EPIDEMICS: diseases of soul and bodies in our world!

Black Theology, Black Church

Many church goers are seeking individual salvation. Family and community is actually closer to being "Christian". I am convinced that the Kingdom of Heaven begins in the family. Return to the civility of our deeper mind to transcend the madness. "When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you." African Proverb. The dominant culture still regards us as property, so we are forced to access divine wisdom as a collective that has eroded in too many of our youth. This is our responsibility.


The selfish angel dominated the children of God. He rapes the powerful and the weak. As a liar and a thief, he successfully educates the privileged to exploit the exploitable and feel satisfied while he rapes the human collective, causing all to behave like his children and not God's. We must address the pathology of contempt from the individual to the collective. The lust for power creates pirates who do not apologize for their behavior. - Adruma Victoria (2017) 

Mothers2Mothers. www.w4.org-health-hiv-nyamata 

African Mothers and AIDS 

Mothers2Mothers, an international non-profit organization, based in Cape Town, South Africa was born in 2001, was founded by Frank Beadle de Palomo and Robin Smalley. Mothers2Mothers work with pregnant mothers, and new mothers who are HIV+, empowering, teaching, training and employing the mothers. These women become advocates for the millions of women in sub-Saharan Africa to fight through the myths about HIV/AIDS for better quality to life, and a myriad of concerns facing the countries of Africa; not as common here in the United States! The infected women receive treatment, while pregnant, preventing the transmission of the disease to their unborn children. These mentor mothers empower and educate other mothers throughout sub-Saharan Africa in a concentrated way to diminish the transmission of HIV, and better equip mothers with the tools they need in their environments! In sub-Saharan Africa 200 babies a day are infected with the virus. 1.3 million pregnant women live with the virus in this region; it is estimated!

My research suspects this is a modest estimation to ease the enormity of the epidemic. Remember this is an epidemic! Now it is possible to reduce the chances of babies born with the virus to as low as 5% by technological advancements approved, and made profitable for Western countries to pour into Africa! Mothers2Mother is an organization, a movement to support, get behind and emulate in related fields of concern for women throughout the African Diaspora! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 5/17/18

Robin Smalley, co-founder of Mothers2Mothers!

IN our Prayers, Thoughts Come!

2011 South Africa

This is my family. The family that is trying to be resilient. On this pic we had no worries, we were all well.

I am trying my best to keep us from unraveling, but it is difficult. At times I don't know what to do... my husband their father is battling all the complications from the stroke. None of us are used to navigating life without Reggie being in the center imparting his wisdom.

What we are experiencing we could have never prepared for. Each day I rise I look for the good, the light in the dim situation. I try to make sense of everything.

I can't run away. This is my reality." - Gervel Jones-Sampson 

... You can't.

I have been following the story of a man and his wife, Gervel Jones-Sampson, for a little while, as the husband struggles with a major health crisis. His wife is telling the story and her telling is told different because she is wife and mother caring for her heart as she cares for the body and heart of her husband wrestling within his mortality, their children in the struggles of being adult children, the next generation. There is a condition, a unique awareness Creatress placed within wives to be Sacred women. It is evidenced in the way wives love their men in hard situations. Assembled with respect for the changing terrain of loving her husband this type of wife understands the complexity of love. Encircled by the challenge to loving a husband is the glyph, the Tree of Life.

Losing my parents over the slow pace of the years between first Mommy and then Daddy leaving this life in pain, lent eyes to me I did not have, and a storytelling I didn't have the capacity for previously. 

I told Gervel these words:

"I pain thinking of your family story this present date. There are similarities to my family story. As encouragement, the changes each day brings, in retrospect, may reveal core relationships between events from the family's distant past and recent past that prepared the family unit for this trail. It is an odd comfort how our lives prepare us, and distance us at the same time. Either view links us to our ancestral lines bridging us to the long ago, and the long away. It is why we live and we live deep in the engagement that brought us here.

None of us (my brothers and sister) fathomed how we were made ready for our parent's illnesses. It began when they began caring for us as babes, and children. We paid attention and learned how to care for them. Mirrors. The mirrors before us and them reflected the light playing with the shadows playing along the paths of our living. . .

My prayers and appreciation for your bewilderment, your love for each other and the bonds being strengthened linking with all Life pulling your family together!"

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

January 18, 2018

Between the Weak and the Strong: distance

NEWS

Work Place Discrimination: "In one of the latest incidents, GRAND RAPIDS, MI has reported a case in which a black nurse has sued Spectrum Health System as she claimed that officials had accepted a white patient’s request for no black caregivers.

Michelle Acklen, who was working for Spectrum Health through Cross Country Staffing, said she was re-assigned to patients on numerous occasions until her ...assignment ended in July.

In a lawsuit which was filed in the U.S. District Court, attorney Julie Gafkay said that Acklen felt harassed and humiliated because of the segregation of her duties and discriminated against as she was unable to perform her nursing responsibilities because of her race. Furthermore, her reputation has suffered damage.

According to Gafkay, Acklen, who lives in Tennessee, worked at Spectrum Health Rehab and Nursing Centre on Fuller Avenue NE and had been placed by the staffing agency in early October 2016. Having been assigned to Spectrum Health, Acklen was required to follow its practices and to report to Spectrum Health supervisors, and as such, she was treated as a Spectrum Health worker.

The debacle had started in March when a supervisor told Acklen that a certain patient no longer wanted black caregivers or nurses. According to Acklen, the patient’s request was granted. It was noted in the lawsuit that when she was assigned to the patient’s floor, she had to change patients with a white nurse." - author unknown 

Response

She needs stronger skin. Suing, I feel, is a weak reaction. It is not unreasonable this request. It is better to be clear with what you and your person in the hospital wants and needs to recover and ask for it. Everything is negotiable.

I asked for my mother to be treated like a white woman when she was in the hospital in her last months. I demanded it in such a way the head nurse had to adjust herself and meet my command. I had to make similar demands for my Grandfather-teacher when he was in a hospital. He did not want Nigerian nurses with skills in the dark arts over his body. I demand and insist upon being cared for exclusively by Black women physicians and Black nurses with a healing touch. Being offended and suing is weak, and not my concern in the serious business of caring for a loved one in the hospital.

It is very much like a person in a hospital insisting upon his sacred items be present in his or her room.

One needs to be able to negotiate. Sometimes those requests cannot be met and adjustments have to be made on everybody's part. I finally had to have two white doctors, both of whom were instrumental in keeping me alive. The first one became close to me as a friend for a lot of years.

In a country rooted in slavery, bondage of the soul, the axiom of war and the contradictions of racial superiority favored by white Americans a person of color needs a better thinking process! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 10/31/17