wherever they find themselves. Some would be in their offices at home listening to the honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, as I did this morning, taking notes, or sharing with others their insights, crying, or gathering the strength of their ancestors, their guardians, peers, and angels, or their own children around them to seal their purpose for serving with renewed strength. I would call it a feeding of one another. Feeding one another stretches the food and the knowledge. It doesn't happen on a larger scale because spectators don't participate... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/9/12

"... and how do we enable 'spectators' to see their own value and power so that they will rise up? the physical oppression is in many ways better for one than the mental/spiritual oppression for at least you can clearly 'see' your enemy and be motivated towards helping one another... as was the case in the past." - Safiyyah Abdullah

I don't have a fix-it answer, Safiyyah, but I remember something told to me by a friend of mine. I don't think he'd want his name used online. In person he wouldn't shy from the attention he'd draw from anyone. He is a white man. He doesn't claim any Native American ancestry, but Bear Heart, of the Muskogee nation, when alive and responsible for the Peace Shield, and its teachings adopted my friend as his grandson.

Bear Heart gave my friend a simple ritual to connect white men from my friend's world into manhood through initiation. Four men in a circle are given a question at a time from four questions to answer Each man sits in a direction answering the directional questions. There is discussion from each direction from each question collectively.

In the East: What is honor?
In the South: How do you protect the innocent?
In the West: Who is your enemy?
In the North: When is enough enough?

This is a Warrior Ceremony, and in that context the words of my old friend and mentor, George Wheeler, in the business world returns to me, "Every warrior should have the right to lead and conquer in their own way."

George's words remind me of the Someone who once said to me, "The value we put on things determines our actions to acquire and resolve the issue." Spectators? I don't, for the most part, try to 'convert', or stimulate, at some point, because everything boils down to a question of life and death. If, and when someone chooses to die 'I leave them let', as they say down South. I leave them be to focus on those who chose to live. That is all we can work with; those who want to live! - Gregory E. Woods, 9/9/12

by  Via Gerard Christensen