Si No Hablamos
Si no hablamos para alabar a la Tierra,
es mejor que guardemos silencio.
Loa al aire
que llena el fuelle del pulmón
y alimenta la sangre del corazón;
que lleva la luz,
el olor de las flores y los mares,
los cantos de las aves y el aullido del viento;
que conspira con la distancia
para hacer azul el monte
Loa al fuego
que alumbra el día y calienta la noche,
cuece nuestro alimento y da ímpetu a nuestra voluntad;
que es el corazón de la Tierra, este fragmento de lucero;
que quema y purifica por bien o por mal.
Loa al agua
que hace a los ríos y a los mares;
que da sustancia a la nube y a nosotros;
que hace verde a los bosques y los campos;
que hincha al fruto y envientra nuestro nacer.
Loa a la tierra
que es el suelo, la montaña, y las piedras;
que lleva los bosques y es la arena del desierto;
que nos forma los huesos y sala los mares, la sangre;
que es nuestro hogar y sitio.
Si no hablamos en alabanza a la Tierra,
si no cantamos en festejo a la vida,
es mejor que guardemos silencio.
© Rafael Jesús González 2013
Escrito especialmente para el Congreso Mundial de Poetas,
Tai'an, Provincia de Shandong, China, otoño 2005
(Siete escritores comprometidos: obra y perfil; Fausto Avendaño, director; Explicación de Textos Literarios vol. 34 anejo 1; diciembre 2007; Dept. of Foreign Languages; California State University Sacramento; derechos reservados del autor.)
If We Do Not Speak
If we do not speak to praise the Earth,
it is best we keep silent.
Praise air
that fills the bellow of the lung
& feeds our heart's blood;
that carries light,
the smell of flowers & the seas,
the songs of birds & the wind's howl;
that conspires with distance
to make the mountains blue.
Praise fire
that lights the day & warms the night,
cooks our food & gives motion to our wills;
that is the heart of Earth, this fragment of a star;
that burns & purifies for good or ill.
Praise water
that makes the rivers & the seas;
that gives substance to the clouds and us;
that makes green the forests & the fields;
that swells the fruit & wombs our birth.
Praise earth
that is the ground, the mountain, & the stones;
that holds the forests & is the desert sand;
that builds our bones & salts the seas, the blood;
that is our home & place.
If we do not speak in praise of the Earth,
if we do not sing in celebration of life,
it is best we keep silence.
© Rafael Jesús González 2013
Written especially for the World Congress of Poets,
Tai'an, Shandong Province, China, Autumn 2005
Guests:
We open with guests: Deborah A. Wright, Dr. David L. Horne, Nvasekie N. Konneh, Zarinah Shakir to speak about Liberia, African America, Food Security and Covid-19
Deborah A. Wright,
a retired Reference Librarian/Administrator from the College of Charleston’s
Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture (Charleston, SC,
USA. She received a Bachelor of Arts
degree from the State University of New York at Albany. As a university student, Deborah participated
in language and history study abroad programs in Mexico and in Puerto
Rico. Additionally, she has traveled in
West Africa to Ghana, Liberia, Togo, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Benin. She has also traveled in the Caribbean (West
Indies) to Barbados, and notably on multiple research trips to Jamaica, West
Indies. Prior to working at the College of Charleston, Deborah was a Public
Educator and Field Office Administrator for the Office of Public Education and
Interpretation of the African Burial Ground Project in New York City, USA. Deborah has done extensive research on
African American music and has written Jazz music appreciation curriculum for
alternative schools in New York City. She recently served as Associate Editor
of The South Carolina Black History
Bugle, an
educational resource magazine for elementary school students. She serves as Editor of the Avery
Messenger, the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center’s newsmagazine. Deborah is a co-founder of the Charleston
Remembrance Program, which for the past twenty-two years, has hosted
programming honoring Africans who perished DURING the trans-Atlantic slave
trade’s Middle Passage. She is a member of The International Coalition to Commemorate African Ancestors of the
Middle Passage (ICCAAMP)
established to organize activities designed to remember the millions of
Africans who were sold, kidnapped, shipped then died along the route from
Africa to the Americas.
Dr. David L. Horne, (Professor Emeritus) was a tenured full
professor of Critical Thinking and African Political-Economic History, and is the
former chair of the Pan African Studies Department at Cal State University,
Northridge.
He has a PhD in history and political economy from UCLA, and
two Master of Arts degrees, one in Public Policy from CSU San Bernardino, and
the other in South African history from the University of Florida. He is the
executive editor of two peer reviewed academic periodicals, the Journal of
African Studies and The Journal of Pan African Studies (recently
renamed The Journal of 21st Century Pan Africanism).
In 2005, Dr. Horne was selected in a poll by the Los Angeles
Wave Newspaper as one of the 25 top Black movers and shakers in Southern California.
He is the author of Straight to the Point: An Introduction to Critical
Thinking; Meeting Maat: The Handbook of African Consensus Meetings and Gatherings;
Introduction to American Government: From a Black Perspective, as well as
numerous scholarly and community-based articles.
He has presented scholarly papers in Nigeria for the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization
Conference (CBAAC), in Ghana at
the W.E.B. Dubois Centre, and in South Africa, France, Libya, Zambia, the Netherlands, Brazil, Trinidad, Cuba and
Barbados in association with the African Union, and for the National Council of Black Studies, and
regularly presents both scholarly papers and Black History Month speeches across the
country and in the Diaspora.
He is one of three regularly invited Diasporan delegates to
African Union technical workshops and analytical discussions held in
Africa at various sites. He was an official delegate to the 6th Pan African Congress
held in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, 1974 and to the 8th Pan African Congress, in
Johannesburg, South Africa, 2014.
Dr. Horne is the International Facilitator for the Sixth
Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) established for the purpose of helping to organize the African
Diaspora for participation and membership in the African Union, (per the AU’s
2003 Article 3(q) invitation to African descendants to join it as the 6th
Region and help create the Union of African States/United States of Africa), and the Pan African Diaspora Union (PADU), an
international umbrella organization of Diasporans, and includes the
AUADS-Europe and the Black Hebrews of Jordan, Israel and the Middle East
Dr. Horne is currently writing a book, Organizing the
African Diaspora, and he is the author of the Decade of the Diaspora
theme currently in vogue.
Nvasekie N. Konneh,
a Liberian writer, poet, magazine publisher, community and cultural
activist emigrated to the United States in
1995 and resides in the state of Pennsylvania. Konneh’s writings
and commentary have been widely published in newspapers and on websites in
Liberia, the United States and Europe.
Nvasekie Konneh served in the U.S. Navy from 1996 to
2005 but while serving on active duty in the U. S. Navy, Konneh did
not bury his activist side. He was the founding chairman of the
National Civil Right Movement (NCRM), a Philadelphia based Liberian
pro-democracy and human rights organization. Through this organization,
Nvasekie Konneh led a large contingent of people in a September 16, 2002 demonstration in Washington DC at the Liberian
Embassy, demanding the unconditional release of imprisoned Liberian journalist,
Hassan Bility, and other illegally detained Liberians during the Charles Taylor
regime. A few months later, he led another demonstration in Washington DC, this
time at the U.S. Capitol, against the continued illegal detention of Liberian
human rights activist, Aloysius Toe and others.
In April 2002, Konneh won the First Place
Award in the Liberian Civil War poetry competition sponsored by the
Liberian Community Association of Rhode Island, United States. The winning poem
in that competition was Scene of Sorrow II. In 2003, Konneh
published his first book of poems titled Going to War For America.
His second publication, The Land
of My Father's Birth (2013), is a memoir of the Liberian civil war
- a personal story of ethnic and
religious persecution, and of survival during the Liberian Civil War.
Since leaving the US Navy in 2005, Nvasekie Konneh has
frequently traveled to Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Europe to
engage in literary as well as community activities. He launched the art and
culture magazine, The Uptown Review on January 7, 2011 in
Monrovia, Liberia. His current volume of poetry with the title, The
Love of Liberty Brought Us Together, continues with the
theme of war, peace, love and pro-democracy, human and civil rights campaign in
Africa in general and Liberia in particular. His poems militate against
social-political injustice as well as celebrate romantic and spiritual
awakening among people of Liberia, Africa, and the world irrespective of
religion or ethnicity.
Nvasekie Konneh is currently the Public
Affairs/Cultural Coordinator for SEHWAH Liberia, Inc., an organization
established to promote
sustainable development, build cultural heritage initiatives and provide advocacy
for women and children in Liberia.
3. Zarinah Shakir born in
Trenton, New Jersey is the Producer/Host of the award winning Perspectives of Interfaith, a television program taped and aired at the Arlington
Independent Media studios in Arlington, VA over fifteen years. Also
it airs at DCTV, Washington,DC, Manhattan Neighbourhood Network and other
markets. She is the former Producer/Host for six years of Islamic
Perspectives, a television program which was the longest running
program about Islam and Muslims in the Washington, DC metro area for over
fifteen years. She contributed six years to the Local Station
Board (LSB) and two years as the Chair of WPFW (89.3FM) in Washington, DC, a
sister station of the Pacifica National Network. Also, she was a national,
elected board member for three years. As the radio producer/host
of “The Struggle Continues,” on WPFW (89.3FM) a one-hour
radio program (Pacifica Network) started by the late Brother Hodari Abdul-Ali,
she focused on a myriad of topics relevant to diverse
communities. Ms. Shakir is invited to participate at numerous
events: community, religious, high schools, colleges and
universities as a panelist, and a motivational and inspirational speaker.
Zarinah is still producing and hosting radio and television programs.
Moreover, presently, she is a member of Toastmasters and is the VP for PR for
her local chapter, Union Public Speakers.
As a teenager at
Trenton Central High School in Trenton, New Jersey her aspirations were to be a
performing artist and an international diplomat. She was trained as
a classical musician in voice and several instruments. After moving
to California at the age of twenty-one, she enrolled at San Francisco State
University and completed her BA in Broadcast Communication Arts and eventually
her Masters Course work in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary with an emphasis on
Marketing and Public Relations and a minor in African-American Studies. Years
later, she received a certificate from Yale University for a summer program on
“The Teaching of Africa.”
In keeping with Ms.
Shakir’s commitment to continuous education, she applied and was accepted to an
American Muslim Women’s Leadership Training program in the United Arab Emirates
for five weeks in 2008-2009. She completed the
Hartford Theological Seminary, Women’s Leadership Institute in Hartford,
CT. A nine-month program which ran from September 2009 to May 2010
designed to instruct, empower and support women on their spiritual journeys,
she received a certificate in Applied Spirituality. Additionally,
she completed a full week program at Georgetown University for Christian-Muslim
Relations (2009), a seven week program (2010) at Wesley Seminary,
WDC, an eight-day (June 6 - 13, 2010) Interfaith Intensive program
with 27 other Christians, Jews and Muslims at Hartford Seminary. In
2012, Zarinah completed the KARAMAH (Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights)
three week intensive (LLSP) Law and Leadership Summer
Program. In 2015, Zarinah traveled to Granada, Spain where
she attended Islamic Critical Thought classes instructed by several
international scholars and upon her departure and arrival of the US she landed
in Moscow, Russia where she wants to visit the mosques and other religious
edifices in the future. Ms. Shakir was accepted to the Hartford Seminary
2016 Graduate program for Imam/Muslim Community Leadership. Finally, at
her local Senior Center, she is enjoying two new classes for her, Sculpting and
Conversational Italian.
She has been a
frequent moderator and facilitator with the Interfaith Conference of
Metropolitan Washington (IFC), in addition a consultant and facilitator for
Unity Productions Foundation (UPF). She completed her first
documentary Part One in 2011 and Part Two in 2013 entitled, “African-American
Pioneer Muslimahs in Washington, DC” with grants received from the Humanities
Council of Washington, DC, the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin and Unity
Productions Foundation.
Ms. Shakir has held
many positions inside and outside of her fields of endeavor, as an
educator: teaching middle and high school Language Arts, Social
Studies, Music and Culinary Arts. She is an avid traveler, loves reading,
arts and culture, interfaith programs, and she especially loves her deen
(religion) of Al-Islam, her son and grandson, Taalib-Din and Justen,
respectively. Her biggest concerns are women’s rights, children,
child neglect/ abuse and the global, humanitarian challenges to peace and the
environment.
Check the
youtube link below for the trailer (five minutes). Enjoy. The
documentary itself is one hour. Just a note, you can find the
complete second film (Part Two) on You Tube, also one hour. http://youtu.be/hp67lYiQZzw
4. Queen Hollins is a sovereign being and founder of the Earthlodge Center for Transformation where she practices and teaches earth-based nature medicine and curriculum. The philosophy at the Earthlodge is to see each Human Being as a sovereign entity holding power and inner technology to create a way for individual and global liberation by deeply connecting with the Earth. Her journey into the mysteries of the Earth began under the tutelage of her grandmother as a little girl growing up in Mississippi. Her spiritual practices include that of Ifa, Black Gnostic Aquarian gospel, sacred Afrikan dance, sacred healing serpent dance, science of mind, plant medicine, and listening to the stories of my elders, which includes Trees. Queen facilitate a sacred Earth ceremony for healing and restoration, a sacred Earth pit journey which includes Sacred Blood rites (menstruation), Lunar/Solar rites & Seasonal rites. She is also a certified Kundalini yoga instructor, intuitive counselor, spiritual activator and offer individual/group sessions and retreats. And with all that she says she is still learning... To stay connected with Queen and the Earthlodge community sign up at earthlodgecenter.org
