PANDA

On Facebook someone created a poster with a Panda Bear holding two pistols in his hand. The caption read: "Destroy racism. Be like a panda; he's black, he's white, he's Asian." To which I responded thus:

Destroy racism? The absurdity of the proposal is in the word. Be like a panda he's black, he's white, he's Asian? What lives within a panda that can be used in the spiritual work of change and shifting? The panda was hopeless before the onslaught of its greatest enemy: the thinking and non-relationship with Life embodied by the European tribes, and their fundamental paradigms that fueled conquest around the globe and continues to justify every act of desecration upon the Earth, our Mother. The very people that orchestrated his demise prance about squealing about how cute he is, and he can only live safely in a zoo!

Panda was not the Medicine I used to overcome my problems with whites. Panda has to play games to survive in the zoo, and make white people feel good about themselves. That is one of the survival tools Blacks use to survive in the world. It isn't spoken aloud. It just is a part of our makeup. Panda Medicine did not know how to deal with my pain. Panda deals with his loss of freedom and habitat suitable to him. But to learn how to do ceremony with whites, to see them without hate, to know how to listen with an open heart in sacred circles to their heart songs, and from the heart call them my relatives was hard work for me, and the first to show me how to do the work were two white women, and one white man many years ago!

It is work; deep dark probing work that removes racism from the center of one's being. If we want panda to be panda and if we want to learn from the panda restore his land and all the animals and the green, and sky he needs to live without us. Learning how to become a Bear is done humbly through relationship with more than one living thing. Learning how to love one's oppressor is to learn how to love in the deepest sense of the word, and the word; the operative word is Power. Power brings in Clarity and Clarity ushers in Power. These relationships mirror what we need between people and the monumental divide created by worldviews, and the different relationships people hold within the spot of land of their Ancestors.

The frustration of reconciliation work for facilitators is in the fears, the deep crippling fears living within whites, for the most part, terrified by their history and its multiple implications. These things keep them from participation in the spiritual work at every level. Dorothy Height said at Coretta Scott King's funeral, "The Black man needs the White man to help him with his fears and the White man needs the Black man to help him with his guilt!" The how to make this happen I have learned, but in this setting, online, it is impossible to translate, to teach, to feel. This is my gift to you. AHO! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

We need each other...

"I don't discount the heart songs of people. The heart knows itself, but in the work of reconciliation there are some rules. There is a transitory phase the predator and the prey pass through. It is very much like a valley between mountains. Quite often whites leap over this part with sweeping words and story that plays on emotions. 


Do we ever hear Indians or Blacks publicly declaring "I have a white heart." The torment on and in the souls of people of color is fresh, and it never helps the way whites step in that pain with the same energy body that conquered into other people's identity and ceremonies. Many of us are so screwed up and hurting we go on automatic and in survival mode do things whites mistake as a passing comment, frivolous gesture. I don't think I have to go into detail, but on behalf of the many who aren't as articulate it has to be said. Reconciliation work between the races does not have full participation because most whites are incapable of a few things we all need if we are to eventually become a family, and sadly step out of the way hoping not to be called upon...


Dorothy Height, at Coretta Scott's funeral summed it the best. "The White man needs the Black man to help him with his guilt. The Black man needs the White man to help him with his fear."


We need each other. This work of reconciliation upon the Medicine Wheels is sacred, but it is hard and challenging. It is far beyond cliches and trying to make whites feel good about themselves in exchange for what we sacrifice by not sacrificing for the sake of our souls and our generations!


These are my words." -Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Shaun Robinson & Dr. Dorothy Height

Shaun Robinson & Dr. Dorothy Height

“I see, recognize and honor this connection and what it means. Accepting and passing on torches are acts of power, and necessary to the advancement of people, families, nations, and the concepts of evolving beyond the norm where corporations and the single-eyed focus of power brokers prefer to usher the ordinary.” –Gregory E. Woods,

Keeper of Stories

2010