The world awaits our awakening. We are one people who are less different and much more alike by our human qualities, cultural similarities, and first creation stories. When I look in the mirror on any given day I see Asian, East Indian, Native American, African from all four corners of our globe from almost every nationality and so called race.
Today is July 4th 2009, our Independence Day in America. Last year, I was helping to light fireworks on a family farm in the mountains of Tennessee, this year I opted to spend this time alone with my dog, contemplating this American ritual of festivities. I could not bring myself to participate. For one, I found myself in an unfamiliar region of the South. I missed my ‘global tribe’ and had better begin to search in my heart for answers as to where I would spend the next four years of my life. I was forced to reconcile my shortcomings with honesty. Something within me had changed me maybe forever. It had seemed the cutting of my unnatural straightened hair had severed all that was false and untrue. In my heart I was tired and assumed the posture of truth. The quiet stillness of the house with only boiling water was soothing on this day. No scurrying downtown to grab a place among the crowds to see fireworks. I have seen fireworks on the Hudson, the West and East side, with friends on rooftops, under the gun shots in the ghettos of Northeast, incensed walled windows from the 5th floor on 16th Street, on the Washington Mall where fireworks shells blackened ash on my cheeks, Georgetown waterfronts, and Virginia town homes catered with barbecued cheese and Italian wine. ( I’ve even partied the French independence Bastille Day in Paris!) But today, this July 4th was my time take myself out of the ritual the bang and dazzle of an independence we have yet to acquire around the world.
I had a poke on Facebook which led me to Twitter and I followed the breadcrumbs to a video post by Runuko Rashidi about the African presence in global history called, “Unexpected Faces in Unexpected Places” a 2000 Old Dominion University lecture. I was delighted and just about taken with this one hour presentation of Dr. Rashidi’s scholarly findings and personal voyages and I thanked the Brotha on Facebook who shared this. It wasn’t that I had not known most of this information, but I did learned a great deal about my passion about African’s in Global History AND my passion for East Indian culture, religion and philosophy which I knew intrinsically was a part of my culture.
No one who saw me in the Lotus asana or speak of Nag Champa could tell me otherwise. India is as ‘home’ to me as Arizona, the Caribbean, Africa or America. I cried when I saw the black Buddha, the Nuba warrior ask “Where are African American’s fighting for our liberation from the Arabs?” Here again were these deep spiritual questions that had swelled my head, conscious and heart and here they were revisiting me once again.
I couldn’t pretend that America’s so called Independence day was superior to anyone elses. And what seemed more apparent on this day was the realization that oppression of truth translates into a much deeper symptom and illness of the spirit. And for this realization I found myself in an unfamiliar place. I did not partake in an American Independence ritual but lit candles and prayers for the liberation of our Global families on all four corners of our planet.
Unexpected faces in unexpected places 2000 – Runoko Rashidi
