Should Black people stay home or sit out this round?

(If “round” sounds dismissive it isn’t intended to. I am simply acknowledging the boomerang nature of revolution -> reaction in a colonial context). There is always an invitation to break the loop by refusing the colonial context altogether. That refusal is the process I’ve been undergoing and am called to make more and more visible to others as a blueprint, a map, an invitation to join me.

Should I/we stay home?

A bigger question we could ask about this moment in the long long journey ahead with not just this administration, but the unraveling of the whole empire that has been at play since its founding, is “what is my place in the revolution?”

I determined during the George Floyd protests that mine was on the spiritual frontline. That I had to go into the Soul & the Cosmic Warrior plane, I had to listen for what my Ancestors were asking, which was for elevation for our lineage(s) and relational repair with the masculine. I had to get really dirty and then very clean with assessing distractions; things I would have considered before to be a crucial use of time and energy were, through the realignment of the Spiritual frontline as my primary place—becoming portals for draining resource that I was working so meticulously and devotedly to rebuild.

For me, it does not mean I will never be in the streets holding up signs again, it just means that I will listen very deeply before I do. I will prepare. I will not react. I will be resourced. I will be ritualed.

The Black Spiritual has always held the ring around the protest. The Haitian Revolution is the most famous modern example of this, with priests and priestesses meeting, strategizing and holding ritual with and for the Ancestors before any action was taken on the ground.

The Spiritual Work was understood to be the groundwork that could not be skipped, as there are no shortcuts to true liberation and there is no true separation of Spirit from Revolution.

In order to be most effective in these Times, we have to be working and thinking on that level. This thinking comes from undoing the impossibilities of the colonial mind. The, I can’t dream because it’s not practical, I don’t have time, I won’t be met. This is what the colonial mind teaches us is the only reality. If we do not work to move beyond this mind, and to the loop of progress –> reaction –> progress — repeat until death — we, meaning all of us We, remain in reaction and direct relationship to the very thing we wish to dismantle, change, or eliminate.

Let be clear however, that I’m not telling anyone not to be in the streets if that is truly where they feel called to be. Angels and devils can and should march together. I feel strongly that we must be in deep deep discernment in these times about where the Calls inside of us are coming from, and how we heed them.

Seeking to dismantle from inside, first, is more effective for sustainable change. The Wise Elders repeat this every generation.

How long will it take for us to listen?

PART II ::

What we are seeing in the streets is part of a much bigger revolution that has been underway, activated by the rage and brilliance of the Ancestors who have been waking up inside of us collectively for decades. Centuries.

I remember my Middle Passage ceremony.

I was in a cold, brown river in California with a group of fellow initiates and three priests, all under the age of 45. We had spent the day before tying red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and white rope onto itself to make long braids as the spiritual elder (Baba) had asked of us, not knowing exactly what it would be for.

The rope was tied to a tree adjacent to the riverbed and then tied around each of us. We, the initiates walked into the river and waited.

As the Baba came around, the other Babas held court on the riverbed and sang. Others in the water began to wail cries. I knew these cries. I was them. As the Baba touched me, two Ancestors in me from the middle passage came forward. He prayed a prayer and I cried and wailed into the river as they spoke what they had been holding onto that had gone unexpressed for generations until their cells, those prayers, and that water—reached me.

I do not know how long the entire releasing ritual took. It was a moment and it was centuries. I do not know or remember what they said, or most of what happened next in that brown, moving water not far from a SoCal highway underpass.

But I do know that the water remembers. I do know that feeling itself: in that ritual, in those moments, was what inner revolution is made of. The willingness, in a community tied by rainbow rope, to confront and release sorrows, was a great protestation to the hand we had been dealt. The unspeakable was spoken over and properly given away in a context that could support the monumental scope of what was leaving.

Feeling, was revolution.

Ritual was protest.

And it is now. Even more so.

As the empire breaks apart, consider refusal through escaping the reactionary loops of the colonial mind.

Through asking what your true place in the revolution COULD be when ritual is involved, when dreaming is given a valued place in your consciousness.

May the waters continue healing and moving all of us to act from the depths of Self and community.

May we know protest as the way we remember to See ourselves beyond the veil.

May we not be distracted from anything beyond seven generations ahead.

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