CHUMA SPIRIT Magazine

Fisiwe's Voice: Does Integrity Mean Anything Anymore?

Written by FISIWE ZWANA-FREEMAN

Repost: Reflecting on Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This was originally posted last year for Black History Month by Fisiwe Zwana-Freeman, but considering today is Dr. King's holiday in celebration of his birthday, I decided it befitting of a repost. Enjoy.

Written by FISIWE ZWANA-FREEMAN

For the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I reflect on what the anniversary of this era really means.

In my adult life, I must admit, I haven’t been all that diligent about celebrating the life of the great Rev. Dr. King. As a child, my parents made it a practice that we do something as a family to pay homage to the life of a great person who sacrificed his life for our sake. Whether we went to a community event or held one at home, we always did something because they felt it was important, no . . . imperative that we acknowledge; that we not forget and not take for granted what Rev. Dr. King had done for us all.

Today I reflect on what the good Rev. Dr. King has done for me and I only cursorily think of the many marches and protests, the days and nights he spent in jail, the countless meals with his children that he missed advocating on behalf of families in peril and the plethora of articulate speeches that he made in front of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people. These things, I admit, are amazing things.

Fisiwe's Voice: I Am Not The Same

Written by FISIWE

Six months ago, I was a practicing Buddhist seeking Enlightenment. Two months ago I got “saved”; accepted the free gift of salvation from Jesus Christ into my heart. Yesterday, I got baptized and committed my life to God. Today I am born again, possessing salvation and defining my place in Heaven when this life is over. Whoa! Right?

As a Buddhist I was intent on dieing to my sensory self. I meditated and sought to become detached physically, mentally and emotionally. The idea is that the connections that bind us to our current state of consciousness are what keep us suffering. My goal was ultimately to obliterate all this perception until I am completely divested from all that ties me to the world and the suffering that inevitably derives from it. This takes life times.

According to Gautama Buddha, God the Creator, was a non-question; a non-issue.1 That in and of itself never, ever sat well with my spirit. Still I pressed on, determined to becoming convinced one day that I could learn to meditate away the deep seeded memory and unshakable knowledge of God’s existence. As a Buddhist, I had to believe that even my connection to God was a tie to be dismantled.

As a Christian, I live to die to my egoic self. I love God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost so much I am willing to ultimately submit my life to them as we all do when we are truly in love. I live to manifest God’s presence and honor Him; to make preparations to live in the new earth with Him forever. It’s an awesome gift beyond compare that Jesus came to earth and exchanged his life to pay for my sins and give me everlasting life with Him. Long before I was ever born, before my parents were born, God knew me. And Jesus thought of me and decided that he loved me so much he would die for me to have everything in God’s Kingdom.

Black History Month Reflection: Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Written by FISIWE ZWANA

For Black History Month, and directly after Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday last month, I reflect on what the anniversary of this era really means.

In my adult life, I must admit, I haven’t been all that diligent about celebrating the life of the great Rev. Dr. King. As a child, my parents made it a practice that we do something as a family to pay homage to the life of a great person who sacrificed his life for our sake. Whether we went to a community event or held one at home, we always did something because they felt it was important, no…imperative that we acknowledge; that we not forget and not take for granted what Rev. Dr. King had done for us all.

Today I reflect on what the good Rev. Dr. King has done for me and I only cursorily think of the many marches and protests, the days and nights he spent in jail, the countless meals with his children that he missed advocating on behalf of families in peril and the plethora of articulate speeches that he made in front of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people. These things, I admit, are amazing things.

I find myself mostly in awe of this man’s capacity to give, care, and love. I wonder how many sleepless nights he spent pained at the anguish others felt and needing to do something to alleviate it. I marvel at the strength of his faith, the knowledge he held that if he simply took action, it would matter enough. Somehow, he didn’t let the enormity of the problems he battled paralyze him. I admire, maybe more than anything, that he allowed his purpose to propel him forward, in spite of any fears he may have had, knowing that what he stood for, what he believed in, meant so much more than whatever he may have feared.

During this time, now 40 years after his assassination, I pray we have not come too far to remember the immense love that lived at the depths of Rev. Dr. King's heart; the true essence of AGAPE love that he wished for to the end to our suffering and the lasting of our unity and joy. In the mainstream propaganda and publicity around this man, too often is lost the message that lay at the heart of what his actions all truly displayed. And I don’t mean his efforts to end racial segregation in the south.

Fisiwe's Voice: Resilience

Written by FISIWE ZWANA

When all else has seemingly failed, what is left?

Each one of us faces the universal human experience in our own stylized way. Disappointment, failure, insecurity, mistakes and unforeseen misfortune target and catch us all in moments we’d just as soon avoid. And it seems the faster we run from those moments, the harder they bite our heels. So what are we to do?

I often find myself unconsciously running the lists of my missteps and flaws like a ticker tape across the surface of my divided attention. While the action may be unconscious, it certainly is not ineffective. Ego is a subversive, divisive…hell, ego is downright vicious and will do anything to keep the resilience of the unconditioned essence of my perfect soul submissive.

In our daily lives, we encounter apparently endless pricks and pokes that try to penetrate our resolve as the world has its way with us. Every stick leaves a hole.

Call it faith, call it grace…resilience is what is left. After the questions of “How…?” that have no graspable answers, resilience brings me around to the answers I can’t see with my eyes or make with my hands.

The world is busy and loud with the collective asking: How will we “survive” with no money, no skills, and no choices? How will we “succeed” with no savings, no wealth, and no fortune? How will we “be remembered” with no notoriety, no fame, without award winning accomplishments to brandish on mantles or display on walls?

Fisiwe's Voice: Western Shoes, African Feet

Written by FISIWE ZWANA

My good friend and lauded NYC based poet/activist, Ngoma, has a telling haiku that goes:

You be sitting there
Western shoes, African feet
Wundrin’ why they hurt

Ngoma’s Link: www.myspace.com/ngomazuniverse

At 37 years old, I find myself intuiting the closeness of a reckoning that both disturbs and excites me.

I love my father, he is the sweetest, funniest, most intelligent man I know. But for the life of me, I cannot figure why he never taught his children and wife his native African language(s). He speaks several dialects of his Zimbabwe home and neighboring areas as well. Along with this comes a host of other questions about my full identity and perception of me being an “African” American. I comb through my memories, trying to pinpoint any clues as to why this portion of my self definition is so…sketchy. Why do I know so little about who I am as a not so removed, yet so removed descendent of the great civilization of Zimbabwe; variously translated from the Shona language to mean “sacred house,” “venerated houses,” “houses of stone,” “ritual seat of the king,” “court,” or “home or grave of the chief?”

The Great Zimbabwe Ruins

My reckoning is not with my father though. Maybe it was too difficult to be surrounded by Americans and create an environment where the language could thrive. Maybe somehow, we dismissed the opportunity and made it perfectly clear to him that we didn’t want to learn. Perhaps, it was a conscious choice on his part that directly correlated to some experience or perception he secretly held. Still, I always think, he could have spoken his language to us from birth and now we would be bi-lingual. As an adult I long for that ability. As a writer and spoken word artist, I yearn to express myself in all the fluent rhythms encompassed in my natural sound and movement.

Honestly, “why it turned out this way” is neither here nor there anymore; I hold no grudge. We have been given so many things—my brothers and I—that instilled a strong African world view in us. My mother, being a Black American from the south who grew up in New York City, added a “soulful,” if you will, texture to my father’s earthy, ancient ways that created a connection between two cultures for us that cannot escape their relation.

My reckoning is with my own long standing inaction toward embracing my Zimbabwean self. But as I mentioned earlier, I can feel it; something is coming.

My late, beloved sistah, Phillippa Emmannuelle, gave me a great gift several years ago: The courage to embark on reinvention. She showed and taught me that out of pain, out of suffering, out of lack, even out of tragedy or ignorance there is the fertile material to invent life and living into a new space and energy that elevates and propels.

As I grapple and dance with my ever becoming womanhood, I am sure that Zimbabwe is simply laying in wait within me for my beckoning. My singing voice clearly springs ancient from the “sacred house” intoning the irrepressible richness of where I come from. My face and feet, my hips and buttocks, my inflection and mannerism are sights of archaeological evidence conclusively establishing my lineage. From the depths of my psychic records, I am claimed by history and geography.

But my conscious mind, my store of acquired knowledge must catch up. With the benefit of having my father, straight from the continent, I am surely closer to understanding the implications of needing to know…needing to make the connection. I come into contact with so many people of color who have no desire to connect to their African roots or otherwise. The distance and the effects of oppressive interference have efficiently dug and pulled at those roots making them disdained, inaccessible in many ways, yet still unable to completely be eradicated.

Just take a look at us all; our varying shapes and sizes, our creative approach to the form and function of living from language to style. If we think America and her ever assimilating spotted history and artfully colored modern culture is responsible for all this, then we are lost—literally. Aren’t we?

An impressively conscientious, young gentleman I met recently told me how he had traced his roots through an internet web site and had traveled to the African continent many times. He spoke of this with such an enthusiasm and pride that I wish I could hear in all or our voices when we speak of Africa.

His determination immediately brought to mind the Nguzo Saba; the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa; the African American holiday created by Dr. Maulana Karenga as an alternative to the commercialism of Christmas back in the seventies. We grew up celebrating this in my family, as well as Christmas, because it offered us, like it did so many, a way to value and fellowship in a unique way pulling from our earliest traditions, simultaneously honoring who we have become . Kwanzaa correlated with our matchless circumstance in time and space as a people searching for home from a long physical, mental, and emotional distance. The principal of Kujichagulia-Self Determination sprung immediately to life for me as this young man demonstrated his understanding the implications of needing to know…needing to make the connection. I felt so proud and hopeful, for he is an Atlanta, Georgia born and bred 30 year old black man who stands up and declares with more than his broad nose, ebony skin, and full lips… “I DON’T CARE WHERE I COME FROM, AS LONG AS I’M A BLACK MAN. I’M AN AFRICAN!” (Thank you Brothah Mack! And thank you Peter Tosh for the song.)

As I reflect on my own acts of Self-Determination, I have come a long way as a woman, a mother, an artist, and a career woman…but I feel I still have a long way to come as an African.

The reckoning bears down on me with an emphatic challenge to explore, learn, and express the Zimbabwe in me. How will I respond? I’ll have to let you know, but I expect it will be an incredible act of reinvention. Stay tuned… Kujichagulia!!!

Until next time, Be Awake and Be Well. May Metta "Lovingkindness" Fill Your Life.

Fisiwe is a writer, singer and performance poet. She is the author of Lovewords: Poetry From a Place Called Love, and she is the host of her own internet radio show, Love Art Life Radio. She can be reached at fisiwezwana@yahoo.com.

Fisiwe’s Voice: What Do I Need a Man For, Anyway?

Written by FISIWE ZWANA

The last time my man and I broke up, I found myself angrily tussling with the question, "What the fuck do I need a man for, anyway?!" Yeah, I was pretty discouraged and pissed and uncertain about what it all meant and why I should even bother anymore.

Yet, I am convinced that it is a question that needs to be asked, not only by women, but by men. The various emotional challenges in my relationship with the man I love have revealed harsh undeniableness to me and I find myself in a position of owing an apology to him.

I apologize for not seeing him for who he was, but instead as whom he was to me. One might say it's just human nature to create the ones we love in our own image....but wow that's simplistic and I must admit cowardly. As a man he has every right to be himself, have his own experience of the world, and be on his path—just like I am on mine—without the "benefit" of my input. We cannot absolve ourselves of the responsibility to see our men with the same clarity and truth that we seek to see ourselves with. The sloughing off of illusions in the mirror must also be done to our vision of our men.

It is not my job to guide him, shape him, and protect him from himself. It is not my job to teach him, improve him (sorry Beyonce, I don't need to "Upgrade" him) or add to him with so much me that he’s unable to discern who he is. He has the right to be uncertain and unfinished and to seek his own transformation however the Universe has it planned for him. And no, I may not be the answer he is looking for.

My brother Ola uses the term "Afromanticism" and I refer to it here to point out how women of color, such as myself, especially freely claim black men for our own and in doing so I see how we consciously and arrogantly, as well as unconsciously and dependently, crush through their personal space and invade their processes of becoming who they are meant to be. We infiltrate their thinking of themselves and we pervasively inhabit their movement. And when they struggle to get free, we are so hurt and..."OFFENDEDED DAMMIT! HOW DARE YOU? DON'T YOU KNOW I AM YOURS AND YOU ARE MINE? SLAVERY AND ALL?...OPPRESSION AND ALL?...AFRICA AND ALL?...EGYPT AND ALL?....PIMPS UP HOES DOWN AND ALL?...MISTER AND CELIE AND ALL?”

What purpose do men serve in the lives of women? We have ridden the egg and seed thing in regards to conception for all its worth. I mean damn! Yes, we need them to procreate, but beyond that how do we coexist in dimensions that allow each of us to freely exist not at each other's expense?

In other words, how do we put in the “work?”

The "work" defined as: the daily and momentary thoughts, attitudes and activities of maintaining the communication and interaction between a man and a woman who have in some way subtle or overt established a personal bond; the "work" of relationship for me has got to include the acknowledgement and constant recognition of each other’s sovereignty. This inevitably means that the work includes an attention to self that changes the landscape of what relationship is "supposed" to look like because if I am doing my part to be the best me I can be and you are doing your part to be the best you can be, then what exactly is it that we share again? What do you do for me? What do I do for you? And what do we do with all that time we used to spend fixing, framing, and adjusting one another?

Can't we throw "the rules" out the window if a woman can pay her own bills?...If a man can raise his own children? Now wait a minute! Don't get me wrong. Undoubtedly the quality of life is sure to be best when a man and woman work in partnership bringing what they both have to bear into the life experience. This is not being debated. But, even in the traditional scenario, as I have witnessed that it "works," often still it is at someone's expense because somewhere along the line, one or the other party has accepted the "rightness" of generally accepted gender roles allowing those traditional molds to be placed on their life force.

How do I recalibrate my thinking and my feeling patterns to accept a new paradigm absent of co-dependence? How do I freely love my man in a way that releases him and in effect liberates us both?

I want to relate based on love, not love based on the boundaries of my relationship. As a woman I know it is my responsibility to myself and the man I love to ask these questions and constantly ask; to constantly be doing the "work" that keeps convention at bay and challenges old familiar patterns while keeping love in the midst.

I know it is my responsibility to myself to engage a man who is at least as capable of identifying and articulating his own process as I am. Capable meaning: ready, willing, and able to walk his path in whatever direction it takes him whether it aligns or diverges from mine. I have all the respect in the world for a man who can do this and still have love in his heart.

And in exploring all this, I keep asking myself, “What is marriage?”  But, I have to save that for another day.

Until next time, Be Awake and Be Well. May Metta "Lovingkindness" Fill Your Life.

Fisiwe is a writer, singer and performance poet. She is the author of Lovewords: Poetry From a Place Called Love, and she is the host of her own internet radio show, Love Art Life Radio. She can be reached at fisiwezwana@yahoo.com.

Fisiwe's Voice: The Constant Dream

Written by FISIWE ZWANA

I'm on an emotional rollercoaster
Lovin' you ain't nothin' healthy
Lovin' you was never good for me (For me)
But I can't get off

--Excerpt from Emotional Rollercoaster by Vivian Green

Like many, I can identify with the lyrics from Vivian Green's song, Emotional Rollercoaster. During those unavoidable times when things aren't going so great in my relationship, I find myself contemplating and analyzing the whys.

In my Buddhist practice I have learned that I suffer because I engage in acts and thoughts that create disharmony and contradict my ultimate goal, which is to end the cycle of life and rebirth and thus end all my suffering.

“He” is my constant dream. I have to marvel at how as a woman, my search is for "man" even in knowing ultimately the embrace must be of "self." The question continues to arise no matter how clear I become. "He" is the constant dream. I keep thinking that if I can improve my relationship with "him"; if I can figure "him" out; if I can master communication with "him"; if I can successfully show "him" the way to innerstand me; if I can choose the right "him"; if I can love "him" to health; if I can truly honor and respect "him"; if I can get the right "him" in my life at the right time under all the right circumstances, then I will have accomplished some worthy task.

Earlier I was listening to the Dhamma talk, and the question in one particular session is about what can we ever do in life that is really worth doing? What actions do we make that lead to our ultimate benefit? What do we do that leads to the deathless?

"Darling, I am only human, yeah...but you are so divine. Tell me when did you leave heaven? Mmm...angel, angel of mine... Take me there, leave these earthly things, take me there....I want you to take me there...." As I write this, Lalah Hathaway bursts in and sings me to tears. I mean what am I to do with this longing that never, ever, ever, ever goes away? What cruel punishment is this that I should feel so incomplete!?

Listening to the Dhamma talk, I realized again and again and again, and I know from direct experience with my meditation that it is the attention to breath, the recognition of breath as the building block of life and the cultivation of a close personal relationship with it that can and will lead the way to the stilling of dukkha (suffering). I can comprehend that the ultimate truth of my reality is ungraspable, and over a lifetime of refining my actions and thoughts to detach myself from those that cause unnecessary strain and angst, that I can reach a place on this path that leads to the end of rebirth. I acknowledge that I must learn to depend less and less on that which is impermanent because these things are not self.

Honestly, if navigating the ins and outs of a deeply emotional connection with another has shown me anything, it has shown me that no matter how much I want to dream this dream of "him," it is still only that. No matter what, it will always fade as an illusion that I have used as a distraction from the path and yet at the same time will serve as an instrument of my deeper clarification of the path. I'm often spent, fatigued of this paradox.

My state of existence right now is not fatalistic; not nihilistic, but exists in the sharp dry arid space of a truth that does not reverberate off of anything outside itself. It is clear.

And as I sit here listening to these soulful love songs sung by Lizz Wright, Rachelle Ferell, Cassandra Wilson, and Lalah Hathaway, they fill me with a sense of only muted angst; one tinted with a little resentment and the kind of matter-of-fact-ness one might look at an old abusive lover with. I'm kind of ruined to them with the knowledge that whatever longing they so poignantly describe is based on many lies and only a few immutable truths.

These soulful love songs strum the deep passionate parts of me that don't serve the stilling of my suffering, but comfort me in the familiarity of it.

My dream of "him" has been necessary for the refinement of my journey.

My dream of "him" is not the destination of my journey.

Every time I get lost in the dream of "him," when it fades and I come back to the un-reverberating truth of my purpose, meditation and the beckoning of freedom from suffering are here waiting for me with an even stronger embrace than before I went wandering into the dream.

Until next time, Be Awake and Be Well. May Metta "Lovingkindness" Fill Your Life.

Fisiwe is a writer, singer and performance poet. She is the author of Lovewords: Poetry From a Place Called Love, and she is the host of her own internet radio show, Love Art Life Radio. She can be reached at fisiwezwana@yahoo.com.