Sister and Brothers...

Cynthia, my little sister, at Vania's bridal shower.

A sister with her brothers! It speaks to the soul of brotherhood in the context of family, from which all other institutions and concepts of manhood springs from. It is an old way of understanding brothers in a family strong and mighty in the assumptions of the cultural vortex, we of the darker hue, live in as family. It means more, this relationship: brothers with sisters.

I should stop there for I am speaking from the deep well of thought the eldest of five sees himself as a brother and a son in a family deeply embedded with the weight and power of legacies!...

Love the picture, I do. These are my words, Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/18/18

We, the Brothers Four! Eric, Gregory, David and Michael Woods. 2017.

When Dr. King spoke: "If you can't fly, then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward" I heard the enforcement of the laws of purpose, and felt at the time what it meant to Colored folks. Being young, and being old and a Negro in those times held a stress level that strangled dreams. It killed by fear and emboldened by necessity a killer instinct in others, and made the leaders arise from within the caste system created by the fears white lives developed themselves into monsters or tolerant moderates, afraid to do what was right in the sight of God!

Dr. King, I recall, was despised by so many ministers, but I saw fear of changing the white people around them alive in the purposes the church served in Colored neighborhoods. No one killed like white folks! I remember how television delivered these messages from Martin Luther King Jr. the way word spread through the forests into the towns and cities where 'Members' lived. I remember old people talking about the way storytellers told the old stories to the children around fires in the dark of night! The fires became radio, radio became television and television became the internet, where the family circles disappeared into the mist of separate rain drops.

Now, today broken circles pretend to bring people together. Pieces of a dream are no more effective than broken bowls. The old ways of fighting the demons are the methods to bring the worst of killers to their comeuppance, to trail, to the courts of law, but not the law created by the killers and framed by the beneficiaries of their brutal murders and acquisitions by force and terror.

It is less and it is more our Ancients speaking the old truths our interactions with those from Europe stripped from our knowing of the deep that gave Dr. King his voice... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/18/18