Podcast #1: Bioneers: From Slavery to Stardust: What Would Healing Look Like?

Sankofa Bird

I’ve always had enough time; it was just filled with too many distractions. COVID took away some of those distractions and a life change put me in the car for longer periods, so I started listening to podcasts and discovered a world of inspiration and wisdom. 

Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature quickly became one of my favorite sources.

This is the first in a series of podcasts that will be featured here, this one chosen because of a bird featured at the beginning of the podcast. The sankofa bird is a metaphorical symbol used by the Akan people of Ghana, generally depicted as a bird with its head turned backward taking an egg from its back. It expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress. (Sankofa.org)

Learning from where we’ve been seems to be a particularly timely metaphor and this is a powerful podcast about one of the darkest places in our history: the slave trade that built wealth for some while destroying the lives of others. 

 

Belvie Rooks, one of the speakers on this podcast, states, “The sankofa bird symbolizes the courage to look back into the past while boldly moving forward and taking that knowledge and transforming it into the wisdom needed to guide the present into a benevolent future for the entire community."

This particular story begins in the North, where a sailor who came to Rhode Island in 1744 built a great wealth in the slave trade. Two honeymooners happened on a book about the family’s history and it changed their lives and brought them together with the author.

This one is a great example of how podcasts can inform, inspire, and make your heart hurt for all the unhealed places. Racism wounds our community and maybe if we could have the courage of the sankofa bird, we might create a benevolent future for all of us.  Listen here.

Intro: What’s it like to be in someone else’s skin? What if the color of the skin is different – say, black and white? What might happen when the descendants of a white slave trader and of black people who were enslaved meet? That is the brave and wrenching journey embraced by Thomas DeWolf, whose white ancestors were once the nation’s biggest slave traders, and Belvie Rooks and Dedan Gills, descendants of African people who were enslaved. Together they depict their remarkable journey to discover what healing looks like.

Movie: Traces of the Trade: A story of the deep north

Vimeo on demand $2.99

#slaveryBelvie RooksDedan GillsJusticeRacial JusticeThomas DeWolf

• Related Podcasts
• Heather McGhee On Confronting The Denial Of Racism
• Patrisse Cullors on How Black Lives Matter Began
• Kimberlé Crenshaw on the #SayHerName Campaign

Unexpected Gifts: Kumbaya 2020

An unexpected gift this morning. By definition, gifts generally lie outside the range of expectations, otherwise they wouldn’t be gifts. 

 

It seems as though I should understand this by now, however I was somewhat startled when an unknown person … a friend of a Facebook friend I’ve never met … asked permission to use my poem Kumbaya 2020. I gave it freely without really knowing who she was nor understanding the use she had for it. Then, promptly forgot about it.

Today I received a copy of the work and I think it has changed my life perspective, so I want to share it.

Fran Dummett produces and hosts an inspirational meditation program sponsored by The Village in Howard, an independent living community in Columbia, Maryland. In these days of Zoom-everything, I rather expected the normal Zoom workshop environment. While it may have started out that way, Fran then creates a YouTube experience that is informative, experiential, and powerfully moving.

Part of the program is a carefully paced reading of Kumbaya 2020. Rather than just reading this poem, however, she prefaced it with a discussion of the history of this African-American song that has been part of social movements for decades, and followed it with a simple, piano performance of the song that made me weep. Watch the video here.

 Fran has brilliantly created a program that engages the mind, body, spirit, and emotions. This episode titled, “Behind the Mask,” invites the audience to explore this metaphor for today’s world as well as the timeless metaphor of identity, hidden and known. She reveals, through her own poetry and conversation, her anxieties and feelings about masks, and invites us to think about it in terms of our own lives.

I am so honored to be part of this series and encourage everyone to watch this episode and subscribe to her YouTube channel… as I just did.

I’ve included the Kumbaya 2020 poem and wish peace and safety to all of you.

 

I want my rose-colored glasses back.

I want to stand in a circle and sing kumbaya. 

I want to sit on the lap of the kindly grandfather god I once believed in.

I want to look at the people around me and not wonder which is a pustule ready to burst.

I want to behold our forefathers with reverence and gratitude and not see the long shadow trailing behind them.

I want to believe in the truth telling of doctors, lawyers, ministers, senators and presidents.

I want the dodo birds to waddle back to a green earth.

I want to drink tea unmasked with my pollyanna sisterhood.

I want to see a beating heart on every sleeve.

I want to hear the peaceful ripple of an untamed stream.

I want discussions of color to be about lavender and rose.

I want superglue for all the broken places.

I want a world without children in cages.

I want full bellies, warm hugs, and a belief in tomorrow.

I want what I thought we had but somehow let slip away.

Oh Lord, Kumbaya 

 

-- Joyce Wycoff