Such as nature loves to hide, I imagine the Yoruba (Nigeria, West Africa) goddess Oshún hiding in a palm grove with her back to the sea as the newly birthed American Navy enters the waters of Cuba for the first time during the 19th Century. Inspired by the Monroe Doctrine to take what is seen, I can hear Oshún laugh looking in her golden mirror as she watches the sailors fight the currents to come ashore with determination in their eyes. Oh, who is this now, she must think after being subjected to the barbaric grasp of the Spanish for over 300 hundred years and several flirtatious attempts for her attention by the British. For fun she spins around and approaches them singing her own praise songs as she bewitches them with the shaking of her sultry hips to the intoxicating rhythm of the batá drum, and the sneak peeks of her firm breasts that poke through the layers of gold and brass necklaces that adorn her neck and arms. Spellbound they fall into the honey grasp of her hands, temporarily forgetting their mission to cultivate the wildness of nature. Oshún laughs pleased that she has shown the animation of this place that they thought was full of dead matter. (Class paper – Yeye Oshún: African archetypes in discovering the anima of the new world’s soul, April 26, 2013)
People laugh – or are offended – at me when I say Coronavirus is the spiritual agent of a Black Mother scorned, like flying beetles rising out of the bow of the earth to seek revenge on human culture that has treated her and the totality of her beings as dead matter without soul. Throughout history she has sent warnings to the current civilization of when humans were out of alignment and too indulging beyond the borders of their plentiful harvests – floods, earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, deadly viruses, sexual disease, child mortality, etc. – and in many situations humans adjusted. But now we have a feral human species that arrogantly believes through technology we are smarter than nature; than God, and the feminine energy that rules the earth domain. And now we are experiencing an explosion of human consciousness uprising.
Right before quarantine – the social conversation centered on war of words, will and action regarding the inclusion of people experiencing homelessness into “our neighborhoods.” Even with the outbreak of Coronavirus – people were risking catching the disease by coming out of their homes- unmasked – truthful in how they felt and whom they were – to protest hotels that wanted to participate in Project RoomKey. Even to this day, people experiencing homelessness –especially unsheltered, have a lower infection rate due to their segregation from society. People experiencing homelessness –like Black Americans in our collective imagination – have been the projected scapegoat of inter-generational wounds metastasizing in the American psyche. They were/are so hated and feared because as long as we could encased them as a banished people- the other – we feel of meaning, of success defined by American masculine capitalists’ norms.
How enslavement spread through racism
The irony is that this need of acceptance and holding onto status on the chain of American hierarchy is our collective slave chain. It is the hook that shackles our pursuit of mental liberation to manifest our spiritual destinies and fulfill our hearts desire by doing what brings us pleasure. We so want to please the invisible gatekeeper whom we empower to deal the hands of fate verse our own fierce, smart, powerful personal heads- Oris, higher consciousness. We believe that as long as we hold certain position, title, class membership, zip code, education pedigree, hairstyle, body-weight, speaking tones – the Joker will allow us to be. This is American Capitalism’s greatest illusion.
This time of anarchy – of uprising – of discomfort is shattering the glass that upholds the United States House of Cards and reflects the artificial social construct where skin color and places of natural origin – not class even if you are white and born into poverty – that has scaled up White privilege on the necks of everyone else. These roots run deep. They are entrenched into the American soil over a layering of five hundred years.
Like a five year old who dreams of being a super hero, the wounded European entered this land seeking revenge and power to overcome the shame of his Dark Ages, the bastardization of his culture through the spreading of the Caucasoid slave trade and African invasions, the permanent class structure that supported monarchies on the beaten backs of even the most intelligent and ambitious persons, and the limitations on innovating new religious thoughts. Dressed in a man’s body, this five year old traveled the seas to prove his greatness to all who doubted him, reifying his insecurities and projecting them onto the people of a land new to him and where he arrogantly slaughtered and enslaved so he could not be king. When that no longer filled his hording desires, he then raped the West Coast of African and stole communities to sell into the borders of his fantasized New World. And when those subjected to his cruelty “screamed” – as did the burning body hoisted into a tree in a communal sacrificial lynching ceremony in James Baldwin’s Go Tell it To the Man– our male-boy laughs and sadistically smiles as human torture has become his reflection of power.
This inner fragmentation of the early White settlers/conquerors/looters/thugs – has now crystalized into bacterial form or a gene mutation that poisons the minds of the collective. It is the brain disease that kills the feminine found inside healthy men and women alike – similarly to how crack cocaine and methamphetamine kills brain cells and certain functions of the human mind. It is a disease that splinters the human family and justifies the dehumanization and segregation of those of us who do not fit the imagio in the psyche of an engendered archetype of a festering, walking oozing wound of toxic masculinity finding hosts in wounded and insecure souls – many of whom, but not all – are men attached to whiteness found in wolf packs for power and whom use weapons to sexually perform, to ejaculate.
She who screams and calls for change
As a real maternal energy of the earth – not the Marion images of patriarchal religions- but the creating mother who holds life and death in her hands– another of her special children were sacrificed to demonstrate her displeasement with what we call “normal”. As a captive audience she hosted the perfect performance for us to see, to feel, to experience the slow dying that is happening each and every 8 mins and 46 seconds across this country and this world. Mother has had enough and now must be appeased.
So out of the mouth of babes, comes truth to power. Out of the bodies of youth – comes a willingness to sacrifice their health (in the spread of COVID) if not their lives, to fight for a future that allows them to exist without the constraints of imprisoning structures or oppression based on skin color instead of the content of our character. The universal police are checking the man-created police force whose job is to maintain the current social structure. And children are tugging on their Mothers’ bosoms asking why do they support such structures. And I am sure male-childs attached to whiteness are like deer in headlights, confused as they were already stunned by the rising “(eco)(woman)feminism and Me too conversation.” Now their power of race is questioned.
Where do we go from here?
All created in a mother’s womb, all living in the womb of the earth- we all have a responsibility to be caretakers of the World’s Soul and she is deeply wounded.
We all have a role and must continue to call for the dismantlement of structures and institutions constructed as gatekeepers of systemic racism. The roulette machines that privilege the 1% while keeping the 99% striving to achieve – staying one notch above the one below and using skin color as a justifying factor. This includes transformative change to our dependence and current structuring in our expectations around policing, housing, education, physical healthcare, behavioral health, gender, nation-state, familial and other institutional agents of the disease of racism. Start in your own workplace understanding complicity in your situation. Look at your leadership, your customers, your suppliers and consultants, look at your founder, the neighborhood you are located in to help identify and begin brave conversations of change.
We must re-engage the ancestors of our past. For white readers – it is not okay to use an excuse that your family history is too painful to study – trust me we know – our family history is made up of that pain and we look back anyway to heal. Instead we all must accept responsibility that few of us have actually studied our own family lineages. We may decorate the front door for Dia de Los Muertos or we may recite stories sold in a history book to project our pain or reason our circumstances, but few and far between know the names going back seven generations. This is our responsibility to appease the Mothers and begin healing the broken bones of humanity. Trace your privilege. If you are living in the United States, in California, in Los Angeles right now – you are more privileged than you know- be honest and trace how that happened. Start sketching a family tree of names and events.
Finally, we must bring in joy to tolerate working through the pain. Dialogues, writing, poetry, visual arts, yoga, dance, music, Blues singing – bring in the joy to WORK THROUGH the pain. We- collectively- are not immune from doing “Our Work” (personal communication with Iya Sobande Greer) Osun/Oshun is the deity of joy- she brings this manifestation through abundance and wealth as medicine to create self-love and functioning structure of humanity. She is the one over the Mothers and she is handing us a mirror to see who we are.
Alisa's thoughts on Beloved Communities 