How Do I

"Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black; our America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness.”    ~Richard Wright, Black Boy

My sweet black boy…

The moment you were conceived I was charged with the responsibility of raising an African American male in a society that seemed to have little or no value for the wealth of gift and tenacity that is the soul of your existence.  You have inherited the shadow of enmity upon your life simply and solely because your skin is cast with a dark hue.  I was beset with the thought of the ensuing challenge of revealing to you the binary nature of a black and white world and what the unsightly implications are for a young man like you.  How do I explain “driving while black?”   How do I justify the sheer viability of “liberty and justice for all” when economic peonage is a reality in our inner cities?  My colored child, I bemoaned the day I would have to say that there is seemingly an unspoken caste system in which “the untouchables,” young black males endure an existence that continues to be calloused like the hands of their cotton picking American forefathers.  How do I explain the “strangeness of fruit” in the genteel south and why America’s estranged Uncle, Jim Crow was once offered a generous helping of freshly baked apple pie?  How do I go farther to say that our many Samsons’ crown and glory was sheared every time they were relegated to the farm animal status of stud?  How do I explain to you, my Negro boy that there are some trace elements of this past that render it necessary for me to instill in you a unique code of conduct, the fundamentals of black male etiquette to save your life from judicial inequity, media buffoonery, and scholastic dilapidation?  How do I speak plainly to your innocence and state, 'Nigger' is more than a word, it is a belief system?  How do I... 

  “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”   ~Matthew 13:57 

Prayer of the Black Madonna

    For my first born, Beautiful Light of the Lord

For my second born, One Who Attains God

For my third born, Divine Purpose of Faith 

Elohim,

It is with humble concern and earnest intent that I petition, intercede for my children.  It is clear to me that the principalities, the rulers of this misbegotten world seek to distract and misinform them of who you are…of who they are just as they stand, worthy.  I do not claim to fully understand the height and depth of your greatness.  But your presence is felt.  Your presence is known.  You are my relation and I am yours.  Thank you for a spiritual space with you that I can call my own.  You have called me at a time such as this to rear, to mold, and to give life.  And it is with reverence that I walk in the way of mother and vessel.  I am not perfect but Love indeed has made me whole.  I thank you for renewal and raising my gaze to eternity.  And as the hart panteth so I beseech your care.  

In the name of the one who stood in the balance, I pray that my children go higher.  I pray that they are more spiritually adept than me and their father.  I pray that they are imbued with consciousness that is universal in effect and scope.  I pray that they are endowed with the gift to discern, the ability to divide asunder religiosity from truth.  I pray that my children have a vision of you that is not bound by the assignment of gender.  May they only know you as Spirit, the Cloud and Fire of their days.  Oh my God, my most precious savior may they “live, move, and have their being in you”.  And in a world that forces them to careen violently into experience may they not lose the innocence of joy.  May they never know themselves as separate from you.   May they meditate on you with every breath that they breathe.  And in the circumstances of life that sway them to and fro may they establish an altar in their home and with each eventide cleanse themselves of all negative energy.  May they consecrate themselves with your light.  Almighty One, I pray that in times of trial and despair that they take refuge in your strong tower.   And when the enemy seeks to besiege their soul may they rest in your shadow.  My Love of loves, may they stand and act in their inherited authority, children of the El Elyon.  I pray that my children trust in the guiding powers that you have set before them.  May they acknowledge with gratitude and respect the ancestors and angelic host that guard the gates on their behalf.  I pray that they take hold of their own agency.  There is no mediator between you and them.  They are the only arbiters of their faith.  And may they only be obedient to the call of Spirit, laying aside all attempts to stagnate them with fear and vain tradition even if the culprit is me…from you they came and to you they belong.   May they never put on the cloak of piety to disguise a decrepit heart.  My God, I pray for them to have Power.  I pray for them to be keenly aware of who they are in Heaven’s book.   May they know once again that you are not a subject of contention nor to be intellectualized and reasoned but to be embodied.  My children are wonderfully fashioned in your image so may they live in this thought…I AM.  May they stretch beyond reliance on linear concepts of you and intuit wisdom of the ages.  May their prophetic voices be neither muffled nor muted.  May they speak with the expediency of the one who was sent.  El Shaddai, please fight for them daily against all physical, mental, and spiritual foes.  May they have divine balance, heart and feather set at equilibrium.  Lord of lords, I pray my beloveds sit on the top most branch of life’s tree.  Incline unto me, oh Lord.  I love them; they are the treasure of my soul.  I surrender them to you.

By the power of Jesus, the Messiah…AMEN.

        

“Your children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.  They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.  You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.  You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow…”

~The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

With Wings As Eagles

"They say the people could fly.  Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic.  And they would walk up on the air like climbin up on a gate.  And they flew like blackbirds over the fields.  Black, shiny wings flappin against the blue up there."

 ~The People Could Fly, Virginia Hamilton

I recently asked you a question.  I did not ask the question to receive an answer.  I already knew the answer.  But I only knew the answer on this plane of existence, the flesh.  Sincere action (or lack thereof) is ALWAYS the exception to the rule; claims of love… interest… care.  I had ground-level awareness.  I had not come into the fullness of such an uncomfortable truth.  So I asked the question to move upward, to gain strength in the struggle.  If I am going to get there I must lift myself.  Home is not of this world but of the Ether.  It is above this want for human validation.  There is no peace here in this base desire, allowing someone else’s lack of understanding to necessitate… me.  I must.  I must lift myself higher.  So I asked the question to finally own this stronghold, to finally own the part I willingly played in my own enslavement and in owning it unlink myself from the chain of your reach.  I invited your answer… invited its pain to grow.  You were selfish and I made myself low.  I forgive you.  I forgive me.  Thank you, I am stronger now. 

I love you but I have no intention of staying here with you.  Here is not my truth.  And dishonesty is the utmost sin… it the source from which perversion, wickedness and unrighteousness flows.  Shall I continue in iniquity?  Will Grace abound in a lie?  Home is not here but of the Amen.  I'm going home and my journey is in the sky. 

So today is the day that I make myself free from the bondage of your clasped hand around my ankle.  I will shake loose of your grip and ascend toward my mark… my prize… my calling.  Today.  Today I will indeed shake free.  Get thee behind me… loose here.  I do not belong to you… loose here.  By the Power… loose here.  By the Glory… loose here.   By God… loose here.  I do not belong to you.  I do not belong to you.  LOOSE HERE…   

A bit of magic, African mystery to lift my people to Love, to life more abundantly...

 "Kum... yali, kum buba tambe!"