Celebrating And Understanding American Black History

Black History Month is the history of everyone. It’s a time we remember our ancestors. And, it’s a time to remember, in particular, the great things that African Americans and those from the African diaspora have contributed to our world. Join Rev Skip as we remember the struggles, victories, the achievements of those who came before us: Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Maya Angelo, Madam CJ Walker, Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, and so many others.

Transcript

I wasn't taught black history.

I was taught a history that was disjointed.

And so we get to celebrate.

And when I was growing up,

I thought black history was the thing that only black people could celebrate.

And I am here to say that it is a shift.

It is for all of us because it is our history.

So that's a fun way we can talk about black history,

But there's another part of history that we don't want to really look at.

You know,

Hasan Jeffries has a video on YouTube that talked about his journey as a historian,

A black man as a historian,

Going to James Madison's home.

James Madison,

One of our presidents,

Great estate,

You can go and you can visit it.

And when Hakeem was there,

When he was there studying the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,

He came across something that he was very surprised to find out.

He was brought down to the basement by one of the curators and the curator said to him,

I want you to touch the imprint of the stones.

So he went across and he touched the imprints of the stones and these little hand imprints,

Very tiny,

Tiny hands.

And in that moment he realized this estate was built by enslaved children.

See,

That's the hard part.

And we call that hard history for a reason.

Hard history is a part that we don't like to talk about,

But if we're not willing to talk about,

We are going to repeat it over and over again.

So what are we here to do for Black History Month?

Number one,

We are here to celebrate.

We must celebrate who and what we are.

We must acknowledge the past,

That's number two.

And then we must be willing to heal and transform the trauma of separation.

This is why we have Black History Month.

And how are we going to do that today?

We're going to use a formula that I created for my own transformation that I believe the world can use to transform this planet,

Because I believe it's a we thing,

But it starts with the man in the mirror.

We can use a philosophy that I've used for a while called CARES.

And CARES stands for connection,

Action,

Remember,

Empowerment,

Self,

Love.

See,

We get to celebrate who and what we are.

Our diversity and inclusivity is what we celebrate here.

Oneness.

See,

I'm so glad there's only one of me.

Can you imagine if there was six of me running around here?

I'm so glad there's only one of you because you are a unique expression of love.

You are created in a unique way.

You're here to show up to do you,

Boo,

So you might as well do it great.

That is why you are here.

So we have to celebrate everything.

So we celebrate Hanukkah,

We celebrate Passover,

We celebrate Christian,

We celebrate Christmas,

We celebrate Easter,

Ramadan,

And this year it culminates in one week again.

It's powerful.

Unity.

We celebrate your blackness,

Your whiteness,

Your straightness,

Your manness,

Your womanness.

We celebrate all of y'all and what you bring to the plate.

And if we don't acknowledge the past,

We are doomed to repeat it over and over again.

Tyreen Nichols.

Why do you think we continue to have black men and black women killed by police?

Because we have not,

Number three,

Healed the trauma of separation.

Until we're willing to step forth and have a real conversation about what is happening,

We will never heal out there.

So I'm inviting you to have a real honest conversation with yourself today.

So before the pandemic,

I was the minister and the practitioner,

Did not wanna talk about race things.

I didn't wanna talk about marginalized communities because I am in the movement of oneness.

We're all one,

We're all unity,

We're all this,

We're all that.

And then it took a murder of George Floyd,

Breonna Taylor,

Ahmaud Arbery in front of my eyes to realize,

Oh,

I have unresolved healing that needs to go on in me.

And I showed up as the stereotypical black angry man.

But it was not stereotypical,

It was unhealed trauma.

I did not realize that until I saw it in front of my eyes.

And then I said,

Okay,

Hold up here.

I need to deal with this because I do not wanna continue to live this energy.

So we began healing circles at Agape.

In fact,

We did healing circles for CSLs.

A group of us has said,

We're gonna step forth and we're gonna heal this planet.

So we had created a place where people have an honest communication about our history,

About what was going on.

And then I jumped into a graduate course by Dr.

Joy DeGruy.

She wrote post-traumatic slave syndrome.

I jumped into her class and I was just open to things I had been carrying on.

Many,

Many tears.

In the middle of the pandemic,

We got 1619 Project,

Which we got to a chance to see the true history of our enslaved ancestors.

And they're not slaves,

They're enslaved.

So we have to change the way we see that word as well.

I also began to read a book called The Sacred Yes by Deborah L.

Johnson.

And in The Sacred Yes,

This is what she writes.

And I wanna share this with you.

She writes this.

We are willing to feel it so we can deal with it.

Then we can begin to heal it.

And I've added this part in,

And then we can ask what will be revealed from it.

With cares,

That is our journey of healing.

That is our journey of healing.

So we go with connection.

Let's dig deep in connection first.

Connection is the feeling.

We gotta be honest with what's going on.

It is the truth of the matter that we're still experiencing all of us,

Not just black people,

All of us,

We're experiencing the trauma of separation.

It's unhealed trauma.

And what is trauma?

Are we living an unwanted experience?

It is a retelling of the hurt because those stories of the enslaved ancestors are passed down epigenetically to all of us,

But we don't wanna face it.

It's emotional response to a terrible thing that has happened.

So if you look at trauma,

It could be from an accident,

It could be rape,

It could be disaster,

It could be enslaved ancestors.

Whatever it is,

Trauma is trauma.

We getting real here,

Y'all.

We must talk about our feelings.

We must talk about how we're feeling and how we're still feeling.

And then once we get honest,

We can get real with what is it that we want.

We get to state into the universe what we want.

We want a world that works for everyone,

And we know it's possible because that's the teachings of new thoughts.

We get to state what we want,

Unity and love.

But see,

If we haven't got really clear about what we're experiencing,

How can we move fully into the presence of love?

And once we get connected,

We go into the action.

The action is the next part where we get to deal with what we're feeling.

The first action is with self,

The man in the mirror,

The woman in the mirror,

The soul that's in the mirror,

They that's in the mirror.

We must have something called a self-contemplating moment.

Self-contemplation.

Here's the three questions that I ask when I do self-contemplation around my triggers.

Why am I triggered?

What is the spiritual truth behind this trigger?

What is the spiritual truth opposing this trigger?

What is the spiritual truth?

And number three,

What am I here to learn?

When I see Tyree Nichols being killed,

I see another black man that's being killed,

I automatically am triggered.

And the reason why I'm triggered is I don't feel safe as a black man in America.

Being real with y'all,

I don't feel safe.

And when I'm not safe,

I gotta go to the truth.

The truth is I am safe in God.

I am safe in love.

I have people around me that keep me safe.

And what am I here to learn?

My biggest journey has been self-love.

It has been self-appreciation.

It's to understand that I was created in this form for a reason.

See,

Self-contemplation will bring you to a higher awakening.

And then of course,

The action and dealing with it is always the spiritual practices of prayer,

Meditation,

Community,

Sacred study,

Yoga practice.

Y'all,

Yoga will change your life.

Try it.

And then we get to move from the spiritual practices into social justice,

Spiritual activism.

And what is spiritual activism?

We're gonna talk a little bit more about that next week.

A spiritual activism is moving from a spiritual practice to create a world that works for everyone.

So that means we pray,

We meditate,

We hold consciousness,

But then sometimes we gotta get out on the streets.

Sometimes we gotta put on our marching boots,

And I got some cute marching boots on today.

Sometimes we gotta walk for equality.

It's not walking for a certain amount of people or this group,

It's walking for everyone.

Sometimes we gotta speak truth to power,

Public enemy.

And then once we begin to deal with it and we get into the action,

We gotta remember,

Y'all.

We gotta remember to remember to remember.

If I can just say that a couple more times,

Remember to remember to remember.

We gotta remember our history.

We gotta remember that we're here to create change and to heal.

We gotta remember our core values of oneness,

Inclusivity,

And diversity.

We gotta remind ourselves that is what we're living for,

Not the circumstances that we are in.

Black History Month,

It's about that celebration.

We gotta remember God's calling,

But not right now.

Actually,

God is always calling.

We have the power to shift.

We gotta remember to remember that the power to shift this planet starts with the man in the mirror.

It starts with us.

And then once we get ourselves straight,

We can go out and change the planet.

But we gotta remember,

We gotta do our own spiritual work first.

Last month,

We were talking about new intention.

So we got a chance to talk about the face of intention by Wayne Dyer,

And he invited us to look at intention.

It's not what we intend to do.

It's the energy we use to change our life.

We gotta remember that we gotta move from creativity to create a new world that works for everyone.

We gotta move forth in kindness.

Martin Luther King said,

When they sick the dog,

Show them kindness and love.

We gotta move from a place of love.

Love is the only thing that can heal this planet,

Y'all.

Love is the only thing.

We're gonna create something beautiful when we all come together.

I love the first song that y'all sang.

When we come together,

It's gonna be beautiful.

It's already beautiful now,

But we can go from glory to greater glory.

We can go from beauty to greater beauty,

Go from love to greater love.

We're here to expand abundance.

We're here to be receptive to all.

We create a space that no one feels marginalized in this community.

You have a home.

You have a place where you can celebrate and to be loved and to give love.

That's what we're all about,

CSL.

And once we remember to remember,

We gotta continue to empower ourselves.

We have a great book that we are reading this month.

If you don't have this book,

This book changed my life.

It is called Spiritual Liberation by Michael Bernard Beckwith.

This is our book of the month.

And this is the book that I really began to see myself in a deeper spiritual way.

I got to liberate myself and understand the beauty of myself.

So this is an incredible book.

And this is what Michael Beckwith talks about.

In this book,

He writes this.

As a vital expression of existence,

We're talking about the big E,

That's God,

Universe.

We have entered in an agreement,

Y'all.

We entered into agreement before we got here with the universal scheme of things to evolve your highest potential and deliver your best on the planet in the unique,

Magnificent way.

That's our agreement.

So if anything else,

The empowerment comes from the spiritual agreement we made before we got here.

Empowerment,

Y'all,

It's the healing.

It is where we live in our life that is inspired.

Inspiration.

We live above the situation.

We live above the circumstances.

So that's why we come to CSL,

To be inspired,

To lift up.

The power is already in you.

There is a spark of divine intelligence that is ready to expand and explode.

So when I was growing up,

I thought Black History Month was done in February because it's the shortest day of the month and giving black people the shortest day of the month.

Don't judge my journey.

It is really done in February because we celebrate Frederick Douglass's birthday and also Abraham Lincoln.

So in 1926,

Carter G.

Woodson created Black History Week so that we can remember all the achievements of African-Americans and those of the African diaspora.

Sometimes we gotta just research,

And I hope y'all Google it,

Achievements of African-Americans.

Here are just a few of them.

Clothes dryer,

1892.

Automatic doors on the elevators.

How about folding chairs,

Gas heated furnaces,

The golf tee,

So y'all who tee off tomorrow,

A black man made that golf tee,

Baby.

Modern toilets.

So you have something to be grateful for when you sit down.

Home security systems,

Mailboxes,

Automatic gear shifts,

The pacemakers,

And I know some of y'all got a pacemaker up in here.

Y'all better be thanking somebody.

Yes,

Potato chips.

Who doesn't like a potato chip up in here?

I love me a potato chip.

Thank you,

Thank you.

Thermostats,

Temperature controls,

The carbon light bulbs,

Refrigerated trucks,

The IBM colored monitor that you use for your computers.

These are the achievements,

And there's so many,

Many,

Many,

Many more.

And once we feel the empowerment,

We move into this place of self-love.

Again,

There's a divine intelligence that live within all of us,

Ready to do greatness,

But it comes from a place of understanding the love that you are.

You are divine emanation of absolute love.

You've been created to do great things.

You've been created to hold our principles,

Our manifesto that's on the wall,

Our core values.

You were created to be the light.

We are here to be the light and to shine it bright.

You are here to bring this love.

We might be the only love that someone sees today.

So I wanna leave you with this.

This is the manifestation of transformation,

And someone gave me this last year,

And I've been just living on this all year long.

And just close your eyes,

I want you to hear this.

We are here to dream like Martin,

Lead like Harriet,

Fight like Malcolm,

Think like Garvey,

Write like Maya,

Build like Madam C.

J.

,

Speak like Frederick,

Educate like W.

E.

B.

,

Believe like Theragood,

Challenge like Rosa,

Invent like George.

This is the manifestation for transformation.

CSL,

Will you celebrate black history throughout the year?

Yes or yes?

Yes.

CSL,

Will you hold the vibration to create a world that works for everyone?

Yes.

CSL,

Will you live out our core values of one nation,

Live out our core values of oneness and inclusivity?

Yes.

Then my job is done,

And so it is.

Blessings.