#25May2017 #June20and21

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

This is a short blog…because, well, finishing a dissertation is serious business. There are two dates that are important that I would like to highlight for you. The first date is May 25, 2017 which is African Liberation Day, but also the launch date of Africans Rising, a continental and global movement spearheaded by its launch director, South African native Kumi Naidoo. Naidoo daringly states that one of the first problems the continent has is a leadership that will not make room for the young; and young Africans are no longer simply willing to point their fingers at the harsh and lasting damage from past European colonization and exploitation, but also at African leaders who hold power too long and often. I invite you to visit this organization’s website. Read the magnificent Kilamanjaro Declaration and sign on to this movement of continental Africans and members of the vast African Diaspora. Join us on 25 May 2017 by wearing something red and turning off all of your electronics (lights, etcetera) for at least a few hours to acknowledge the millions of Africans across the continent who do not have electricity. Visit: Africans-Rising.org and read more about this beginning. You can also watch a video of one of the most brilliant minds on earth: the anti-apartheid activist, feminist and environmentalist Kumi Naidoo here. This is worth every minute:

The second dates for you to remember are June 20 & 21, 2017 which is the premier of season two of Queen Sugar. The Ava DuVernay-created show is a revelation. Never before has such an honest portrayal of a Black farming family been shown on television with their virtues and their flaws and their humanity in tact. So, I encourage any and everyone to watch the two-night premiere on the OWN TV network or app on June 20 & 21, 2017. You can watch a trailer for the second season right here.

Think. Stay Engaged. Àṣé.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

How I Maintain Peace and Equilibrium

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

Adire Eleko cloth (Yorùbá, circa 1960)

The following is simply a few of my methods for maintaining a sense of balance and a sense of peace. This is not for everyone, nor should it be. Each individual must find where their sense of balance is…The following I learned from my late mother and father, a few late cousins, several former professors, some friends, and from my students and the young people I mentor:

I believe in spending time with and listening to young people. Children, adolescents and young adults not only need guidance but I also need their guidance. Only they can tell me how they feel or how they arrived at a particular opinion. I ask them to teach me something and they always do; and just as I learn something new, they also feel empowered because an older person needed their assistance and advice and respected their capacity to give it.

I avoid negative people. That person (or people) who never has anything nice to say about anything or anyone can ruin an otherwise great day. I avoid them as much as possible or altogether. (Included in this group are whiners, complainers, moochers, and those who are chronically lazy.)

I expect good treatment and greet almost everyone with a smile; and 99 times out of 100 I get that good treatment and friendliness back. Most people will smile back and speak, but even if they do not smile back, I do not lose anything by smiling and being friendly. A kind word to a waiter or customer service representative has often gotten me a few perks.

I stop from time-to-time to take a snapshot of a flower, a sunset or a view that catches my attention. Occasionally, I have pulled over on the side of the road to do this. When I look for beauty I often find it.

I turn off the news. I have purged myself of the affliction of addiction to bad news, to horrifying news, to doom and gloom. Yes, there are plenty of problems that need and should have my attention and my activism. Yet, a combination of activism and cynicism does not work for me; neither does feeding off of the gore and bad policies that have overtaken most news outlets.

I pick my battles. Not every battle is worth the tension and heat it generates. If the battle only allows me to blow off steam, if it resolves nothing nor makes me any income nor pushes me any closer to my goals, then I do not need to participate in that battle. When the battle helps me or someone else, then I might fight it.

I maintain an inquisitiveness about spirituality, the arts, about my ancestors, and I do the research. For example, I love the idea that the Yorùbá people (along with their many Afro-American descendants in the Americas) believe that procreation is also a form of art. A sense of wonder about creation and creativity (artistic and otherwise) without the rigid dogmas of organized religions is a better path for me to stay connected to my Creator, and all of creation.

I hope anyone who reads this finds (or has found) his or her own path to peace.

Àṣé!

The Old Souls…

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

“Self Portrait” by Copyright © 2015 Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.

This blog is just a quick update…I have recently been in touch with young people who belong to, or I should say are in communiqué with, the Old Souls…

Old Souls are those ancestors who have passed on and who regularly communicate with children and other young people in their efforts to keep the majority of us on the straight-and-narrow path…

I cannot begin to tell you how many people I know who are the parents of small children who speak as if they are well over the age of eighty when they speak…All I can say is that it is the Old Souls that speak to and through these children and young adults…

I have also experienced this with the young people that I have taught and/or mentored and/or influenced in some way. Quite often, I hear some pearl of wisdom, some saying or colloquialism that they are much too young to know. It comes out of their mouths as if my/our grandparents or great grandparents are speaking through them…

I have learned to listen to that Old Wisdom coming from young mouths…I have also learned to completely let go of that Western Judaic-Christian tradition that, unfortunately, draws a sharp demarcation between the secular and the sacred…I have known this to be problematic for quite some time. It has taken me nearly a lifetime to BELIEVE it was problematic…

In most of the many varied African cosmological traditions, a problem (or a person who presents themselves as a problem) was there to teach everyone involved in the problem an important moral or ethical lesson…The requirement was to experience the problem and fully learn the lesson and in order to learn the lesson one must be fully human—not holy—but human…

In my own very recent and past losses, I have learned to trust this fully human experience from the young people I have encountered (and by young, I mean post-Baby Boomers) who do not need judgment as much as they need our guidance and love. They do not need criticism as much as they need our support and cushion, as they try and fail and learn from their experiences and failures and successes…

And we must remember and acknowledge that they are not as young as we older folk would like to believe they are…They come bearing the gifts of the Old Souls and we would do well to listen and learn…I have learned to listen. When I do, I often I hear my parents and grandparents voices…Àṣé!

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

A New Definition of Brother…

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Copyright © 2016 by Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved.

I had to learn the hard way not to rely solely on

American-born brothers who

talk plenty smack and talk plenty righteousness about

how we Black folk have work to do, but at the same time demand

that I keep my mouth shut about the mess that affects me as a woman and all

that infects us/we as a people…

I had to learn the hard way that many of my brothers did not

arrive speaking with American accents, but

some had/have foreign accents so thick that I

need(ed) someone to decipher what they were saying, but

what they said mattered less than what they did…

I learned that plenty Josés and Juans and Ahmads and Maliks and

Etiennes and Lúcios and Willies and Sams

of my world

and my hemisphere

weighed in on matters that affected my life as a Black woman when

so many other so-called brothers assumed that my problems as a Black female

would be handled by someone else or

handled by me by myself…

I had to learn the hard way that my definition of “brother” needed to remain

outside of my typical geographic boundaries of what I/We call the USA

and we either grab hold of each other as kith and kin

or we drown in the waters waiting for

some definition that none of us could live with anyway.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers. All Rights Reserved.

Guide My Feet…

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

“Guide My Feet”
(Traditional Negro Spiritual)

I am grateful that my late Mama and Daddy taught me our old African tradition of ancestor worship. That worship was as much a part of my childhood as was the old Western Judeo-Christian tradition…Now, for those who know me well, you know that I can be the most severe critic of ministers and organized religion(s) that too often fail to act in the best interests of the flocks they claim to serve, lead and protect. Yet, that is another blog. Save your breath. I am only responding to the message(s) sent to me…

I occasionally re-read the poem that my friend actor-poet-writer Charles Reese wrote immediately following the death of my nearly 92-year-old mother in early 2013. In homage to her, he referred to my Mama as “a Queen,” but he also referred to her as “our newest ancestor.” — Nothing in “Syble’s Poem” struck me as much as that line about her becoming an ancestor. For people who know my late Mama, they know that certain songs remained in her repertoire right up to the very end of her days here on earth.

I do not need to recount the tragedies that have happened to Black folk in the last few weeks or even over the last year. Yet, for the last couple of days I have been unable to get the old Negro Spiritual “Guide My Feet” out of my head. Composed and sung in the caldron of American chattel slavery and passed down from generation-to-generation by my people, I have been singing it and humming it off-and-on for the last couple of months. At first, I thought I was going crazy. I must confess that I had a similar experience with “You Gotta to Move,” a Gospel/Blues song composed by Mississippi Fred McDowell. A few months earlier in the year, I was singing “You Gotta Move” in an impromptu singing session that followed a gathering of my Sistahs that was a combination of good coffee, prayer, testimony, and truth-talking with each other at Dream Café…A few days after that meeting, I ran into a brother in a wheelchair who was singing the same song on a corner in downtown Atlanta. That had to mean something, I thought…

When I went to my cousin Dexter’s graduation from Morehouse College this past May 2015, the class Valedictorian and Summa Cum Laude graduate Jerek Sharrod Brown burst into “Guide My Feet” before he began his inspirational and spellbinding Valedictory address. His voice in song was an unexpected, but welcome and perfectly poetic pleasure. I felt something inside of me shift and move when Brown sang and when he spoke. I felt something shift again when my cousin Dexter’s name was called as a new graduate of Morehouse College. After all, I remembered when I first held him in my arms when he was still an infant…

Today I decided to see whether the lyrics to “Guide My Feet” would come up in a general search on Google. It did. Now, usually when something comes up in an internet search, I typically download it and then email it to myself just to make sure that I have a couple of copies of my research findings in two different places. Yet, something strange and beautiful happened after I performed my usual ritual…

When I clicked the email button to send my Google search findings to myself, the email did not pull up my personal email address. Instead, it opened my late Mama’s email address which was and remains a secondary email account affiliated with my own primary account…Sometimes the Creator knows that you need a little help. Sometimes the ancestors are talking to you…

There are moments when no matter how bad things are or may seem, you simply do not worry and you no longer expend energy on people who do not work in your and your own people’s best interests. I have reached that moment. More than we know or acknowledge, the ancestors speak to us in small but important ways if WE only listen, if WE only listen…So, Thank You Mama and Daddy and all the known and unknown ancestors and saints…Thank You Goddess…Thank You God…Peace and Blessings. Àṣé…

Guide my Feet,

while I run this race.

Guide my Feet,

while I run this race.

Guide my feet,

while I run this race,

For I don’t want to run this race in vain.

This Blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this blog or any total or partial excerpt of this blog must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: http://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly and visibly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: Ancestor Worship

The Old Souls…