To Think Anomgst Beauty

Gervel Jones-Sampson. Muse is Shesteddra. The question is 

"What is it going to cost you to become the truth of who you are?" 

Gervel Jones- Sampson, intriguing how you blended an intellectual struggle amongst and within countless Black American women in this one moment, and then asked a fundamental question: "What is it going to cost you to become the truth of who you are?" Age, wisdom, insight and deep knowledge of one's self is behind the cleverness of the riddle you've hidden in the obvious. Well done. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 10/07/18 

"A man needs a woman, and sometimes has to wait until she, and he have aged and matured to discover each other, in the deeper sense of being together!" - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 

A riddle, a riddle for the soul's intellect: "Walking carefully as a woman is different from walking gracefully as a woman. A lady teaches this to a girl, a woman. It is a transformative walk that engages the soul, not a prance looking for meat." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 10/7/18

Speaking to our Unborn.

One of the puzzling things about white Americans I have noticed and puzzled over is this: Excellence in Black Americans was often a surprise, and deeply resented! In translation of how they feel about and how they react to Blacks excelling where they (whites) have believed no Colored could excel is brutality. President Barack Obama is experiencing the backlash of committing to excellence my parents predicted would happen to any one of us. In the short months after his presidency white backlash turns on itself and they begin to undo the quality of their lives to make a point. As millions of whites rejoice in Trump ravaging the legacy of Mr. Obama there is a lessening of the power of American dominance in the world-at-large. I don't need to point out any one thing. It just sits there as sad evidence. 

There was a sound made recently when nations snickered at the beginning of Trump's address before the UN... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 10/11/18 

pregnant underwater by Gervel Jones-Sampson. [Feb. 2017]

What is Unknown from known.

[it is possible} the mystique she has merged into spells into the receivership of Divine Man is the hope of higher spirituality. The vernacular only sees a hat lowered over the face. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

underwater. JJ Malone by Gervel Jones-Sampson. 2016.

[The] Universe arises countless times from within bodies. Awareness of them is dependent upon access to memories and reenactment of universal agreements to touch the physical with Spirit. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 3/18/18

To Know.

photographer Gervel Jones-Sampson in the mountains somewhere in March of 2012.

"Simple, nice gentleness arising from within the moment tranquility settles into an already tranquil soul is the moment of touch in the feel of timelessness. Prayer has this quality, as well as being alone within the many, not in a pitiful state, but a state of union.

Sitting upon a rock in the vastness of a valley the mountains look far into what we don't know, couldn't know. We can bask in the mountain's knowing, and know none of what the mountain knows, has seen. It would be too much so we sit in the valleys knowing only what we know, as what we don't know tells us what they know into our stillness. This is the point of being still: to feel without knowing enough for a conversation in the open spaces of soul and  matter." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11/3/17  

Gervel Jones-Sampson

Gervel Jones-Sampson.

"The face of age knows something youth could not know." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 

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