This Moment Of Clarity-Week 41

My dad immigrated from the Bahamas in the 1950's. I remember when I was younger he would talk about living through the 1950's and 1960's here in the USA.  He would reflect on working in, living in, and navigating the way racism presented itself in the US, which was a bit different than in the Bahamas, though it was still very present there too. I mean let's not act like colonialism didn't leave the plague of racism and anti-blackness on every land mass it touched.

The one thing that always sticks with me when thinking about those stories he told was him saying "Give me a southern racist over a northern one any day. At least with the southern racist you know where you stand." It took me a few years and some living to realize that his use of north and south in this context was more about overt and covert racism than it was about geographical locations. He'd usually included this sentiment when he was recounting his life in the business word. He would talked about the white people who smiled at you and were cordial to your face, while they were undermining you at ever turn.

This concept of my father's came to mind quite often over the course of the 2016 election campaign and has even more so since the advent of the new administration. The way that whiteness, embodied by white people, felt empowered to throw off subtlety and coded language, crawl out of the woodwork and from under every ancient rock it lived, and bare it's ugly, evil face has been mentally, emotionally and spiritually taxing. And I will not negate that this ramping up of white supremacy poses an increased physical threat to those of us on the receiving end of their ire. However, as I find myself in recent days assessing where we are headed as a nation and where my gifts can best be used to serve the greatest good, I have realized that this exposing of these once shrouded elements of whiteness, though painful, shows us all exactly where we stand; with ourselves, with our neighbors, our coworkers and friends, as a country.

I am no Pollyanna. I know that the road to this country truly living up to it's written creed and ideals, if it can indeed do it, is long and treacherous. I understand that more likely than not it will get worst before it gets any better in America. The roots of white supremacy upon which this country was formed will not be easily unearthed. They will strain against the soil of liberty hoping to hold on to old familiar ground. But, more than any time in my lifetime, we all know where we stand.

We live in a time where one can no longer hide behind a facade of fake civility. People can smile in cordiality with coworkers, but their social media activity will belie the truth of their heart. One can no longer claim association to one POC as a way to side step responsibility for perpetuating anti-blackness. Companies can no longer claim diversity by instituting systems of tokenization without having it called out. And white supremacists are no longer hiding behind hoods and robes.  It is from this place of clarity we have an opportunity to shift the course of our nation and with our collective skills strive to form a more perfect union, whether in the confines of this current structure or by building a new one on a firmer foundation of equality.

I finally get what my father was saying. As painful as it may be to experience, it is a lot easier to form strategies for both survival and victory when everyone is playing their hand openly. I hope against hope daily that we as a nation will make it through to the other side of now. But I know that no matter what, we were never gonna make it at all in this new millennium without this moment of clarity that we are now living. The truth is painful, rarely pretty but always necessary for forward motion. Racism is insidious, even more so when it is subversive. Now that we are all clear that it is alive and well and has never gone anywhere, let's work to make this current iteration the last gasping breaths of a dying paradigm.

Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself- Week 8

Last night I decided to binge watch the new season of Chef’s Table. It is one of my favorite streaming series. Not just because I love food and cooking, but also because I always manage to glean some small life wisdom from it as I watch. This time was no different. While I watched the first episode that featured the Korean Buddhist Monk Jeong Kwan, she said something while being interviewed that touched me in a strange place and I had resonance with its sentiment. She said, “I thank my parents for their energy and virtue. They let me become who I am.” What she said struck me because you usually hear people say “I thank my parents for helping me become who I am” or “I thank my parents for all they did to support who I have become.” But she was very conscious in saying that her parents had allowed her to become who she was always determined to be. 

You see when she was a young child about 8 yrs old, she told her father that she would never marry when he told her that cooking would help her find a good husband. She said she would live alone on a mountain in the woods. That she would be free. She said her father was crestfallen and cried and told her “I will allow you to do that. But it makes me sad that someone so young would feel that way.” When her mother died suddenly when she was 17 she fled her grief by going to the hermitage. She asked to be a monk and they took her in, but after only a few weeks she wrote to her father and asked him to come and get her, and he came. But by the time he arrived to take her back home, she realized she didn’t really want to leave, she just wanted to say goodbye to her father and siblings because she never had. He left her there to live her monk’s existence, on a mountain in the woods, just like she had said she would when she was 8. He returned to visit with her about a month or so before he died. At age 70 he saw and ate the beautiful temple food that she made for the other monks and visitors to the temple. He saw the life of beauty and peace she lived there in the hermitage. He stayed with her for about a month and then offered her the simple praise for her monk’s life by telling her she had chosen well and bowing to her 3 times (a high honor in their culture) and went back home. He died a week later. She expressed gratitude for her mother’s sacrifice of mercy (the way she sees the death of her mother) that drove her to the hermitage and her father’s ability to let her go not once, but twice. And she prayed that they would be happy in the next life.

This story struck me because this woman decided when she was a girl, before she was clear on what a monk even was, that it was her path to the free life she wanted to live. It is not the one that either of her parents would have wished for her. I’m sure they dreamed of a good marriage for her and many grandchildren. But they allowed her to follow her course despite their own desires. And then I realized that I too had been given that same gift

My parents are traditional Caribbean American people. I’m sure they’d have rather I had chosen a stable profession and a more traditional life than the one I’ve spent chasing this artist’s dream. But they forwent their own desires and allowed me to follow my course and live my life on my own terms. While my father was driving me to the bus station so I could go back to Atlanta from my last visit home that I made in June of 2002 before he passed, he asked me a few things about my life. General questions about work and relationships. I answered some questions and skirted around others.  And then he looked at me and asked, “Are you happy?” I said, “yes daddy, I am.” And he said in return, “well that’s all that matters.” It was the last face to face conversation I would have with my dad.

  

That moment with my dad as well as the one recounted by the monk Jeong Kwan’s with her father revealed to me what sweet torture parenting must be. I mean to be a good parent you must impart all the wisdom you have gathered from living into these other beings who will one day chart a course of their own that may be TOTALLY contrary to anything that you have imagined. And you must trust that their course will be good for and to them even if it makes absolutely no sense to you. It’s not something you think about often if you are not a parent. And truthfully, if you are the child of good parents you don’t think of it much either. It just seems like the natural order of things; what is supposed to happen. But so many people are living lives that were never meant to be there’s because they are living a parent’s expectation instead of their heart's desire. So, I am grateful for the gift that both my parents gave me. The gift to be who I am in the world, even when they didn’t always agree or understand it. And when I win my first award for any of these artistic endeavors I am still pursuing (and I will), I will make sure to phrase my thank you to them as Jeong Kwan did. Because acknowledging that they “let me become who I am” encompasses all the sacrifice, all the support AND the sweet torture of letting go that every good parent knows. It is now for me the highest level of praise from child to parent. And if I ever have any of my own, I will do my best to earn this one simple sentiment from them.

Yep, all that from an episode of Chef’s Table. LOL

For the Works' Sake - Week 5

Growing up in a Christian household as I did, I often heard that as disciples of Christ we should reflect him in the earth. I was encouraged by my parents to avoid the very appearance of evil as the bible says. I was never perfect at this task, but it was an ever-present and guiding force for me through most of my life. Even now in my middle age I understand that my actions are representative of my character in the eyes of many.

During the past election cycle and truthfully the past decade I have notice that there is a faction of those who would call themselves Christians whose actions belie the profession of their faith. Though their words espouse trust and belief in a benevolent and loving savior, their actions promote hate and exclusion, and their politics support authoritarianism and fascism. Some who claim Christ as their savior have aligned themselves with men and women on earth who not only fail to reflect the principles Christ stands for, but actively work to oppress, steal, kill and destroy. These are tenets attributed to another biblical entity whom none of us should be seek to align with.   

This week while working on another project I was reminded of Jesus and one of his conversation with the disciples before his crucifixion. He was talking to his disciples about his impending crucifixion and departure from earth. What he told them was so outside the realm of what they perceived as possible that some of them found it hard to believe. They asked him for confirmation so that they knew his words were true. And to their requests, he offered his resume. To paraphrase, he basically said, “Even if you aren’t quite sure that I am a manifestation of the Father, there is NO denying all the good that I’ve done while I've been with you. Believe the good I have done even if you can’t believe the words I say.” Here Jesus himself is advocating for the notion that actions speak louder than words. And he didn’t stop there. He went on to assert that he fully expected them to follow his lead. And because they would be in this physical plane longer than he would be, he anticipated them doing so much more. 

This all brings me back to the second decade of this new millennium in America and the disparity between Christ of the bible and some who profess to follow him now.  There are many among the American population now who like the disciples are asking this faction of American Christians “why should I believe anything you say about your faith?” But unlike Christ, if they were to offer their resume there would be very little to encourage anyone to believe. Not only have they not lived up to the aspirations of Christ who intended they do more than he did while here on earth, they have backed politics and policies that serve to do the very opposite of what Christ advocated while he was here; love, equity, redemption.

Faith is often defined as belief in the unseen. I define it as a trust in the yet to be manifested reality. However even Jesus understood that as humans we would sometimes require evidence on this temporal plane, and to this end He provided the criteria by which we assess those who claim to follow him. He said that we’d know them by their displays of love (John 13:35) and by the works that love inspired (John 14:11-12). And truthfully part of this criteria bares out even for those who don’t claim Christianity or religion at all. I am a writer. I love words. But I also know that idle words profit very little. Words that inspire no action invokes very little change. Pondering this made me assess my own life outside of the context of Christianity and ask myself could I say to someone who asked for confirmation in regards to anything I am promoting or endorsing “Believe me for the works’ sake?” Selah

“Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” John 14:11-12

This Is My Country

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher taught me a song. At the time, I did not know it was one of the songs in the boy scout cannon. I only knew out of all the patriotic songs I had learned about America, It was my favorite. More than the Star-Spangled Banner. More than the Battle Hymn of the Republic or America the Beautiful, it to me resembled closest to my family's experience here in these United States. I was born and raised in Miami, FL. My mother was born in Key West and raised in Miami. But my father came to these shores from the Bahamas as a teenager seeking a better life. And my Mother’s parents came here in the early 20^th century from the Bahamas seeking the same. I was a native American by both birth and choice. My own birth and the choices of my direct ancestors. So, when my kindergarten teacher taught me “This Is My Country” I was sure it was written for folks just like me whose direct ancestors were among the huddled masses yearning to breath free. It was OUR American song.

It wasn’t until I was about 11 that I began to feel the dissonance between the lyrics of that song and the history of America. Age 11 is when I fell in love with history and my eyes began to open to the atrocities wrought on this land in the name of “The Republic.” I learned about the native genocide, slavery, The Civil War, Jim Crow. I witnessed the war on drugs and the false narrative of “black on black” crime being played out on the nightly news that I always watched with my father and realized that the words of my once favorite song were all a lie. It was a lot for a tween to take in. I went from disappointment to disdain to disillusion, but through it all I kept reading and ingesting history, hoping that eventually it would all make since.

At age 16 something interesting happened. I decided that though America had not always lived up to the story told to me as a 5-year-old, it could, if we worked to make it accountable to its written creed. I attended rallies against injustice. I was a member of all the student organizations in my county; Students and Youths against Racism, The African Cultural Awareness Society, Green Peace and SO many others. It was as if I truly believed I could and would singlehandedly change America and the world for the better. The idealism of youth, unclouded by the cynicism of having lived too long on earth, is such a beautiful thing. 

I’m 44 now and that wide-eyed optimism has all but vanished. I’ve seen too much of America to think any one person could shake her from the grips of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy that has always threatened to be her undoing. But, my living has taught me that people united CAN make a difference. It’s taught me that looking your demons in the eye and facing them is the only way to excise them. And it’s taught me that hope somehow always springs eternal in the hearts of us, who call ourselves citizens of these United States.  It is the hope that keeps us fighting for freedom, justice, and equality for everyone. It is hope that makes us fight without ceasing for the heart of this country we want to love despite all its flaws.

On this inauguration day, as the 45^th president, a man who openly derides and divides, is sworn in. I chose to reflect on the people who love America, but fear what his presence in that office will do to their individual lives as well as the country. I chose to resist his fascist rhetoric with the only weapon I have ever had, my voice and creativity. And I’ve chosen to help America face its demons in my little movie. Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” I may get tired and even disgusted with America, but I will never be silent. My place here was paid for by the blood of my ancestors. It is for them I fight and for the generations to come. This is my country, to have and to hold.