Make IT, Survive!

Harriet Tubman. She stands in my thinking a menacing presence balanced in her years after the Civil War with marriage, property ownership, the building from a vision she carried, and a life serving Colored folks in the hard years learning how to no longer be slaves! It was a hard time after the Civil War most have no concept of, but her depth is in the role she played during the freed times (1965-1876)! How to live when Southern whites unleashed their rage from 1866 on are a complex circle of interlocked stories making the buzzing sound in the undercurrent of modern life in the States! 

Harriet Tubman is a complex part of America's contradictions, and the bane of the country's existence. If white Americans were to understand why an African freed slave would terrorize them freeing African souls, and why she killed those Negroes, who wanted to go back to their masters, they'd better understand the dark of their souls, and their existence!

When she said, she'd admonished slaves running north with the words: "If you hear dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going!" she was talking with and talking to the warrior spirit prepared to die to live!

I don't want to participate in the romanticizing of the woman, or her hard work. It is where she has slipped into in the expanse of time since her life was lived. And I do not want 

HOLD ON...
by jojo brooks shifflett

And in the Winter of life, Hold on.
Hold on to you, Not who you think you should have been.
Hold on to what you know to be good, if it be but a bit of bread and honey,
or if it be a bit of earth that warms you,
or a face that makes you smile.
Hold on to these things that made you, you.
Hold on to what you must now do,
Even if it means traveling far away.

Hold on to life,
When it is easier to just let go.
Hold on to my hand,
No matter the distance between us.
For my dear one, you still hold my heart,
though we be so far, far apart.

Telling A Story!

Protect him, a traditional story. "What are your thoughts on this?"

There is a lot to remember in this image. The most provocative memory comes from the dark times of enslavement when African women created secret societies to protect their men, and fleeing slaves from the ravenous spirits of the whites! I think about Voudon and its importance to African survival, not only for their own, but the white women seeking refuge from their own men, and culture! There is Harriet Tubman's ability to kill those who wanted to return to slavery, and the Maroon societies throughout the African Diaspora. Lastly, I remember how this spirit permeates the ancestral links of our young people, who are unguided and unable to fit in their minds who they are, and how all these things align themselves into their systems of beliefs, action and inaction!

It is a deep story denied, captured and hidden and in the open,  and in action! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

A Riddle to Resistance

An historical note: I refrain from referring to Blacks prior to the 1990's as 'African American'. That term was resisted vehemently by all concerned prior to that decade. Referring to them thus implies to the naïve that Blacks, or Coloreds were citizens with a basis of pride of heritage that was not fashionable as many like to fantasize about today.

In the social climate of the 21st century the fundamental and the variety of questions to freedom from the perspective of people bound to the nature of being ghetto, and retaining the status of being 'niggers' makes the historical reference to Black folks of our past as African Americans as too far ahead of themselves. You cannot correct the past by renaming it from the present.

On April 20, 1853 Harriet Tubman's task was to free her sister, and her sister's two children, at a terrible cost: her marriage. Her husband was a free man. They lived in southern Maryland, she slave-born, he a free born man. He couldn't take the risk of entering into that affair running the risk of being caught by whites three years after a law that required returning runaways to their owners, or the authorities was passed.

 

Being free born would you had you been him then? ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 7.17.16



a couple playing together.

 

Life always asks the question of Black White People

Lace Petite

by FiveRings Photography
November 27, 2013  

Harriet Tubman a long time ago said, "I had crossed the line. I was free but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land."

That is an emotion hard to capture across the expanse of time if bondage is a way of being in vogue, or feel if one has a life of privilege and is in bondage. No stranger to the feeling of this kind of isolation affords those who have obtained their freedom the deep unction Harriet Tubman carried within her that compelled her to go back and lead and sometimes pull people out of slavery into free land. Harriet Tubman is not the only one, in such a line of work, who bemoaned the state of mind that craved the return to bondage, and resented those who sought to be free. There are few free people and it is a strange land with all the resistance to freedom and truth telling.

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.4.14

bikini clad Angela Simmons in door way

A NEW DAY?

UNDER A NEW PRESIDENT 2012

Reconciliation is an art form, and a tool friendships need to mend and stay connected. How it is done depends on the integrity of heart, and the color of intent. – Gregory E. Woods 11.7.12

“Unknowingly I have learned how to listen and share with others who are not of the same overstanding as I, where spiritual and religious thoughts are concerned. Because the studies I am living in, I found that instead of frowning on what others say, I relate to it by translating it through the teachings of our Ancient Ancestors, so that we are seeing, listening and helping in a balance thought.

No one can fully assist another through force, fears, anger and rudeness but one can help another through relating, understanding and the truth of divine love for Self and all others no matter their belief, color, status, sexual orientation or wealth. We cannot begin to love another until we learn to respect one another...” ~Priestess Kefa https://www.facebook.com/ForeverTeabz 

President Barack Obama hugs his family in Chicago
nov.7, 2012
by Larry Downing

ENTITLEMENT OF NEGROES

Louis C.K. on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno 

The sense of entitlement too many Black American’s have taken possession of is baffling, and if they were conscious would be ashamed if they were aware of their ancestors observing them. But they aren’t. I am watching the Tonight Show with Jay Leno show. One of Jay’s guests, a white comedian, Louis C.K. is real funny. Without any reservation his racial jokes about white entitlement began with him comparing his daughter’s standard of life with their peer age groups around the globe.


When Jay Leno asked how his daughters were doing Louis C.K. said, “My kids are good. I mean on paper they’re great. Two little white kids in America.” And later on in his bit he continued with his children’s stories, saying to one of his girls, “You’re a little white girl in America. You wear clothes made by children your age professionally. You don’t get to say, yew ,(at anything you put in your mouth you don’t like).

His timing was impeccable and skillfully left listeners pining for his next line, and even more when he turned on Black people and slavery relaxed and easy like Sunday morning.

“…I just wanna say I’m not trying to say if you’re white you can’t complain. I’m just saying that if you’re Black you gotta complain more because you can’t take people’s historical context away from them…and white people want to like — c’mon it wasn’t us like they want Black people to forget everything.

Like every year white people add like a hundred years to how long ago slavery was. I’ve heard educated white people say slavery was over 400 years ago! No, it very wasn’t! It was 140 years ago… and it ‘s not like slavery ended and everything has been amazing, and ended like a clean shit where you don’t have to wipe…and by the way white people have their own thing, stuff that we went through that hurt us; we have to cope with like when they took our slaves from us! That was really hard for us and we’re still…”

I, like the audience, was on the floor.

The other guest, Aron Ralston, is famous for cutting his right hand off to save his life when, on a hike, a rock trapped his hand between a wall. He has written a book now a movie on his experience, and like the comedian, Louis C.K. is relaxed and easy like Sunday morning. Now here I am a facilitator thinking about the Black youth, many of whom are in the prison system one way or another, I have been working with over the years. They all have parents, and some of these youth are not in the system but share a commonality with other Black Americans, older and younger: a sense of entitlement.

What does anyone owe a spirit of poverty?

Jessica Simpson

Jessica Simpson, I don’t know, but she like most artists did not come from wealthy families. There is a work ethic guiding them, and a vision. There is a work ethic that catapulted African slaves into a wealthy position, on paper, in America. There was something more than a work ethic in Japanese culture that made them a super power a generation after we bombed the hell out of them at the end of the 2nd World War. The Pequot nation was nearly wiped off the face of Turtle Island by the British a few centuries ago. By the 1970’s two Black Pequot women were the sole caretakers of what was left of their traditional land. Today, they are a sovereign nation of considerable means. What lived within Africans who survived the Middle Passage that did not make the journey to the late 20th century and the first decade of the 21st?

Today, millions of Black American youth are committed to failure for a lot of reasons outside of, and within their control. We all know the stories, and many have lived through and survived those conditions and either excelled or merely exist above those conditions. That’s cool. What I am aiming at lies within the belief system of a people that come from a race of people who were connected in the deepest of relationships with peoples from other dimensions and planets and star systems for thousands of years. These relationships structure the inner domain of our race in a way that still has access to realms other races have been trying to access through our music, our dances, our physical powers as athletics, and our spiritual practices still alive within our African Diaspora.

Black Americans are two kinds of people: aboriginal, mystical people, and defeated souls out of relationship with their true selves all rolled up in one contradiction. Is there a way out? Is there anything we can learn from a successful Jessica Simpson who has expanded her portfolio into fashion? Yes. Learn business, but that doesn’t go to the heart of the matter. Our inability to reconnect our spirits with the spiritual practices of our ancestors disconnects us from the cords of our depth and relationship with the spiritual realms that created life and the mysterious forms of magic and creation that formed the concept of concepts: self-discovery.  ©Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (excerpt, Songs of a Father)

an AMERICAN STORY: Jessica Simpson's business

bikini designed by Jessica Simpson

- Louis C.K., comedian

bikini designed by Jessica Simpson

ACTIVISM

12 Keys of Spiritual Activism

1. All actions must be based on compassion.
2. Compassion flows from the understanding of the Connection between all living beings.

3. Compassion must be applied with wisdom.
4. Apply synergy and teamwork to accomplish goals.

5. Spiritual Activism is the pursuit of service for the good of all, not for the advancement or benefit of individuals or selected communities.
6. Pursue Integrity , Honesty and Dignity in the conduct of your actions.

7. Do not defame your detractors or those who doubt you.
8. Raising another up raises you up as well.

9. Learn to listen to your heart not your mind.
10. Search out viable and sustainable solutions.

11. Do not judge yourself simply by the results of your actions.
12. Let Metta be the motivation for your actions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDvRqXnCYgQ&feature=player_embedded

http://humanityhealing.ning.com/video/the-12-keys-of-spiritual-1

Odalys Garcia sitting upon the water

HARRIET TUBMAN vs NIGGER SHIT

freedom is never found it is fought for

It is difficult to acquire a clear mind, to maintain a free spirit, to overcome darkness of the soul and confusion of mind and beliefs. The hardness of broken people ruling over people and the coldness of policy makers that interferes with the collective wisdom of mothers and fathers moves and affects our walk. The fact that we have accepted their expert opinions without the warrior spirit we were born with tells us a lot about ourselves.

It is a fight to become. It was a fight to be born from mother's womb. Insanity makes sense in the context of the sacred Medicine Wheels. Positioned on one wheel I am familiar with Insanity lives south on this wheel looking north at Growth. There is a relationship between the two. Some of our gifted healers live with Insanity as a grounding force capable of propelling them to grow their medicine. This is not a path for the faint of heart. This is a warrior's path.

Harriet Tubman spoke right into the jacked up paradigms of African ex-slaves during an interview that produced an eye opening response. Her answer to the remark about the number of slaves she freed is revelatory.

"There would have been more had they known they were slaves."

The gift of what I am saying is to fight for your freedom from whatever binds you. To understand freedom understand its denials.

Fight for your freedom.



©Gregory E. Woods 2008
Dawn Wolf
Keeper of Stories

Harriet Tubman had to kill some who wanted to turn back.  Can you envision what that took to do that?  How much fight do you have in you?