I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings…

L.O.V.E.




Happy Friday Night Love and Light to you! Welcome to another winning week of awesome!

Under normal circumstances, LIFE and I get along swimmingly. Under normal circumstances, I just wanna dance and let LIFE herself have her way with me! Hon-tee, I have such a love affair with my life sometimes, it catches me off guard and I wonder if I’m sane. But alas, I am not.

 

It’s unfortunate that the last few weeks, this here Friday Night Love and Light has been a touch on the quasi somber side. LIFE and I are in the midst of a bit of a spat, but I’m sure we’ll make up eventually. We always do…

 

I’d like to lie and say with all that I have going on, I have it all going on *snaps*. And yet, I am a true fan of authenticity. I believe that by sharing our actual truth, we help each other to not only embrace that truth and find liberation from it; but also to recognize we all go through stuff. No matter how positive and powerful we are, everybody’s got their something. I don’t write these LOVE notes so you can think I’m perfect and perfectly devoid of issue. I write them so that you can know that I know WE are ALL in this thing together. You are not a lone, no matter what it is you’re going through.

 

When I go through stuff, it’s become instinct for me to sit and pray for other people. I don’t why I do this. I can’t say it makes me feel all that much better about the stuff that happens to be irking my soul at the time. I can say there’s a part of me that truly believes that if I’m having a hard time, someone in the world is having a MUCH harder one and I should lift them up, just in case nobody else is praying for them.

 

Prayer never used to be my bag, until I discovered Affirmative Prayer. The difference to me between Affirmative Prayer and the reg ole kind is that with the former, there is a sense and maybe even an attitude that whatever it is, is already done. I don’t say “Pleeeeeeaaaaassssseeee Lawd, dear sweet OMG, pleeeeeeeaaaasssssseeee can you do whatever it is, cause I neeeeeed whatever it iiiiiiiisssss because I doooooo!” (And then sit and stew in hopes that Yeezus heard me.)

 

I say instead, “How good it is to be in the presence of LOVE and light and ALL that there is. How good it is to be in the presence of already done. How good it is to have all needs met and to know without the shadow of one doubt that LIFE itself is for me and whatever it is that I think I need is already done because there is no withholding in the universe. There is no withholding in the spirit. I lift up my brothers and sisters everywhere they are, in such a way that there is only light and love in them and their interactions this day. How good it is to know that anything in them that is not GOD is transmuted and transcended right now into something fabulous!”

 

Feel the difference? The reg ole way feels powerless. The Affirmative way feels wielding. So I like to do this for myself and my family, friends and any old body who happens to cross my path. I take that back. I do feel much better when I pray for others. I feel much better indeed.

 

I will say that there are some prayers that no matter how affirmative you may be with them, what it is is gonna be what it is. Like when someone we love dearly passes on from this mortal realm. Many of my fellow poets and people are nursing a bit of heartache once the news hit that our Queen Mother, Dr. Maya Angelou died on Wednesday. Mother Maya was just… EVERYTHING. I didn’t know her personally, but I knew her. I knew her work. I knew her power. I knew her light. I knew her fierceness and LOVE of being a beneficial presence on this planet.  I knew that every single thing she wrote or said felt exactly like an affirmative prayer for us all. She knew our potential and she spoke to us as though we knew it too. Even when we didn’t. She was her own solar system. She lived her own potential. She was everything a phenomenal woman is designed to be and already I miss her presence on this planet.

 

It’s becoming infinitely clear that our Elders are moving on (and at a rapid pace). In doing so, they’re also leaving this crippled Earth to us to fix, change or destroy. They’ve done they’re part. They’ve been holding a space for us in their legacy-waiting–I would imagine, for us to get the memo and start LOVEing each other better as we’re supposed to. Lots of us don’t seem to have read that memo. I wonder sometimes if enough of us are even ready enough to take the wheel and steer. By force or by foul. Too many of us don’t seem like we even know how to drive our own lives, let alone a planet’s worth. I can’t lie, seeing what I’ve seen in my short/long life, causes my stomach to hurt some.

 

It’s not really our fault. But it’s still our charge. And it is kind of our fault. Our lives are ours.

 

So when amazing souls like Mother Maya and Fathers Madiba and Amiri and even Uncle E. Steven, plus so many others who’ve walked before us doing such amazing work–being beneficial presences on this planet–shuffle off with such quiet power–there’s a sadness that lingers because I know deep down we’ve lost another LOVE warrior. The sadness lingers a bit because we’ve got so few of us stepping up to hold their space. Like, holy crap. We care about different things today, as we’ll suppose we should. But a lot of what we care about today, don’t mean much to more than just us, really. Which is a whole other post for another day.

I will say though, with some amount of emphasis, that it is because of Mother Maya’s legacy that I know why the caged bird sings…

 

<3

 

I’ll end this post with the gorgeous words Mother Maya used to honor the passing of her dear friend and fellow Ascended Elder, Amiri Baraka…

<3


Peace be still, Mother. “I give condolences to everybody, because when a poet dies something hopeful in the national psyche disappears.”

 

Friends, we’ve got WERK to do. So let’s WERK. If you haven’t seen these, you must.

 




Now you know. Let it flow. So. That’s what I learned this week. I do hope it helps something. Thank you for reading this (!!!) Remember always to #RuleYoSelf with L.O.V.E. Have a Happy Awesome Weekend! Love you madly!

Osho Lovianhal,

-e-

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