"...Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?...As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." from Marianne Williamson's
A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles
My graduate school advisers would be shaking their heads in sideways directions if they heard me co-opting a term from someone else's past and using it for my benefit today. They would, perhaps, accuse me of "cultural appropriation." Yet, such thinking, again, only serves to further what Francis Moore Lappe (especially in her book, Hope's Edge, which is a follow up to Diet for a Small Planet - a seminal read for anyone remotely invested in questions of sustainability) would call "a premise of lack." "There isn't enough - food, money, resources, energy, materials, acknowledgment, recognition, etc - to go around, so don't steal our ideas, our ways or our culture and then sell it back to us, piece meal by happy meal," the thought goes. And, yes, there is a point there. Well taken.
However, allow me to share an experience from this past Sunday, when I arrived onto a packed dance floor, writhing with dozens of human bodies shimmying through shared time and space. Meanwhile, my own personal energetic body was a sharp contrast to the pulsing beats that DJ God was throwing down and to the booty shaking that was happening all around me by my fellow Dance Church revelers. Instead of meeting them at their tempo, I chose to stay inward - slower, contained, held, flowing without any grand, sweeping gestures. It was simply how I felt and, sometimes, the best way we honor others, is by honoring ourselves first. And, then, DJ God threw down a Stevie Wonder mix that had excerpts from that iconic 80's television show, What's Happening?, interspersed with a fly rhythm and a heavy downbeat that moved right through me - penetrating a deep, guttural core. In that moment, I jumped up to my feet, threw my hands to my hips, rolled my head around my neck and told nobody but the ceiling above, "I SELL SOUL FOOD, BITCH!" What followed was my entire Self releasing a foot pounding, hip cranking, full bodymind soulspirit release that feeds some innately humananimal part of me. Some connection to all that once was - to a lineage of human ancestry - flowed through me. In fact, sometimes in these moments, there is no me. There is only US, and our shared pulse. There is only this moment now. There is only and ever this.
So, today, I speak from a premise of possibility, as well as from the untapped potential of truly honoring our past. Our shared story - ourstory - where, yes, African peoples were stolen from their native lands, enslaved and forced to build a developing country upon their ebony backs, baking in a hot, southern sun. It was by their blood, sweat, toil and tears that a capitalist America began to flourish. How did these ancestors of ours survive? How did they endure? By dancing and singing, of course! By raising their voices, in sweet harmony, and by flinging their bodies, in staccato melody. By enjoying the setting sun, even after a hard day's work, outside on a patio or on the dirt road, with their next door neighbors, with their family and their friends. By breaking bread, together, while savoring the Earth's natural delights of collard greens, okra, kale, mustard, pokeweed, and more. By coming together, time after time again, in spite of the oppression, violence and force that may have chained their bodies but never enslaved their souls.
By freeing their spirits ~
YES, indeed.
(I hope you'll join us for some fresh, heaping plates of live and local SOUL FOOD at this Saturday's, 01/15 6-10pm, official business launch of the "Prosperity Hive.")
YES, indeed.
(I hope you'll join us for some fresh, heaping plates of live and local SOUL FOOD at this Saturday's, 01/15 6-10pm, official business launch of the "Prosperity Hive.")
